Dec 18: E-Stories
Day663 Sumy Zvanivka Zaluzhnyi BlackSea Morozovsk FIN POLtruckers Putin NATO Biden Trump HUN BUL RUBank Pistorius memes GenZX A&P Darth ISW UKDef Avdeeva Eckel Brooks Kokcharov Bartholomew Davis
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 shells 11 communities in Sumy Oblast, injuring 1. Russian forces shelled 11 communities along the Sumy Oblast border on Dec. 16, injuring one civilian, the Sumy Oblast military administration reported.
Russia continued to batter Ukrainian targets with mortars overnight, with Dnipropetrovsk in the centre, Sumy in the north and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast hit with artillery, local media Ukrinform reports.
Combat Situation Update
On 17 December, 54 combat clashes occurred in the combat zone; the biggest number of attacks was repelled on the Avdiivka front – 25, reports the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
On the Kupiansk front, the Russians, supported by aircraft were trying to breach the defence of the Ukrainian forces, but to no avail.
The Defence Forces of Ukraine repelled six Russian attacks near the settlement of Synkivka and to the east of Petropavlivka in Kharkiv Oblast.
On the Lyman front, the Defence Forces repelled eight Russian attacks near the settlement of Makiivka in Luhansk Oblast and to the east of Terny in Donetsk Oblast.
On the Bakhmut front, the Defence Forces repelled five attacks by the Russians near the settlements of Bohdanivka, Klishchiivka and Andriivka in Donetsk Oblast.
On the Avdiivka front, the Russians supported by aircraft were trying to breach the defence of the Ukrainian forces, but to no avail.
The Ukrainian Air Force confirms from their side that a Russian Su-25 was shot down by Russian anti-aircraft fighters. It is rumoured that one of their own anti-aircraft defence units shot it down.
CDS Report: Currently, the most potent adversary's troop groupings within the Joint Group of the Russian Armed Forces on the Southwest Theater of Military Operations are the "Yug (South)" grouping and the "Dnieper" grouping, aligning with the priorities of the Russian military command:
Avdiivka and Bakhmut directions ("Yug (South)" grouping) – 158,134 personnel
Kherson direction ("Dnieper" grouping) – 72,620 personnel.
Military Intelligence confirms incursion into Russia’s Belgorod Oblast. Military skirmishes were reported near Russia’s Terebreno village on the border with Ukraine, Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence wrote on Dec. 17.
ISW: Ukrainian strikes against Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) assets have changed Russian naval operating patterns, causing the BSF to move some ships away from its main base in occupied Sevastopol & hampering its ability to interfere w/ maritime trade in the western Black Sea.
Ukrainian strikes have likely caused the BSF to set conditions for a more permanent basing pattern along the eastern Black Sea coast as it transfers naval assets away from Crimea and expands a small port in de facto Russian-controlled Ochamchire, Abkhazia.
Ukrainian strikes against BSF assets have successfully facilitated the use of Ukraine’s Black Sea grain corridor as international support for the corridor continues to increase despite Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative and military threats against it.
In the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a wiretap was found, RBC reports with sources familiar to the situation. "The devices were discovered today during the preparation of the premises for work."
Noel Reports: Conditions at the front. “Thaw and rain significantly worsen the movement of troops.
Forbes: Russian marines, reinforced by an army regiment, failed to dislodge the Ukrainians. So after some cursory training, the 104th Air Assault Division took the lead. The 104th Air Assault Division was supposed to save the Russian campaign on the left bank of the Dnipro River in southern Ukraine. Instead, the newly-formed division “suffered exceptionally heavy losses and failed to achieve its objectives during its combat debut,” the U.K. Defense Ministry reported. The approximately 2,000-person division itself became a casualty of an escalating war of attrition. The division “was reportedly poorly supported by air power and artillery, while many of the troops were highly likely inexperienced,” the ministry in London explained.
The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces is reporting the latest Russian casualty figures. It claims Russia has lost 346,070 troops – dead or injured – in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to a report in the Kyiv Independent – including 1,250 casualties in the past 24 hours.
The consequences of the attack on the airfield Morozovsk. A Russian Su-34 was reportedly damaged by shrapnel. Debris from drones were also found. Russia's Morozovsk military airfield usually has a large number of fighter jets and bombers. But it also has a huge fuel storage area, with hundreds of big containers sitting side by side, with no protection. It's also 140km from Ukraine's border.
Behind the Lines
CDS Report: Russian occupation authorities increased pressure on Ukrainian citizens working at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. According to the Main Intelligence Directorate, the occupiers demand that several hundred Ukrainian station workers obtain Russian passports and sign contracts with the "Rosatom" corporation by December 31, 2023.
Putin himself made his first visit since the election announcement to Arkhangelsk, where he visited the Sevmash machinery plant. The visit was quite similar to his visit to Ulan-Ude earlier this year: the city cleared of people, most workers sent home
The Guardian: Putin warned of “problems” with neighbouring Finland after it joined Nato earlier this year, in an interview published on Rossiya state TV on Sunday that ratcheted tense rhetoric higher.
The west “dragged Finland into Nato. Did we have any disputes with them? All disputes, including territorial ones in the mid-20th century, have long been solved,” Putin said. “There were no problems there, now there will be, because we will create the Leningrad military district and concentrate a certain amount of military units there.”
Russia’s plans of further border militarisation come as, on Monday, Finland will sign a defence pact with the US military, allowing it broad access amid Finland’s long border with Russia.
The pact will make “organising peace time operations easier, but above all it can be vital in a crisis,” Finland’s foreign minister Elina Valtonen said. Dozens of asylum seekers crossed into Finland on Friday after border crossings were temporarily opened again.
The NACP (National Agency on Corruption Prevention) suspended the war sponsor status for the Raiffeisen Bank after threats from Austria to maintain a veto over the 12th sanction package against Russia. (Me: Austria is blackmailing Ukraine. Lovely.)
North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile towards the sea on Sunday, South Korea’s military said, as Pyongyang called the US and South Korea “thugs” performing “reckless military manoeuvres” in the region. The North Korean defence ministry said the arrival of the US nuclear-powered submarine USS Missouri off South Korea as the latest act that proves Washington is contemplating nuclear war, Reuters reports, citing the state news agency KCNA. About 20 minutes after initially reporting the launch, the Japanese coast guard said the missile had already fallen, Reuters reported.
Lorry blockades are continuing at the Polish-Ukrainian border, with about 2,150 Ukrainian lorries stuck in Poland unable to return, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Blockades are continuing at three crossing points, the newsroom quotes a spokesperson for Ukraine’s border guard service,Andrii Demchenko, as saying.
The blockades are caused by Polish protestors. The Polish drivers feel undercut and want the EU to restore a transport permit scheme that limited the number of Ukrainian drivers able to operate in Poland to 200,000 entries a year. They say the lifting of restrictions in the months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has hit their earnings.
“We demand the reinstatement of the pre-2022 system of transport permits,” Rafal Mekler, the Polish protest organiser has said. He said on X, formerly Twitter, his intention to extend the blockades until 1 February 2024.
Hungary will veto Bulgaria’s entry into Europe’s passport-free Schengen zone unless it scraps a transit tax on Russian gas. It comes after Hungary blocked further funding to Ukraine at a summit this week but did not block Ukraine beginning EU accession talks.
Me: I’m not convinced that the blockade or other events we are seeing are organic. Covert and overt operations have increased across NATO countries: Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Ireland, Italy, Moldova, U.S., and Bulgaria, and I’ve probably missed something. These operations are meant to break the West’s alliance with Ukraine and/or keep it busy with traumatic domestic events. There are always two main goals in an offensive strategy: increase your own capabilities and decrease your adversary’s ability to counter your actions.
Julia Davis: Andrey Gurulyov talks about Russia's future
Meanwhile in Russia
Putin vowed to make Russia a “sovereign, self-sufficient” power in the face of the west. In a campaign speech he accused the west of unsuccessfully trying to “sow internal troubles” in Russia.
Putin says Biden's comments about Russia attacking Nato country 'complete nonsense'
Putin Biden’s remark that Russia would attack a Nato country if he won in Ukraine was complete nonsense, Reuters reports, adding that Russia had no interest in fighting with the western military alliance.
Biden, in a speech aimed at easing the deadlock on Capitol Hill and convincing Republicans to back further aid for Ukraine, said: “If Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there.” Putin will attack a Nato country, he predicted, and then “we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today: American troops fighting Russian troops,” Biden said.
The story goes that as Russia continues to divert funds from “domestic” needs to increase production in the military industries, living standards in Russia will decrease. By extension, this ‘should’ trigger some sort of dissent in Russia. We are applying our own way of governing to the governance system in Russia, which is wrong.
Russia is not governed by the will of the people. Citizens in the West protest when living standards decrease: doing that in Russia will get you nowhere. Not even the mothers or wives protesting the death of their loved ones has changed anything, nor has any protest for more kit at the front. Thinking that any form of protest triggered by the reduction in living standards will bring the regime to change its mind is an illusion we hold in the West.
The living standards they are referring to may be in certain pockets of Moscow and St Petersburg where the oligarchs or financial wizz-kids live, because most other citizens have been living dismally for years. The Russian leadership will make sure those rich Russians in Moscow and St Petersburg are taken care of. The same thing happened during the Soviet period when the regime made sure to keep the nomenklatura of the Communist Party and their families happy. They had their own kinds of limosines, and specialised stores open only to them offering all the luxury goods they desired. Actually, the only place where some dissent could form is amongst the regional leaders who see their budgets cut and their piece of the pie reducing as the war goes on.
The Russian deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, said Moscow would increase its oil export cuts in December as part of an Opec+ deal, Reuters reports, citing the Interfax news agency. It comes as the world’s biggest exporters, Russia and Saudi Arabia, try to support the global price of oil. Novak said Russia would deepen cuts to below the 300,000 barrels a day already agreed, Interfax reported.
Moscow is not interested in extending the Black Sea grain deal, according to the state-owned RIA news agency, citing the agriculture minister, Dmitry Patrushev.
“Our grain export volumes, taking into account the winding down of the grain deal, have by no means fallen, they even slightly increased,” RIA quoted Patrushev as saying.
Egypt and other countries called on Vladimir Putin to revive the grain deal in July, but the Russian president said in September that Moscow would only rejoin if the west fulfilled a separate memorandum agreed with the UN to facilitate Russian food and fertiliser exports.
Allied Support
Europe is preparing to make up for lost military support for Kyiv from the U.S. - German Defense Minister Pistorius "We clearly understand that sooner or later we will have to compensate for something of what may no longer be coming from Washington." The official believes Germany has "approximately five to eight years" to rebuild its military industry. Me: Wow. When Germany is waking up, that says a lot.
Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria to sign treaty on Black Sea mine clearance in January. Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria plan to sign an agreement on joint clearance of mines in the Black Sea in January, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler said on Dec. 16, Reuters reported.
Jem Bartholomew—Ukraine ups meme warfare
Ukraine’s fight against the Russian invasion has taken many forms – brutal trench warfare on the frontlines, drone sabotage deep into enemy territory, cyberwarfare on Russia’s military infrastructure.
Now, as the frontline hits stalemate with bitter winter sweeping in, another form of warfare comes to the fore: memes.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Ukraine has used memes and savvy internet strategies to keep Ukrainian morale high and increase support in the rest of the world. Scholars have referred to this as “memetic warfare” that is deployed to help control the narrative.
According to a report from the Brookings Institute, a US thinktank, in February this year, memes are “concurrent and complementary to [Ukraine’s] military efforts, suggesting that they are meant to play a supporting role”, and that they are designed for a range of audiences, “including Ukrainian citizens, expatriate audiences abroad, and Russians, especially soldiers’ families”.
The report said wartime memes were generated primarily from below, by Ukrainian citizens, but also from official sources in efforts to combat war fatigue.
Last year, the Ukrainian post office released commemorative stamps of a Ukrainian soldier sticking a middle finger up to the Russian Moskva warship, which was sunk in April 2022. The stamp referenced a recording of Ukrainian soldiers who said over radio airwaves, “Russian warship, go fuck yourself”, which became a meme and symbol of resistance.
A paper from Olga Tokariuk, at the University of Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, found memes, particularly those using humour, had a “strategic power”.
“In times of war, humour becomes a powerful weapon to overcome fear,” Tokariuk wrote. “It not only highlights the failures of the opposing forces but also serves to boost morale. Ukrainians found solace in laughter, turning the once formidable Russian army into subjects of ridicule.”
Trump going full on ethno-nationalist. I won’t make any academic statements. You decide to vote for someone like this, get your head checked.
The Biden campaign on Trump's 'poisoning the blood of our country' remarks: “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy. Trump is not shying away from his plan to lock up millions of people into detention camps and continues to lie about that time when Joe Biden obliterated him by over 7 million votes three years ago."
Mike Flynn has started ‘Operation Z’, for Generation Z. It is a direct reflection of the Z Generation in Russia. With a different theme and narrative, the same ‘Z’ is being used by Italian pro-Kremlin TikTokers. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russian propagandists have been disseminating the ‘Z’ symbol via various vectors: the latest was via the Putin Grannies. In the video, notice the cross symbol as well and the colours.
More divisions: I find the divisions of people into generations fascinating but not for any sociological purpose, but because this is yet another division that is being promoted on TikTok. The video above is Gen Z, and this talks about Gen X that everyone has seemed to have ‘forgotten’ (whatever that means).