Dec 27 Buonasera Mag
Day 306: Donbas Bakhmut Kremmina Engels Nikifova FSB Antov BNDSpy- A&Ps- ISW Davis Belot Kallioniemi BuchaNYT Zegart TheSpyMuseum Giczan
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…
Front line situation in Donbas 'difficult, painful.' “The situation there is difficult, painful. The occupiers are spending all the resources available to them — and these are significant resources — to squeeze out at least some progress,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Dec. 26.
Ukrainian forces have repelled Russian attacks in the areas of two settlements in the Luhansk region and six in the Donetsk region over the past 24 hours, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in this morning’s operational update.
Heavy fighting is taking place near Kreminna, northwest of Lysychansk, according to the head of the Luhansk regional military administration, Serhiy Haidai. Haidai said:
The Russian occupation troops managed to build a very powerful defense in a month, even a little more. They are bringing there a huge amount of reserves and equipment. They are constantly renewing their forces.
Intelligence chief: Ukraine will return occupied Crimea by force. Ukraine will liberate the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula by a combination of military force and diplomacy, Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s Intelligence Directorate, told Liga.net. “But nothing will happen without force,” said Budanov.
Russian military dispersed aircraft from the Engels airfield in Russia's Saratov Oblast after the explosions there on the night of December 26, stated the spokesman of the Air Force Command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Yuriy Ihnat during a the national telethon program.
Changes in leadership reflect Prigozhin’s continuing ascent: A Wagner Group-linked Russian officer, Yevgeny Nikiforov has been appointed commander of the Russian western military district (WMD), according to Ukrainian intelligence. In its latest update, the US thinktank Institute for the Study of War said Yevgeny Nikiforov is reportedly commanding the Russian western grouping of forces in Ukraine out of a command post in Boguchar, Voronezh oblast in southwestern Russia.
Russia's FSB domestic security agency announced that it had killed a group of saboteurs from Ukraine attempting to cross into a Russian border region."As a result of a clash on December 25, 2022, four saboteurs, who attempted to enter the territory of the Bryansk region from Ukraine, were killed," the FSB said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.
One of the richest deputies of Russia died in India. This was reported by the NDTV. According to them, Antov died after falling from the third floor of the hotel on December 25. Antov was twice included in the Forbes list in 2019. His fortune was estimated at $150 million.
National Bank: Ukraine’s GDP to fall by one third in 2022; Russian attacks on energy system imperil economy. The war also reduced the demand for banking services and led to additional credit losses, according to the deputy head of the National Bank.
The G7, the European Union and Australia agreed this month to a $60-per-barrel price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil effective from December 5th over Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. The Kremlin’s decree stated: “This...comes into force on Feb. 1, 2023, and applies until July 1, 2023.”
Ukraine seeks to have Russia expelled from UN. The ministry argued that Russia had illegally become a member of the UN and the Security Council after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was a permanent member of the council.
Lukashenko and Putin have arrived together at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, BelTA has learned. As BelTA reported, the CIS leaders met at an informal summit the day before that lasted 7 hours. The CIS heads of state first held an official meeting, and then went together to an informal lunch on behalf of Vladimir Putin in honor of the CIS leaders.
Germany’s spy agency fears that Moscow was able to turn one of its agents in the months following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, it has emerged. The agent, who worked for Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is believed to have had access to secret information about the Ukraine war from Britain’s GCHQ spy agency and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the US.
The alleged double agent, identified only as Carsten L in accordance with German privacy regulations, was arrested on suspicion of treason in Berlin last Wednesday. He was remanded in custody after appearing before a judge.
Security sources are now investigating the possibility that the agent was blackmailed into betraying his country, German broadcaster Tageschau reported.
Henry Belot, Cryptocurrency becomes mainstream option for money laundering and funding of terrorism, Austrac says- The Guardian
Australia’s financial intelligence agency has warned Russian paramilitary groups are soliciting cryptocurrency donations to buy weapons and that Australians have donated to terrorist organisations overseas.
Senior executives at Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) also said cryptocurrency has become a “standard part of the money-laundering tool kit” for organised crime groups in Australia.
The agency’s deputy chief executive and head of intelligence, John Moss, said crypto was no longer considered a “niche option” for criminal activity and had become more mainstream.
“We are now seeing more traditional money laundering being displaced into cryptocurrency, particularly to send money offshore,” he said.
Moss said Russian groups have been soliciting digital currency donations on social media to buy weapons, drones and armour for the conflict in Ukraine.
Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha- New York Times
This investigation was reported and produced by Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Dmitriy Khavin, Christoph Koettl, Haley Willis, Alexander Cardia, Natalie Reneau and Malachy Browne.
When videos and photos emerged in April showing bodies of dozens of civilians strewn along a street in Bucha, Ukrainians and the rest of the world voiced horror and outrage. But in Russia, officials had a completely different reaction: denial.
President Vladimir V. Putin dismissed the gruesome scene as “a provocation,” and claimed that the Russian Army had nothing to do with it.
But an eight-month visual investigation by The New York Times concluded that the perpetrators of the massacre along Yablunska Street were Russian paratroopers from the 234th Air Assault Regiment led by Lt. Col. Artyom Gorodilov.
The evidence shows that the killings were part of a deliberate and systematic effort to ruthlessly secure a route to the capital, Kyiv. Soldiers interrogated and executed unarmed men of fighting age, and killed people who unwittingly crossed their paths — whether it was children fleeing with their families, locals hoping to find groceries or people simply trying to get back home on their bicycles.
Amy Zegart, Open Secrets: Ukraine and the Next Intelligence Revolution- Foreign Affairs
Over the past year, private citizens and groups have been tracking what Russia is planning and doing in ways that were unimaginable in earlier conflicts. Journalists have reported battlefield developments using imagery from commercial space satellites. Former government and military officials have been monitoring on-the-ground daily events and offering over-the-horizon analyses about where the war is headed on Twitter. A volunteer team of students at Stanford University, led by former U.S. Army and open-source imagery analyst Allison Puccioni, has been providing reports to the United Nations about Russian human rights atrocities in Ukraine—uncovering and verifying events using commercial-satellite thermal and electro-optical imaging, TikTok videos, geolocation tools, and more. At the Institute for the Study of War, a go-to source for military experts and analysts, researchers have even created an interactive map of the conflict based entirely on unclassified, or open-source, intelligence.
