Feb 28: Buonasera Mag
Day 369: UkraineDef Belarus 180 BELoppo 100missiles Nemtsov Medvedev China WindsorFramework NATO US EE A&Ps Avdeeva Sumlenny Firtsov DeResta Snyder EUCouncil Tenzer Umland CER Davis
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…
Russian forces have escalated shelling and infantry assaults in the Bilohorivka, Svatove-Kupiansk and Kreminna areas of Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk province, according to the region’s governor Serhiy Haidai.
Zelensky approves new sanctions against Russian individuals. The list includes individuals allegedly involved in the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, those who help support mercenaries fighting against Ukraine, and Russian athletes and other sporting representatives who have shown public support for the war.
Ombudsman: Russia holds 180 political prisoners in occupied Crimea. There are currently 180 political prisoners, including 116 Crimean Tatars, illegally held in Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets reported on Feb. 26.
Explosion at Belarusian military airfield damaged Russian aircraft in reported partisan attack. A Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft in Belarus was damaged as a result of the Feb. 26 explosion at the Machulishchy airfield near Minsk, Belarusian opposition media Nasha Niva reported on Feb. 26 citing Aliaksandr Azarov, leader of Belarusian anti-government organization BYPOL.
In today's telephone conversation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, General Mark Milley, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine paid attention to the issue of the supply of military equipment, weapons and ammunition.
Belarusian opposition leaders Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Pavel Latushko are being tried in absentia in Belarus. They have been charged with conspiracy, organizing an extremist group, and undermining the government of Belarus and its state security. The prosecution has requested each be sentenced to 19 years in a penal colony.
ISW: “The specter of limitless Russian manpower is a myth.” The Institute for the Study of War said Russia will face increasing costs to replace its losses in the latest report on Russian forces’ recruitment campaigns on Feb. 26.
Russia has around 100 high-precision cruise missiles left, Ukraine's Intel Russia can now produce no more than 30-40 missiles per month. The production volume fails to keep up with the dynamics with which Russian forces use cruise missiles.
Reuters: Former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that the only way for Moscow to ensure a lasting peace with Ukraine was to push back the borders of hostile states as far as possible, even if that meant the frontiers of NATO member Poland. "Victory will be achieved. We all want it to happen as soon as possible. And that day will come," said Medvedev. He predicted that tough negotiations with Ukraine and the West would follow that would culminate in "some kind of agreement," he said.
Putin has given an award to actor Steven Seagal for international humanitarian and cultural work, a state decree published on Monday showed. Reuters reports the decree said the 70-year-old actor had been given Russia’s Order of Friendship. There was no immediate reaction from Seagal.The decree mentioned Seagal’s work as a special representative of Russia’s foreign ministry for humanitarian ties with the United States and Japan.
NATO countries could transfer 62 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. This number of tanks will be enough to form two tank battalions, Boris Pistorius said on Feb. 26. However, Pistorius doubted that Germany would approve additional Leopard 2 deliveries, as the country's industry must first replace the tanks in Germany's own stocks.
US House Foreign Affairs Head: Congress ready to 'prioritize' advanced weapons for Ukraine. House Foreign Affairs Committee Michael McCaul said on Feb. 26 of the delivery of fighter jets or long-range missiles that if approved, Congress “would take steps to move the process along.”
Saudi foreign minister meets Zelensky in Kyiv, signs $400 million aid agreements. The visit was the first by an official Saudi delegation to Ukraine since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1993. According to Ukrainian presidential office head Andriy Yermak, Saudi Arabia will provide Ukraine with $100 million in humanitarian aid and $300 million in oil products.
Estonian defense minister arrives in Kyiv with new military aid. Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur arrived in Kyiv on Feb. 26, announcing a new military aid package for Ukraine that includes weapons and equipment for Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces.
Yegor Firsov, In Ukraine, we are different now- Politico (letter)
War breaks, it maims, it takes what you hold most dear. But it hasn’t yet succeeded in taking our humanity — or our desire for freedom.
A year ago, none of us could imagine our lives as they are now.
Even those of us who trusted the warnings from Washington about Russia’s impending attack had no idea that war would last so long — or that it would change our lives so much. It was easier to imagine ourselves dying in a battle for Kyiv than in a military uniform, sitting in a trench half-full of water in the rain.
When old photos pop up on our phones now, looking at an image from just 12 months ago, we cannot believe they ever happened, that those people we see were once us too.
I serve in the Territorial Defense Brigade now, and most of us weren’t professional military before February 24. Among my comrades-in-arms there are miners, farmers, teachers, even jewelers and dog handlers.
Just one year ago, I was busy building a family house in Bucha. I was professionally active in environmental protection, went to soccer practice and was dreaming of taking my father on his first vacation abroad to Greece. I had no beard; I washed every day; I drove an environmentally friendly car . . .
Recently, I had the opportunity to take a break from the front line and go to Kyiv for a couple days. I visited my unfinished house in Bucha and saw how the city had returned to life after the occupation. The holes on the road from mortar shells had been filled, burnt-out car and equipment had been removed, even the bombed-out houses had been cleaned up.
Yes, we are all different now. And we perceive life differently.
War cripples not just physically but primarily psychologically. And now, no matter where we are, we wait for the “incoming,” for the shelling. We can’t walk peacefully around our cities — even those of us visiting families in Western Ukraine, a thousand kilometers away.
My friend Andriy would wake everyone up several times a night, shouting “cover, cover, cover” while cramming himself under his bed. It could take us up to half-an-hour to calm him. In the morning, Andriy remembered nothing. Only the video on his phone managed to convince him that he should go see the battalion psychologist.
Timothy Snyder, Making of Modern Ukraine, Lecture 1- Thinking about…
If Ukraine resisted on 24 February 2022, it must have existed the day before. Why has Ukrainian history been so hard to see?
In this lecture, the key question is the relationship between history and myth. I use Vladimir Putin’s notion of “historical unity” between Russia and Ukraine as an example of a political myth with political significance. The point is not only to show the problems within a particular myth, but to show the difference between myth and history. Myth closes down the questions that history is meant to ask. And it prevents us from learning almost anything of interest. In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, myth is one cause of a war that is intended to exclude or eliminate the elements of the actual past that do not fit the framework most comfortable to a present-day tyrant.
The lecture can be found as video here and as audio here or here.
Assigned reading: The following are the books the students were expected to have to hand: Ascherson, Black Sea; Plokhii, Gates of Europe; Snyder, Reconstruction of Nations; Snyder, Red Prince; Snyder, Bloodlands; Snyder, Road to Unfreedom; Pomerantsev, Nothing is TruRudnyts'kyi, Essays in Modern Ukrainian History; Shore, Ukrainian Night
For this lecture the assigned reading was a chapter from another book: Yekelchyk, Ukraine: Birth of a Modern Nation, chapter 1.
Nicolas Tenzer, Faces of Ukraine’s Dead Haunt the West- CEPA
Perhaps the worst thing is that democratic leaders and peoples, as if accustomed to war, do not finally ask themselves the only valid question: why did we in the West not stop the war? Why have we, the supposedly freedom-loving and law-abiding nations, not put an end to an aggression that violates all the principles we are supposed to cherish? Why have we, nations that proclaim the sacred value of the human person and the imprescriptible rights attached to it, not saved tens of thousands of human lives?
If leaders and peoples have not wanted to ask themselves this question, it is undoubtedly because they know only too well the answer: we have not wanted to.
This is nothing more than a repetition of the same history: neither in Syria, nor before in Chechnya and Georgia, did we want it — nor in Ukraine in 2014. Each time, communication advisers often know how to spread a kind of rumor: we were powerless — powerless after the de facto annexation by Russia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008, powerless after the chemical attacks on Ghouta in 2013 and the siege and then fall of Aleppo in 2016 and, powerless again, after the occupation disguised as the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Donbas in 2014.
With this message of impotence, we humiliated ourselves before Putin. But it was a lie. Who can believe that the largest and most powerful army in the world, that of the United States, 20 times at least superior to the Russian army, and its European allies could not defeat the Russian army, whose power is even weaker than the most critical analysts assessed before 24 February 2022?
UK and EU have agreed on the Windsor Framework
Sunak says he and Von der Leyen have changed the protocol, and are now announing the “Windsor framework”. He says the UK and the EU have had their differences, but they are friends. This is the beginning of a “new chapter”. Sunak said,
I’m pleased to report that we have now made a decisive breakthrough.
Together we have changed the original protocol and are today announcing the new Windsor framework.
Today’s agreement delivers smooth-flowing trade within the whole United Kingdom, protects Northern Ireland’s place in our union and safeguards sovereignty for the people of Northern Ireland.
In case you missed it…
Speakers: Lawrence Freedman, Emeritus Professor of War Studies, King's College London; Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies, University of Oxford; Olesya Khromeychuk, Director, Ukrainian Institute London; Iuliia Osmolovska, Director, Kyiv Office, GLOBSEC; Richard Shirreff, Director, Strategia Worldwide & former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, NATO Chair: Charles Grant, Director, Centre for European Reform
On February 24th 2022, Russian forces launched an unprovoked all-out attack on Ukraine, seeking to seize Kyiv and to replace the democratically elected leadership there with Russian puppets. A year later, Russia has not achieved its war aims, but it is occupying more than 15 per cent of Ukraine’s territory, and Vladimir Putin is still trying to conquer more. Ukrainian forces, which were expected to collapse quickly when the invasion started, have out-performed all expectations and forced Russia back in a number of regions, but face considerable challenges in others. The West, despite periodic nuclear sabre-rattling from Russia, has supplied ever more lethal weapons systems to Ukraine, though in small quantities. After a year of renewed war, what lessons should analysts and policy-makers draw about Ukraine, Russia, European security and the nature of future warfare? And what steps should they take in the coming year to help Ukraine re-establish control over all its territory and to deter Russia from future wars of aggression against its neighbours?
Programming Note…
