Aug 9 Buonasera Mag
Day 167: UA strikes Crimea, Zaporizhzhia NPP, grain ships, HARM, Amnesty fallout, Pushilin, North Korea, Turkey, Germany, Latvia, Leleka Care. Reporting: Avdeeva, Vetrov Munch, Parker
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.
Weiss spoke to artillery/weapons specialist Thomas C Theiner @noclador about Ukraine's long-range strikes on occupied Crimea. His verdict: "90% it's ATACMS, 10% it's cruise missiles."
Local authorities: Families of Russian military leave occupied Kherson following Ukrainian attacks. According to the Kherson Oblast State Administration, due to the strikes on the Antonivsky and Kakhovsky bridges, "panic started to spread" among the Russians in Kherson.
Stories we’re following…
Energoatom: Shelling may cause blackout at nuclear plant, jeopardize nuclear fuel. Petro Kotin, president of Ukraine's nuclear power monopoly Energoatom, said that the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Enerhodar in Zaporizhzhia Oblast is connected to Ukraine's grid via one transmission line. If the line is damaged by Russian shelling, the plant will go into blackout mode, which will jeopardize the safety of nuclear fuel, he added.
Two more ships, carrying corn and soybeans, departed Ukrainian ports, taking the total to 10 ships carrying Ukrainian grain exports since the UN deal to unblock Ukraine’s grain exports was struck, Reuters reported.
Forbes: Air Force destroys Russian missiles worth estimated $26 million in one morning. At 10 a.m. on Aug. 8, Russia launched four Kalibr cruise missiles into Ukraine, each was shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile units in Odesa Oblast and central Ukraine.
The Pentagon confirms that the U.S. has sent HARM high-speed anti-radar missiles to Ukraine. These missiles will be especially helpful for the Ukrainian Air Force to avoid detection by S-400s.
Zelensky calls on West to ban Russian travelers if Russia annexes more Ukrainian territory. President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with the Washington Post that closing the borders for Russian travelers is "the most important sanction."
More Amnesty fallout: Co-founder of Amnesty's Swedish chapter, Pär Wästberg leaves the organization because of disagreement with Amnesty International's report on Ukraine.
Denis Pushilin said that the DPR was in negotiations with North Korea to bring builders from North Korea in to help rebuild the occupied territory. Pushilin also stated that there would be an “open tribunal over the war criminals of Ukraine”, with the first to be held in Mariupol, which would feature the testimony of the “Azovites”, in reference to Ukraine’s Azov battalion.
Russia has suspended an arrangement that allowed US and Russian inspectors to visit each other’s nuclear weapons sites under the 2010 New Start treaty, in a fresh blow to arms control. Mutual inspections had been suspended as a health precaution since the start of the Covid pandemic, but a foreign ministry statement on Monday added another reason Russia is unwilling to restart them.The Real Russia. Today. Monday, August 8, 2022
Local officials and veterans’ groups in at least 20 regions across Russia have formed more than 40 “volunteer battalions” to join the invasion of Ukraine, sources told the newspaper Kommersant. Salaries range widely from region to region (for example, the minimum offer in Perm is reportedly 300,000 rubles — almost $5,000 — per month), though some men say they haven’t been paid on time.
Belarus has announced it is to hold live fire military training exercises both in Belarus and in Russia during August.
Sergej Sumlenny: Unconfirmed reports on 4 Ukrainian missile strikes at Russian-held airfield Novofedorivka in Crimea- the Saky Air Base. If true- the first strike on Russian-occupied Crimea (not counting offshore gas rings). Can be the consequences of decimated RU air defense: 13 SAM systems knocked out within 3 days.
At least 12 explosions of varying intensity were heard in the course of a minute around 3.30pm local time, two witnesses said. Three were particularly loud, triggering sparks and smoke.
US official: Negotiations with Putin won't work. Kurt Volker, former U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine negotiations, told RFE/RL that he doesn't believe that there will be any results from negotiation attempts with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
US confirms it provided Ukraine with anti-radiation missiles. Colin Kahl, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, confirmed on Aug. 8 that American authorities have transferred unspecified "anti-radiation missiles" to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The US will provide an additional $4.5bn (£3.7bn) to Ukraine’s government, bringing its total budgetary support since Russia’s February invasion to $8.5bn (£7bn), the US Agency for International Development has announced. The funding, coordinated with the US Treasury Department through the World Bank, will go to Ukraine’s government in tranches, beginning with a $3bn (£2.5bn) disbursement in August, USAid, the Agency for International Development, said.
Turkey's Baykar to build drone factory in Ukraine. The Turkish company that produces Bayraktar combat drones, is currently in the process of building a factory in Ukraine, said Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar.
Germany rules out launching Nord Stream 2. “We face difficult months ahead, but it is clear that we stand firmly on the side of Ukraine, and we stand behind the sanctions that we agreed together with the European Union and the international community,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Aug. 8.
Financial Times: West considers sanctions against Turkey due to its cooperation with Russia. According to sources cited by the Financial Times, the West is increasingly alarmed at the deepening ties between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Erdogan and Putin agreed to boost economic ties at a meeting in Sochi on Aug. 5. The Washington Post reported earlier that Russia wanted Turkey to help it bypass the sanctions imposed due to its aggression against Ukraine.
Poll: 52% of Russians support continuing war against Ukraine. According to a new poll by the Russian Field sociological agency, 38% of respondents were in favor of moving to peace talks with Ukraine.
Ukraine's Education Ministry and University of Cambridge sign agreement to streamline Ukrainian students’ transition to school abroad.
First group of wounded Ukrainians arrive in Latvia for treatment. Twenty one seriously injured Ukrainians from active war zones have arrived at the Riga Eastern Clinical University Hospital on Aug. 8.
“One would like to remind her of other words: ‘the fact that you are free is not your merit, but our shortcoming.”
RUSI, Russia’s war machine is running out of U.S. microchips
In a research paper the authors explain how their analysis of 27 Russian weapons systems and pieces of military equipment lost or expended since the beginning of Russia’s February invasion of Ukraine contained “at least 450 unique microelectronic components” produced by companies based in the U.S., Europe, and East Asia. The findings indicate that “Russia’s war machine is heavily reliant on imports of sophisticated [predominantly American] microelectronics to operate effectively”, and that the lack of alternatives for the production of these required components means that Russia will have to turn to both “less capable replacements” and sanctions evasion.
Vadym Vetrov reports…
For our Italian readers, Vadym has been an inestimable resource and a guest on EuroFile@6 and WTF. He’s been reporting on what is happening on the ground since day one, and assisting Italian journalists in the east, and now in Kharkiv.
Today he is reporting from what is left of the Rynok Barbashov market, Europe’s largest market, where 10,000 people worked. Vadym shows the extent of the destruction due to Russian shelling, “it’s burned, completely burned by the war.” He also reports that the merchants are trying to get back on their feet and return to a semblance of normal life.
Munch, Why did Amnesty International Ignore My Warnings about their Ukraine Investigation?—Byline Times
In May this year, I was sat around a table with Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis researcher predicting their upcoming report would land like a lead balloon. We were in the kitchen of our hotel in Kramatorsk, the administrative capital of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk and we could hear the boom of artillery outside our windows every hour.
Rather than expressing shock at the relentless Russian bombardment, the Amnesty staff seemed much more concerned with the fact that a Ukrainian army unit had taken refuge in the basement of a college building.
Maria Avdeeva reports
Speaking in Vilnius today Tsikhanouskaya reminds us that…
Parker, Donald Trump spent his whole presidency ripping up documents that aides had to tape back together
“It is absolutely a violation of the act,” said Courtney Chartier, president of the Society of American Archivists. “There is no ignorance of these laws. There are White House manuals about the maintenance of these records.”
Federal investigators have seized documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
