Dec 14 Buonasera Mag
Day 294: selected posts on today's news from Ukraine, Russia, the EU-A&Ps- Snyder ISW Rosenberg Vetrov RFE/RL Alinejad Babij Loukerenko Rivero
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…
Russia attacks Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast with drones. According to the Kyiv City Military Administration, debris from the drone damaged two administrative buildings in the Shevchenkivskyi district. Deputy Head of the President’s Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko reported on Dec. 14 that a private house in the village of Vyshneve in Kyiv Oblast was also damaged as a result of the morning attack.
Russian forces firing multiple rocket launchers hit the regional administration building in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, according to a senior Ukrainian official. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said two floors of the building on the central square of the recently liberated city had been damaged, but that no one was reported hurt.
The Russian assault on Wednesday morning came as the US was expected to decide whether to supply Ukraine with its advanced Patriot air defence system. US officials told CNN that the missiles could be delivered in a matter of days after the repeated Russian barrages against Ukrainian cities.
Official: Ukraine launches production of 152-mm, 122-mm projectiles. Ukraine has launched the production of 152-millimeter and 122-millimeter artillery shells as the stocks of Soviet ammunition are running out, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said on Dec. 13.
Poll: 85% of Ukrainians believe victory in war with Russia requires liberating all territories, including Crimea and Donbas. According to a recent poll conducted by the Rating Group, 9% of Ukrainians said they would consider a victory in liberating territories controlled by Ukraine before Russia's full-scale invasion started on Feb. 24.
Russia rules out withdrawal from Ukraine by end of 2022. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Dec. 13 that Kyiv needs to accept new territorial “realities,” dismissing a peace proposal by President Volodymyr Zelensky that would include the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
Peskov insisted at Tuesday’s briefing that Kyiv needed to accept new territorial “realities” that included Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions as its “new subjects” – annexations that most UN countries have condemned as illegal. Ukraine’s presidential adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said on Wednesday that it was Peskov and Putin who had to accept the “new reality” that “there are no stolen Ukrainian territories within the [Russian Federation] ‘forever’”.
Russian oil revenues fell last month despite a boost in production to just below levels before the invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency has said. The IEA estimated that Russia earned about $15.8bn (£12.8bn) from oil sales in November, the second lowest this year after $14.7bn in September, a sign that western efforts to choke off the Kremlin’s income are working.
Prime minister: Ukraine’s GDP may halve if Russian attacks on infrastructure continue. Russia’s continued attacks may add 10 percentage points to Ukraine's predicted GDP drop, he added.
Nearly seven million children in Ukraine, or almost every child in the country, have been put at “desperate risk” as a result of continued attacks on Ukrainian critical energy infrastructure, the UN’s children agency has warned.
Ukrainian investigators have uncovered a “torture chamber“ in Kherson city where children were allegedly detained and abused by Russian occupying forces, Ukraine’s human rights chief said.
The Ukraine General Staff has published a video instruction for the Russian troops on how to surrender using a Ukrainian quadcopter drone. The video, with detailed instructions in Russian, is posted on the General Staff Facebook page. Russian troops looking to surrender must notify the coordinators of the Ukrainian I Want to Live program, who will give them a time window for the drone’s arrival.
NLB, a group of pro-Ukrainian hackers, has released more than three million personal records from the state-run Moscow Electronic School website — an educational platform used by Moscow public schools. “The leak affects a huge part of Moscow population, including schoolchildren,” writes a Telegram channel whose bot offers to check whether a user’s phone number is part of the data leak.
President Zelensky urged Europe to support a war tribunal to try senior Russian officials as he accepted the EU’s top human rights award. The EU and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, have lent support for the creation of a special tribunal to try senior Russian officials – potentially including Putin – for the crime of aggression in Ukraine.
The US is finalising plans to send the Patriot missile defence system to Ukraine which could be announced as soon as this week, according to US officials. The plan is awaiting approval by the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, before it is sent to President Joe Biden for his signature. Approval is expected, two US officials and a senior administration official told CNN.
Alex Raufoglu: Ukraine passes European Union recommended legislation in steps to join the bloc.
Allies pledge over $1 billion to support Ukraine throughout winter. French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna announced that some 70 countries and international organizations will be involved in allocating funds.
UK sanctions 12 Russian military commanders following mass strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The U.K. also sanctioned Iranian businessmen and officials involved in the production and supply of drones to Moscow used to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.
Larissa Babij, A Kind of Refugee 12.12.2022
Last Monday I packed up my computer and headed for my trusty cafe (that always has power) on the right bank to get some work done before meeting friends in the evening. Halfway through my coffee the air raid alarm sounded. The cafe is on the first floor of a 5-story brick apartment building; the windows are small. I keep typing.
After a while the waitress comes up, agitated, and asks me to pay: they’ve decided to close up and go to the nearest bomb shelter. Some 70+ missiles are on their way. I close my laptop quickly and figure I’ll do the same. Outside people walk with purpose and many are clustered near the entrance to the underground metro station. Some stand around smoking or talking on the phone; it seems like everyone is receiving information from their telephones. I watch the people, wondering how soon the missiles will arrive, and decide in which direction to move if I hear one in the next instant.
Maria Gabriella Pasqualini, Stella Rimington, pioneer of the Services who broke down taboos- Le Formiche
Before her, the idea of the female spy was linked to the stereotype of hired escort, a woman of easy virtue; she at best she was an admired noblewoman, if driven by ideological motives. The intervention of Maria Gabriella Pasqualini, scholar and teacher of the security services
The Financial Times recently published a nice article on the secret lives of the most important current female agents of MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service). He did not mention the woman who in 1991 became director general of MI5 (Security Service - counter-espionage), the first woman to reach a top position in the entire British information sector: Stella Rimington .
Programming note- ICYMI…
Jorge L Rivero, The Russian Military’s Failure in Ukraine Is No Surprise- The National Interest
The Russian military invaded Ukraine on false or otherwise flawed assumptions about the Ukrainian military, and Western views of the Russian military were often equally as wrong. Senior U.S. military officers and government officials believed the Russian military would quickly destroy Ukrainian resistance, with some officials speculating that Kyiv would fall within seventy-two hours. Instead, the attack on Kyiv stalled, with the infamous forty-mile convoy becoming the climax of Russian logistical and planning failures that led to the embarrassing withdrawal from Kyiv in late March. Perhaps the West fell prey to the Russian information campaigns that have been demonstrated during military campaigns over the years, such as Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War or the “Little Green Men” in Crimea. Military analysts ultimately believed that the Russian military had reformed after Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov’s 2008 “New Look” reforms.
