Aug 25 Buonasera Mag
Day 183: Chaplyne, Zaporizhzhia NPP, Dnipropetrovsk, RU conscription, Wagner, sham referendums, Russian tourist visa ban, Germany, Canada, Italy, Posts & Arts: Ze,Darth Putin, Ben-Ghiat, US State Dept
Catching up…
EA Worldview’s Ukraine Up-date- hop over to Scott’s amazing hourly Ukraine up-date page. I’ll fill in with some bits and bobs.
Stories we’re following…
President Zelensky: at least 22 people have been killed and 50 wounded in a Russian rocket strike on a Ukrainian railway station on Wednesday. He said the rockets struck a train in a station in the town of Chaplyne, about 145km (90 miles) west of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
The remaining two working reactors at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine shut down after nearby fires damaged overhead power lines, Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom said.
President Zelensky spoke at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Wednesday saying that Russia has put the world “on the brink of a radiation catastrophe. It is a fact that the Russian military has turned the territory of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, into a warzone.”
The western Synelnykove district in Dnipropetrovsk oblast has been shelled overnight with eight people injured so far, the Kyiv Independent reports.
The Ukrainian forces are decimating Wagner units east of Bakhmut.
Ukrainian court jails official for 12 years on charges of spying for Russia. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that an official at the Cabinet's secretariat had been charged with high treason.
On Aug 5, Putin signed another “Decree” on increasing the number of Russian army personnel by approximately 150,000 servicement.
Russia plans to disconnect Europe’s largest nuclear plant from Ukraine’s power grid, risking a catastrophic failure of its cooling systems. Petro Kotin, the head of Ukraine’s atomic energy company, said Russian engineers had drawn up a blueprint for a switch on the grounds of emergency planning should fighting sever remaining power connections.
Up-date: The last regular power line supplying electricity to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine has been restored, according to the UN nuclear watchdog, citing Ukraine.
WaPo: "To bolster Russia’s depleted weapons inventory, Iran has begun delivering 'hundreds' of suicide drones, according to the intelligence officials. These drones would probably be part of the 'Shahed' series"
US says Russia could announce ‘sham referendums’ in occupied parts of Ukraine this week. According to CNN, John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the U.S. National Security Council, said that the U.S. has information that Russia is preparing to announce its "sham referendums" in occupied territories of Ukraine by the end of this week.
Russia's war has proven 'both costly and strategically harmful.' The U.K. Defense Ministry said in its intelligence update on Aug. 24 that Russia had to revert to more modest objectives in the east and south after failing its goal of toppling the Ukrainian government.
Ukraine has destroyed Russian military equipment worth $16.6 billion since Feb. 24. In six months of Russia's war in Ukraine, Russia has lost 12,142 pieces of equipment worth $16.56 billion, excluding missiles, according to Forbes.
Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuanian are on track to introduce a regional tourist visa ban against Russians. Landsbergis , says the foreign ministers of the 5 counties will discuss it on Monday, anticipating that there won’t be EU unity on the issue.
Germany’s government approved a bylaw restricting the heating of public buildings and banning illuminated advertising hoardings, in an effort to save energy and tackle soaring energy costs. Emmanuel Macron has warned the French they are facing sacrifices and what he called the “end of abundance”.
The city of Hague in the Netherlands has said it will ask for a temporary exemption of EU sanctions against Russia, as it struggles to find a new gas supplier to replace the Russian supplier Gazprom. The city said it held an EU-wide tender in June and July, but failed to attract any bids from potential suppliers, Reuters reports.
Canada to return remaining gas turbines exempt from sanctions. Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly said Canada plans to return five turbines which are part of the Russian Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany. Previously, Canada released one turbine to Germany, but Russian state-controlled gas giant Gazprom refused to take it back.
Italy will review its emergency plan for gas next week. It has not taken steps towards rationing yet but will take them into consideration Russia cut gas supplies, as per a government source. Spain was the first country to begin rationing energy supplies.
53% of Americans say US should support Ukraine until Russia withdraws. That support came from both Democratic and Republican voters, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Aug. 24. Only 18% of respondents said they opposed supporting Ukraine.
The Guardian, Isobel Koshiw has reported from Ukraine on how the country is marking its 31st year of independence.
As Ukraine marks 31 years of statehood, Kyiv’s streets are a far cry from the way they looked six months ago when thousands were fleeing in panic and military checkpoints operated on most corners.
The very real feeling of imminent death – which jolted the population into mounting a large-scale, voluntary resistance – has subsided outside the frontline areas in the south and east. Most restaurants and businesses in the capital have gradually re-opened. But like Kyiv’s tree-lined streets and summer clothes, the physical aspects of life returning to normal have not outweighed the inner pain many Ukrainians are experiencing – brought home even more by the muted public holiday.
“As I’m speaking to you now, I have goosebumps. People I know, my godson even, is fighting at the front. There is no celebration today. I can’t even believe that this is happening,” said Yana Pasychnyk, a choral singer in one of Ukraine’s national choirs.
The Cosmopolitan Globalist, "The West doesn't realize how much danger it's in." (article and podcast)
Dugin, The Third Empire, the Cult of Stalin, Neo-Medievalism, and the Sources of Russian Conduct: An Introduction to Dina Khapaeva.
The author, Dina Khapaeva, is the director of the Russian studies program at Georgia Tech’s School of Modern Language. Monique Camarra and I spoke to her on the Cosmopolicast about the article, which begins this way:
No one can read Vladimir Putin’s mind. But we can read the book that foretells the Russian leader’s imperialist foreign policy. Mikhail Yuriev’s 2006 utopian novel, The Third Empire: Russia as It Ought to Be, anticipates—with astonishing precision—Russia’s strategy of hybrid war and its recent military campaigns: the 2008 war with Georgia, the 2014 annexation of Crimea, the incursion into the Donetsk and Luhansk regions the same year, and Russia’s current assault on Ukraine.
Faux protests in Washington, DC
A ‘protest’ was held yesterday in Washington DC. The pictures taken at the organised photo-op will be uploaded to Telegram channels and all other Russian-controlled and funded infowar websites to be pumped through the disinfo pipelines for maximum effect.
The US State Department, PRC Efforts to Manipulate Global Public Opinion on Xinjiang
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) actively attempts to manipulate and dominate global discourse on Xinjiang and to discredit independent sources reporting ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity conducted against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. PRC-directed and -affiliated actors lead a coordinated effort to amplify Beijing’s preferred narratives on Xinjiang, to drown out and marginalize narratives that are critical of the PRC’s repression of Uyghurs, and to harass those critical of the PRC.
Britain did it!
Russian propaganda channels are now blaming the UK for Darya Dugina’s car bombing. They really should look closer to home.
Draghi’s Farewell- Decode39
Out-going Italian PM Mario Draghi spoke at the Rimini Meeting yesterday. Draghi was warmly received: the audience gave him a 5-minute standing ovation and interrupted his comments with applause 32 times. Read highlights of his address in Decode39.
When he became PM in February 2021, Italy was facing multiple crises. International onlookers doubted Rome could tackle them all. Mr Draghi noted that it managed to raise its GDP to 6,6% in 2021 and 3,4% in 2022 (so far), beating expectations and overtaking most other European countries.
“Domestic credibility must go hand in hand with international credibility. Italy is a founding country of the EU, a protagonist of the G7 and Nato […] Protectionism and isolationism do not coincide with our national interest, he said, recalling the “autarkic illusions of the last century.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Always the Victim: A Century of Strongman Scams- Lucid
The idea that the strongman is a victim is one of the more durable scams of authoritarianism. The August FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, which was prompted by his storage of highly classified state documents in his private residence, has given new life to Trump's version of the con. It’s designed to vindicate his assertions that his enemies (codified as the "Deep State,") are out to get him.