Jan 29 The Sunday Edition
Day 340: UASitRep Iran Bakhmut Avdiivka 66,500 KalibrMissiles EstonianWomen ATACMS Pavel UAsanctions NK Scholz Zahawi Bagshaw-A&P-Avdeeva UKDef Kondriatiuk Noel Ilves Niland Davis Kirillova TVtoront
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.
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Stories we’re following…
Ukraine defending against Russian offensives in 3 areas. Russia continues conducting offensive operations toward Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Novopavlivka, Donetsk Oblast, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported on Jan. 28.
Russia concentrating forces along southern front. According to Southern Opeational Command spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk, Moscow is increasing drawing upon its “mobilization resource”, troops that had been previously engaged in occupying Ukraine’s southern territories, rather than fighting on the front lines, earlier in the war.
Prosecutor General’s Office records over 66,500 Russian war crimes, crimes of aggression in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office reported on Jan. 28 that the Russian military has committed 66,743 war crimes and crimes of aggression in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s all-out war.
Russia keeps 3 Kalibr cruise missile carriers in Black Sea. Russia currently has three Kalibr cruise missile carriers in the Black Sea with 20 missiles on them, Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesman for the Odesa regional military administration, wrote on Telegram on Jan. 28.
ISW: Russian army likely replacing exhausted Wagner forces in Bakhmut. Russian regular army forces are likely replacing units of the exhausted mercenary group Wagner Group in order to maintain the offensive in Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast, the Institute for the Study of War said.
Large explosion reported at military plant in Iran. A loud explosion was heard at the ammunition manufacturing center of the Iranian Defense Ministry in Isfahan as a result of the “unsuccessful” drone attack, Iranian state media reported. Local security official said no one was injured.
Zelensky: Ukraine needs ATACMS missiles to stop ‘Russian terror.’ The U.S. has been reluctant to supply ATACMS due to the fear of escalation and the concerns that they may be used to attack Russian territory. Supporters of supplying ATACMS to Ukraine argue that Kyiv's inability to strike targets far from the frontline results in the deaths of numerous Ukrainians and makes it harder for Ukraine to expel Russian troops from its territory.
Air Force: Ukraine seeks to get 24 modern fighter jets from Western allies as first package of such aid The priority for Ukraine is to acquire American F-16s, however, they are also considering French Rafale and Swedish Gripen fighter jets, Ihnat said in an interview with El Pais, published on Jan. 28.
Mourners gathered in Kyiv today to commemorate a British volunteer killed while on a rescue mission from Soledar. British voluntary aid worker Andrew Bagshaw, for whom the service was held, and fellow volunteer Chris Parry, were killed during an attempted humanitarian evacuation.
A contingent of military officials is quietly pushing the Pentagon to approve sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine to help the country defend itself from Russian missile and drone attacks, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
Ukraine imposed sanctions against 182 Russian and Belarusian companies, and three individuals, in the latest of a series of steps by president Zelensky to block Moscow’s and Minsk’s connections to his country. “Their assets in Ukraine are blocked, their properties will be used for our defence,” Zelensky said in a video address. The sanctioned companies chiefly engage in the transportation of goods, vehicle leasing and chemical production, according to the list.
North Korea on Sunday denied providing arms to Moscow after the US said it supplied rockets and missiles to Russia’s private military group Wagner – which Washington has designated as a transnational criminal organisation, partly because weapons dealings with Kim Jong-un’s regime is a breach of UN sanctions.
Tagesspiegel: Scholz wants to continue to talk to Putin. “I will also be on the phone with Putin again - because it is necessary to talk to each other,” the Chancellor said, adding it was up to Putin to withdraw troops from Ukraine and end this “terrible, nonsensical war.”
US creates working group to detect corruption in aid to Ukraine. The Ukraine Oversight Interagency Working Group comprises inspectors from the Pentagon, State Department, USAID, and other departments of the U.S. government. It meets monthly to “coordinate, collaborate, and ensure transparency in the collective whole-of-government Ukraine response oversight efforts,” the document said.
Millions of microchips made by Dutch companies reportedly ended in Russia since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, despite heavy sanctions on technological goods, an investigation by Dutch newspaper Nederlandse Omroep Stichting (NOS) showed.
Czech, Slovak leaders to visit Kyiv. Czech President-elect Petr Pavel plans to visit Ukraine together with Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, reported Czech TV channel CT24 on Jan. 28.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Sunday fired Conservative party chairman Nadhim Zahawi after an inquiry into Zahawi's tax affairs found a "serious breach" of ministerial rules, the government said.
Lister, Pleitgen & Somm, As a Russian offensive looms, Ukraine races to train military on new Western weapons- CNN
The Ukrainians fear that a second Russian offensive may begin within two months. By the spring, 150,000 Russians drafted last autumn will have been trained and probably incorporated into battle-ready units. For the Ukrainians, it’s a race against time. But they are essentially converting a military based on Soviet hardware to one using advanced western weapons at warp speed.
They won’t be getting M1 Abrams main battle tanks, which are powerful but difficult to maintain. Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy adviser, said of the M1 that it’s “expensive. It’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine.”
Experts also believe the German tanks could make a real difference. “Leopard 2 is a modern, well-protected main battle tank with good sensors,” Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow in Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told CNN.
Paul Niland, Calls for a ‘Negotiated End’ to Putin’s War: A Simplistic Solution to an Unthinkable Reality- Byline Times
In the wake of the attack, a makeshift memorial to the victims sprang up in Moscow. Under a statue of a Ukrainian poet in the Russian capital, people laid flowers – and were promptly arrested. Russia under Vladimir Putin has become a fascist police state, and that is to be the fate of any and all territory that he controls or perceives to belong to his kingdom.
This is why his war cannot result in any of Ukraine or any Ukrainian citizens being left subject to his rule. The choice of abandoning Ukrainian citizens to Putin’s fascist police state system is not an acceptable one.
Ben Keith, Interpol Is Doing Russia’s Dirty Work- Politico
But when the police are the criminals, there is indeed a trade-off. Regimes like Russia and China don’t recognize the distinction between ordinary crimes and political offenses — a distinction on which Interpol is based.
By ignoring that distinction, Interpol winds up “acting as an arm of a criminal regime to go after its enemies,” in the words of Bill Browder, the Putin critic and foremost target of Russia’s Interpol abuse. The Kremlin has repeatedly asked Interpol to arrest Browder, who has called out Russian corruption, though Interpol has rebuffed the requests.
Interpol’s neutrality on Russia’s membership amid the war in Ukraine comes down to refusing to do anything that could be perceived as taking sides. That isn’t neutrality; it’s blindness. True neutrality means enforcing Interpol’s rules against all comers, regardless of the identity or the reaction of the rule-breaker.
Kseniya Kirillova, Wagner and the Serbs- CEPA
Serbia has long known of close ties between its thriving extreme nationalist community and Russia. But it was only this month that President Aleksandr Vučić, sharply criticized the mercenary group, Wagner, effectively now an arm of the Russian state, for recruiting Serbs for the war in Ukraine, noting that this is “against our rules.”
Why now? That statement is almost certainly linked to a remonstrance from US State Department adviser, Derek Chollet, who earlier had expressed alarm that Prigozhin’s organization was trying to recruit fighters in Serbia and other countries. Chollet noted that this is unacceptable and that he had personally voiced these concerns during talks in Belgrade with the Serbian leader.
But while Vučić did as he was asked, the likelihood of firm action from the government is moot. A number of Serbian pro-Ukrainian activists, including representatives of the new anti-war wave of emigration from Russia, say that Serbian officials knowingly enable the notorious mercenary group’s operations in Serbia and have given direct orders that there should be no interference in such activities.
Programming note…
Signing off for the day…