Jan 5 Buonasera Mag
Day 315: Kherson Kyiv Horlivka drones StPete Melitopol Wagner Rogozin AM X-10 RC RUgas Rome Asylov BGI Tinder Crimea-A&P-UAWorld Patrikarakos ISW Zelensky Yermak Liubakova Avdeeva O'Brien Golub
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…
President Zelensky has called on western allies to supply Ukraine with tanks. In a video address, during which he thanked France for providing them, Zelensky said: “This is what gives a clear signal to all our other partners. There is no rational reason why western-style tanks have not yet been supplied to Ukraine.”
Tass is reporting that the mayor of Russian-occupied Horlivka has said that the armed forces of Ukraine fired at the city, and hits were recorded on the buildings of a hostel and a medical unit.
Journalists identify 4 Russians operating Iranian-made drones in Ukraine. Russian servicemen Sergey Sozinov, Gleb Pivkin, Russian Air Force captain Andrey Stepovoy and Russian Air Force lieutenant Evgeny Glukhov are allegedly responsible for manning some of the Iranian-made kamikaze drones launched to attack Ukraine, according to a joint investigation by Slisdvo.Info and Nashi Groshi Lviv.
Partisans stop movement of military convoys on Russian railroad. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate reported that partisans had stopped the movement of civilian trains and military convoys on the Trans-Siberian Railway in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region overnight on Jan. 4.
Explosions reported in Russian-occupied Melitopol. The Russian-installed authorities reported late on Jan. 4 that explosions were heard in the city of Melitopol in Ukraine's southeast and its suburbs. Vladimir Rogov, a Russia-appointed member of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast administration, said that air defense had been activated. He did not provide any details.
Putin instructed Shoigu to introduce a ceasefire along the “contact line” in Ukraine from 12:00 on January 6 to 24:00 on January 7. (How hypocritical. they’re killing people, and stealing their children, and now they’re going to celebrate ‘Christmas’.)
Russia has caused $700 billion in damage to Ukraine in the last 10 months, according to Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal. That doesn’t account for any of the damage from Russia’s armed aggression from February 2014-February 2022.
The first inmates recruited by Wagner have received their promised pardons after fighting for six months in Ukraine, Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin told journalists on Thursday. “They worked off their contract. They worked with honour, with dignity. They were the first ones. Nobody else in this world works as hard as they did,” Prigozhin told RIA-Novosti.
The former head of Russia's space agency Dmitry Rogozin said on Wednesday that he had sent a piece of shrapnel from a French howitzer shell that injured him in the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine last month to President Macron. Rogozin was injured in a December attack on a Donetsk hotel where he had reportedly been celebrating his birthday with the deputy head of the breakaway Donetsk People's Republic, among others.
Putin “remote-attended” the launch of a warship armed with new hypersonic Zircon missiles (the Admiral Gorshkov will voyage across the Atlantic and Indian oceans, plus the Mediterranean Sea)
Ukrenergo: Emergency blackouts introduced as power consumption rises. On Jan. 4, Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo reported that power consumption in the country had increased due to colder weather and the intensification of business operations following the winter holidays.
France vowed to send light tanks, AMX-10 RC armored fighting vehicles to Ukraine. This is the first time that a Western country has agreed to give tanks to Ukraine — a supply that Kyiv has been asking for for months.
Ukrainian Orthodox Church to hold historic Christmas celebration in Kyiv Pechersk Lavra on Jan. 7. The celebration will take place in the part of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra previously controlled by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, an affiliate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Kyiv named honorary best city in the world. Kyiv has been named the “Honorary Best City of the World 2023” in the latest ranking released by the Resonance agency, a consultant in tourism, real estate, and economic development.
Biden confirms US considers sending Bradley fighting vehicles to Ukraine. According to Reuters, U.S. President Joe Biden answered positively to reporters on Jan. 4 when asked if the option of sending Bradley fighting vehicles to Ukraine was on the table.
The US is looking at ways to target Iranian drone production through sanctions and export controls, the White House said. Washington previously imposed sanctions on companies and people it accused of producing or transferring Iranian drones that Russia has used against Ukraine.
Norway donates 10,000 artillery shells to Ukraine. The Norwegian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Jan. 4 that donated artillery shells can be used in the M109 howitzers that Norway has donated in the past.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Rome cannot mediate since it “is helping the bloody regime in Kyiv” and has an “aggressive anti-Russian” posture. Not for the first time, Ms Zakharova has criticised Italy.
Putin told his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, that Russia was open to dialogue over Ukraine but that Kyiv would have to accept the “new territorial realities”, according to a readout of the call by the Kremlin.
Berik Asylov, Kazakh attorney general, announced today that foreigners took part in the events of Qandy Qañtar, Bloody January, of last year. Citizens from russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan are among them.
CNN obtained an intelligence report claiming that parts made by more than a dozen U.S. and Western companies were found inside a single Iranian drone downed in Ukraine last fall.
Select Russian private armament manufacturers are continuing to criticize the Russian military campaign. The owner of the Lobayev Arms precision grade rifle ammunition manufacturer, Vladimir Lobayev, commented on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order for Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu to submit a report on the provisions for the Russian Armed Forces by February 1. (see full article)
A Chinese genetic-research company, BGI, is under investigation across the European Union and was blacklisted by the United States for its suspected links to the Chinese military. But Belgrade is deepening its partnership with the controversial entity through new agreements and a production center. A $200 million project, the BIO4 campus is meant to be a hub for scientific research and investment in the Balkan country and will focus primarily on biomedicine and biotechnology. BGI's expanding partnership with Serbia comes despite the company dealing with investigations across the European Union due to its alleged misuse of genetic data and sanctions in the United States for its suspected links to the Chinese military.
Western sanctions against Russian meat suppliers (in response to the invasion of Ukraine) have left McDonald’s without its key burger ingredient in Kazakhstan, and the chain now plans to sell off its restaurants there (embezzlement charges against a prominent franchisee owner aren’t helping either).
QatarGate via Politico: “The Qatargate scandal hasn’t exactly shocked long-term watchers of the European Parliament. Emilio De Capitani, who spent 26 years as a Parliament official before becoming a transparency campaigner, says the spiraling investigation into alleged influence-peddling by Qatar and Morocco is “not at all” a surprise. The way the political groups in the European Parliament work is still very patchy and sometimes grants an excessive margin of discretion to the rapporteur or to the parliamentarian who is in charge of preparing an urgent resolution,” De Capitani told Playbook in an interview. Control and oversight by national delegations “is very limited and almost inexistent if the delegation is of a ‘big’ EU country or if the proposal has been negotiated by a ‘big’ parliamentary committee. This makes it practically impossible to verify what these MEPs are really doing,” he argues.”
Tinder in the trenches: How war has changed love and sex in Ukraine- WaPo
“I did not have the energy to carry a conversation beyond, ‘How are you?,’” said Vlad, 30, who spoke on the condition that his last name not be used so he could speak candidly about his sex life. “We start, ‘Hello; how are you?’ — and nothing goes after that. For me, it was a lot of energy to continue this dialogue. I didn’t have it.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has upended nearly every facet of daily life here, creating, to put it mildly, problems that are more urgent than Vlad’s dating life. The country faces an economic collapse. Air raid sirens warn daily of Russian bombardment, and Ukrainian soldiers are locked into a merciless struggle for territory in the east.
But intimacy has been another casualty. Interviews with more than a dozen soldiers, soldiers’ partners, psychologists, sex shop owners and others in Ukraine show that reality is far darker than the wartime romances produced by Hollywood.
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, The Case for Taking Crimea- Foreign Affairs
Yet Russia still controls one Ukrainian province: Crimea. In 2014, Russia seized the peninsula in a remarkable breach of international law. Putin actively exploits a narrative that claims Crimea’s transfer to Ukraine, carried out by the Soviet Union in 1954, was “erroneous.” In taking the peninsula, Putin believes he has both corrected what he called a “mistake” and improved Russia’s international position, restoring his country to great-power status.
But those premises are false. Crimea has a rich and unique history; it has not been a part of Russia since time immemorial. It became a rightful part of independent Ukraine after a 1991 nationwide referendum in which Ukrainians—including a majority of Crimean residents—voted for independence from the Soviet Union. It is easy to understand why Crimeans wanted out. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, whereas Ukraine was en route to becoming a pluralistic democracy. Moscow’s current rule has revitalized many of the Soviet Union’s dictatorial practices in Crimea, including oppressing minorities and subjecting citizens to a state media that peddles propaganda. Moscow turned the area into a giant, menacing garrison, which it then used to invade Ukraine. As long as the peninsula remains in the Kremlin’s hands, Ukraine—and Ukrainians—cannot be free of Russian aggression.
'Propaganda Is Almost Everywhere': Grassroots Campaigners Take On The Kremlin War Machine- RFE/RL
"There are moments of despair," said Anna Zhukova, who is the editor in chief of the Perm 36.6 Telegram channel. "When you see that you are working 12 hours a day and yet are unable to do anything to stop the war or to really change anything.
"On the other hand," she continued, "I see that there are tens of thousands of people in the Perm region who oppose the war. And if we stop our work, they will be left alone, unable to get uncensored information."
