Jul 4: E-Stories
Day 495: Kherson Crimea UASitRep OccupiedUA Wagner Kadyrov ICC GER Luka BlackSea AUS POL FRriots AI Zuppi A&P UAWorld UKDef ISW Zubrin Ponzio Lévy Zakaria Berlinski Liubakova Unilever Saakashvili
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.
Ukraine designates Unilever as 'international sponsor of war.' Ukraine's National Corruption Prevention Agency (NACP) added British corporation Unilever to the "international sponsors of war" list for not exiting Russia. The Ukraine Solidarity Project (USP) on Monday erected a giant billboard outside the Anglo-Dutch consumer group’s London headquarters featuring pictures of wounded Ukrainian soldiers – posing in the style of the Dove beauty brand’s advertisements – and the slogan: “Helping to fund Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Before I forget, Happy 4th July to all American readers!
Stories we’re following…
Ukraine’s state emergency service report that firefighters have been working on the right-bank of the Kherson region over the weekend. Suspilne reports that 12 fires have broken out in the area in the last 24 hours after Russian shelling, ten of them in residential areas. Emergency service workers report being “under constant fire” while trying to deal with the fires, which have all now been extinguished.
Suspilne reports that yesterday “Russian troops fired 117 times on the liberated settlements of Luhansk region on July 2. Six residential buildings were destroyed by shelling. There are no dead or injured civilians.” One person has been killed in a drone attack on a residential building in the city of Sumy, the country’s defence ministry said.
On July 3, Russian troops launched three S-300 missiles and 20 Shahed attack drones on the territory of Ukraine. APU shot down 14 drones. The Russian military also carried out 44 air strikes and carried out about 50 attacks from multiple launch rocket systems on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and settlements of Ukraine.
The Russian-imposed leader in occupied Kherson, Andrey Alekseyenko, has stated that the damage to the Chongar bridge linking Kherson and Crimea has been repaired.
General Zaluzhnyi visits Rivne Nuclear Power Plant for 'information exchange' on possible scenarios and risks at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the General Staff of the Armed Forces informed on July 3.
Air Force: Ukraine downs 13 out of 17 drones Russia launched overnight. The remaining four drones that Ukraine's air defenses didn't shoot down did not reach their targets, according to the Air Force.
In her regular operational update, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar has re-stated that Ukraine is making incremental gains in both the east and the south, and said that 37.4 sq km (14.4 sq m) of territory had been reclaimed. In the south, Ukraine has regained 28.4 km of territory, bringing the total area of re-captured territory along that front to 158.4 km, Maliar claimed.
The situation in the Bakhmut direction has escalated, the struggle for the initiative continues, said Anna Maliar, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine. According to her, the Russian military unsuccessfully tried to advance in this direction, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine achieved “certain” success. In Bakhmut itself, the Russian military is constantly shelling the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, trying to disrupt the logistics of the Ukrainian army and inflict maximum losses, Malyar said. In turn, Ukrainian servicemen, the deputy minister noted, also hit enemy positions and prevent him from moving around the city.
Exiled mayor: All hospitals in occupied Lysychansk re-purposed for military needs. All medical facilities in the occupied city of Lysychansk, Luhansk Oblast have been re-purposed as military hospitals for Russian troops, exiled Mayor Valerii Shybiko said on Priamyi TV channel on July 3.
Russia’s top election official has warned Putin that the Russian Federation may need to abandon plans to hold elections in the regions it claims to have annexed from Ukraine in September, depending on the military situation at the time. It is currently planned that the five regions would hold regional and municipal elections on 10 September, along with the rest of the Russian Federation. Reuters reports Ella Panfilova, who chairs Russia’s central election commission, told Putin “Since the situation is really difficult, anything can happen.”
Russia has brought 700,000 children from the conflict zones of Ukraine into Russian territory, the head of the international committee in the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, has said. Grigory Karasin said on his Telegram messaging channel late on Sunday:
In recent years, 700,000 children have found refuge with us, fleeing the bombing and shelling from the conflict areas in Ukraine.
New audio from Prigozhin: He said his "march for justice" was intended to "fight the traitors" and "mobilize society", promising that "you will soon see our next victories on the front". He did not specify which front or what kind of victories.
Putin’s recent comments about payments to the Wagner group was “like direct evidence” that Wagner’s mercenaries were an illegal arm of the Russian army in the war, Ukraine’s top prosecutor has told Reuters. Putin said last week that Wagner and its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had received almost £1.58bn ($2bn / €1.84bn) from Russia in the past year. Ukrainian prosecutor general Andriy Kostin made the comments in The Hague where he was attending the opening of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression on Monday. He said Putin’s comments about state spending on Wagner was “like direct evidence that they are not only de facto, but probably, illegally, also are part of the Russian army.” The use of mercenaries by states in armed conflict is banned under the Geneva Conventions.
According to Meduza, 3 Wagner bases are under construction in Belarus, claims a telegram channel close to the group . As stated in the post, the photographs show “the arrangement of one of the three bases near the village of Osipovichi, in the Belarusian Mogilev region.” The post also says that some of the mercenaries have already begun training and are practicing "tank maneuvers and maneuvers with heavy equipment at a training ground located a couple of kilometers to the south." (Photos: The Grey Zone)
Shoigu breaks silence on Wagner rebellion. Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made his first comment on the Wagner rebellion, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported on July 3. The minister highlighted the military's loyalty in the face of "provocations" and "destabilization attempts."
Ramzan Kadyrov is alive. There were rumours during the week that he was dead, but here he is doing a live stream on social media.
RIA Novosti reports that an object resembling a mine was found in a post office in central Moscow. Emergency services told RIA that more than 20 people were evacuated.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that there were “not too many hopes” the Black Sea grain deal would be extended, Reuters reports. The grain deal, which under Russia has guaranteed the safety of grain ships heading to and from Ukrainian ports through waters it controls, will expire on 18 July.
Owners of cars with Russian numbers have begun to complain about the confiscation of their vehicles in Germany: in some cases, the authorities consider the import of personal cars as an export of sanctioned goods from Russia to the EU. According to experts interviewed by RBC, such a strict interpretation of sanctions can lead to disputes and violation of property rights. According to the lawyer and partner of BGP Litigation, Sergey Glandin, the actions of the German authorities are the result of a rough reading of the sanctions rules. We are talking about the 833rd sectoral regulation, which formally prohibits the export from Russia to the European Union of goods specified in Appendix 21, which include cars.
Record collapse of gas production in Russia registered at -24% compared to pre-war period. In May 2023 Russia produced 48.2 billion cubic meters, a drop from May 2022 when it produced 57.5 bcm May 2021, and 63.1 billion cubic meters (source Rosstat).
China looks to hold regular drills with Russian Navy. China's Defense Minister Li Shangfu said he hopes for regular joint exercises and patrols by the Russian and the Chinese navies, Reuters reported on July 3.
Fareed Zakaria: Russia’s biggest problem is not that it’s losing the Ukraine war but that it’s losing the 21st century.
NEXTA: The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) has nominated Victor Bout for the next elections. The "arms dealer" topped the party's candidate list. In December 2022, Victor Bout, who had been convicted in the U.S. for arms trafficking, smuggling and supporting terrorism, was exchanged for American basketball player Brittney Griner. He spent 10 years in an American prison.
While Lukashenko was saying (for 6 minutes) about the importance of “July 3 for every Belarusian,” his sons were not even at the Mound of Glory, they were not in Belarus at all. Two government planes left the country yesterday:
• Boeing 737-800 (EW-001PA) flew to Beijing, probably with Viktor on board.
• Bombardier Challenger 850 (EW-301PJ) flew to Russia, Dmitry was on board and left the country ahead of the “main holiday.”
Nikolai, as Lukashenko himself said, went to study to Beijing.
Hanna Liubakova: Belarus Lukashenka changed the date of Independence Day to July 3, when Minsk was liberated by the Soviets in 1944, not when the USSR collapsed or when we have Freedom Day. This is Rahachou today. The Soviets are back, it seems. How sad it's to see this happening in my country.
BBC News: Shell still trading Russian gas despite pledge to stop. Oleg Ustenko, an adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, accused Shell of accepting "blood money". Shell said the trades were the result of "long-term contractual commitments" and do not violate laws or sanctions. As recently as 9 May, a vast tanker capable of carrying more than 160,000 cubic metres of gas compressed into liquid form - liquefied natural gas or LNG - pulled out of the port of Sabetta, on the Yamal peninsula in Russia's far north. That cargo was purchased by Shell before heading onwards to its ultimate destination, Hong Kong. It is one of eight LNG cargoes that Shell has bought from Yamal this year, according to data from the Kpler database analysed by Global Witness. [continue]
Robert Zubrin: “Currently we’re witnessing the First Space War. Ukraine is only holding because of space-based weaponry, reconnaissance assets.”
Currently we’re witnessing the First Space War. Ukraine is only holding because of space-based weaponry, space based communication systems, reconnaissance assets, space-assisted precision-guided munitions. Russia outnumbers Ukraine in terms of forces, soldiers, artillery. They are fighting with a mass. Ukraine is fighting back with precision-guided weapons. You sunk that Moscow cruiser thanks to the guided weapons. You didn’t shoot 50 missiles to hit it. You shot two missiles and both hit it.
Ukraine needs to have space capabilities. Right now Ukraine is using America’s space capabilities. But those availability depend on the whims of the American Administration.
Zelensky: ‘If Russian warships stay in Black Sea, they will fear to get close to Crimea.’ President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian Navy Commander Oleksiy Neizhpapa discussed the situation in the Black Sea, Russia's capabilities to launch missile strikes, and the defense capabilities of the Ukrainian Navy in Odesa Oblast on July 2.
President Zelensky has released a message on his official Telegram channel about his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz:
“We coordinated positions on the eve of the NATO Summit in Vilnius and discussed the formats of future security guarantees for Ukraine. I briefed him on the situation on the battlefield. We shared our assessments of the latest developments in Russia and Belarus and discussed the current state of the grain deal and the importance of its continuation.
I am particularly grateful for the active implementation of the previous €2.7 billion defense package and for the €8.8 billion multi-year defense support plan for Ukraine.”
Austria wants to join European air defense initiative over Russian threat. Austria wishes to join the European Sky Shiled initiative to protect against Russian wayward drones and missiles, Euroactiv wrote on July 3. The move has sparked discussions on the country's long-standing military neutrality.
Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nauseda, says there will have to be an upgrade of forward defense on NATO’s eastern flank. This in connection with the relocation of the Wagner group and Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus. More NATO soldiers are needed
Spiegel: Poland, Germany fail to agree on tank repair center for Ukraine. The Polish and German governments have so far failed to agree on opening a maintenance center in Poland to repair Leopard tanks supplied to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on July 2.
Ukrainian authorities have charged a former top security official with treason, Kyiv’s domestic intelligence agency said on Monday, Reuters reports. Oleh Kulinich, who headed the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) Crimea directorate, was arrested last July on accusations of recruiting other Russian-friendly operatives on orders from Moscow. Investigators said Kulinich was working for Russia’s Federal Security Service and was overseen by other former Ukrainian officials who had defected to Moscow.
An international office to investigate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine will open on Monday in The Hague, in the first step towards a possible tribunal for Moscow’s leadership. The International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression (ICPA) features prosecutors from Kyiv, the EU, the US and the international criminal court. It will investigate and gather evidence in a move seen as an interim step before the creation of a special tribunal that could bring Kremlin officials to justice for starting the Ukraine war.
FT: EU considers concessions for sanctioned Russian bank to protect grain deal. The EU is considering concessions for a sanctioned Russian bank to keep Moscow in the Black Sea grain deal, the Financial Times (FT) reported on July 3, citing unnamed sources.
Hungary will ask the EU for a one-year extension of an exemption from sanctions against Russia that allows refiner Slovnaft to export products refined from Russian oil to the Czech Republic, Reuters reports Hungary’s foreign minister said on Monday.
Reuters: As NATO welcomes new members in response to Russia's campaign, access to these new territories and their infrastructure opens ways for allies to watch and contain Moscow. The accession of Finland and soon Sweden is a chance to treat the whole of northwest Europe as one bloc.
Riots in France
I’ve held off posting anything about the rioting in France over the past 5 days because I couldn’t figure out if they were organic or piloted. I turned to Claire Berlinski at the Cosmopolitan Globalist and her colleagues because they live there and understand what’s happening. Claire suggests this reading: OPINION: Riots could become France's most dangerous crisis in decades, The Local. Reuters adds that less than 160 were arrested on Sunday night in connection to the riots.
Since Wednesday, social media feeds have been flooded by videos claiming that France was descending into civil war. I’ve seen this narrative in Italy: before Draghi was defenestrated, some dodgy accounts posted videos on social media in June and July 2022 claiming there were ‘mass protests’ in Rome and other Italian cities, and that Italians were flocking to mass demos in Rome hosted by the League Party, Matteo Salvini’s pro-Russian outfit. I couldn’t find anything in Italian media about the protests. We quickly tracked down the photos and videos posted and found that they were filmed or taken when Italy had won the European Cup. The Lega Party and Fratelli D’Italia rallies were dated back to 2018.
It turns out that the same account, Radio Genova, that had posted fake Italian protests in the summer of 2022 was also posting vidoes of racial violence in France. This is just one account: I’m sure there were many as Shayan Sardarizadeh at the BBC has discovered.
While John Lichfield points out that there are authentic “long-standing social problems of racism and violence” that are “clashing with the current political landscape”, there are also forces inside France that seek to destabilise French society, leadership, and put president Macron in the worst possible light for their own goals. Many of these videos are not organic so they indicate that some sort of information operation is underfoot. Information specialists in France, or those monitoring this activity, will be writing about it when they’ve gathered enough details so stay tuned.
President Macron has laid the blame on video games and emphasized less youth exposure to social media.
When I see the kind of online activity that exploded over the past few days, I always wonder if Russia is involved in some way. Madi Kapparov, an analyst, has said that it is difficult to prove. Kapparov added that there are indications that Russia may have been involved: the weapons which were confiscated from the rioters, and the gleeful reaction on Russian Telegram channels to the violence in France. The propaganda on the Russian-aligned channels were focused on three narratives: 1. payback for French liberals; 2. this is what happens when the West veers away from traditional values and 3. how can the West help Ukraine if it can’t help itself. To finish off, for most of the afternoon on Monday #MacronDissimission, #MacronResign and #FranceHasFallen were trending on Twitter, and videos of rogue rioters looting and burning everything in sight were prominent with these hashtags.
Russian children being brainwashed by propaganda at school—UkraineWorld
The Russian state has long been concerned with youth policy. Now textbooks will be used to help the Kremlin raise "loyal" citizens with the "correct" stance on the current Russo-Ukrainian war.
The textbook's approach to dealing with Ukraine-related topics began with removing all references to Ukraine.
Russian independent media Mediazona reported that on the first day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, editors of the Prosveshcheniye publishing house were directed to reduce references to Ukraine and Kyiv in Russian school textbooks. Prosveshcheniye is one of Russia's largest and oldest publishers of schoolbooks.
According to Mediazona's sources, this tendency has been in place since 2014, but even after years of "scrubbing", in 2022, editors had to censor an additional 15% of all texts.
In April 2022, Russia's Education Minister Sergei Kravtsov and Head of Russia's President's Administration Department for Public Projects, Vladislav Kononov, presented a new history textbook for the 11th grade with a chapter dedicated to the war in Ukraine.
Kononov noted that the history textbook is "not just a textbook on some subject, but a tool for protecting our traditions."
It was written in conjunction with Vladimir Medinsky, Russia's former Minister of Culture who also led the Russian delegation in negotiations with Ukraine in Belarus at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Anatoly Torkunov, a Soviet and Russian diplomat and rector of Moscow's State Institute of International Relations.
The relevant pages from the textbook were featured as a backdrop on the screen, allowing us to see some snippets of its contents. [continue]
The textbook then delves into the reasons for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is the United States that sought to "maintain their domination at a time when it's economic, political and moral positions were considerably weakened" and "took the course aimed at undermining the positions of those states capable of challenging their hegemony" (Russia and China).
Be careful on July 4th kids…
On Cardinal Zuppi’s mission to Moscow
Papal envoy cardinal Matteo Zuppi said on Sunday his mission to Moscow on the Ukraine war was focused on humanitarian issues and had not involved any discussions of a peace plan.
Pope Francis had in May asked Zuppi, head of the Italian bishops’ conference, to carry out a peace mission to try to help end the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported.
Zuppi met one of president Vladimir Putin’s advisers, Yuri Ushakov, and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, patriarch Kirill, in Moscow this week. Earlier in June, he also visited Kyiv for talks with president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
All the meetings “were important, especially in humanitarian aspects, which are what we have focused on. There is not a peace plan, not a mediation”, Zuppi told state broadcaster RAI.
“There is a big aspiration that the violence will end and that human life can be preserved, starting with the protection of the little ones”, he said, adding he would meet with Pope Francis in coming days to discuss the outcome of the meetings he had held.
This is the official line. There has been criticism expressed about the Cardinal’s visit, especially since he met with Maria Lvova Belova, wanted by the ICC for war crimes. The pictures of the Cardinal’s visit with Belova showed a smiling Cardinal.