(YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif.) — A possible brutal murder in one of the most scenic places in America goes unsolved, a serial killer confesses to more than 100 murders and two generations of detectives try to crack the case.
The second season of “Wild Crime” on Hulu launches on Oct. 24. The case at the heart of this season begins in June 1983 when a man out walking with his friends’ son in Yosemite National Park finds a hand in a meadow.
“It was pretty obvious it was a human hand,” said Tom Day, who stumbled upon the crime scene. “I knew I had to get a hold of law enforcement and get somebody up there to look at it.”
“We had no idea of the who, what, when, where, why, or how this hand had come to Summit Meadow,” said Kim Tucker, former criminal investigator at the National Park Service.
The officers faced obstacles from the outset: the crime scene was in the complete wilderness, there was no widespread DNA testing at the time and there were no clues in the surrounding area.
“We didn’t have any known missing people from the immediate area,” said Tucker, “so it was very difficult to think, well, what is the next thing we should do?”
Investigators would eventually turn to a forensic anthropologist, who suggested the deceased was a young woman.
In the spring of 1984, when the case had gone cold, investigators were contacted by the California Department of Justice, who gave them a tip that an alleged serial killer was confessing to murders across the country, including one that could fit the profile of the Yosemite case.
Investigators thought this might be a breakthrough in the case, and went to meet this alleged serial killer, whose name and frightening backstory is revealed in “Wild Crime.”
The alleged serial killer was confessing to things like necrophilia and cutting up victims into “little tiny pieces” and during four months in police custody he admitted to committing 156 murders, mostly female victims.
One place that he said he had committed a homicide was “a mountainous national park in California,” said Tucker, which gave investigators a potential lead for the first time in the case.
Additionally, the alleged serial killer said in an interview with the police that he had “specifically across the United States left evidence to show I was doing the crimes.”
Investigators went to meet the alleged killer in the Sacramento county jail in August 1984.
He gave them his testimony, confessing to killing a young woman in the national park by strangulation.
A few months later, in Texas, the alleged killer provided even more details, saying that he and the alleged victim had had lunch together, eating “some fried chicken wrapped in tinfoil” and beer, before he killed her. He also said that he remembered trail markings near where the murder occurred.
These markings, the investigators realized, could have been the cross-country ski trail signs nailed to the trees in Summit meadow.
“It’s like, ‘This guy has been to the crime scene,'” said former criminal investigator for the National Park Service Don Coelho. “That’s when it hit us.”
Back in Yosemite, the investigators made crucial breakthroughs with leads from the alleged killer’s confession. They found beer cans, wrapped-up tin foil, a canteen and what seemed like a piece of fabric that could have been from the victim’s jacket.
“I don’t know that what we found was proof,” said Tucker, “but I felt like we had found the scene that he described.”
The story continues to get stranger and more unbelievable.
Aspects of the case begin to fall apart when the alleged killer recants his confession. A human skull, found across the street from the meadow, brings investigators closer to identifying the victim.
The case would eventually be taken over by National Park Service agent Cullen Tucker, Kim Tucker’s son, nearly 40 years later.
“This unidentified skeleton has a name,” said Cullen Tucker. “We need to find it. We need to help bring justice to these people, to the families.”
The rest of the investigation would lead them to name the suspected victim and uncover their relationship to an alleged bizarre California cult.
Watch Season 2 of “Wild Crime” on Hulu to learn how the story ends.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced on Friday that 7,560 pounds of Italian pork sausage products from Bob Evans Farms Foods, Inc. were being recalled over potential contamination with extraneous materials, specifically thin blue rubber.
The raw Italian pork sausage impacted by the recall was produced Sept. 8, 2022, with a use or freeze by date of Nov. 26, 2022.
Click here to view the recalled labels of the 1-pound containers.
The affected Bob Evans Italian Sausage is labeled with lot code XEN3663466 and has a time stamp between 14:43 and 15:25, the FSIS stated. The products also bear establishment number “EST. 6785” inside the USDA mark of inspection.
“The problem was discovered after the firm notified FSIS it had received consumer complaints reporting thin blue pieces of rubber in the product,” the recall notice stated. “There have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about an injury or illness should contact a healthcare provider.”
The FSIS added that it is “concerned that some product may be in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers” and advised anyone who’s purchased the products “not to consume them.”
Consumers should throw out or return the products to the original place of purchase.
“FSIS routinely conducts recall effectiveness checks to verify recalling firms notify their customers of the recall and that steps are taken to make certain that the product is no longer available to consumers,” the agency said.
Bob Evans Foods, Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the recall.
(ST. LOUIS) — Five victims were injured in a shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis, Missouri, on Monday morning, according to a source briefed on the investigation.
The suspect “was quickly stopped by police” inside the school following the shooting and taken into custody, according to the St. Louis Public School District and St. Louis police.
The suspect was also injured, the source told ABC News.
Students are being evacuated from the building, the district said.
The conditions of those injured were not immediately clear, and the source said not all injured were necessarily shot.
(ST. LOUIS) — Two students were injured in a shooting at a St. Louis, Missouri, high school Monday morning, according to the school district.
The suspect “was quickly stopped by police” inside the Central Visual and Performing Arts school following the shooting, according to the St. Louis Public School District.
Students are being evacuated from the building, the district said.
The injured students’ conditions were not immediately clear.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — One of two former police officers scheduled to go on trial Monday on charges stemming from the death of George Floyd pleaded guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors, a court official told ABC News.
J. Alexander Kueng, 29, pleaded guilty Monday morning to one count of aiding and abetting in manslaughter after prosecutors and Kueng’s defense attorney agreed to recommend a sentence of 42 months in prison, a spokesperson for the Hennepin County Courts said.
The plea was announced just as a joint state trial for Kueng and Tou Thao, 34, was to begin with jury selection. The trial comes after the two former Minneapolis police officers reported to separate prisons this month to begin their federal sentences.
Both men had pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding and abetting in second-degree unintentional murder and aiding and abetting in manslaughter stemming from the Memorial Day 2020 death of Floyd, which ignited massive protests across the nation and world.
The trial in Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis begins Monday with jury selection, which is scheduled to take three weeks, a spokesperson for the court told ABC News.
Opening statements in the trial are scheduled to get underway on Nov. 7.
The state trial was initially scheduled for June 2022, but Judge Peter Cahill delayed it over concerns it would be difficult to seat an impartial jury given the pretrial publicity. Earlier his year, Thao, Kueng and a third defendant, former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, were convicted on federal civil rights charges stemming from Floyd’s death and Lane later pleaded guilty to state charges.
At the time of his decision, Cahill said postponing the trial should “diminish the impact of this publicity on the defendants’ right and ability to receive a fair trial from an impartial and unbiased jury.”
Lane, 39, pleaded guilty in May to state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. In exchange for the plea, state prosecutors agreed to dismiss the top charge against him of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder. Lane was sentenced in September to three years in prison, which he is serving concurrently with his federal sentence of 2 1/2 years.
Kueng, Thao and Lane were convicted in February by a federal jury on charges of violating George Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene or provide medical aid as their senior officer, Derek Chauvin, kneeled on the back of Floyd’s neck, while he was handcuffed, for more than nine minutes.
Kueng, a rookie cop at the time of Floyd’s death, was sentenced to three years in federal prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Thao, who had been a nine-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department at the time of Floyd’s death, was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, also followed by two years of supervised release.
Floyd suffered critical injuries when he was placed in handcuffs and in a prone position on the pavement after being accused of attempting to use a fake $20 bill at a convenience store to buy cigarettes. Videos from security, police body cameras and civilian cell phone cameras showed Floyd begging for his life and complaining he could not breathe as Chauvin held his knee on the back of his neck, rendering him unconscious and without a pulse, according to prosecutors. Floyd was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead.
Chauvin was convicted in state court last year of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.
While Chauvin’s state trial was livestreamed gavel-to-gavel due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic limiting the public’s access to the courtroom, cameras are not being allowed at the trial for Kueng and Thao. Cahill ruled in April that conditions “are materially different from those the Court confronted from November 2020 through April 2021 with the Chauvin trial.”
The 46-year-old Chauvin also pleaded guilty in December to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced in July to 21 years in federal prison.
During their federal trial, Lane, Kueng and Thao each took the witness stand and attempted to shift the blame to Chauvin, who was a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department. Lane told the jury that Chauvin “deflected” all his suggestions to help Floyd, while Kueng testified that Chauvin “was my senior officer and I trusted his advice” and Thao attested that he “would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out.”
(NEW YORK) — Math scores among fourth and eighth grade students across the country experienced their largest decline in decades, according to results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the “Nation’s Report Card.”
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which conducted the study, said in a statement that the results reflect the “profound toll” the pandemic took on student learning.
“The results also underscore the importance of instruction and the role of schools in both students’ academic growth and their overall well-being,” Carr said. “It’s clear we all need to come together—policymakers and community leaders at every level—as partners in helping our educators, children, and families succeed.”
NCES compared students’ NAEP scores during the COVID-19 pandemic to pre-pandemic performance on the 2019 NAEP assessments. NCES has administered the assessments in math and reading since the early 1990s. About 450,000 students from more than 10,000 schools participated in the 2022 exams.
Compared to 2019, the average fourth grade math assessment scores decreased by 5 points and the average eighth grade assessment scores decreased by 8 points, according to the results.
On average, fourth and eighth grade students’ reading scores also declined but not as sharply as the math assessment scores. Compared to 2019, the average fourth and eighth grade reading scores decreased by three points each.
Fourth grade students of color, specifically, experienced more dramatic declines. For example, the average math score for Black and Hispanic fourth grade students dropped the most compared to other racial and ethnic groups. The average reading score for American Indian/Alaska native fourth grade students plummeted by the largest margin.
The northeast region saw the largest decline in average scores for both math and reading during the pandemic.
For many parents and educators, the recent NAEP results confirm fears of the pandemic’s long-term consequences for students’ academic progress.
Remote learning also laid bare existing racial and class disparities in education caused by lack of access to reliable technology and child care support for full-time working parents. Students of color were also more likely to continue remote learning for longer periods of time and were also more likely to have lost a parent or caregiver compared to their white peers during the pandemic.
Last month, NCES reported that math and reading test scores among the nation’s 9-year-olds also plummeted during the first two years of the pandemic, with reading scores falling by the largest margin in more than 30 years.
(NEW YORK) — After the pandemic hit the U.S. in early 2020, Chris Pernell, MD was on TV screens across the country, emerging as a leading voice on COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on people of color.
Earlier this year, backed by more than 100 New Jersey state leaders, Pernell — University Hospital’s inaugural chief strategic integration and health equity officer — was ready to throw her hat in the ring for the Newark hospital’s CEO search.
Instead, last month, she left her job at the hospital entirely.
Tasked with advancing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the hospital, Pernell said the conditions she fought to change — discrimination and racial bias in medicine — were ultimately why she chose to resign.
In interviews with ABC News, three Black physicians, ranging from a former resident to a hospital executive, shared allegations of being systematically pushed out of their workplaces. One claimed they were terminated without justification. Others said they resigned of their own volition due to an untenable work climate.
All of them cited racial discrimination as one reason for their departure, which they said was enabled and exacerbated by the medical field’s competitive culture, hierarchical structure and often exploitative nature.
They also pointed to the existing underrepresentation of Black doctors, who constitute only 5% of all practicing physicians nationwide, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Recent census data, meanwhile, shows that Black people make up around 12% of the U.S. population.
This shortage of Black doctors has been linked to reduced access to medical care, less effective medical care, and worse outcomes, especially among Black patients, according to the American Medical Association.
In August, the advocacy organization Black Doc Village launched a national campaign dubbed #BlackDocsBelong to bring awareness to the shortage of Black physicians and high rate of dismissals among Black medical residents.
While Black residents constitute around 5% of all residents, they accounted for nearly 20% of those dismissed in 2015, according to a report by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
In prestigious specialty fields, like surgery, the disparities can be even more pronounced, per ACGME’s analysis.
Vanessa Grubbs, MD, the Black Doc Village president, said the organization specifically strives to advocate and support Black physicians by “interrupting the system” that continually pushes them out.
“This is about increasing the number of Black physicians so that we can improve the health of the Black community,” she told ABC News.
Pernell, meanwhile, said she knows she’s not alone.
“My story is not unique across the larger field of healthcare and life in general,” she said.
The personal cost of calling out alleged racism in health care
Rosandra Daywalker, MD graduated from medical school at the top of her class in 2015, matching with the University of Texas Medical Branch’s otolaryngology program for her residency.
At the time, Daywalker said she was the only Black trainee there. Nevertheless, she said she excelled in the program, boasting a spotless record and receiving stellar evaluations.
But after Daywalker voiced concerns about how a Black patient was treated by a white faculty member during a morbidity and mortality conference — and that same faculty member later became her direct supervisor — she said things began to change.
“Overnight, I become someone who doesn’t like feedback,” she said. “You start to see him inject these words like I’m ‘unprofessional’ or that I’m ‘incompetent.'”
From there, Daywalker claimed she endured differential treatment from the supervisor, including him unnecessarily delaying her clinical rotations.
She said the faculty member also frequently manufactured lies about her, casting her into an “angry Black woman” stereotype by “falsely accusing her of being angry and looking like she wanted to assault him,” according to a lawsuit she filed against UTMB.
His hostility towards her came to a head when she was unexpectedly placed on a performance improvement plan, Daywalker said.
“This is what they do. If they don’t have a real reason to get rid of you to fire you, they will make things so bad that you have no choice but to leave,” Daywalker claimed.
Daywalker said the hostile work environment, which she said posed concerns for her own safety, and the toll it took on her health made leaving UTMB her only option.
While Daywalker was not fired because she said UTMB had no basis to do so, after more than three years of training, the Texas Workforce Commission determined she resigned “for good cause,” meaning for a work-related reason that would make an individual who wants to remain employed leave employment, such as unsafe working conditions.
Daywalker left her residency in 2018. She has since filed a lawsuit against UTMB alleging violations of the Civil Rights Act and the Family Leave Act.
UTMB declined to comment on Daywalker’s allegations due to ongoing litigation. In court papers, it has denied her claims and contends it “had legitimate, non-discriminatory, and non-retaliatory reasons for all employment actions affecting Daywalker that she contends were unlawful.”
Daywalker is not the only physician who said they were retaliated against for speaking out about racism in healthcare.
Pernell, the only Black woman on University Hospital’s senior executive leadership group, said her efforts to implement DEI-related reforms at the hospital were often demeaned and unfairly scrutinized.
When she began publicly criticizing the Trump administration’s pandemic response and sharing her personal story of losing her father to COVID-19, Pernell said she was told other hospital executives didn’t approve of her “mouthing off” on TV.
She said University Hospital subsequently launched an investigation into her conduct, accusing her of misusing hospital resources for her media appearances.
“[It was] as if I, a Black woman who had experienced loss and hurt and grief in this pandemic, should not speak about it — and speak about it from the auspices of also being a Black physician, leader and executive,” Pernell said.
“Organizations look for people who look differently from them, but they don’t want people to think differently from them,” she added.
Pernell said the investigation lasted through January 2021. Not long after, University Hospital commenced its search for a new CEO. At the time, more than 100 leaders from across the state signed an open letter endorsing her for the position.
But Pernell said she was never able to apply because she was under yet another investigation, this time accusing her of pressuring other staff members to support her CEO candidacy, which she denies.
Pernell said the investigations were “baseless” attempts to “inflict reputational harm” as her profile rose, making her less competitive as a CEO candidate.
In her final conversation with the hospital’s interim CEO and chief legal officer, she recalled telling them, “I want you to be able to hold space for what a Black woman experiences and the level of scrutiny around just a desire to apply.”
University Hospital did not directly address Pernell’s account. But its board of directors wrote in a statement to ABC News that the hospital is “committed to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive environment,” has identified “specific, measurable steps in furtherance of that goal,” is “very proud” of its progress and continues “to pursue this goal in earnest.”
Some Black physicians say racial bias can intensify workplace competition
Other physicians told ABC News that they were similarly antagonized once perceived as professional threats, which they say racial bias heightened — on top of the medical field’s already cutthroat culture.
In March 2018, Dare Adewumi, MD began working at Wellstar Cobb Hospital in Austell, Georgia, where he said he was recruited to singlehandedly “restart” the neurosurgery program. Previously, the hospital had no neurosurgeons and referred patients elsewhere, including Wellstar Kennestone Hospital, where Adewumi’s supervisor worked.
However, as his practice flourished, Adewumi said he began receiving an influx of “letters of inquiry,” all but one filed by colleagues, questioning his surgical approaches and technique. He said his white colleagues did not receive similar criticism, even when they had worse patient outcomes.
He also said the complaints sent out for external review found that he did not deviate from the appropriate standard of care.
Before arriving at Wellstar, Adewumi said he had completed two fellowships on spine and brain tumors, where he learned several difficult-to-master techniques. He suspected there were “elements of jealousy” and competition at play among his Wellstar colleagues, he said, “especially [me] being a dark-skinned Nigerian who is now doing these big complex surgeries that would intimidate others.”
Adewumi said his presence at Wellstar Cobb also diverted lucrative surgeries away from his colleagues at Wellstar Kennestone.
After he raised concerns about the letters, Adewumi said a hospital system executive suggested he resign. Adewumi refused.
He said Wellstar then proposed an “action plan,” framed as a way for him to “build camaraderie” with the other hospital system neurosurgeons. Adewumi said he obliged, quickly completing many of the requirements and garnering praise from medical executive committee leaders for his progress and “good attitude.”
Despite this, two months later, in October 2019, he was fired “for no cause” because “certain relationships were not properly fostered,” Adewumi said he was told.
With Adewumi’s action plan incomplete, the hospital refused to give him a “letter of good standing,” which he needs for another hospital to credential him.
In March 2020 when hospitals were slammed at the height of the pandemic, Adewumi said he emailed Wellstar administrators offering to return temporarily as a volunteer, which would allow him to complete his action plan. But Wellstar declined his offer.
To this day, Adewumi is still unable to find full-time employment as a neurosurgeon because of the unfinished action plan. He has filed a lawsuit against Wellstar, alleging violations of the Civil Rights Act.
“Imagine going through 15 years of learning how to do something and dedicating your entire livelihood to this and then having it snatched away from you because you’re the wrong color,” Adewumi said.
In court papers, the hospital has denied the allegations. Wellstar’s attorney William Hill wrote in a statement to ABC News that Adewumi’s case is “not about race” and denied that Wellstar discriminated against him. He added, “The evidence at trial will show that Dr. Adewumi’s allegations have no merit and that Dr. Adewumi continues to ignore the legitimate business and medical professional reasons for not continuing his employment.”
Fixing a flawed system
The physicians interviewed said the trend of Black doctors leaving medicine can’t be blamed on just a handful of “bad actors.”
“There’s a hierarchical structure in medicine,” Adewumi said. “Especially in surgery, there’s militaristic approach to it as well, where you simply do your job, you shut up, you don’t complain.”
“It’s very easy to then be downtrodden and then be trained to tolerate being treated that way,” he added, “You don’t even realize that you’re being stepped on more than other colleagues are being stepped on.”
Daywalker added that employee remediation processes are inconsistent and unevenly enforced across hospitals, with minimal oversight and accountability.
Pernell noted that the loss of already underrepresented Black doctors also has detrimental consequences for access to and quality of patient care overall.
“When you have Black leaders who are being denied the use of their practice, denied the use of their professional power, it only further exacerbates the inequities in the system that lead to disparate outcomes for Black patients,” Pernell said.
In August, a group of physicians, medical students, and patients staged a protest in front of Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine in Pasadena, California, to kick off the #BlackDocsBelong national awareness campaign.
On a policy level, Grubbs said the group is calling for greater accountability and transparency measures, as well as financial incentives for hospitals to graduate Black residents. The campaign also includes a project to collect concrete data on the rate of Black physician dismissals, as well as their stories.
“Everyone tries to dismiss a story here and there,” Grubbs said. “But if we put all our stories together, that’s where the power is to make change.”
After leaving UTMB, Daywalker completed an occupational and environmental medicine residency. She is now a PhD student studying total worker health, writing her dissertation on envisioning an inclusive workplace model that precludes rather than empowers the discriminatory practices she said she faced.
“We normalize — and even glorify — poor working conditions and traumatic experiences in medicine,” Daywalker said. “Why is that? Our resources, access, and knowledge have evolved, so why hasn’t our idea of what it means to become and remain a physician?”
“How do we set up organizational culture, systems level policies, practices, procedures to ensure wellbeing and safety for everybody? That starts with listening to the most marginalized,” she added.
(NEW YORK) — Ethan Crumbley, the teenager accused of gunning down four students and injuring several others at his Michigan high school, pleaded guilty to all charges against him on Monday.
The 24 charges include terrorism and murder.
The thin 16-year-old appeared in court in an orange jumpsuit, white face mask and glasses, calmly answering questions from the judge and prosecutor. Crumbley admitted to them that he asked his father to buy him a specific gun.
David Williams, chief assistant prosecutor in Oakland County, said Friday when the plea was announced that there were “no plea deals, no reductions and no agreements regarding sentencing.”
Crumbley is set to return to court on Feb. 9. A date for sentencing will follow; at the sentencing, victims will have the opportunity to read statements.
Crumbley was 15 at the time of the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School. He allegedly used his father’s semi-automatic handgun to carry out the attack.
A teacher allegedly saw Crumbley researching ammunition in class days before the shooting and school officials contacted his parents but they didn’t respond, according to prosecutors. His mother, Jennifer Crumbley, texted her son, writing, “lol, I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught,” according to prosecutors.
Hours before the shooting, according to prosecutors, a teacher saw a note on Ethan Crumbley’s desk that was “a drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, ‘The thoughts won’t stop, help me.’ In another section of the note was a drawing of a bullet with the following words above that bullet, ‘Blood everywhere.'”
Crumbley’s parents were called to the school over the incident, saying they’d get their son counseling but did not take him home.
The teen’s parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, were charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter after allegedly making the gun accessible and failing to recognize warning signs about their son before the shooting. They have pleaded not guilty.
(LONDON) — Rishi Sunak has been chosen as the new British prime minister less than a week after Liz Truss stepped down from the position after just six weeks in office.
(KHARKIV, Ukraine) — The commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine is real and that the West “should be worried,” but said his country is nonetheless winning the war.
Gen. Col. Oleksander Syrskiy made the comments in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent Ian Pannell in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sunday. As the 57-year-old top commander of his country’s land forces, Syrskiy has played a decisive role in turning the war in Ukraine’s favor, first leading the successful defense of the capital, Kyiv, and then — most recently — masterminding the counteroffensive in the northeast that upended the monthslong conflict and threw Russian forces onto the defensive.
The rare interview, airing Monday on ABC News’ Good Morning America, is one of the few times Syrskiy has spoken publicly at length and he described Ukraine’s tactics, the importance of Western support, the threat of renewed attacks from Belarus and his determination that Ukraine will reclaim all of its territory, including the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Ukraine’s successes, however, have been shadowed by the recent threats from Putin that Russia might resort to nuclear weapons to reverse the course of his war in Ukraine. Syrskiy told ABC News that he takes the threats seriously.
“We are and should be worried,” Syrskiy said. “I do believe that such a threat really exists and we have to take it into account.”
The urgency of those worries was underlined on Sunday when Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu made telephone calls to his counterparts in France, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, alleging that Ukraine was preparing to use a “dirty bomb” on its own territory. Shoigu’s claim sparked fears that Russia might be laying the groundwork to use a nuclear weapon and blame Ukraine for it.
Following Shoigu’s call with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson dismissed the allegations as “transparently false.”
“The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation,” Watson said.
Russia’s nuclear threats have grown louder as its position in Ukraine has become increasingly desperate, and Ukrainian troops now threaten to force the Russians to retreat from the key port city of Kherson — yet another potential turning point in the war.
Syrskiy is one of the minds behind the two crucial victories so far that have enabled Ukraine’s stunning success in pushing back Russian forces.
When Russian troops advanced on Kyiv in late February, shortly after launching the invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Syrskiy directed the defense that shattered Putin’s initial objectives. Then in September, Syrskiy led the counteroffensive in northeastern Ukraine that liberated thousands of miles of Russian-occupied territory — a disaster for Moscow that forced Putin to order a military draft and, for the first time, raised the prospect that Russian forces might suffer a full defeat in Ukraine.
“Of course I think we are winning,” Syrskiy told ABC News. “Because, first and foremost, we are winning the psychological battle.”
But the commander warned against complacency, noting the heavy sacrifices that success has required of Ukrainians.
“We have success on the battleground, but war is difficult,” he added. “There hasn’t been any wars at that scale in Europe, or elsewhere in the world, since the Second World War. And we understand that this war is about survival of our people and our state, and this is why we have no other option but to win.”
Syrskiy was given the Hero of Ukraine award in April for his efforts defending the capital city. But the victory in Kharkiv, his hometown, was especially personal. Cerebral and reflective, Syrskiy is also a military leader who prefers to see the frontlines himself, regularly visiting positions to personally meet some of the soldiers he is sending into battle. He told ABC News he feels that responsibility and has a “spiritual connection” with his troops.
Although he was appointed to his current post in 2019, Syrskiy has helped lead Ukraine’s defense against Russia since 2014, when Russian troops and separatist proxies seized parts of the disputed Donbas region, the predominately Russian-speaking industrial heartland of Ukraine’s east.
Syrskiy has a deep familiarity with the tactics of his enemy, having been trained in the same Soviet school of warfare. In the 1980s, he studied at the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School. Now, he’s exploiting that knowledge on the battlefield.
“It’s easier to understand your enemy’s actions,” he told ABC News. “You can foresee what he might do in different situations.”
But as a commander, like the rest of Ukraine’s military leadership, Syrskiy has embraced a different mode of military thinking since even before 2014 — adopting NATO doctrines that grant greater initiative to more junior officers on the ground and moving away from the top-down Soviet approach.
“Of course there was a change in mentality,” he said. “Understanding that victory is achieved not by increasing the number of troops, but by using them smartly.”
Despite his familiarity with Russia, Syrskiy said he had not believed Moscow would go through with a full-scale invasion. Even as Russian forces massed near the border, he said he believed an attack would be limited to the east, though he still prepared for the worst.
“To be honest, I did not expect that scale and level of invasion from the enemy,” he told ABC News.
Now fighting in Donbas, Syrskiy said Ukraine’s strategy was to avoid full-frontal clashes that favored Russia’s massed artillery and instead, steadily degrade Russia’s firepower by hitting supply hubs while launching constant mobile attacks. The goal, he said, was to achieve objectives with minimal losses.
“We achieve this by reliably hitting the firepower of the enemy, their artillery, avoiding frontal assaults, emphasizing raids and manoeuvers, attacking from the flanks and from the back,” he added. “We create the conditions under which we can make the enemy nervous, start taking losses and abandon their positions.”
The successful counteroffensive in the northeast led by Syrskiy has been hailed by military experts as a masterstroke that will go down in the history of warfare, alongside other victorious operations like the D-Day landings during World War II or the Battle of Saratoga in the American Revolutionary War.
Ukraine’s success relied on patience and misdirection, declaring a counteroffensive in its south over the summer which lured Russia into pulling some of its best troops from the northeastern frontline. Once Russia had thinned its defenses in the northeast, Ukraine struck, rapidly breaking through and causing Russia’s lines to collapse.
Initially, the northeastern counteroffensive had itself been planned as a feint to tie up Russian units, according to Syrskiy. But he said he realized while planning the operation that Russian forces there were weaker than expected, opening up an opportunity to deliver a blow that would have a much wider effect.
“When we were planning it, it became obvious to me that an advance in Kharkiv as an operation will benefit us most and will have the most negative impact on the enemy,” Syrskiy told ABC News.
“I noticed it first in May during the first offensive operation around Kharkiv, when we managed to liberate 10 to 30 kilometers of areas surrounding the city,” he added, before noting that it was only in the summer that the change in the balance in forces made the counteroffensive possible.
A similar Ukrainian success now looks possible in Kherson. Russia has ordered all civilians to leave the southern city amid reports it has already pulled back some veteran troops. But there are also concerns Russia might blow up the nearby Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, which Ukrainian officials allege Russian troops have rigged with explosives, threatening to flood Kherson.
Syrskiy declined to comment on the battle for Kherson, saying only that he believes “in the success of our armed forces.” He said the threat Russia might also blow up the Kakhovka dam should also not be underestimated.
There is also renewed concern around neighboring Belarus, from where Russia launched its failed assault on Kyiv and where it has recently again begun moving in more troops and equipment. Western and Ukrainian officials have said that, for now, the new build up in Belarus is small and more likely a feint aimed at drawing Ukrainian troops away from the south.
But Syrksiy said he believes the Russian moves in Belarus do reflect preparations to try to move the fighting into new areas once again.
“Of course they are getting ready for escalation of the battle and switching the conflict to other combat zones,” he told ABC News. “They are getting ready for action aimed at weakening our groupings and, to my mind, the possible purpose of that would be to cut or degrade our lines of communication and supplies.”
But he said by doing so, Russia again risks stretching itself too thin in the north.
“They risk stepping on the same rake twice and hitting themselves in the face,” he added.
Most experts believe Putin is preparing for a long war, hoping his military mobilization and the arrival of winter weather will allow Russia to stablize its frontlines and then outlast Western determination to support Ukraine.
The possibility of Republicans taking control of the U.S. Congress in the midterm elections next month is also raising questions whether American aid will continue as strongly for Ukraine. Republicans are divided on the issue and some party leaders have suggested they might scale aid back.
When asked if he was worried that U.S. support could dry up if Republicans win more seats in Congress, Syrskiy said he doesn’t get involved in politics.
“I trust the government. I trust the people of the United States of America. I trust that our strategic partner will continue to help us overcome our enemy come what may,” he said.
Syrskiy said he was grateful to the American people for the aid, which he said played a key role in Ukraine’s victories. Without U.S. weapons and ammunition, he said he couldn’t even imagine how much harder the task would be.
When asked whether he believes Putin would stop if Ukraine succeeded in liberating all its territory, Syrskiy said it doesn’t matter and that the fastest way to end the war was for Ukraine to push Russia out as quickly as possible.
“We have no other option, we have to go forward, move straight to our state borders,” he said, adding that victory would only be when Ukrainian flags were flying over all Ukraine’s borders, “including Ukrainian Crimea.”
Syrskiy recalled seeing razed villages last week as he drove near the recently liberated city of Lyman in northeastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.
“You can’t look at these scenes without getting emotional,” he told ABC News. “You literally feel pain in my heart, in my soul, so certainly you want to deliver such a blow to the enemy that they can never get back to Ukraine.”
