Jan 3 Buonasera Mag
Day 313: Bakhmut Makiivka Kherson Progozhin ISW torture chambers UAWeapons EU Sunak Macron GER -A&P- Davis Fink Koshiw Theiner Kramer Gould-Davies Piagnerelli Rottboll Lula PagellaPolitica Lucas
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…
General Staff confirms Dec. 31 attack on Russian troops in occupied Makiivka. The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said in its daily update that the Ukrainian military damaged or destroyed up to 10 units of Russian military equipment of various types in the occupied Makiivka in the eastern Donetsk Oblast. The number of Russian military personnel killed in the attack is still being clarified, the military reported.
Ukrainian military says it killed 400 Russian troops in occupied Makiivka. A Russian military base in occupied Makiivka, Donetsk Oblast, was hit on New Year’s night, killing 400 soldiers and injuring at least 300, the Strategic Communications Department of Ukraine's military wrote on Telegram. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed Ukraine's strike.
Chief commander: Ukraine has liberated 40% of territories occupied by Russia since Feb. 24. According Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine continues to deter Russian attacks on a land area with a total length of 3,786 km, including an active front line of 1,500 km.
Russian troops have spent weeks attempting to capture a single house Bakhmut, the head of the Russian Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin has said. In a grim video released over new year, Prigozhin was filmed visiting a basement near the eastern front filled with the bodies of his fighters, many of them convicts, who had been killed during the bitter fighting for the city, a key Russian objective since the summer. Prigozhin said as he saw the dead Russian soldiers:
Their contract has finished, they will go home next week. These are getting ready to be sent. We all work during New Year’s Eve. Here lie Wagner fighters who died at the front. They are now being put in zinc coffins and they will return home.
Russian forces suffer major casualties in Kherson Oblast. The Ukrainian military confirmed that on Dec. 31, the units of the Armed Forces struck personnel and equipment concentration in the village of Chulakivka, Kherson Oblast. Chulakivka is located 67 kilometers south of Kherson, on the Russian-occupied east bank of the Dnipro River.
Russia is planning a protracted campaign of attacks with Iranian drones to “exhaust” Ukraine, President Zelensky warned in his Monday night address. Ukraine, he said, had to “act and do everything so that the terrorists’ fail in their aim, as all their others have failed.”
Yuriy Ignat, spokesperson for the air force command of the armed forces of Ukraine, has claimed that nearly 500 Russian drones have been downed since September.
The Ukrainian strike on a Russian base in Makiivka, Donetsk, has generated “significant criticism of Russian military leadership”, according to a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). A number of prominent Russian pro-war bloggers and commentators acknowledged the attack on Makiivka, with many suggesting the number of casualties was higher than the figures officially reported.
Air Force: Ukraine has shot down nearly 500 drones launched by Russia since September. According to Yuriy Ihnat, the spokesman for the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, 84 of these drones were downed in the first two days of 2023.
The Russian Interior Ministry has put a "wanted" notice out on six purported members of the Vagner mercenary group who may have escaped from a training camp in an occupied region of Ukraine over a week ago. The ministry declined to provide details on the six, who were said to have fled a Vagner training camp in the eastern Ukrainian Luhansk region where Russian forces and Russian-backed separatists hold a wide swath of territory.
Police: 25 torture chambers discovered in liberated areas of Kharkiv Oblast. Investigators have discovered 25 torture chambers in the liberated areas of the northeastern Kharkiv Oblast, head of the regional police Volodymyr Tymoshko reported on Jan. 2. Tymoshko described detention conditions of civilians as “inhumane.”
Ukroboronprom executives charged for supplying low-quality equipment to army. Ukraine’s Economic Security Bureau reported on Jan. 2 that it had charged six executives of Ukroboronprom, the country’s main defense company, with embezzlement and abuse of power.
Nato countries will discuss their defence spending targets in the coming months as some of them call for turning a 2% target into a minimum figure, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told the German news agency DPA, according to a Reuters report.
SpaceX to launch Ukrainian nanosatellite into Earth orbit on Jan. 3. The satellite will be used to conduct a scientific experiment on the effectiveness of heat pipes as the main element of space vehicles’ thermal stabilization systems, said Ukraine's science ministry.
Ukraine-EU summit to take place in Kyiv on Feb. 3. The statement followed President Volodymyr Zelensky's first diplomatic phone call in 2023 with European Commission Head Ursula von der Leyen. The summit's primary focus is expected to be the EU's further support for Ukraine in the face of Russia's aggression.
EU Ambassador says union decreased Russian oil supplies by 90% in 2022. The European Union cut down Russian oil imports by 90% before the end of 2022, “radically reducing” energy dependence on Russia, the EU Ambassador to Ukraine Matti Maasikas told Ukrinform. According to Maasikas, Russia can sell its oil to other markets, but the revenue from such sales is limited as Russia is forced to significantly discount every barrel sold.
European Commission President: Ukraine to start receiving 18 billion euro aid package. The EU would begin disbursing the support package worth 18 billion euros for Ukraine in monthly tranches, European Commission Head Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter after her first diplomatic phone call in 2023 with President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelenskiy and Sunak spoke today and discussed the UK’s ongoing support for Ukraine, as well as the provision of more supplies to help the latter in its fight against Russian invaders, Downing Street confirms. A No 10 statement released just now reads:
The prime minister spoke to the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskiy this afternoon.
The leaders discussed the abhorrent drone attacks on Ukraine in recent days, and the prime minister said the thoughts of the UK were with the Ukrainian people as they continued to live under such bombardment.
The prime minister said Ukraine could count on the UK to continue to support it for the long term, as demonstrated by the recent delivery of more than 1,000 anti-air missiles.
Work was also underway to provide further equipment in the coming weeks and months to secure Ukraine’s victory on the battlefield, the prime minister added.
President Macron reaffirmed that Ukraine “needs our support more than ever”, as he hosted Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson in Paris, with Sweden having taken over the rotating presidency of the European Union.
Julia Davis: Russian propagandists aim to convince the viewers that "the Soviet miracle" & the expansionist glory of the Motherland are more important than life, which is "overrated." They want new maps—or rather "a globe of Russia," because its borders end...nowhere.
Isobel Koshiw, How Sumy’s residents kept Russian forces out of their city- The Guardian
On 24 February, when Russia invaded, there were only a few dozen Ukrainian professional soldiers in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Sumy, and they had no command centre. That evening, those 50 or so paratroopers were ordered to leave the city – about 20 miles (30km) from the Russian border – for another area. Most of the police force had already fled, along with much of the city’s leadership.
Sumy’s residents were left, confused and in shock, to defend the city on their own as Russian forces rolled towards them. The Sumy self-defence forces, which formed for the most part on the first day of the invasion, managed to hold the city for almost six weeks, despite being encircled. After 6 April, the Russian forces were pushed out of Sumy region, and most of the self-defence forces members then joined the army where they are now serving.
Sumy region borders Russia on two sides, to the north and east. The efforts of Sumy self-defence forces and ordinary residents inside and outside the city contributed to the disruption of the Russian supply lines from the Russian border to Kyiv. Their efforts helped prevent Russian forces from successfully surrounding the capital and seizing control of the country’s command centre.
Ukrainian forces deal with Russians in Makiivka
Andrew E Kramer, Clergymen or Spies? Churches Become Tools of War in Ukraine- NYT
“In the north, there are about 500 of them, with a mortar platoon, five armored personnel carriers and three tanks,” Mr. Pavlenko wrote to a Russian officer in March, as the Russian Army was hammering Sievierodonetsk and areas around it with artillery.
“He needs to be killed,” he wrote of the rival priest, according to evidence introduced at his trial in a Ukrainian court, showing he had sent lists to the Russian Army of people to round up once the city was occupied. Mr. Pavlenko was convicted as a spy this month and then traded with Russia in a prisoner exchange.
His was hardly an isolated case. In the past month, the authorities have arrested or publicly identified as suspects more than 30 clergymen and nuns of the Ukrainian arm of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Nigel Gould-Davies, Putin Has No Red Lines- NYT
“What are Putin’s red lines?”
This question, asked with growing urgency as Russia loses its war in Ukraine but does not relent in its aggressions, is intended to offer analytical clarity and to guide policy. In reality, it is the wrong question, because “red line” is a bad metaphor. Red lines are red herrings. There are better ways to think about strategy.
“Red lines” implies there are defined limits to the actions that a state — in this case, Russia — is prepared to accept from others. If the West transgresses these limits, Russia will respond in new and more dangerous ways. A red line is a tripwire for escalation. Western diplomacy must seek to understand and “respect” Russia’s red lines by avoiding actions that would cross them. Russia’s red lines thus impose limits on Western actions.
There are three flaws to this reasoning. First, it assumes that red lines are fixed features of a state’s foreign policy. This is almost never the case.
Talk about luck…
Can you trust what politicians say?
Pagella Politica is a fact-checking outfit in Italy, which verifies statements made by Italian politicians. I’ve used it several times. In the post below, they point out former PM Draghi and current PM Meloni’s truthfulness rating of public statements: truthful, imprecise and little or not truthful. Less than 50% of what Prime Minister Meloni says is truthful.
Emil Rottboll, Danish military intelligence suggests drug-induced megalomania may have influenced Putin to invade Ukraine- Berlingske
The man making this stunning observation is not just anyone.
Joakim heads the Russia analysis team at FE, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service. For security reasons he is not allowed to present himself in photos or using his last name.
This is the man who leads Danish intelligence gathering on President Putin, the Russian army and Russian society.
And he is the one helping Danish decision-makers and politicians gain the best possible understanding of the threat that Putin poses to Denmark and his chances of success in Ukraine.
Now Joakim has agreed to lift the veil on a least some of this knowledge to Berlingske’s readers.
He also gives us an educated guess as to why Putin sometimes appears uncomfortable when seated and grabbing the edge of the table tightly with his hand.
