Category: Michael Novakhov – SharedNewsLinks℠

Pokrovsk, Sumy and Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

Dima never puts out a cigarette until he smokes it right down to the filter, risking burning his fingers to squeeze out one more drag. He spent years on the Ukrainian front lines. He knows the price of a good smoke.

As a battalion commander, Dima was in charge of around 800 men who fought in some of the fiercest, bloodiest battles of the war – most recently near Pokrovsk, the strategic eastern town that is now on the brink of falling to Russia.

But with most of his troops now dead or severely injured, Dima decided he’d had enough. He quit and took another job with the military – in an office in Kyiv.

Standing outside that office, chain smoking and drinking sweet coffee, he told CNN he just couldn’t handle watching his men die anymore.

Two and half years of Russia’s grinding offensive have decimated many Ukrainian units. Reinforcements are few and far between, leaving some soldiers exhausted and demoralized. The situation is particularly dire among infantry units near Pokrovsk and elsewhere on the eastern front line, where Ukraine is struggling to stop Russia’s creeping advances.

CNN spoke to six commanders and officers who are or were until recently fighting or supervising units in the area. All six said desertion and insubordination are becoming a widespread problem, especially among newly recruited soldiers.

Four of the six, including Dima, have asked for their names to be changed or withheld due to the sensitive nature of the topic and because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

“Not all mobilized soldiers are leaving their positions, but the majority are. When new guys come here, they see how difficult it is. They see a lot of enemy drones, artillery and mortars,” one unit commander currently fighting in Pokrovsk told CNN. He also asked to remain anonymous.

“They go to the positions once and if they survive, they never return. They either leave their positions, refuse to go into battle, or try to find a way to leave the army,” he added.

Unlike those who volunteered earlier in the war, many of the new recruits didn’t have a choice in entering the conflict. They were called up after Ukraine’s new mobilization law came into force in the spring and can’t leave legally until after the government introduces demobilization, unless they get special permission to do so.

Yet the discipline problems clearly began way before this. Ukraine went through an extremely difficult patch during last winter and spring. Months of delay in getting US military assistance into the country led to a critical ammunition shortage and a major slump in morale.

Multiple soldiers told CNN at the time that they would often find themselves in a good position, with a clear view of the approaching enemy and no artillery rounds to fire. Some spoke of feeling guilty for not being able to provide adequate cover for their infantry units.

“The days are long, they live in a dugout, on duty around the clock and if they can’t shoot, the Russians have an advantage, they hear them advancing and they know that if they had fired it wouldn’t have happened,” said Andryi Horetskyi, a Ukrainian military officer whose unit is now fighting in Chasiv Yar, another eastern frontline hot spot.

Serhiy Tsehotskiy, an officer with the 59th Separate Motorized Infantry Brigade, told CNN the unit tries to rotate soldiers in and out every three to four days. But drones, which have only increased in number over the course of the war, can make that too dangerous, forcing soldiers to stay put for longer. “The record is 20 days,” he said.

As the battlefield situation deteriorated, an increasing number of troops started to give up. In just the first four months of 2024, prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against almost 19,000 soldiers who either abandoned their posts or deserted, according to the Ukrainian parliament. More than a million Ukrainians serve in the country’s defense and security forces, although this number includes everyone, including people working in offices far away from the front lines.

It’s a staggering and – most likely – incomplete number. Several commanders told CNN that many officers would not report desertion and unauthorized absences, hoping instead to convince troops to return voluntarily, without facing punishment.

This approach became so common that Ukraine changed the law to decriminalize desertion and absence without leave, if committed for the first time.

Horetskyi told CNN that this move made sense. “Threats will only make things worse. A smart commander will delay threats, or even avoid them,” he said.

Pokrovsk has become the epicenter of the fight for Ukraine’s east. Russian forces have been inching towards the city for months, but their advances have sped up in recent weeks as Ukrainian defenses begin to crumble.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear his goal is to gain control over the entirety of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions and taking over Pokrovsk, an important military and supply hub, would be a major step towards that objective.

It sits on a key road that connects it to other military cities in the area and a railroad that links it with Dnipro. The last major coking coal mine still under Kyiv’s control is also just to the west of the city, supplying coke to make steel – an indispensable wartime resource.

Ukrainian soldiers in the area paint a grim picture of the situation. Kyiv’s forces are clearly outnumbered and outgunned, with some commanders estimating there are 10 Russian soldiers to each Ukrainian.

But they also appear to be struggling with problems of their own making.

An officer from a brigade fighting in Pokrovsk, who asked for their name to be withheld for security reasons, told CNN that poor communication between different units is a major issue there.

There have even been cases of troops not disclosing the full battlefield picture to other units out of fear it would make them look bad, the officer said.

One battalion commander in northern Donetsk said his flank was recently left exposed to Russian attacks after soldiers from neighboring units abandoned their positions without reporting it.

The high number of different units that Kyiv has sent to the eastern front lines has caused communication problems, according to several rank-and-file soldiers who were until recently fighting in Pokrovsk.

One said it was not unheard of to have Ukrainian signal jammers affecting vital coordination and drone launches because units from different brigades didn’t communicate properly.

A group of sappers – or combat engineers – spoke to CNN near the border between Ukraine and Russia’s Kursk region, where they have been recently redeployed from just south of Pokrovsk.

Kyiv launched its surprise incursion into Kursk last month, taking Moscow by surprise and quickly advancing some 30 kilometers (19 miles) into Russian territory.

Ukraine’s leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, said one of the goals of the operation was to prevent further attacks on northern Ukraine, while also showing Kyiv’s Western allies that, with the right support, the Ukrainian military can fight back and eventually win the war.

The operation also gave a major boost to an exhausted nation. Ukraine has been on the backfoot for most of the past year, enduring relentless attacks, blackouts and heartbreaking losses.

But the sappers were not too sure about the strategy. Having just finished a long mission over the border, they were slumped around a table outside a closed restaurant near the frontier, waiting for their car to turn up.

Chain smoking and trying to stay awake, they questioned why they were sent to Kursk when the eastern front line is in disarray.

“It felt weird entering Russia, because in this war we were supposed to defend our soil and our country, and now we’re fighting on the other country’s territory,” one of them said. CNN is not disclosing their identities because they were not authorized to speak to the media and due to the sensitive nature of their words.

All four have been fighting for more than two-and-half years and theirs is a tough job. As sappers, they spend days on the front lines, clearing mine fields, preparing defenses and conducting controlled explosions. They can find themselves under attack, ahead of even the first line of infantry, dragging around some 40 kilograms (88 pounds) of kit and four anti-tank mines, each weighing about 10 kilograms (22 pounds).

Speaking to CNN, they appeared completely exhausted. They had no rest between their Pokrovsk mission and the one in Kursk.

“It depends on each commander. Some units receive rotations and have time off, while others are just fighting non-stop, the whole system is not very fair,” one of the soldiers said. Asked if the advances in Kursk gave them the same boost as the rest of the nation, they remained skeptical.

“After three years of this, war, everything feels the same,” one of the men told CNN.

Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Ukraine’s Commander in Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi admitted low morale is still an issue and said raising it was “a very important part” of his job.

“The Kursk operation… significantly improved the morale of not only the military but the entire Ukrainian population,” he said.

He said he had been going to the front lines regularly to meet with the soldiers there and do what he could to make them feel better. “We understand each other no matter who I am talking to, whether it is an ordinary soldier, a rifleman, for example, or a brigade commander or a battalion commander… I know all the problems that our servicemen, soldiers, and officers experience. The front line is my life,” he said.

And Horetskyi – an officer specially trained to provide moral and psychological support to troops – is part of the plan to boost morale.

During recent leave in Kyiv, Horetskyi told CNN that while his role has existed for a while, it consisted mostly of paperwork. Now he spends a lot more time with his unit, checking in, making sure they are not burning out. Not that his help is always appreciated.

“They have this idea that I’m a shrink that will make them take thousands of tests and then tell them they are sick, so I try to break down the barriers,” he said, adding that little distractions can prevent a downward spiral.

In the monotony of war, any break from the routine can help, he said. This can include a wash in a real shower, a haircut or going for a swim in a lake. “It’s such a little thing, but it gets them out of the routine for half a day, it makes them happy, and they can return to their positions a bit more relaxed,”  Horetskyi explained.

Even officers with many years of experience are finding the situation in the east difficult.

Some, like Dima, are transferring to posts away from the front lines. He said his decision to leave the battlefield was mostly down to disagreements with a new commander.

That, too, is increasingly common, several officers told CNN.

The ranks of Dima’s battalion grew thinner and thinner, until the unit disappeared.

They never received enough reinforcements, Dima says, something he blames squarely on the government and its reluctance to recruit more people.

The battalion suffered painful losses in the past year, fighting on multiple front lines before being sent to Pokrovsk without any rest. Dima saw so many of his men killed and wounded, he became numb.

Yet he told CNN he is determined to go back to the front lines, but will make one change first.

“I’ve now made the decision that I will stop getting attached to people emotionally. It’s a rotten approach, but it’s the most sensible one,” he said.

Former President Trump on Saturday dismissed findings from the Justice Department about Russia’s covert efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. elections and joked about whether he should be offended that Vladimir Putin had offered a tongue-in-cheek endorsement of Vice President Harris.

Trump held a rally in Wisconsin, where he referenced a Justice Department announcement earlier in the week that it seized 32 web domains Russia has used for its influence campaigns.

“Three days ago it started again. The Justice Department said Russia may be involved in our elections again,” Trump said. “Russia. It’s Russia. And you know the whole world laughed at them this time.

“They said just the other day, the attorney general, ‘We are looking at Russia.’ And I said oh no. It’s Russia, Russia, Russia all over again,” Trump said, referring to the investigation into his 2016 campaign by special counsel Robert Mueller. “But they don’t look at China and they don’t look at Iran. I don’t know what it is with poor Russia.”

The Biden administration earlier this week condemned Russian efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. election.

The Justice Department seized web domains and targeted two employees of RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a Russian state media outlet with content available in English, charging the duo with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The indictment accuses the two of partnering with a conservative-leaning media company to help sow division in the U.S.

Collectively, the two actions are some of the strongest moves taken under the Biden White House to confront accelerating efforts by the Russian government the intelligence community has deemed “the predominant threat to U.S. elections.”

Trump has in the past cast doubt on the intelligence community’s findings that Russia was attempting to influence U.S. elections, including during a meeting he had alongside Putin in 2018.

The intelligence community determined Russia attempted to influence the 2016 election, which Trump won, and the Justice Department investigated the Trump campaign over possible coordination with Moscow. The final special counsel report found no evidence of collusion.

Trump on Saturday also quipped about comments from Putin, who earlier in the week joked that he is supporting Harris in the upcoming election, citing her “infectious” laugh and potential to change U.S. sanctions on Russia.

“He endorsed Kamala. I was very offended by that. I wonder why he endorsed Kamala. No, he’s a chess player,” Trump said.

The former president has repeatedly said Putin does not fear or respect the current administration, though Trump’s critics have accused him of cozying up to autocrats and dictators.

U.S. intelligence officials warned Friday that the Russian government’s covert efforts to sway the presidential election are “more sophisticated than in prior election cycles,” and that Moscow is using artificial intelligence to create increasingly convincing fake content that could aid Trump. Four years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously endorsed the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump.

But Trump, who has repeatedly described the probes into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “hoax,” is dismissing them this time around, too.

“The Justice Department said Russia may be involved in our elections again,” Trump told the crowd at his rally. “And, you know, the whole world laughed at them this time.”

The Republican presidential nominee’s comments appeared to reference the indictment Wednesday of two Russia-based employees of Russia’s state-run news site, RT, in an alleged scheme in which they paid an American media company to spread English-language videos on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X.

“It’s Russia, Russia, Russia all over again. But they don’t look at China and they don’t look at Iran. They look at Russia. I don’t know what it is with poor Russia,” Trump said.

Trump’s rally, at the airport in Mosinee, Wis., was billed as focused on “draining the swamp,” but featured a stump speech that meandered from familiar attack lines about inflation and jobs to falsehoods about sex-change operations for minors, conspiracy theories about government employment statistics and dismissals of Russian interference in American elections.

The indictments were part of the administration’s most sweeping effort yet to tackle what it described as Russian disinformation campaigns ahead of the November election.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Washington Post this week that the indictments were “nonsense” and denied Russian interference in the elections. And Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said that he wants Vice President Kamala Harris to win the election, rather than Trump, in a tongue-in-cheek endorsement that was widely viewed — including by the former president — as an effort to undermine rather than support her.

“I knew Putin, I knew him well,” Trump said at the rally Saturday. “The other day he endorsed Kamala. He endorsed Kamala. I was very, offended by that … I think it was done maybe with a smile.”

Peskov said in an interview on Russian TV this month that Moscow views Harris as a more predictable opponent than Trump. “The Democrats are more predictable. And what Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Ms. Harris,” he said.

But Russia, which is in the midst of a bloody, protracted invasion of its neighbor Ukraine, has other interests at stake in the 2024 election.

Trump, who has often boasted about his relationship with Putin and claimed without evidence that Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if he was president, has expressed deep skepticism about continuing U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

“I will have that war finished and done and settled before I get to the White House,” Trump vowed Saturday, repeating sentiments that the Kremlin has previously dismissed. “As president elect, I will get that done.”

Cheeseman reported from Washington. Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.

The Georgia teenager who killed four people and wounded nine others in a shooting at Apalachee High School on Wednesday was interested in prior school shootings, according to multiple reports.

Colt Gray, a 14-year-old student of the school, was arrested at the scene northeast of Atlanta and later charged with four counts of murder. Additional charges are expected.

His first court appearance is scheduled for Friday.

Gray was allegedly “obsessed” with the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Fla., where former student Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and wounded 17 others, sources told the New York Times.

In May 2023, authorities in Jackson County, Ga., investigated Gray after receiving a tip that he made threats online about shooting up a middle school. Gray, 13 at the time, denied making the threats, and his father said he knew nothing about them.

The threats came from a Discord account with a Russian username. According to an incident report obtained by Atlanta’s WSB-TV, “translation of the Russian letters spells out the name Lanza, referring to Adam Lanza,” the 20-year-old man who killed 20 children and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.

On Wednesday, the FBI and the local sheriff’s office said they hadn’t compiled enough evidence to arrest Gray or his father at the time, only issuing a warning to local schools for “continued monitoring” of the teen.

However, Discord representatives told TMZ on Thursday that Gray’s account was banned that May, six weeks after it was created in early April 2023, for violating the platform’s anti-extremism policy.

“Discord’s Safety Team immediately responded to law enforcement,” handed over information related to the investigation into the threats and removed the account, a rep told the outlet. The company said it had no record of Gray using the platform between then and Wednesday’s shooting.

Students at Apalachee High who were interviewed on Wednesday told reporters Gray fit the stereotype of a school shooter and often skipped school. Authorities said Wednesday was Gray’s second day attending school, even though the year began on Aug. 1.

“He skips usually, so you never really know where he’s going,” Lyela Sayarath told CNN, describing how Gray walked out of their math class before attempting to return with a firearm. The door had automatically locked behind him, she said, so he opened fire in the classroom next door.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said officers located Gray “five or six minutes” after the call for help went out. Gray complied with the officers’ commands immediately and was taken into custody.

“It was carnage. There was blood everywhere,” Smith told NBC News in an interview. “You could smell the gunpowder. Lotta screaming, yelling. Little bit of chaos.”

Students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53, were identified Thursday as the victims. Aspinwall was also the defensive coordinator for the school’s football team, which canceled a game scheduled for Friday.

Originally Published:

Harris campaign reacts to Putin saying he supports Harris

02:04

– Source:
CNN

CNN
 — 

Russian President Vladimir Putin raised eyebrows Thursday when he expressed his support for US Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, flattering the Democratic nominee with some curiously timed remarks.

“Our ‘favorite,’ if you can call it that, was the current president, Mr. [Joe] Biden. But he was removed from the race, and he recommended all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. Well, we will do so – we will support her,” Putin said Thursday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. “She laughs so expressively and infectiously that it means that she is doing well.”

Putin also criticized former president and current Republican nominee Donald Trump for placing “so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia like no other president has ever introduced before him.”

Putin’s comments come on the heels of sweeping sanctions announced by the Biden administration to combat a Russian government-backed disinformation effort to influence the 2024 elections and boost Trump’s candidacy.

And despite the Russian leader’s vocal support of the Democrats, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said on Wednesday that three Russian companies – at Putin’s direction – used fake profiles to promote false narratives on social media. Internal documents produced by one of those Russian companies show one of the goals of the propaganda effort was to support Trump’s candidacy or whoever emerged as the Republican nominee for president, according to an FBI affidavit.

So what is Putin trying to accomplish?

If the past is any guide, Putin is simply stirring the pot of US domestic politics. In December 2015, Putin praised Trump, calling him the front-runner months before the businessman secured the Republican nomination.

“He is a bright and talented person without any doubt,” Putin said, calling Trump “an outstanding and talented personality.”

Did Putin know something about the 2016 US presidential elections that the pollsters didn’t? No, but the Kremlin leader did little to conceal his dislike of Hillary Clinton, then the likely Democratic nominee.

And when purloined Democratic National Committee emails were leaked just ahead of the Democratic National Convention, Putin did not hide his glee.

While US officials pointed a firm finger of blame at Russia for the hack, Putin denied the Russian state had anything to do with it. And in remarks at the same forum in September 2016, he praised the leak as a sort of service to the voters, saying, “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”

That content being the embarrassing revelation in the leaked emails that Democratic officials gave preferential treatment to Clinton.

In other words, the whole DNC hack episode supported the Kremlin’s view that American democracy is a sham: Nothing matters but power, everything is decided in smoke-filled rooms, and hectoring countries like Russia about adherence to democracy and human rights is hypocritical.

Putin’s view of the American political system makes even more sense when we are reminded of an insight from exiled Russian political journalist Mikhail Zygar, the author of “All the Kremlin’s Men.”

Zygar noted that Putin loved “House of Cards” – the darkly cynical television series about Washington politics – and even recommended it to his ministers.

“That’s his American politics textbook,” Zygar said in an interview.

It’s also possible that Putin was simply trolling Harris by winking at a consistent insult from Trump about the way she laughs.

So if Putin’s take on US election politics is seen through the lens of “House of Cards,” then, Putin’s support of Harris is a sort of Frank Underwood move: A kind of endorsement poisonous to its recipient.

Additional reporting by Anna Chernova and Christian Edwards.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the indictments as “nonsense.”

He accused the United States of repressing journalists to quash a “truth” that it did not like. “This is not the first time that Russia has been blamed for interfering into America’s elections,” Peskov said in a message answering questions from The Washington Post. “Well of course it’s nonsense. We’re not interfering.”

“Our media are doing their job. They’re just reporting. They’re reporting the truth, but unfortunately Americans do not like uncomfortable truth for them, and should it appear, they immediately implement repressions against it. This is the reality.”

Peskov’s statement comes against a backdrop of Russia’s own practice of jailing journalists, dissidents, activists and ordinary citizens posting about the war in Ukraine or criticizing the regime.

As Peskov denied election interference, President Vladimir Putin claimed to be supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the race — despite the revelations from one of the indictments and a related set of charges that linked Russia’s efforts to supporting the Republican Party in the election.

“We had Biden as a favorite, but he was dropped from the race. He recommended that all his supporters should back Harris, so we will, too,” Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East.

Harris “has such an infectious laugh that it says she’s doing well,” Putin said, adding that as a result she might refrain from sanctioning Russia.

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed a 32-page federal indictment accusing the two RT employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, of conducting a money-laundering operation that spent nearly $10 million on efforts to covertly influence American public opinion, notably blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia.

In a separate legal action, U.S. prosecutors seized 32 Russian-controlled internet domains that were used in a state-controlled operation called “Doppelganger” to undermine international support for Ukraine and promote its preferred outcome in the U.S. presidential election.

The 277-page indictment over the Doppelganger campaign contains documents previously reported on by The Washington Post. The documents show that Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko directed a network of political strategists to promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions to undermine support for Ukraine.

The indictment includes additional documents by the same political strategists clearly showing the Kremlin campaign aims to bolster support for Moscow’s preferred political party, redacted as “U.S. Political Party A.” The earlier documents reported on by The Post make clear that this is the Republican Party.

One, titled “The Good Old USA Project,” states that the goal is “to secure victory of U.S. Political Party A candidate (Candidate A or one of his current internal party opponents) at the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.”

The Treasury and State departments on Wednesday also announced sanctions on Russian individuals and entities it accused of “malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” Among them was one of the Kremlin’s most prominent propagandists, RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan.

Peskov said Russia would develop retaliatory measures in response to the sanctioning of Russian state media. He said the measures could not be symmetrical but that decisions would be made soon regarding the spread of U.S. media news in Russia.

Russia’s foreign propaganda and disinformation operations play an increasing important role in Putin’s efforts to rebuild Russia as a great global power, amplifying divisions in the West and winning support in the Global South where pro-Kremlin narratives have gained significant traction. A key objective of the operations has been to weaken military support for Ukraine.

Another of the documents in the Doppelganger indictment lays out the Kremlin strategists’ plans to create a “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network” that would give explicit support for the Republican Party and some of its members’ stances questioning assistance for Ukraine.

“The U.S. Political Party A is currently advancing a relatively pro-Russian agenda. That could be exploited by posing as ardent U.S. Political Party A and relaying the part of their agenda that coincides with ours,” the document states. “One example would be the financial and military support to Ukraine.”

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials from Putin down have spoken openly of an “information war” being waged between Russia and the West, while denying interference in the politics of foreign countries.

But a 2019 report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that Russia launched an information war that included interference in the 2016 elections to boost Trump’s candidacy, and efforts have continued to spread Kremlin propaganda narratives that sow doubt and disinformation in the West.

In sanctioning Simonyan and others, the Treasury Department described her as “a central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts.”

When the news broke, Simonyan posted on Telegram: “Oh. They woke me up!” She followed up with another post, “Great work, team.”

Despite Kremlin denials of interference, Simonyan has frequently boasted on state television about RT’s ongoing efforts to sow pro-Kremlin narratives in the United States. Peskov did not answer a question on the apparent contradiction between the Kremlin’s position and Simonyan’s statements.

In a March interview, Simonyan described how RT created hundreds of information outlets, opening new ones whenever U.S. authorities shuttered them, in what she called an “information war.”

“We create many sources of information that are not tied to us. While the CIA tries to figure out that they’re tied to us, they already have an enormous audience. Sometimes they find them and close them down,” she said.

“It happens with us that you wake up in the morning and 600 channels are gone, immediately. But while they’re closing them, we’ve already made new ones. This is how we chase each other. It’s even fun.”

“War is not fun, but with an information war you can have fun,” she added, laughing heartily.

In a January interview she said it was “too optimistic” to hope that the United States was on the edge of a civil war or social collapse, adding that Russia has to face the prospect of America leading the world “like an elephant in a china shop” for many years to come.

“We, without question, have seriously destabilized this china shop. I mean this ridiculous, illogical, egotistical and unjust world order that has existed since 1991 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” she said referring to Russia’s view of U.S. global hegemony.

David Nakamura contributed to this report

CNN
 — 

The community of Winder, Georgia, is grieving two students and two teachers who were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School Wednesday. It’s the deadliest of 45 school shootings so far this year. Here’s the latest:

Live updates: The latest on the Georgia high school shooting

• Authorities arrest 14-year-old suspect: Colt Gray, a 14-year-old Apalachee High student accused of being the shooter, is in custody, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference. He will be charged with murder and will be handled as an adult, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.It was not immediately clear when Gray would make his first court appearance, but it will be “within a reasonable amount of time,” Hosey said.

• Authorities identify four killed: Hosey identified the four killed in Wednesday’s shooting as 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, 14-year-old Christian Angulo, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimie. The school’s website shows the two adults were both math teachers and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.

• Nine others injured: Nine other people – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All of those wounded are expected to recover.

• How the shooting unfolded: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. Law enforcement arrived shortly after, Hosey said, in addition to two school resource officers who were assigned to Apalachee High. The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. A school resource deputy confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.

• AR-platform weapon used in shooting: The weapon used in the shooting was an AR-platform weapon, Hosey said. A law enforcement official earlier told CNN it was an AR-15-style rifle, but did not provide any information on how investigators believe the weapon was obtained or any other details on the weapon and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the weapon was brought into the school. “We’re still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline from the time that he got here to school today until the incident,” Hosey said.

• High school had received a phone threat: The high school had received an earlier phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call Wednesday morning warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who placed the call.

• County schools went into lockdown: All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there were no reports of secondary incidents or scenes.

• Government officials react to shooting: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.” President Joe Biden offered federal support to state and local officials and called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. “We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he said in a statement. General Merrick Garland said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene, working with state, local and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

• Local schools shutter after shooting: Schools in Barrow County will be closed the rest of the week while the investigation plays out. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School. Winder, which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau.

• How it compares to past school shootings: Of the 45 school shootings this year, 32 have been reported on K-12 campuses and 13 on university and college campuses. The US has suffered at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.

The suspect, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee, was questioned by law enforcement last year regarding “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He denied making the threats online, the agencies said.

The online threats included photographs of guns, the statement said.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have
unsupervised access to them,” the statement said.

The agencies added that “at that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.”

Investigators have spoken to the suspect and have been in touch with his family, Smith said. It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation.

One student, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspect left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. When the suspect returned near the end of the class, he knocked to get back in. Another student went to open the door, but Lyela said they noticed the gun and didn’t open the door. She said the shooter went to the classroom next door and opened fire.

Hosey said there’s no evidence of other schools being targeted, but investigators are pursuing “any leads of any potential associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident.” There’s also no evidence that any additional shooter was involved, and no evidence of a list of schools being targeted.

“However, there is a lot of evidence that is being recovered and evaluated,” Hosey added.

As law enforcement investigates the shooting and motive behind it, Smith warned that it could take “multiple days” to get answers.

Kemp thanked first responders and other officials who responded to the shooting Wednesday.

“This is everybody’s worst nightmare and I just want to offer my sincere condolences and our thoughts and prayers to the families that have lost loved ones, for those that are injured and continuing to fight through just a tragic time,” Kemp said.

Hosey called the faculty and staff at the high school “heroes” that took action to protect students.

“The heroes that we need to remember is our faculty and staff here at this school,” Hosey said. “They acted admirably. They were heroes in the actions that they took. The protocols in this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had here today so I want to recognize them.”

Kathrine Maldonado overslept Wednesday and missed school, she said. After she woke up later that morning, her friend texted her saying the school was in a lockdown.

Kathrine’s friend said she was okay and then started texting group chats, where they found out that a friend was killed and at least two more were injured.

“When I found out I started crying, and I just got mad, because why would you shoot innocent people,” Kathrine said.

Kathrine said her friend Christian, who died in the shooting, was known as a class clown and described him as a “sweet person.”

Other Apalachee High School students said they were still processing Wednesday’s tragedy.

“It’s been pretty difficult because like a lot happened in kind of a short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was kind of hard to process it.”

Another student, 14-year-old Macey Right, said she is worried about returning to school.

“I really don’t want to go back; I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying,” Right said. “I want to go to school worrying about what my GPA is going to be when my year is over and worrying about my career.”

CNN’s Isabel Rosales, John Miller, Nick Valencia, Dakin Andone, Sharif Paget, Elise Hammond, Maureen Chowdhury, Tori B. Powell, Nouran Salahieh and Amir Vera contributed to this report.