Dec 2 Buonasera Mag
Day 282: Dnipro Belarus Nasams Scholz-Putin EU-ICC Germany Marin RUOilCap UAEmbassies Kuleba Luksha Snowden-A&Ps-Popescu Karnitschnig Zelenska HAKA Tokariuk Standish
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…
Ukraine’s armed forces have lost between 10,000 and 13,000 soldiers so far in the war against Russia, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told a Ukrainian television network on Thursday.
Russia’s withdrawal from the west bank of the Dnipro River last month has provided the Ukrainian Armed Forces with opportunities to strike additional Russian logistics nodes and lines of communication. This threat has highly likely prompted Russian logisticians to relocate supply nodes, including rail transfer points, further south and east.
The US is reportedly working with two Middle Eastern countries to shift advanced Nasams air defence systems to Ukraine in the next three to six months. Kyiv received two of the eight approved deliveries of Nasams in early November.
Chancellor Scholz has urged Putin to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict as soon as possible, “including a withdrawal of Russian troops”, when the two leaders spoke recently. The Kremlin said Putin told Scholz the German and western line on Ukraine was “destructive” and urged Berlin to rethink its approach. Its readout of the call served to highlight the gulf between Russia and western governments over Ukraine, even though Moscow and Washington have both said in the past 24 hours they are open in principle to talks, Reuters reports.
Germany is aiming to deliver seven Gepard tanks that had been destined for the scrap pile to Ukraine this spring, adding to 30 of the air-defence tanks that are already being used to fight against the Russian army, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Friday.
Germany to supply Ukraine with bridge-laying tanks, border protection vehicles. Germany has handed over to Ukraine unmanned surface vessels, some bridge-laying tanks and dozens of border protection vehicles as part of their new batch of military aid, according to a statement posted on the German government website.
Finish PM Marin, has called for Europe to build its own defence capabilities in the wake of the war in Ukraine, saying that without US help it is not resilient enough. “We should make sure that we are stronger,” Marin said in Sydney on Friday. “And I’ll be brutally honest with you, Europe isn’t strong enough. We would be in trouble without the United States. This is the time to stop being naive, also when it comes to China.”
The West's plan to starve Russia of resources to fight its war in Ukraine by imposing a price cap on its oil exports hits a diplomatic logjam in Brussels as Poland presses for tougher action. EU governments 'tentatively' agree on $60 a barrel price cap on Russian seaborne oil. The decision envisages an adjustment mechanism to keep the cap at 5% below the market price, according to diplomats and a document seen by Reuters.
Russian oil output could fall by 500,000 to 1m barrels per day early in 2023 after the European Union imposes a ban on seaborne imports from Monday, two sources at major Russian producers have told the Reuters news agency.
The Ukrainian Embassies in Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Croatia, Italy, the consulates in Naples & Krakow, and in Brno received bloody packages. They contained animal eyes, the packages themselves were soaked in a liquid of a blood color and had a corresponding smell.
Kuleba: NATO countries should increase arms production for battles ahead. In an interview with Politico, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged NATO countries to boost their weapons production, adding that if they don’t, “we won’t be able to win – as simple as that.”
Susanna Schlein, an advisor at the Italian Embassy in Athens, was attacked during the Her car was blown up. She is the sister to Ely Schlein is a politician in Italy. The Italian foreign office has condemned the crime and MInister Tajani is set to go to Athens today. The car bomb may have been planted by anarchists, who had protested in front of the Italian Embassy against the 41bis against the terrorist Alfredo Cospito . On 19th Oct. and 29 Nov. FAI/FRI planted two bombs in Chilean petrochemical companies.
The Minsk City Court sentenced Dzmitry Luksha, a freelance correspondent for Kazakhstan's Khabar 24 television channel, and his wife, Palina Palavinka, to four and 2 1/2 years in prison, respectively, after finding them guilty of "discrediting Belarus."
Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked information about U.S. surveillance programs, swore an oath of allegiance to Russia and has collected his Russian passport, his lawyer told state media on Friday.
Olena Zelenska in London, UK.
Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian president, has urged western nations not to allow themselves to become accustomed to Ukraine’s plight. Speaking to the Times, she has said:
It is quite understandable that the west is tired. However, this phrase, I hear it quite a lot — war fatigue — is quite a dangerous phrase for us because that is exactly what our adversary wants. They expect people to forget and the world to get tired of the sad news and for Ukraine to disappear from the front pages. They would then feel they had the permission to do what they want.
As winter draws in, she accused the Russians of trying to terrorise Ukrainians into believing they will not be able to survive.
It would be wrong to say these things don’t scare us, they do, but we know we must endure this. The winter is treacherous and that is what they are counting on, it’s not the first time they are using the force of nature against the civilian population.
She also detailed how she has cut off all contact with any Russian relative or acquaintance, telling the paper:
Of course, Putin is to blame but without the support of the Russian people he couldn’t have done it on such a scale … I have relatives [in Russia], but we don’t communicate. Those relationships have ended completely … There will be no point in returning to those dialogues, when your own life and children’s and your family’s is in great danger and people don’t even ask if you are still alive, I think such relationships are over.
Russian position on negotiations
Putin claims to be open to talks on a possible settlement in Ukraine but lays the blame on the United States which he says refuses to recognise “annexed territories”. He states that the US is hindering a search for any potential compromise. President Biden said on Thursday that he was prepared to speak to Putin if he was looking for a way to end the war but that Putin had not yet indicated that. Kremlin spokesman, Peskov said:
The president of the Russian Federation has always been, is and remains open to negotiations in order to ensure our interests. The most preferable way to achieve our interests is through peaceful, diplomatic means. Putin was, is and remains open to contacts and negotiations.
Why…I keep asking…why…
Chancellor Scholz has said that Europe should go back to its prewar “peace order” with Russia if Russian president Vladimir Putin will renounce aggression against his neighbours, according to a report of his comments at a security conference.
The Times reports that during a panel discussion at the event in Berlin, Scholz was asked how Germany would act towards Russia once the war was over given the “strong partnership” that had once been in place between the two countries.
At this stage I would say it’s not about partnership, to be very honest. Russia spoilt the peace order we worked on for so many decades and we agreed there should never again be the attempt to change borders by force.
And what Russia is doing today is going back to the imperialistic approach of the 19th, 18th, 17th century where just a stronger country thinks it could just take the territory of the neighbour, understanding neighbours as just hinterland, and some place they can give rules to be followed. And this can never be accepted.
However, he continued: “We have to go back to the agreements which we had in the last decades and which were the basis for peace and security order in Europe.
And for Russia this also means that it accepts that there are open-minded societies, open societies, democracies, that follow completely a different way of how they are governed and how they attract people ... In the end there is no aggression coming from the member states of the European Union, there is no aggression coming from Nato, and all questions of common security could be solved and discussed. There is a willingness to do so.
We can come back to a peace order that worked and make it safe again if there is a willingness in Russia to go back to this peace order.
Reid Standish, Surveillance Tech In The Balkans- RFE/RL
An RFE/RL investigation documented a murky operation by Serbian law enforcement during nationwide protests in 2021 that showed how officials could abuse cutting-edge Chinese surveillance tools in the future. Read Part 1 and Part 2 here.
Serbia has already deployed thousands of surveillance cameras across the country as part of plans to introduce some 8,000 Chinese-made Huawei surveillance cameras with facial-recognition capabilities.
Due to the pressure, Belgrade says that facial-recognition software is not yet deployed, but the use -- and potential abuse -- of the technology has been a source of rising alarm and our reporting shows why.
For those of us on Twitter…
The findings — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups that study online platforms — provide the most comprehensive picture to date of how conversations on Twitter have changed since Mr. Musk acquired the site.
These changes are alarming, researchers said, adding that they had never seen such a sharp increase in hate speech, problematic content and formerly banned accounts in such a short period on a mainstream social media platform.