Feb 8: Buonasera Mag
Day 349: Kharkiv Bakhmut Gazprom RUrecruits Marchenko Google Maliuk Klymenko US-GER-EU Hidalgo-A&Ps-Crear ISW Alander Vindman Scherba Patrikarakos Chalupa Zolkina Reznikov UAWorld
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…
Ukraine’s military has claimed that the last 24 hours were the deadliest of the war for Russian troops, increasing its tally of Russian military dead by 1,030 overnight to 133,190. The figure, which could not be independently verified, marks the biggest increase in daily Russian military deaths since the war began last February.
An industrial site in Kharkiv was hit late on Feb. 7, Ihor Terekhov, the city mayor, reported. According to preliminary data, Russian forces launched 6 to 10 S-300 missiles at the central part of the city, said Governor Oleh Syniehubov.
Ukraine’s intelligence: Russian Gazprom to create its own private military company. Russian state-owned energy monopolist Gazprom is creating its own private military company, Ukraine's Defense Ministry Intelligence Directorate reported on Feb. 7, citing the decree signed by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
China is providing technology that Moscow’s military needs to prosecute the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine despite an international cordon of sanctions and export controls, according to a Wall Street Journal review of Russian customs data. The customs records show Chinese state-owned defense companies shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology and jet-fighter parts to sanctioned Russian government-owned defense companies.
Russian Defense Ministry prepares legislation that would allow draftees to volunteer for peacekeeping missions — an option currently available only to specially trained contract soldiers. Russia’s two active peacekeeping operations are in Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Companies linked to Medvedchuk’s wife funded Russian military, occupation government in Crimea. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported on Feb. 7 that it had “liquidated a large-scale scheme of underground financing” of the Russian National Guard and Interior Ministry in occupied Crimea from the companies linked to Oksana Marchenko, the wife of Ukraine's most high-profile pro-Kremlin politician and Russian President Vladimir Putin's ally Viktor Medvedchuk.
Navalny team discovered the unsanctioned foreign assets of Mkrtich Okroyan, the chief designer of the Soyuz factory, which produces missiles used against Ukraine. Okroyan’s 28-year-old daughter owns a mansion in the UK that’s used as the address for a bentonite clay vendor.
Russia blocks website of Moscow Helsinki Group, the country’s oldest human rights organization. Last month, a court granted a federal request to terminate the group’s activities.
Almost a year after Google blocked the channels of its biggest television networks, Gazprom Media is officially ditching YouTube, ceasing the publication of new content from its other outlets on the service. Gazprom Media’s decision has fanned rumors that Russia might block YouTube’s entire platform.
Ukrainian parliament appoints Vasyl Maliuk as head of Security Service. Vasyl Maliuk has been the acting head of the SBU since July 2022, when Zelensky dismissed the previous SBU head, Ivan Bakanov, over endemic treason at the security service.
Ukrainian parliament appoints Ihor Klymenko as interior minister. The former head of the National Police of Ukraine, Klymenko, has served as the acting interior minister since the death of Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky in a helicopter crash on Jan. 18.
President Zelensky will speak to Parliament and meet Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at 10 Downing Street, where Mr. Sunak is expected to announce plans to expand British military support for Ukraine to include training its pilots in NATO fighter jets.
Biden to Congress: US will stand with Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’. U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to support Ukraine as long as needed during his annual State of the Union address as Russia’s all-out war approaches its one-year anniversary on Feb. 24.
U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken discussed contributions to Ukraine with Austrian Foreign Minister Schallenberg, German Vice Chancellor Habeck, and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba yesterday.
Germany's Defense Minister in Kyiv, says Ukraine to receive over 100 Leopard 1 tanks. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced in Kyiv that Ukraine would receive over 100 older Leopard 1 battle tanks from a group of several European countries.
Netherlands, Denmark to join Germany in sending Leopard 1 battle tanks to Ukraine. The defense ministers of the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany issued a joint statement on Feb. 7 saying that the three countries will provide Ukraine with at least 100 Leopard 1 battle tanks.
Portugal will send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, according to Prime Minister Antonio Costa. The Prime Minister said, in the early hours of Saturday, that Portugal would hand over Leopard 2 tanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and added that a logistical operation was currently underway with Germany to recover some tanks.
The U.S on Tuesday announced its approval of a $10 billion sale of 18 Himars precision rocket launchers plus ammunition and other equipment to Poland, a NATO ally that borders conflict-hit Ukraine.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, opposed the participation of athletes from the Russian Federation in the 2024 Olympic Games in the French capital. "The arrival of Russian athletes to the Olympics is impossible while the war continues in Ukraine," she said.
EU to launch Information Sharing and Analysis Center to fight disinformation campaigns. The creation of the Center follows the release of the first European External Action Service report on foreign information manipulation and interference threats on Feb. 7, which offers evidence of Russian disinformation campaigns and insights into Russia-China cooperation.
European External Action Service publishes first report on external manipulation of information channels. It has interesting data on the disinformation tactics and techniques that Russia and China use.
David Patrikarakos, The madness behind the battle for Bakhmut- Unherd
“The objective for today is to come back alive.” Yevgeny is a young commando from the “Mad Pack”, a special forces unit that has been fighting in Bakhmut since November. His words are familiar — lacquered with that mix of emotions common to almost all soldiers fighting on the frontlines of war: laughter and unease. We clamber into a Land Cruiser and head toward the city. “The situation is always changing,” he continues. “But one thing remains the same: the line of contact is always active.”
Even by the standards of eastern Ukraine, Bakhmut is a hellscape of destruction. Electricity has been out since August and water since October. Rows of uniform Soviet-style buildings now resemble a series of ragged molars, mottled by shells and blackened with soot.
The streets of this city that once had a population of 70,000 are almost empty of civilians, save for the odd elderly man or woman who ambles past amid the constant drum of nearby shelling. Everywhere I look I see soldiers: standing guard, advancing forwards, taking cover, congregating in doorways and behind walls, and almost always smoking. Our first port of call is a mosque. A small squat rectangular box that could be a normal house save for a small golden dome on its roof. Kazbek, a Chechen soldier fighting for Ukraine, who is our guide with Yevgeny, gets out of the car and goes to pray, bowing to Mecca as shells explode around us.
Mariia Zolkina, Ukrainians are united in rejection of any compromise with the Kremlin- Atlantic Council
A comprehensive nationwide survey conducted by the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and the Razumkov Center in mid-December 2022 illustrates this faith in Ukrainian victory while also highlighting nationwide opposition to any compromises with the Kremlin. The poll found that 93% of respondents expect Ukraine to win the war, while just 3% expressed doubts. This reflects the growing sense of confidence generated by the successful September 2022 Kharkiv counter-offensive and the November liberation of Kherson, the only regional capital occupied by Russia. By the end of 2022, Ukrainian forces had liberated around 50% of the land seized by Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion ten months earlier.
The survey also offered importance insights into Ukrainian perceptions of victory. Perhaps the most significant finding was that Ukrainians are not ready to accept a return to the status quo on the eve of the full-scale invasion, when Russia already occupied Crimea and parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in eastern Ukraine. Instead, a commanding majority of Ukrainians are convinced that only the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity within the country’s internationally recognized borders can bring peace.
There is very little appetite for the kind of territorial concessions and land-for-peace deals periodically proposed by international commentators. Just 8% of surveyed Ukrainians said they would be prepared to accept the ongoing Russian occupation of Crimea in order to end the war.
Staff, With threats and intimidation, China coerces Uyghurs in Turkey to spy on each other- Radio Free Asia
After Yasinjan and his family moved to Istanbul in 2016, the police back home in Xinjiang tried to keep in touch. They wanted to know all about the clientele at the modest barbershop he opened in the Zeytinburnu district, home to a large Uyghur immigrant population.
The police contacted him on his phone. He refused to talk to them. They sent threats through his relatives. He ignored them. They imprisoned his father-in-law. He didn’t budge. Then, this January, the police tried something new: They sent him a customer.
The nervous young Uyghur man was an indiscreet spy. He walked into the shop, took out his phone and started recording. He taped Yasinjan asking him to wait his turn. He taped the other customers in the shop. He went back outside and took shots of the storefront.
“I realized something was wrong, so I called him and said it was his turn,” Yasinjan told Radio Free Asia. “When he came into the barbershop, he confessed everything.”
Programming note…
