Jan 31 Buonasera Mag
Day 342: UASitRep Luhansk RUtroops Belarus IranBanks NK Mykolaiv Bradleys F-16s Marcon CAESARs Shmyhal-A&Ps-Alander UKDef MacKay Mathers Waller Kassymbekova Soldatov&Bogodan RISS
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…
General Staff: Ukraine’s military hits 3 Russian control points. Over the past day, Ukrainian forces hit three Russian control points, four concentrations of troops, and two ammunition depots, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in its Jan. 30 update.
General Staff: Russia turns 2 maternity hospitals in Luhansk into field hospitals. It is now only possible to give birth at the Luhansk Regional Perinatal Center, "where there is a catastrophic lack of places, as well as risks and unfavorable conditions for childbirth," the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces reported in its morning briefing.
UK Defense Ministry: Russia doesn't rule out another wave of mobilization. "The Russian leadership highly likely continues to search for ways to meet the high number of personnel required to resource any future major offensive in Ukraine while minimizing domestic dissent," the U.K. Defense Ministry reported on Jan. 30.
Moscow moves additional troops to Kursk Oblast. Russia has deployed more troops and military equipment to its Kursk Oblast, which borders Ukraine, Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoit said on Jan. 30, as reported by Russian state-controlled Interfax news agency.
Belarus and Russia are conducting a week-long session of training for the joint command of their regional grouping of forces, according to the Belarusian defence ministry.
Russian Defense Ministry is poised to begin funding volunteer military formations; this could funnel more money to Wagner Group, though officials insist that the policy shift requires no new budget allocations.
Russia and Iran are integrating their banking systems in order to get around being banned from SWIFT. The new communication system will reportedly connect roughly 700 Russian banks and 106 foreign banks from 13 other countries.
Security Service arrests pro-Russian council member on suspicion of treason. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) reports arresting a Siversk City Council member for alleged treason. The man represented the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party.
NATO chief: North Korea provides Russia with missiles. North Korea is supplying missiles to Russia for its war against Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin in Seoul on Jan. 29.
Zelensky comes to Mykolaiv with Danish PM, meets with local officials. President Volodymyr Zelensky and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen visited Mykolaiv on Jan. 30 under Denmark's patronage of the city's restoration, according to the President's Office.
US Transportation Command: Over 60 Bradley fighting vehicles en route to Ukraine. U.S. Transportation Command reported on Jan. 30 that they are delivering the first shipment of Bradley Fighting Vehicles to Ukraine as part of the United States $2.85 billion military aid agreement announced earlier this year.
CNN: Biden says US won't send F-16 jets to Ukraine. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Jan. 30 that he wouldn't send American fighter jets to Ukraine, even though the U.S. is ramping up military assistance in the form of artillery and tanks.
Macron does not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Jan. 30 that he does not rule out sending fighter jets to Ukraine. However, he said multiple conditions must be met before doing so.
France promises to send 12 additional CAESAR self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine. French Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu added that 150 French soldiers would train 2,000 Ukrainian troops in Poland this summer.
PM Shmyhal: Ukraine plans to join EU within 2 years. Ukraine has "a very ambitious plan" to join the European Union within the next two years, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told Politico. "So we expect that this year, in 2023, we can already have the pre-entry stage of negotiations," Shmyhal said ahead of the EU-Ukraine summit, set to take place in Kyiv on Feb. 3.
Jennifer Mathers, Ukraine war: attitudes to women in the military are changing as thousands serve on front lines- The Conversation
Thousands of women have voluntarily joined Ukraine’s armed forces since 2014, when Russia’s occupation of Crimea and territories in eastern Ukraine began. Over the past nine years, the number of women serving in the Ukrainian military has more than doubled, with another wave of women joining after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Women have served in Ukraine’s armed forces since the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, but were mainly in supporting roles until the beginning of the war in 2014. They started serving in combat roles in 2016 and all military roles were opened to women in 2022. However, many women in non-combat roles, such as medics, are exposed to the same dangers and hardships as their male and female colleagues who fire the weapons.
According to Ukraine’s deputy minister of defence, Hanna Maliar, by the summer of 2022 more than 50,000 women were employed by the armed forces in some capacity, with approximately 38,000 serving in uniform. Women are now with units on the front lines.
Julian G Waller, Public Politics in the Wartime Russian Dictatorship- WOTR
Will President Vladimir Putin’s regime implode? Unfortunately, the media’s fixation with this question — understandable as it might be — has prevented us from gaining a more holistic understanding of how Russian politics are working right now.
While fully in the grips of a new form of bellicose, authoritarian rule, Russia has not fallen down the totalitarian path and rather exhibits signs of a skewed but dynamic authoritarian public politics. Putin’s regime is a personalist dictatorship in a partial state of exception, and one with a great deal of elite quiescence at the top. Yet the political dynamics playing out in the public eye are hardly uniform and reflect real claims to power and influence that can help Western observers understand Russia’s transforming political system.
Three interrelated expressions of public politics are particularly useful for understanding regime dynamics across Russia today. First is the vocal chorus of “war correspondents” who have become a source of creative criticism on the Russian political spectrum’s hawkish flank. Second is the rise of warlord-like political-military figures and their intentional use of politics as public spectacle — ever more notable when set against the studied submission of the regime’s broader elite cohort. Finally, there is the long-sidelined political party system which nevertheless manages to provide by far the clearest examples of divisions in lower-tier elite opinion on the war.
Botakoz Kassymbekova, How Western scholars overlooked Russian imperialism- Al Jezeera
For far too long, Western academia has ignored the legacies of the Russian Empire and colonisation.
Some, especially the self-professed “anti-imperialists”, claimed Russia was “provoked” and portrayed Ukraine’s resistance as a “Western imperial” plot. Others considered analyses of Russian imperialism as having a pro-war, hawkish agenda or being a reflection of narrow ethno-nationalist sentiments.
But for scholars from the post-Soviet space – from places that have suffered from Russian aggression and imperialism – these reactions were hardly a surprise. They had been ignored and dismissed before.
Discussions of Russian imperialism have long been overlooked while American, British and French imperialisms have been studied closely and thoroughly. This has much to do with how Western academia and to a certain extent political elites have chosen to approach the Soviet Union and its eventual dissolution.
Soldatov & Borogan, Russia’s Return to Gulag Economics- CEPA
Under the growing pressures of war, the Russian military-industrial complex is experiencing acute shortages in manpower. With so many workers mobilized and with casualties rising (now estimated to be “significantly, well over” 100,000), the authorities are beginning to look at another, time-honored source of cheap labor — the prison population.
Convicts have rarely been so sought after in Russia, at least since Stalin’s time. The notorious Wagner mercenary group, a Kremlin-authorized private army, has already been recruiting convicted criminals with the offer of get-out-of-jail-free cards for those able to survive six months on the Ukrainian frontlines.
Those dubious about Wagner’s deal will now be steered towards the manufacture of tanks and other weaponry.
Russian demand for industrial workers has increased dramatically since the war in Ukraine started, and there is apparently no other way to satisfy it.
It’s hardly a secret that the country has been experiencing a shortage of locksmiths, welders, and turners for a very long time. And now Russia just doesn’t have enough workers to manufacture missiles and tanks for Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Programming note…
