Feb 18: Saturday Edition
Day 359: Luhansk Sevastopol Chapayevsk MunichSecurityConf Zelensky RUSitRep Italy Denmark Poland FB Latvia Auchan YaleStudy-A&Ps- Aseyev Gic Pigni Michel Cockerell Matviichuk
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…
The governor of Luhansk province in Ukraine’s east, Serhiy Haidai, says ground and air attacks from Russian forces are increasing. “Today it is rather difficult on all directions. There are constant attempts to break through our defence lines.”
Explosion reported in Sevastopol, Russian proxies claim drone attack. A “loud sound, similar to a muffled artillery shot or an explosion,” was heard in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea early on the morning of Feb. 17, according to Krym Realii media outlet.
At least one person was killed and at least three were injured by an explosion at a defense enterprise in Russia’s Samara region on Thursday, state media reported. The blast occurred at a plant in the city of Chapayevsk that manufactures detonators and explosives, a source from the local emergency services told TASS.
President Zelensky warned a possible consequence of delaying western weapons to Ukraine could be a Russian invasion of Moldova. He said neighbouring Belarus would make a mistake of historic proportions if it joined in the Russian offensive and claimed polls showed 80% of its people did not wish to join.
'There is no alternative to Ukrainian victory.' President Zelensky compared Russia's war against his country to the story of David and Goliath at the Munich Security Conference. "This is not only about Ukraine. The bottom line is that Goliath must lose, and there is no alternative to this because the Kremlin can destroy security...We can have victory not only over Putin in Russia but (over Putins) in the whole world. Won't this be proof of the power of the idea of freedom? It definitely will.”
Nuland: US supports Ukraine striking targets in Crimea. "Russia has turned Crimea into a massive military installation…those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that," said U.S. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. "Ukraine is not going to be safe unless Crimea is at a minimum demilitarised," she added.
Russian FM spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, has said the US is inciting Ukraine to strike directly at Russian territory, after comments by the US undersecretary of state, Victoria Nuland, about Crimea.
MT: Prigozhin blamed the Russian army’s bureaucracy for slowing military gains and said Bakhmut would be captured by April.
General Staff: Iranian drone instructors arrive in Luhansk. A group of Iranian military instructors has arrived in the occupied city of Luhansk to train Russian troops on the use of Shahed drones, Ukraine's General Staff reported on Feb. 17. Earlier, Iranian instructors were spotted in Russian-occupied territories of Kherson Oblast, Crimea, and Belarus.
Belarus is ready to build Sukhoi Su-25 ground attack aircraft, which “have proved to be efficient in Ukraine”, Lukashenko told Putin during a meeting today, state-run Belta news agency is reporting.
Russia’s foreign ministry said it has summoned the Italian ambassador, after Moscow said a number of performances by Russian artists in Italy had been cancelled. In a statement, the Russian ministry accused Italian authorities of discriminating against Russian artists, without providing further detail.
Russia has introduced a free package of satellite channels for residents living in occupied Ukraine that critics say is an attempt to create a “digital ghetto”. The package is called Russkiy Mir, or Russian World, which has become a byword for the propaganda Russia seeks to spread outside its borders, focusing on its imperial greatness and the outside enemies determined to destroy it, namely the west. It is just under a year since millions of Ukrainians started living under Russian occupation.
Munich Security Conference 2023
President Zelensky warned possible consequences of delaying western weapons to Ukraine could be a Russian invasion of Moldova. He also said neighbouring Belarus would make a mistake of historic proportions if it joined in the Russian offensive and claimed polls showed 80% of the country did not wish to join the war.
Chancellor Scholz gave president Zelensky an indirect rebuff, saying caution was better than hasty decisions and unity was better than going it alone.
President Macron urged allies to intensify their military support for Ukraine to help the country carry out a needed counter-offensive against Russia.
AFP: President Biden will be “messaging” Putin, when he speaks in Warsaw on Tuesday, the US says, while hailing Nato’s unprecedented effort to help Ukraine. In addition, the White House said, he would speak by phone next week with the leaders of Britain, France and Italy. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is due in Washington on 3 March.
Reuters: US to warn companies against evading Russia sanctions. The U.S. will directly warn companies against evading U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on Feb. 17.
The first batch of Leopard-1A5 battle tanks the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are buying for Ukraine will be delivered as soon as possible, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said. He added that the Netherlands was prepared to host a new tribunal to judge Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, adding that more support was needed for that to happen.
Poland won't send F-16s to Ukraine, not against sending other jets. During the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 17, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Poland is not open to providing F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. However, he expressed the country's willingness to collaborate with other NATO member states on providing alternative fighter jets.
Facebook allowed an exiled Moldovan oligarch with ties to the Kremlin to run ads calling for protests and uprisings against the country, according to a report. The ads featuring politician and convicted fraudster, Ilan Shor, were seen millions of times in Moldova, even though he and his political party were on the US sanctions list, AP reports.
Among other things, we must stop financing our enemies. Our cheap goods from China today will be bombs on our heads tomorrow. Our governments have a DUTY to protect us from this evil and to stop it.
Latvia passes law allowing state to donate drunk drivers’ confiscated cars to Ukraine. The country’s Cabinet of Ministers will have to approve each individual “donation”.
Russian branch of French retailer Auchan supplies aid to Russian troops. An investigation reveals that the Russian branch of French retailer Auchan has been supplying Russian forces with supplies under the guise of humanitarian aid. Under international law, humanitarian aid can only be supplied to civilians. However, the supplies coordinated by Auchan in Russia included men's socks, cigarettes, lighters, and razors.
Giovanni Pigni, ‘Black PR’: How Wagner Recruits Mercenaries and Shapes Russian Politics- The Moscow Times
The documentary “PMC Wagner: Contract with the Motherland,” which was produced by state-run channel RT, is one of a series of slick videos glorifying the notorious mercenary company that has taken center stage in Russia’s attempts to advance in Ukraine.
As the once-secretive mercenary company has stepped out from the shadows amid the Ukraine war, so too has its media and PR machine ratcheted up attempts to attract new recruits and help promote the company’s standing within the Russian elite.
Its strategy of blunt, aggressive rhetoric and vicious criticism of its rivals exemplifies what is known as “black PR,” according to experts.
Tens of thousands of mercenaries are believed to be fighting with Wagner in Ukraine.
A “significant portion” of Wagner recruits are likely attracted by the combination of heroism and machismo that the Wagner brand seeks to embody, according to Ilya Bykov, a political science professor and expert in political PR.
It’s aimed at “people who think that life has little value, that death is inevitable and that at least some heroism can be found over there [in Ukraine],” he said.
Mini-thread: Oleksandr Mykhed
More than 6,000 children in Russia’s custody. Children from Ukraine ages four months to 17 years who have been held at camps and other facilities since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
At least 43 facilities in network. 12 camps around the Black Sea, 7 in occupied Crimea, 10 clustered around Moscow, Kazan, and Yekaterinburg. 11 of the camps are located over 500 miles from Ukraine’s border, including two camps in Siberia and one in Russia’s Far East.
Network of children’s facilities stretches from one end of Russia to the other: The furthest camp this investigation identifies is in Magadan oblast in Russia’s Far East near the Pacific Ocean, approximately 3,900 miles from Ukraine’s border with the Russian Federation.
At least 32 (78%) of the camps engaged in systematic re-education efforts that expose children from Ukraine to Russia-centric academic, cultural, patriotic, and/or military education.
At least two camps that hosted children alleged to be orphans who were later placed with foster families in Russia. Twenty children from these camps were reported to have been placed with families in Moscow oblast and enrolled in local schools there.
At two camps, Artek and Medvezhonok, children’s returns were suspended indefinitely according to parents. Medvezhonok is one of the largest camps identified, at one point hosting at least 300 children from Ukraine.
Parents also described being unable to get information about their child’s status or whereabouts after their return has been suspended. It is unknown how many of Ukraine’s children Russia currently holds and how many have been released to their families.
This operation is centrally coordinated by Russia’s federal government and involves every level of government. At least 12 of these individuals are not on U.S. and/or international sanction lists at the time of this report.
Numbers to watch:
1000+ “orphans” pending adoption
350 of Ukraine’s children already re-homed
14,700 Ukrainian children officially documented as deported
126 departed children returned to Ukraine
Actual estimate: closer to several 100,000 displaced or deported
No Information = Probable Harm
Parents not given contact information for camp officials
Children moved across regions and into medical care for emergent issues without parental notification
Families forced to get new by word of mouth or through the media
Some parents told not to send cell phones with their children to camp
The report is here: hub.conflictobservatory.org/portal/sharing…
Please share the truth about Russian war crimes and atrocities.
Please don’t forget about Ukraine.
Please support us.
This is a war against humanity and future.
Isobel Cockerell, Earthquakes conspiracy theories- Coda Infodemic
In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, a disinformation narrative is spreading on Twitter that the earthquake is the fault of the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Alaska, conceived over 30 years ago. It’s a project that investigates the ionosphere — the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and the vacuum of space.
The program pulses a signal into the ionosphere which is then studied. But for years now, conspiracy theorists have believed the Research Program can trigger earthquakes and extreme weather events — oh, and be used for mind control, of course.
Every time there’s an earthquake or tsunami, conspiracy theorists make the same old claims that this obscure facility in deepest Alaska is behind the devastation. In 2016, two men from Douglas, Georgia loaded a vehicle with assault rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition and bulletproof vests and planned to blow up the place. There was a machine in the complex that they believed was “trapping human souls.” Luckily, police thwarted them before they even managed to leave Georgia.
But conspiracies about HAARP are not limited to the outreaches of obscure fringe groups. In 2010, the then-president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the UN that he believed floods in Pakistan were the fault of the HAARP program. The same year, Hugo Chávez, the former president of Venezuela, also blamed the Chilean and Haiti earthquakes on the program.
Now, conspiracy Twitter has jumped on the bandwagon. A flurry of copy-and-paste tweets showed up this week, suggesting the U.S. and other NATO countries knew about the earthquake before it happened and evacuated their embassies. Disinformation researcher Marc Owen Jones found 300,000 tweets and 130,000 accounts tweeting about it — far more, he said, than he expected.
Programming note…
