Feb 10: Buonasera Mag
Day 351: Zelensky Kyiv 71missiles Iran Wagner Moldova Romania Blinken drones LITH BEL Panfilov UADef IOC TikTok ZinEU-A&Ps- Tokariuk Scollick Kallas Michta Matveev Hendrix Kirillova Davis Foley
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…
Mayor: 4 killed in explosion at former factory in Kyiv. Four people have been killed and five have been injured in an explosion at a former factory in Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, the city mayor, reported on Feb. 9. The rescue operation is still underway, he added.
Defence of Ukraine: Since yesterday evening russian terrorists have attacked Ukraine with 71 cruise missiles. 61 were shot down by our air defenses.
UK Defense Ministry: Both sides likely to avoid major offensives in March due to muddy conditions. The weather continues to play “a significant role” in the war, with the movement of vehicles expected to get more complicated as the temperature rises and the snow melts, the ministry said in its daily intelligence update on Feb. 9.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, said two Kaliber missiles launched from the Black Sea had entered Moldovan airspace, then flew into Romanian airspace, before re-entering Ukraine at the point where the borders of the three countries meet.
Iran modifies its drones supplied to Russia to inflict maximum damage on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. According to a new investigative report, cited by CNN, the unexploded warhead of an Iranian Shahed-131 drone discovered in Odesa Oblast was "hastily modified with poorly fitted layers of dozens of small metal fragments" that scatter over a large radius on impact.
Russia has potentially lost up to half of all its operational tank fleet since the start of the Ukraine war, according to information collected by a monitoring group, as its military struggles to meet the goals of Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
Wagner Group claims to have stopped recruiting prisoners for war against Ukraine. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has “completely stopped” recruiting prisoners to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, Wagner founder Evgenii Prigozhin said on Feb. 9.
Russia to install facial recognition systems to identify drivers at certain border checkpoints by 2024- the state contract is worth $11.4 million.
Residents in Bryansk, Kirov, Altai, and Novosibirsk are protesting against “predatory” utility price hikes as governors raise rates, they say, to ensure “uninterrupted” service.
Marina Ovsyannikova, the former Russian state TV editor who famously interrupted a live news broadcast to protest against the start of the Ukraine war, has described her “chaotic” escape from house arrest in Moscow and how she fled across Europe to seek asylum in France.
EU calls on Russia to stop ‘absurd' claims of victimhood in war against Ukraine. “There is no doubt that this Russian aggression is illegal under international law,” the EU delegation said in a statement during an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe meeting in Vienna, as quoted by Ukrinform on Feb. 9.
President Zelensky says he recently warned Moldova’s president that Ukraine’s intelligence community intercepted a Russian plan to “break the democracy of Moldova and establish control over Moldova” (Moldova’s Intelligence and Security Service says it too has tracked “subversive activities, aimed to undermine the Republic of Moldova, destabilize, and violate public order”)
Estonian PM Kaja Kallas: "First of all, it's very important that we speed up military aid to Ukraine," Kallas told reporters upon arrival at the Special European Council in Brussels. "I think that all of us looked to the warehouses for what we have, but we should do more. And we should give a clear signal to the European defense industry to produce more."
U.S. Sec of State Anthony Blinken: “The United States and the United Kingdom are taking coordinated action today targeting cybercriminals who launched assaults against our critical infrastructure. We will continue to work with the United Kingdom and with other international partners to expose and disrupt cybercrime emanating from Russia. The United States is designating seven individuals who are part of the Russia-based cybercrime gang Trickbot.”
Russia is a safe haven for cybercriminals, where groups such as Trickbot freely perpetrate malicious cyber activities against the United States, the United Kingdom, and our allies and partners. These activities have targeted critical infrastructure, including hospitals and medical facilities.
Zelensky: Several European countries ready to provide Ukraine with fighter jets. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Feb. 9 that he is due to hold a series of bilateral meetings “where the topic of combat aviation will be given the necessary attention."
Ukrainian troops arrive in Belgium for training on underwater drones. A group of Ukrainian soldiers has arrived in Belgium under the European Union's training mission to master underwater drones, Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder said on Feb. 9. These underwater systems, capable of finding various threats such as mines and spy equipment, have already been delivered to Ukraine, according to Dedonder.
Lithuanian Def Min Arvydas Anušauskas said Ukraine would receive 36 anti-aircraft guns to fight drones, Shaheds, as part of assistance package. 15 trained instructors returned to Ukraine. Lithuania will train about 1,600 Ukrainian mil personnel in 2023.
Belarus takes an unsurprising hit to its Democracy Index, published by The Economist Group, placing 153rd out of 167 countries.
Sad news for the Georgian community and diaspora: Oleg Panfilov died this afternoon. He was dedicated to the fight for a rules based order in Georgia and Georgia’s EU accession process. He was also an advocate for Saakashvili and Gvaramia, both in prison in Georgia on trumped up charges.
Reznikov: Over 600 officials of Armed Forces, Defense Ministry prosecuted after internal audits. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Feb. 9 that 621 officials working at Ukraine's Armed Forces and Defense Ministry were prosecuted after internal audits in 2022. Reznikov didn't specify for which violations the officials were held responsible.
Poland will close a major crossing point on its Belarusian border due to “security” concerns- a Belarusian court recently sentenced a leader of Belarus’s minority Polish community to eight years in prison for reporting on Lukashenko.
International Olympic Committee president criticizes Ukraine's call to boycott the Games. In a letter to Ukraine’s National Olympic Committee, sent on Jan. 31, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, Thomas Bach, criticized Ukraine’s threat to boycott the Games, saying it would violate the Olympic charter.
Bloomberg: TikTok identifies vast Russian disinformation network. TikTok Inc. revealed a Russian disinformation network disseminating propaganda about Moscow’s full-scale war against Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Feb. 9. The network targeted over 100,000 European users over the summer of 2022.
Andrew A Michta’s mini-thread, There will be no do-overs
I grow weary of people who have never been Russia (or if they have, a visit Moscow is their reference point) nor speak or even read Russian, but are opining on how Moscow will roll and what Ukraine should/should not do. This war is not another BS session about US politics.
Thousands of Ukrainians are on the frontlines, many losing their lives, while many of our Western “experts” think this war is a checkers board to play out their visions of a brave new global power distribution. Pls understand this: If Ukraine loses there will be no do-overs.
This is a civilizational decision point. If Russia loses, Europe can finally solve its security dilemma in the “crush zone” in Eastern Europe that last century pulled it into two world wars. If Ukraine loses, there will be a wider war in Europe in a few yrs.
Steve Hendrix & Serhii Korolchuk, Ukraine readies along all fronts for Russia’s next big attack- WaPo
Valentyn Lymarenko and his infantry unit have already been seasoned by a year of combat, but they are grunting through exercises in this snowy trench to prepare for the next phase of fighting: a much-anticipated Russian offensive.
“We know they are coming,” Lymarenko said amid the pop of practice rifle fire. “We don’t know where.”
As Moscow struggles to turn the tide of a war that so far has largely failed, Ukrainians are bracing for a Kremlin do-over. But just where Russia will seek to land its blow remains a mystery, forcing Kyiv to ready its troops along a varied and forbidding front stretching from Belarus to the Black Sea.
From boggy northern wetlands to raging street fighting in the east to the treeless southern steppe, each range of terrain presents its own set of challenges and openings for Russian invaders and the Ukrainians intent on expelling them.
Kseniya Kirillova, Putin’s Enforcers Pour Into Occupied Ukraine- CEPA
The notorious Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has announced the dispatch to the occupied territories of 300 qadis – judges who apply Sharia law, together with imams, “to make their contribution to the victory of our state over the servants of Satan.”
According to Kadyrov, the first group has already completed training with special forces before being sent to Ukraine, after mastering a range of secular skills including “tactical fire training.” The exact function of these religious judges in occupied areas has not been explained, but 34 democratic states have judged the Chechen state guilty of “harassment and persecution, arbitrary or unlawful arrests or detentions, torture, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.” It may therefore be fair to question whether Chechnya’s judges meet jurisprudential minimum standards.
The Institute for the Study of War believes that Kadyrov’s initiative may have the secondary purpose of establishing the conditions for the long-term resettlement of the Muslim population from the Caucasus to the occupied regions of Ukraine. Such movements of populations are long-established elements in the Kremlin playbook, as has been seen with the enforced removal of more than a million Ukrainians to the Russian Federation over the past year.
Programming note…
