Feb 15: Buonasera Mag
Day 356: UASitRep Luhansk Bakhmut Baikonur Ramstein TanksJets allies EU Yashin Moldova Sturgeon Pregozhin RUEcoGraphs-A&Ps-Sullivan ISW Avdeeva Applebaum Reznikov Jorge Moustafa Kramer Cepa deepfakes
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…
Ukrainian forces have reportedly blown up a bridge near Bakhmut, in a sign they may be planning to retreat from the area. Ukraine denies it intends to leave Bakhmut, despite six months of heavy fighting and reportedly dwindling stockpiles. The capture of Bakhmut would give Russia a significant symbolic boost ahead of the first anniversary of the war.
Ukraine repels Russian assaults near over 20 settlements in 3 oblasts. In a regular morning update on Feb. 15, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported that the Ukrainian military had repelled Russian attacks near over 20 settlements in Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv oblasts.
The Russian defence ministry claimed earlier its troops had broken through two fortified lines of Ukrainian defences on the eastern front of Luhansk. It said Ukrainian troops had retreated in the face of Russian attacks, but did not say in which part of the region.
Russian forces have made incremental progress in the last day or two in their assault on the Ukrainian city of Bahkmut but it is unclear if it will fall, the White House has said. John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, added that if Bakhmut were to fall to the Russians “it would not have a strategic impact on the overall war”. Prigozhin has said the battle is far from over.
Financial Times: ‘Western intelligence shows Russians amassing aircraft on Ukraine border.' Western intelligence indicates that Moscow is amassing fixed-wing and rotary aircraft near Russia’s border with Ukraine, two officials privy to the information told Financial Times.
General Milley: Russia lacks capacity for new attack on Kyiv. US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley added that the Russians have already launched their new offensive in Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.
Washington Post: White House warns Ukraine it faces turning point in war. U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is convincing Kyiv that the turning point in the war will be reached already this spring, the Washington Post reported, citing U.S. officials.
The mayor of the (Russian-leased) Kazakhstani city of Baikonur is offering residents $3,500 each to fight in Ukraine. Russia has been leasing Baikonur and its spaceport since 1994 for $115 million annually.
Officials in the Belgorod region signed an agreement with the local Orthodox clergy to invite priests into classrooms for future parent-teacher conferences, seminars, competitions, and other school events
Cabinet of Ministers appoints new First Deputy Defense Minister. The Cabinet of Ministers dismissed Ivan Rusnak as Ukraine's First Deputy Minister of Defense and appointed Lieutenant General Oleksandr Pavlyuk as his successor on Feb. 14.
Ukraine appoints new High Anti-Corruption Court head. The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) announced that Vira Mykhailenko is the court’s new head.
Zelensky thanks new Western arms pledges following Ramstein format meeting. "Together, Ukraine and its partners are doing everything to ensure that the terrorist state loses. And to make it happen faster," said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
The US is considering the possibility of handing over thousands of confiscated weapons and over a million rounds of ammunition to Ukraine, writes Wall Street Journal.
Pentagon head says allies to help Ukraine launch counter-offensive in spring. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Feb. 14 that the Ukraine Defense Contact Group would "support Ukraine's fight for freedom over the long haul," adding that it would help Kyiv "hold and advance during the spring counter-offensive."
US works toward tougher restrictions on banks with ties to Russia. Washington is working to push harsher restrictions on banks with ties to Russia and crack down on those evading current rules, the U.S. State Department’s Sanctions Coordination Office head James O’Brien told Reuters.
EU working group to explore using frozen Russian assets for reconstruction of Ukraine. An EU working group led by the Swedish Presidency of the Council of the European Union will be exploring the possibility of utilizing frozen Russian assets to aid in post-war Ukraine's reconstruction efforts.
Allied pledges and activity: Ukraine’s allies Germany and the U.S. are not focusing on sending fighter jets to Ukraine, citing other priorities for the time being. The Netherlands and Denmark have announced they won’t be supplying Leopard 2 tanks but refurbishing 100 Leopard 2 tanks in German warehouses. Germany will also begin its production of Gepard guns. Polish defense minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, says Western tanks will arrive in Ukraine by March, and talks are on-going with Finland to aid in the supply of tanks. Spain to train 55 Ukrainian soldiers on Leopard tanks starting this week.
Norway to send 8 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Norway will donate eight Leopard 2 main battle tanks and up to four support vehicles to Ukraine, the Norwegian Defense Ministry reported on Feb. 14. The "tanks package" will also include ammunition and spare parts, reads the report.
Moldova temporarily closes its airspace due to security reasons. Moldova closed its airspace for more than three hours on Feb. 14 "to ensure the safety and security of civil aviation," the country's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) reported. The airspace was reopened at 2:47 pm. The incident comes a day after Moldovan President Maia Sandu said Russia was planning a coup d'état in Moldova involving attacks on government buildings.
Scotland's Nicola Sturgeon 'to resign': Scotland’s first minster to hold media conference at 11 a.m. amid reports she is standing down. The SNP leader — who has led her pro-independence party and Scotland’s devolved government since 2014 — is expected to announce she is standing down at an 11 a.m. press conference from her official residence of Bute House, Edinburgh.
Stephanie Kirchgaessner, Manisha Ganguly, David Pegg, Carole Cadwalladr & Jason Burke, Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections- The Guardian
Team Jorge’ unit exposed by undercover investigation
Group sells hacking services and access to vast army of fake social media profiles
Evidence unit behind disinformation campaigns across world
Mastermind Tal Hanan claims covert involvement in 33 presidential elections
A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.
The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.
He is being unmasked by an international consortium of journalists. Hanan and his unit, which uses the codename “Team Jorge”, have been exposed by undercover footage and documents leaked to the Guardian.
Hanan did not respond to detailed questions about Team Jorge’s activities and methods but said: “I deny any wrongdoing.”
The investigation reveals extraordinary details about how disinformation is being weaponised by Team Jorge, which runs a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The group also works for corporate clients.
Nurbek Savitahunov & Yanina Sorokina, 5 Graphs Explaining Russia’s Wartime Economy- The Moscow Times
As Russian officials play down the economic impact of President Vladimir Putin’s order to invade Ukraine, the emergence of end-of-year data from 2022 in recent weeks has painted a mixed picture of the economy’s performance.
There were some positive signs: inflation receded after hitting a peak in April, while oil and gas revenues reached record levels. The International Monetary Fund last week even revised upward its forecast for the Russian economy, predicting 0.3% growth in 2023.
However, at the same time, remittances skyrocketed last year as a flood of people left the country, banking profits fell and the country’s budget deficit reached record levels.
“The main takeaway of the year: having somehow coped with the first blow, the Russian economy looked around and realized there are no good prospects,” Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister and an ally of jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny, wrote in a recent article.
The Moscow Times has compiled some of the most interesting data from 2022 to create five graphs that shed light on the state of the Russian economy.
See graphs for: Budget deficit and surplus, oil and gas revenues, inflation and interest rates, remittances to post-Soviet countries, banking sector profits
Andrew E. Kramer, ‘Our Losses Were Gigantic’: Life in a Sacrificial Russian Assault Wave- NYT
The soldiers were sitting ducks, sent forth by Russian commanders to act essentially as human cannon fodder in an assault. There are two main uses of the conscripts in this tactic: as “storm troops” who move in waves, followed by more experienced Russian fighters, and as intentional targets, to draw fire and thus identify Ukrainian positions to hit with artillery.
In interviews last week, half a dozen prisoners of war provided rare firsthand accounts of what it is like to be part of a sacrificial Russian assault.
“These orders were common, so our losses were gigantic,” Sergei said. “The next group would follow after a pause of 15 or 20 minutes, then another, then another.”
Of his combat experience, he said, “It was the first and last wave for me.”
Russia’s deployment of former convicts is a dark chapter in a vicious war. Russia Behind Bars, a prison rights group, has estimated that as many as 50,000 Russian prisoners have been recruited since last summer, with most sent to the battle for Bakhmut.
Satariano & Mozur, The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real- NYT (read online to see the deepfake videos)
In one video, a news anchor with perfectly combed dark hair and a stubbly beard outlined what he saw as the United States’ shameful lack of action against gun violence.
In another video, a female news anchor heralded China’s role in geopolitical relations at an international summit meeting.
But something was off. Their voices were stilted and failed to sync with the movement of their mouths. Their faces had a pixelated, video-game quality and their hair appeared unnaturally plastered to the head. The captions were filled with grammatical mistakes.
The two broadcasters, purportedly anchors for a news outlet called Wolf News, are not real people. They are computer-generated avatars created by artificial intelligence software. And late last year, videos of them were distributed by pro-China bot accounts on Facebook and Twitter, in the first known instance of “deepfake” video technology being used to create fictitious people as part of a state-aligned information campaign.