Feb : E-Stories
Day732 SwedenNATO RUattacks CombatSit BehindLines InRussia Allies USNews A&P Kreko ISW UKDef CDS Noel Davis KI United24 LiveUaMap CSIS Barents Giles Scafaria CrimeanTatar Panyi FT EUOversight Finley
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.
HISTORIC!!!!
Stories we’re following…
At least 4 injured in Russian attack on Dnipro. Russian forces attacked Dnipro and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with cruise missiles and drones on Feb. 25, injuring at least four people, Governor Serhii Lysak reported.
Russian attacks kill 2 civilians in Kherson Oblast. Russian forces attacked the village of Tiahynka in Kherson Oblast, killing two people, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin on Feb. 25.
Kuleba: 'Ukraine fatigue' is not based on evidence. The narrative about 'Ukraine fatigue' is not based on evidence, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the Kyiv Independent at the "Ukraine. Year 2024" forum on Feb. 25.
Prosecutor's Office investigates Russian execution of 7 Ukrainian POWs. Law enforcement opened an investigation into Russian troops executing seven Ukrainian soldiers who surrendered as prisoners of war (POWs) in Donetsk Oblast, the Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Feb. 25.
Combat Situation Update
Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from Lastochkyne, west of Avdiivka, Dmytro Lykhovy, spokesperson for the Operational-Strategic Group of Forces Tavriya confirmed. Additional reports of Russian advances towards Tonen'ke, and the probable retreat from Sjeverne are reported.
ISW: Delays in Western security assistance have forced Ukrainian forces to husband materiel and have generated uncertainty in Ukrainian operational planning, vulnerabilities that Russian forces will increasingly exploit to facilitate gains on the battlefield.
Budanov: Russia's goals for 2024 same as previous two years. Ukraine's military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said that Russia’s goal is still to destroy Ukrainian statehood and reach the administrative border of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts to “keep what they already have," but that they "have been unable to do (so) by military means."
Together with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Rustem Umerov, Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi visited the front lines.
"We listened to the commanders of the troop groups about the situation in their areas of responsibility. The enemy regularly attacks the positions of our troops. The situation in many areas is complicated and requires constant monitoring. We analyzed the current situation in detail and discussed the necessary further steps, first of all, to protect troops from drones and air strikes by KABs, as well as to strengthen certain sections of the front," Syrskyi emphasized.
Due to ammunition shortage in the Ukrainian army, Kuleba called for a ban on the export of ammunition from European countries to countries other than Ukraine. "All contracts for the export of ammunition produced in Europe to third countries must be put on hold, and all such ammunition should be sent to Ukraine," he said.
Zelensky: Russia preparing offensive for early summer. Russia is preparing to launch an offensive in Ukraine in spring or the start of the summer, President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the "Ukraine. Year 2024" forum in Kyiv on Feb. 25.
Several Nato and EU members considering sending soldiers to Ukraine, Slovak PM says
Reuters reports that several Nato and European Union members are considering sending soldiers to Ukraine on a bilateral basis, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico said on Monday.
“I will limit myself to say that these theses (in preparation for the Paris meeting) imply a number of Nato and EU member states are considering that they will send their troops to Ukraine on a bilateral basis,” Fico told a televised briefing after a meeting of Slovakia’s security council.
Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi is developing two versions of the war plan in case Kyiv receives U.S. aid, and if it does not, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview to CNN, published on Feb. 26.
On Feb. 13, the Senate passed the bill, which contains $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, after months of deadlock, but has for now still been blocked from the floor of the Republican-led House of Representatives.
According to Zelensky, without U.S. assistance, Ukraine will struggle in 2024 not only to prepare for new offensive, but to simply defend along the current front line.
One version of Syrskyi's plan assumes that if Washington provides assistance, Ukraine will be able to start pushing back Russian troops, and if not, it will focus on defense, the president said.
“If they (U.S.) will change their minds, it’s a big problem for us,” Zelensky said, adding that he had asked U.S. President Joe Biden to have Democrats and Republicans meet to reach a deal on aid for Ukraine.
Behind the Lines
Hungary’s parliament has approved a bill to allow Sweden to join Nato, clearing the way for the Nordic country to join the alliance.
Speaking to parliament before the vote, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán said he recommended parliamentarians vote in favour of Sweden’s ascension to Nato because is strengthens “Hungary’s security [and will work towards ending] the killing and destruction [in Ukraine] where hundreds of thousands died and millions have fled their homeland”.
Denmark on Monday said it had dropped its investigation into the explosions in 2022 on the Nord Stream pipelines carrying Russian gas to Germany, becoming the second nation to do so after Sweden also closed a separate probe, Reuters reports.
"There is not sufficient grounds to pursue a criminal case in Denmark ... and therefore the Copenhagen Police has decided to conclude the criminal investigation of the explosions," Denmark's police said in a statement.
Police added that they believe there was deliberate sabotage of the gas lines.
Sweden earlier this month dropped its investigation into the explosions saying it lacked jurisdiction in the case but had handed evidence uncovered over to German investigators, which are yet to publish any findings.
Maalbeek near EU HQ, Brussels, on Feb 26: the capital of the European Union looks like a war zone. This is how malign actors (whoever they may be) abuse the right to protest. They simply want to create chaos, not get to the heart of matters concerning agricultural policy. The small micro-protests that had begun in the summer of 2022 were just a test to see what authorities would do.
Reuters reports that Kyiv has urged Poland to punish those responsible for spills of a Ukrainian grain cargo at the border over the weekend, deputy prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Monday.
Around 160 tonnes of Ukrainian grain were destroyed at a Polish railway station amid protests in what a senior Ukrainian official said on Sunday was an act of "impunity and irresponsibility".
"Those who have damaged Ukrainian grain must be found, neutralized, and punished. Two friendly civilized European states are interested in this," Kubrakov said on X.
United Nations chief Antonio Guterres deplored how the UN Security Council had failed to respond adequately to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying the conflicts had "perhaps fatally" undermined its authority.
DefenceOne: China is building Its own Starlink—even as questions surround Musk's constellation
China launched a record 67 commercial rockets last year, second only to the United States’ 116—the vast majority for SpaceX’s Starlink. But Elon Musk isn’t the only one building a space-based network for communications, navigation, and sensing. A Nov. 23 launch from Xichang Satellite Launch Center carried a batch of satellites intended to lay the foundation for China’s own Starlink-like service.
Meanwhile in Russia
Reuters: Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny was close to being freed in a prisoner swap at the time of his death, said Maria Pevchikh, a Navalny ally.
Speaking on YouTube, Maria Pevchikh said talks about exchanging Navalny and two unnamed U.S. nationals for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian FSB security service hit man in jail in Germany, were in their final stages at the time of his death.
Krasikov was jailed for life in Germany after being convicted of killing an exiled Chechen-Georgian dissident in Berlin's Tiergarten park in 2019. Putin signalled in an interview with U.S. journalist Tucker Carlson this month that he wanted to get Krasikov back.
Pevchikh said she had confirmation that negotiations for the swap were in their final stages on the evening of Feb. 15.
The Russian authorities are considering the possibility of attracting a loan in yuan from China, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview with RIA Novosti .
According to him, the corresponding powers are assigned to the Ministry of Finance in the budget law. “We have the right to attract loans in yuan. Negotiations with Chinese partners have been going on for quite some time,” Siluanov said, noting that “there is no solution yet.”
Russia-based LockBit ransomware hackers attempt comeback. Gang sets up new site on dark web and releases rambling statement explaining how it was infiltrated by law enforcement agencies.
The Russia-based group has set up a new site on the dark web to advertise a small number of alleged victims and leak stolen data, as well as releasing a rambling statement explaining how it had been hobbled by the UK’s National Crime Agency, the FBI, Europol and other police agencies in an operation last week.
The group said law enforcement had hacked its former dark web site using a vulnerability in the PHP programming language, which is widely used to build websites.
In a statement, the NCA said LockBit remains “completely compromised”. A spokesperson said: “We recognised LockBit would likely attempt to regroup and rebuild their systems. However, we have gathered a huge amount of intelligence about them and those associated to them, and our work to target and disrupt them continues.”
The prosecutor asks that Memorial co-chairman Oleg Orlov, who is being tried for repeatedly “discrediting” the army, be found guilty and sentenced to two years and 11 months in a general regime colony, the human rights center reports. The court is considering Orlov's case for the second time.
The case was again sent to court with an updated charge, which stated that Orlov committed a crime motivated by enmity and hatred towards military personnel. The human rights activist does not admit his guilt. The reason for the persecution was a Facebook post entitled “They wanted fascism. They got it." In the text of the post, Orlov condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Meanwhile at the Russian embassy in Oslo Norway at night—volume up!
In Russia, regulations may appear for video surveillance at retail facilities to search for wanted citizens, Vedomosti writes on Monday, February 26.
The main goal of the regulation is to recognize faces from video streams of cameras in real time and compare them with a database of criminals. In case of a coincidence, law enforcement should receive an appropriate signal, said Pavel Lyulin, vice-president of the Union of Shopping Centers (STC).
Julia Davis: Meanwhile in Russia: head of RT Margarita Simonyan praised Tucker Carlson and RT's covert operations for US Congressional squabbles, leading to Ukraine's ammo shortages. She urged able-bodied Westerners to move to Russia and solve its demographic crisis.
A record number of Russians - 5,750 people - asked for asylum in South Korea in 2023, this is five times more than in the same period, and also exceeds Russian asylum applications from 1994 to 2019, CNN reports , citing migration data. country services.
The trend continues in January: Russian citizens make up the largest group of applicants. In addition to them, natives of Kazakhstan, China and Malaysia most often request asylum. The South Korean Migration Service clarified that most often asylum seekers claim persecution on religious or political grounds, discrimination based on nationality, race or membership in a particular social group.
Putin will visit Turkey and hold talks with Erdogan at some point after Russia's March presidential election, the Kremlin said on Monday.
US Treasury says threat to sanction 3rd-country banks has impacted Russian funding flows. According to internal Treasury Department data, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told Reuters that the flow of Russian money to third-party countries long suspected of assisting Russia's sanctions circumvention has decreased since the order was signed.
My husband and I will be visiting Lake Nato soon.
Allied Support
European leaders gathered in Paris on Monday to send Putin a message of European resolve on Ukraine and, France has said, to counter the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is bound to win. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has invited his European counterparts to the Élysée Palace for a working meeting at short notice because of what his advisers say is an escalation in Russian aggression. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the British foreign secretary, David Cameron, and the Dutch PM, Mark Rutte, as well as leaders from Scandinavian and Baltic countries are among those scheduled to attend.
Ukraine will receive 120.000 122-mm ammunition from Bulgaria as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Denmark, The Netherlands and Canada are working on the financing for 800.000 rounds of 155/122-mm ammunition. India but also African and Balkan countries might be an option, which still have quite large stocks of artillery ammunition stored. Most of them do not openly want to sell but a solution through intermediaries is possible with a promise of discretion. Spiegel reports that these type of negotiations are already underway.
EU Foreign Affairs Rep, Josep Borrell, announced that he will propose to member countries of the bloc to create an aid fund for Ukraine for the development of drones and artificial intelligence.
Ukraine has started negotiations with Norway on the conclusion of a bilateral security agreement. The parties discussed the main structural elements and blocks of the future agreement and agreed on a schedule for further work.
Macron called on Europe to prepare for an attack by Russia in the coming years. He said that Putin's regime will not be able to win the war in Ukraine and called on allies to show more activity in supporting Kyiv.
Newly leaked documents from the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin reveal in detail how the Kremlin is working to ensure Putin’s election victory, building a pan-Russian propaganda network and internet censorship machinery for the purposes of information warfare, and integrating the occupied territories in Ukraine.
In the leaked Kremlin documents, these activities are literally and unashamedly called an “information war”, even though it is being waged against their own society. The total planned budget for the three main categories – the presidential elections, information war and the occupied areas in Ukraine – reaches €1.1 billion. The largest share of it, up to €631 million, was allocated for the information war, according to the documents. (Throughout the article, we will refer to the amounts in euros, using the rounded exchange rate of 1 ruble = €0.01.)
At the same time, the Kremlin pays special attention to what it calls new territories, i.e. occupied areas in Ukraine, where it has sunk billions of rubles to ensure the local population’s loyalty.
We consulted several Russian analysts to verify the authenticity of the leaked documents. In addition, we compared their content with publicly available Russian state budget data and found several projects that overlap (unlike the leaked files, however, the public budget does not disclose the purpose of these sums). We also looked for references to the implementation of the projects that received funding from public sources and, in many cases, found them. All of this together allows us to assess the leaked files as genuine. [continue]
FT: Russia unleashes war propaganda offensive in Italy
At the local museum in the central Italian town of Foligno, some 80 people gathered on Sunday to watch a Kremlin-backed propaganda film about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Witness — which depicts Ukrainian soldiers as Nazis pledging allegiance to Hitler, waving Mein Kampf and committing atrocities — played to empty cinemas in Russia last year. But the film is now being shown across Italy at special screenings organised by Moscow-friendly groups.
“It is a question of fundamental national security,” opposition lawmaker Carlo Calenda, leader of the centrist Azione party, said in a television interview. He is demanding that Salvini clarify whether the League’s ties with Russia have been severed or not.
The furore comes as analysts warn that Moscow is stepping up efforts to stoke public opposition to Meloni’s pro-Ukraine stance and generate pressure for a settlement on the Kremlin’s terms, aided by its network of Italian sympathisers in politics, media, academia and civil society.
“We see this surge in propaganda,” said Lia Quartapelle, a lawmaker with the opposition centre-left Democratic party. “They are waiting to spread the idea that peace is possible, coming to terms with Putin’s Russia is possible and it is Ukraine that does not want the deal.”
Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, Italy’s chief of defence staff, warned last week of an “intensification” of Russian disinformation campaigns aimed at promoting the “image of a Russia eager for peace, and the picture of a war that is now pointless and whose outcome in Moscow’s favour was no longer in question”. [continue]
Bloomberg: Biden to meet with House speaker. U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with Congressional leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, at the White House on Feb. 27 to discuss a funding bill for Ukraine’s security needs, Bloomberg reported on Feb. 25.
Congress lurches into a new week of political chaos, as lawmakers struggle to avoid a partial government shutdown in just five days, while pushing for an election-year trial of President Joe Biden's top border official.
CNN: Trump, adult sons and former Trump Org. officials appeal civil fraud judgment in New York
Former President Donald Trump, his adult sons and two former Trump Organization officials have appealed the $464 million judgment entered against them in the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case.
The Trumps filed a notice of appeal with the court on Monday, the first business day after Judge Arthur Engoron made the judgment official. Donald Trump is personally on the hook for $454 million, including interest payments.
In the filing, the attorneys said they were appealing the money judgment and other relief, including the bans against the Trumps from serving as officers of New York corporations for a period of years and whether the judge “committed errors of law and/or fact, abused its discretion, and/or acted in excess of its jurisdiction.”
NYT: Manhattan prosecutors requested a gag order on Donald Trump to protect jurors and witnesses in the first criminal trial of a former president. The filings noted Mr. Trump’s “longstanding history of attacking witnesses, investigators, prosecutors, judges, and others involved in legal proceedings against him.”
In a statement, McDaniel says she will step aside on March 8th in Houston when the RNC holds its “RNC spring training.”
Zackary Cohen: Fulton County DA Fani Willis and her top prosecutor received an onslaught of harassing phone calls over the weekend after their personal contact information was cited in legal paperwork from Trump’s defense lawyer in GA case.
Willis and Nathan Wade both changed their phone numbers because of an “explosion” of calls in recent days, one source told CNN. The wave of calls came after an unredacted version of the motion -- including exhibits -- was shared with counsel on both sides.
Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia case told DA’s office he mistakenly shared unredacted phone records with a reporter before motion was filed, per state's response. Reporter did NOT publish the records, as requested, and contact information was redacted in 8-page motion filed publicly.
But cell phone records “with personal identifying information,” still appeared on social media, per the DA's response to Trump motion filed on Friday. As a result, sources say, both Willis and Wade received an influx of hostile calls over the weekend.
Reuters: Satellite images of the hotly disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea show a new floating barrier across its entrance, near where Philippine ships and China coast guard vessels have had frequent run-ins.