The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian Kh-59/69 cruise missiles over Odesa Oblast during the day on May 7.[65]
Russia will hold drills that include practice for the use of tactical nuclear weapons, days after top European leaders voiced stronger military support for Ukraine.
Kremlin officials continue to re-intensify Russia's reflexive control campaign targeting Western decision-making with nuclear threats and diplomatic manipulation. Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov reiterated claims that "aggressive" Western policies forced Russia to prepare to conduct snap nuclear exercises.[93] Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Maria Zakharova reiterated claims that UK Foreign Minister David Cameron's assertion that Ukraine can use UK-provided weapons to strike military targets inside Russia is escalatory and that Russia can respond by striking UK military facilities "in Ukraine and beyond."[94] Russian troops engage in routine nuclear exercises as part of this wider nuclear rhetoric information operation, but ISW continues to assess that Russia is highly unlikely to use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield in Ukraine or anywhere else.[95] Russian officials will likely continue to intensify Russia's reflexive control campaign to discourage ongoing Western military support for Ukraine and discourage Western governments from allowing Ukrainian forces to use Western-provided systems to strike military targets in Russia.[96]
understandingwar.org/...
then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Congress in 2018: "I don't think there's any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Any nuclear weapon used anytime is a strategic game changer."
Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reported on May 7 that it exposed a network of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives who were planning to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence and military officials.[26] The SBU stated that the exposed agents included two colonels of Ukraine's Office of State Security (State Guard) who were operating as part of the FSB's Fifth Service.[27] The FSB's Fifth Service originates from the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB)'s Fifth Service, which conducted counterintelligence and espionage operations in non-Russian Soviet states and now essentially functions as a foreign espionage branch of the FSB.[28] The SBU noted that the FSB recruited the agents out of Ukraine's State Guard before the 2022 full-scale invasion.[29] Both agents are facing life imprisonment on charges of treason.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin began his fifth term as Russian President on May 7 and stressed Russia's need for unchallenged autocratic rule while indirectly calling for victory in Ukraine.
- Russian ultranationalists lauded the start of Putin's fifth term as a historic event and explicitly approved of the autocratic tradition in which Putin is casting himself, with one of them hailing him as "imperator," the formal title of the Russian tsars since the time of Peter the Great. Russian ultranationalists also expressed hope that Putin will continue to deepen an anti-Western ideology that the Kremlin has been heavily developing since the start of the full-scale invasion.
- The current Russian cabinet of ministers and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin formally resigned on May 7 as constitutionally mandated, and the ministers who return to service and the ones whom Putin replaces will indicate who has Putin's favor and signal his political priorities for his fifth term
- Belarus has announced a surprise nuclear readiness inspection likely as part of the Kremlin's re-intensified reflexive control campaign targeting Western decision-making.
- Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) reported on May 7 that it exposed a network of Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) operatives who were planning to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other high-ranking Ukrainian intelligence and military officials
- The Russian Prosecutor General's Office declared US non-governmental organization (NGO) Freedom House an "undesirable organization" on May 7, likely as part of an ongoing effort to consolidate control over the domestic information space and further deprive Russians of access to civil society organizations and independent assessments of Russian civil and political rights.
- Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Avdiivka, Donetsk City, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
- Russian occupation officials continue efforts to forcibly recruit Ukrainian civilians into the Russian military in occupied Kherson Oblast.
- The Kremlin is working with occupation administrators to strengthen Russia's control over the child welfare system in occupied Ukraine.
Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on May 7 but there were no changes to the frontline... Russian forces also continued offensive operations northeast of Kupyansk near Synkivka; northwest of Svatove near Pishchane, Berestove, and Stelmakhivka; northwest of Kreminna near Nevske; west of Kreminna near Terny and Yampolivka; and south of Kreminna near the Serebryanske forest area and Bilohorivka on May 7.[36] ...Select Russian and Ukrainian sources have recently claimed that elements of the 76th VDV division may be redeploying from western Zaporizhia, but have not explicitly claimed that these elements may be redeploying to the Kreminna area.[38]
⚠️ "It is difficult at the front. Russia is trying to reach Kurakhove and Pokrovsk", - Syrskyi.
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— MAKS 23 👀🇺🇦 (@maks23.bsky.social) May 6, 2024 at 8:22 AM