Jan 24: Buonasera Mag
Day 335: east, south, and north of Ukraine Gerasimov GER RUmobilisation PantsirS1 RUbanks UAresignations POL/EST/SWE/EU Tatars-A&Ps-UKDef Tortèli ISW Theiner Eckel Mitcha Ostovsky Troy Soldatov AC
Catching up
Hop over the Scott Lucas’s EA Worldview for the latest up-dates from the US and the Middle East as well as Europe.
Stories we’re following…
Russian attacks across 7 Ukrainian oblasts kill 1, injure 8 over past 24 hours. Russian attacks were reported in Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Luhansk oblasts in the east, south, and north of Ukraine.
UN: At least 18,483 civilian casualties in Ukraine due to Russia’s war. According to the United Nations human rights agency, Russia’s war against Ukraine has killed at least 7,068 civilians and wounded at least 11,415 from Feb. 24 to Jan. 22.
General Valery Gerasimov: Russia’s recently announced military reforms are a response to NATO’s likely expansion and the “collective West” using Ukraine in a hybrid war against Moscow, the new head of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine has said. “Today, the new threats are NATO’s aspirations to expand at the expense of Finland and Sweden, as well as the use of Ukraine as a tool for hybrid warfare against our country,” he said.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Monday that while Russia’s military call-up is complete, other provisions of Putin’s mobilization decree remain in effect because “mobilization” also includes “other measures” related to the war.
New draft legislation before the State Duma would require anyone crossing Russia's borders in a vehicle to reserve the date and time of that border crossing in advance.
Declarations of deputies and senators will not be published this year. This was reported to Vedomosti by an interlocutor in the State Duma Committee on State Construction and confirmed by its chairman Pavel Krasheninnikov. The data on the income of deputies and senators, as well as their real estate (as well as members of their families) will no longer be published.
A former commander of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Andrei Medvedev, who recently fled to Norway has been apprehended by police, an official said in Oslo on January 23. "He is apprehended...and we are considering whether to seek a court's decision for internment," police lawyer Line Isaksen told Reuters, declining to give further details.
Olga Romanova, the head of Russia Behind Bars, a prisoners’ rights activist claims that 80 percent of Wagner Group’s 50,000 prisoner-recruits are either dead or missing.
A Pantsir-S1 surface-to-air missile launcher system has been installed in the village of Yashcherovo in the Novgorod region, six kilometers from Putin's residence. According to the source, the air defense system was installed several weeks ago. Residents of Yashcherovo and the neighboring villages confirmed to Agentstvo that the village has indeed been equipped with such a system.
Russian banks plan to start issuing stickers containing NFC (Near-Field Communication) chips to replace foreign contactless payment services such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, which were suspended in Russia soon after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RBC reported on Monday.
German defence group Rheinmetall could deliver 139 Leopard battle tanks to Ukraine if required, a spokesperson for the company told media group RND. Rheinmetall could deliver 29 Leopard 2A4 tanks by April/May and a further 22 of the same model around the end of 2023 or early 2024, the spokesperson was quoted as saying.
PM: Poland to apply for Germany's approval to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine. “Even if we did not get this approval, we would still transfer our tanks together with others to Ukraine," Mateusz Morawiecki said, adding that Germany's consent is "of secondary importance."
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said Germany is not blocking the export of Leopard 2 tanks as Berlin faces mounting pressure to supply the heavy weapons that Kyiv has been calling for .Asked about the issue, Borrell told a news conference yesterday: “It seems Germany’s not going to ban the exporting of these weapons, if some EU member states who have them, want to send them.”
Politico: The row within Germany’s coalition government on whether to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine is spilling out into the open. While Olaf Scholz’s coalition partners, the Greens and Liberals, have been in favor of sending the heavy weapons and have been awaiting a decision since last week, the chancellor and his spokespeople remain cryptic.
Thomas C Theiner: “People asked me why Germany's @spdde is so obsessively blocking and delaying help for Ukraine... Well, in the last 20 years the russians invited EVERY male SPD politician to russia for conferences, events, ceremonies, etc. and the russians paid for it all... and all these SPD men got the same rooms in the same hotels and totally "by chance" met beautiful young women (or men), who adamantly insisted to have sex with these old SPD men in front of the mirror in these exact hotel rooms - naturally with the lights on. It's that simple.”
Ukraine Court rules against arresting former Naftogaz CEO on embezzlement charges. The High Anti-Corruption Court on Jan. 23 decided not to arrest Andriy Kobolev, the former CEO of state oil and gas monopoly Naftogaz.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov — one of the most prominent faces of Kyiv’s defense efforts — as well as deputy infrastructure minister Vasyl Lozynskiy are under fire as separate investigations into government corruption rocked the country over the weekend.
Anti-Corruption Court seizes assets of Russian billionaire. The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine seized the Ukrainian assets of Russian billionaire Mikhail Shelkov. The assets include multiple apartments, vehicles, company shares, and money in Ukrainian bank account.
Security council bans state officials from leaving Ukraine, except for business trips. Under martial law, Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are banned from leaving the country during the war, except for cases when they obtain special permits from the government.
Poland is prepared to form a “small coalition” with other European countries for supporting Ukraine if Germany doesn’t agree to supply Ukraine with Leopard 2 tanks.
Estonia to give Ukraine all its 155-mm howitzers in largest aid package so far. "We want to create a precedent so that other countries will not have any excuses why they cannot provide Ukraine with the necessary weapons to win the war," said Estonian Ambassador to Ukraine Kaimo Kuusk.
Sweden to provide Ukraine with equipment to restore energy supply. The Swedish government allowed the state-owned grid operator Svenska Kraftnat to transfer the materials that can be used to restore Ukraine's power system.
Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency is suspected of directing associates of a St. Petersburg-based white supremacist militant group to carry out a recent letter bomb campaign in Spain, The New York Times reported Sunday, citing unnamed U.S. officials. According to the NYT, Spanish investigators who worked with U.S. and U.K. counterparts believe the GRU’s Moscow-based 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center used the Russian Imperial Movement, a radical group with members and associates across Europe, as a proxy in the campaign.
The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on dozens of Iranian officials and organizations, including a government minister, regional governors and lawmakers, suspected in the security crackdown on protestors, but did not add Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to its terror group blacklist.
Russian citizens relocating to Turkey in recent weeks are being refused residence permits, independent Russian-language media outlet Current Time reported Monday. Since Dec. 26, Russian citizens who left Russia following the invasion of Ukraine and the military mobilization have been denied short-term residence permits for tourism in several cities, the report shows.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced May 14 as the date for the country's next parliamentary and presidential elections, confirming that Turkish voters will head to the polls a month earlier than he had previously flagged.
CNN: Three members of the Oath Keepers and a fourth person associated with the far-right militia group were convicted of seditious conspiracy by a Washington, DC, jury on Monday for their role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection. The four men were accused of plotting to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral college victory, a conspiracy that culminated in the attack on the US Capitol.
Jim Fitzpatrick, UK government helped sanctioned Putin ally sue British journalist- Open Democracy
The UK government helped the boss of Russia’s murderous mercenary army to circumvent its own sanctions and launch a targeted legal attack on a British journalist, openDemocracy can reveal.
Sanctions introduced in the UK and Europe in 2020 were supposed to prevent anyone from doing business with Prigozhin. He had also been sanctioned in the US in 2018.
But a vast cache of hacked emails shows that, under the leadership of Rishi Sunak, the UK Treasury issued special licences in 2021 to let the oligarch override sanctions and launch an aggressive legal campaign against a journalist in the London courts.
Tim Lister, Fred Pleitgen & Matthias Somm, As a Russian offensive looms, Ukraine races to train military on new Western weapons- CNN
A few kilometers from the Belarus border, Ukrainian forces are training for what they expect to be a brutal spring.
Ageing T-72 tanks – some twice the age of their crews – fire off rounds into the mist, while ground troops practise storming abandoned buildings. Some of the training takes place in the eerily quiet town of Pripyat, deserted since the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.
As the troops are put through their paces, Lieutenant General Serhiy Naiev takes delivery of a dozen pick-up trucks armed with heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, a crowd-funded initiative to help Ukraine repel Iranian-made Shahed drones, which have caused so much damage to Ukraine’s power infrastructure.
Arkady Ostrovsky, Russia risks becoming ungovernable and descending into chaos- The Economist
When russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, invaded Ukraine on February 24th 2022, he set out to grab territory, deprive it of sovereignty, wipe out the very idea of its national identity and turn what remained of it into a failed state. After months of Ukraine’s fierce resistance, its statehood and its identity are stronger than ever, and all the things that Mr Putin had intended to inflict on Ukraine are afflicting his own country.
Mr Putin’s war is turning Russia into a failed state, with uncontrolled borders, private military formations, a fleeing population, moral decay and the possibility of civil conflict. And though confidence among Western leaders in Ukraine’s ability to withstand Mr Putin’s terror has gone up, there is growing concern about Russia’s own ability to survive the war. It could become ungovernable and descend into chaos.
Leonid Gozman, Europe's Freedom Depends on Ukraine Winning a Decisive Victory Over Russia- The Moscow Times
The biggest disappointment of the allied conference held at the U.S. military base in Ramstein, Germany on Friday was the failure of the negotiators to agree on delivering Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. While an eventual tank transfer was not ruled out altogether, it wasn't agreed upon either — the can was simply kicked down the road again as Ukrainian bodies continue to pile up.
The international community seems to have understood that Ukraine must win this war, or at least that Putin cannot be allowed to emerge victorious. This understanding is fuelled not so much by sympathy for Ukraine, but rather by the realization that Putin’s regime is a threat to the whole of Western civilization. If Putin attains his goal of destroying Ukraine he will not be satisfied but will continue "reclaiming what's his." That is, the world has understood that no amount of appeasement will ever make peaceful coexistence with Vladimir Putin possible.
On China…The Quiet Professional
A podcast that critically and candidly explores law enforcement and partner agency issues; Giving a voice to the people who carry out these duties. Latest episode:
S2E6: CHINA - Charles Burton - History / Communism / Subterfuge /Self-Defence / Indo-Pacific Policies.
Programming Note…
Featuring: The Honorable Sheldon Whitehouse, United States Senator (D-RI)
Spotlight conversation: H. E. Krum Zarkov, Minister of Justice of the Republic of Bulgaria
This hybrid event will take place on Tuesday, January 24, 2023 from 8:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. ET at the Atlantic Council office, and it will be streamed virtually.
