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unrelated? — series of terror attacks this same weekend in Russian Dagestan).
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on television Friday that almost 700,000 Russians are fighting in Ukraine. "In the zone of our special military operation there are almost 700,000," Putin said during a televised meeting with decorated participants from the offensive. In December at his end-of-year press conference, Putin gave the figure of 617,000 taking part in the war in Ukraine. He said that of those, 244,000 had been mobilized. It last gave an official figure in September 2022, when it said 5,937 soldiers had been killed in combat.
The first two years of the Ukraine war have produced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions totalling approximately 175mn tonnes of CO2, surpassing the annual emissions of the Netherlands, according to a joint study by Ukraine's Environment Ministry and climate NGOs released on June 11. The financial cost associated with these emissions over the two-year period has exceeded $32bn, the study reported. This figure accounts for both direct effects, such as the impact of shelling, bombing, forest fires and damage to energy infrastructure, as well as associated impacts, including increased refugee flows, rerouted plane traffic and the future carbon cost of reconstruction. Military activity was a major contributor to the total emissions, accounting for around 51.6mn tonnes, with 35.2mn tonnes attributed to the fuel consumption of Russian troops.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Ukraine to withdraw from four eastern regions partially occupied by his forces as a condition of peace talks, ahead of a Kyiv- backed conference on the war to which Moscow hasn’t been invited. Putin said Ukrainian forces should pull out from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of the country in return for a cease-fire by Russian troops. He also demanded Ukraine give up its bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in a televised speech before Foreign Ministry officials on the eve of a Swiss-hosted peace conference aimed at promoting Ukrainian demands for a Russian withdrawal from its territory.
In the past month, Russian forces have gained 167 square miles of Ukrainian territory, while Ukrainian forces have re-gained 1 square mile, according to the June 11, 2024, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. Russian forces in Ukraine “have run a small offensive operation ... [with] limited penetrations,” but they “don't have the military capability to overrun Ukraine,” according to former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and “it is not likely that the Ukrainian military can militarily eject” the Russians. “From a military—purely military standpoint, you're at a military stand--a stalemate,” he said at the Futurist Summit on June 13. Milley is not alone in his assessment. Nearly half of Ukrainians believe the war with Russia is at a stalemate, according to a recent poll conducted by Rating for CEIP and reported by WP.
52 RUSSIA Country Report July 2024 www.intellinews.com