Feb 21: Buonasera Mag
Day 362: Bakhmut RUmilitia Prigohzin RUeco NS2 RUspying Lukashenko Sweden Poland CharlesIII Ramstein Ukenergo Baerbock Meloni-A&Ps-Rupar Lautman Kamyshin Apt stwithukrainetw Davis AtCouncil Cohen
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…
Russia will claim that Bakhmut has been captured to align with the anniversary, regardless of the reality on the ground, the UK Ministry of Defence has claimed. Russian forces are likely under increasing political pressure as the anniversary of the invasion draws near, the latest British intelligence report says.
British intelligence: Russia steps up attacks on civilian infrastructure. The U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Feb. 21 an increasing trend of Russian attacks on medical and educational facilities in Ukraine, which they attribute to Russia's indiscriminate use of artillery.
ISW: Russia formally integrates proxy militias from eastern Ukraine into Russian military. The ministry confirmed the formal integration of Russian-backed proxy militias from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts into the Russian military, the Institute for the Study of War reported.
The saga continues: Prigozhin has accused the Russian military leadership of not giving the Wagner soldiers ammunition that is available in the army's ammunition storage points. Source: Prigozhin’s statement, published by his press service.
Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has described Russia’s relations with Moldova as “very tense” and accused its leaders of pursuing an “anti-Russian” agenda. The new administration has vowed to pursue a pro-European path and also called for the demilitarisation of Transnistria, a breakaway region in the east of Moldova where 1,500 Russian soldiers are stationed region. Russia was acting “responsibly”, Peskov said with regard to peacekeeping forces it has stationed in the breakaway region and warned Moldova against inflaming the situation further.
The Russian economy contracted by 2.1% last year, according to the country's statistics agency Rosstat on Monday, revealing Russia to have absorbed Western sanctions over Moscow's military intervention in Ukraine better than expected. The figure was better than the 2.9% contraction forecast by the Economic Development Ministry in September and the around 3% drop in gross domestic product (GDP) expected by the central bank.
As reported by DW, Putin offered to resume gas supplies to Europe through the intact part of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. "The ball is in the EU's court. If they want to, then the taps can be turned on and that's it," he said in a speech at an energy forum in Moscow. Germany, however, said it would not take Russian gas via the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that has become a flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis.
The legislature in the Siberian region of Novosibirsk has voted to end the practice of holding direct mayoral elections in the regional capital as well as in the adjacent scientific research center of Koltsovo, Interfax reported on Monday. “1.5 million citizens got deprived of their right to vote and take part in the management of their destiny and budget,” Communist party deputy Yakov Novoselov said during the debate.
Russia isn't letting up on its efforts to spy on its European neighbors, a Western security official told the Washington Post. But since everyone knows who their spies are, Russia is struggling to move them around to new assignments after the operatives get kicked out of countries in Europe, the Post reported. The senior Western security official, who spoke to the Washington Post anonymously, said that his country has been sharing the identities of these spies with officials from other EU countries.
Lukashenko has said the nation will form a new territorial defence force amid the fighting in neighbouring Ukraine. Speaking during a meeting with officials on Monday, Lukashenko said the country needs to form paramilitary units in every town or village to serve as territorial defence to complement the country’s 45,000 military “in case of aggression”.
Russia poses a clear military threat in Sweden’s immediate area but its forces are largely tied up in the war in Ukraine, the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service (Must) said yesterday. Lena Hallin, head of Must, said that Must judged that Russia wants to avoid current tensions escalating into an armed conflict with Nato.
Ukraine’s military intelligence accused Russia of planning “nuclear blackmail” ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden’s trip to Poland for the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) claimed Russia plans to hold unannounced large-scale nuclear exercises involving strategic missile submarines and long-range aviation.
Russia creates a trial database of military-eligible citizens that could expedite potential future mobilizations and stop draft dodgers. The project’s purpose is reportedly to prevent the “wrongful” mobilization of men who are exempt for various reasons.
Russian Education Ministry decides to televise pro-war lessons for kids and parents. The patriotic curriculum “Conversations about What’s Important” will air on Channel One.
King Charles III has visited Ukrainian troops being trained in Wiltshire in the south-west of England. As well as the recruits, the monarch met instructors from a variety of nations, including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Lithuania, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Finland.
Next Ramstein summit to take place in mid-March. The 10th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, also known as Ramstein, may take place in mid-March, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Feb. 20. The summit will likely be held online, according to the minister.
Situation with Ukraine's energy infrastructure has become more stable. The situation with Ukraine's energy infrastructure has become more stable, and energy imports are nearing zero, reported Ukrenergo on Feb. 20. Starting from October, Ukrenergo's key network facilities suffered extensive damages due to Russian missile and drone attacks, meaning they will need significant resources and time for complete restoration.
EU launches Ukraine’s digital transformation support project worth 17.4 million euros. The European Union is allocating 17.4 million euros (($18.5 million) to Ukraine’s digital transformation. The project titled "Digital Transformation for Ukraine," will support the development of digital services and infrastructure, as well as day-to-day governance.
Germany’s FM Annalena Baerbock has said she told Chinese diplomats that Beijing is “responsible for world peace” and must not ship any weapons to Russia. “I made it clear that China in particular, as a member of the Security Council, is responsible for world peace in the situation we are currently experiencing with the Russian war of aggression, which is also a breach of international law.”
Italian PM Giorgia Meloni is heading to Kyiv to meet President Zelensky, and reiterate Italy’s support for the war-torn country, as she navigates tensions on the issue within her right wing alliance and a divided public opinion.
More than 30 countries, including the US, Britain and France, have pledged their support for banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing in international sporting events, a statement from the UK government has said. There are “serious concerns about how feasible it is for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete on a neutral basis given they are directly funded and supported by their state”.
Clara Apt, Russia’s Eliminationist Rhetoric Against Ukraine: A Collection- Just Security
Long before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale assault on Ukraine in February and even prior to his 2014 invasion and capture of Crimea, analysts noted with alarm a different kind of escalation – the threatening rhetoric against Ukraine by Putin and actors within his control. Dating at least to 2008 or 2009, increasingly hostile language laid the groundwork for rejecting Ukraine’s existence as a state, a national group, and a culture.
What follows is a compilation of publicly available statements (readers are invited to submit by email any that we may have missed).
Experts such as Francine Hirsch, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg,” have pointed to such language as evidence of genocidal intent toward the Ukrainian people. Whether and how the concept of “genocide” applies to Russia’s campaign against Ukraine is the subject of debate, notwithstanding the reference in Article II of the Genocide Convention to “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.” A related issue under discussion is a concept often referred to as “cultural genocide,” which generally connotes the intentional destruction of a group’s identity even in the absence of mass killings. “These calls for ‘de-Ukrainization’ are an incitement to genocide: to ‘destroy, in whole or in part,’ the Ukrainian nation,” Hirsch wrote in April. And Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder, in reference to the same article in the Russian outlet RIA Novosti that prompted Hirsch’s conclusion, wrote, “Russia has just issued a genocide handbook for its war on Ukraine.”
Jeff Stein, Return to the Wilderness of Mirrors- SpyTalk
Germany unmasks a Russian mole at the top of its spy service, just the latest in redux reboot of the 'Year of the Spy'
Carsten Linke, 52 who was arrested on December 21, oversaw an internal security unit of the BND, Germany’s premier foreign intelligence gathering agency, “with access to the personnel files of agency employees," officials told the Post. According to the charges, Linke was aided in his treachery by a 31-year-old gem and metals trader in Bavaria who frequently ferried Linke’s classified booty to Moscow. An unidentified allied intelligence service helped the Germans unearth the spy op, the paper said.
The revelation comes on the heels of the Jan. 23 arrest of Charles McGonigal, a high ranking veteran FBI counterintelligence official in New York, and amid a mounting furor over questionably sourced accusations that a senior former CIA spy catcher was a Russian mole.
The Post’s story featuring Linke, which led Saturday’s print edition, was headlined, “U.S. and allies seek to root out Russian spies.”
Eliot A. Cohen, Biden Just Destroyed Putin’s Last Hope- The Atlantic
The long-range missiles matter. So do the super-accurate artillery shells, the surface-to-air missiles, and the winter weather gear; the training in the English countryside or the muddy Grafenwöhr maneuver grounds; and the intelligence provided from the eyes in space and the ears on airplanes that circle outside the battle zone.
President Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv matters just as much as any of these.
Symbols matter: a Kennedy or a Reagan at the Berlin Wall, a Churchill with a cigar and a bowler, for that matter a green-clad Zelensky growling, “I need ammunition, not a ride.” Simply by taking the hazardous trip to Kyiv, Biden made a strategic move of cardinal importance.
This is a gut punch to Russia’s leader. The Russians received word of the trip, we are informed—and presumably the threat, stated or implied, that they would get a violent and overwhelming response if they attempted to interfere with it. For a leader obsessed with strength, like Putin, that is a blow. His own people will quietly or openly ask, “Why could we not prevent this?” And the answer, unstated, will have to be, “Because we were afraid.”
Programming Note…
Join the DFRLab’s global research team on February 22 as they present their investigations, creating a timeline of key pre-invasion events and Kremlin rhetoric, and exploring the patterns of pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation tools and narratives. Researchers will also detail how Kremlin informational tactics have evolved over the course of the post-invasion period, presenting case studies from Russia and Ukraine, across Europe, and from Africa and Latin America.