Jul 6 Buonasera Mag
Day 133 Ukraine: Slovanynsk, HIMARS, Donetsk evacuation, eastern flank shoring up, expulsion RU agents Germany, Austria, Hungary, Norway, Moutet's French Lesson, Yikes Boris, David Pepper on EF
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…
The governor of the Donetsk region has also urged 350,000 civilians to evacuate in light of an imminent Russian offensive. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that getting people out is necessary to save lives and to enable the Ukrainian army to better defend towns from the Russian advance.
On Telegram, Haidai said: “Today’s videos from Lysychansk are painful to watch.” He accused Putin’s troops of engaging in a scorched earth policy, “burning down and destroying everything on their way”.
Ukraine has rejected a claim by Russia’s defence ministry that Moscow’s armed forces had destroyed two advanced US-made HIMARS rocket systems and their ammunition depots in eastern Ukraine.
Arbitrary detention of civilians is growing in parts of Ukraine held by Russian military & affiliated armed groups. Currently, 270 cases were documented based on information from monitors’ field visits & interviews conducted with over 500 victims & witnesses of human rights violations.
Latvia will reinstate compulsory military service to counter Russia threat. Serious discussions about a return to conscription in Latvia occurred in early February as the Ukraine invasion loomed.
Britain will send 10 more self-propelled artillery systems and suicide drones to Ukraine. These arms transfers were the most significant outcome of Boris Johnson's call today with Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russia's military is reportedly preparing for a new phase of its gradual Ukraine invasion, and after nearly five months of sustained personnel and equipment losses, a key Russian official just reconfirmed Vladimir Putin's initial goals of capturing and occupying Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv.
Russia keeps amassing troops at Ukraine border, forms 3rd Army Corps: up to 4,000 manpower and up to 300 firepower units. This is not enough to launch an offensive operation toward Kyiv, but the formation of the 15,500-strong 3rd Army Corps based in Mulino, Nizhny Novgorod region, is underway in the Western Military District.
Keep your eyes on Norwary-Russia relations now and the possibility of a Russian attack against Norwary. The fact is that Norway is an important energy supplier, an alternative to Russia in dependence on Europe.
Russian occupied Donetsk seizes two foreign flagged ships in Mariupol as state property. Seizures of this kind could escalate if Turkey's seizure of a ship carrying smuggled Russian grain becomes a recurring trend.
Belarus army threatens to strike Poland military infrastructures AGAIN in case of "provocations" against the country.
The German security authorities now officially have about 200 Russian secret agents operating in Germany. But the total number of Putin's spies in this country is probably much higher, writes Bild.
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock declines meeting with Russian nonsense pronouncer Lavrov. For this, the German political opposition whines that "she is not doing her job".
Austria begins ejecting Gazprom from its Haidach gas storage facility.
The body of the director of the contractor company 'Gazprom', Yurii Voronov, was found in the pool of an elite village near Vyborg.
Hungarian FM: Hungary doesn't deliver weapons to Ukraine to protect Hungarian citizens from Russia. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told CNN that Hungary didn't want to put 150,000 Hungarians living in the west of Ukraine at risk of being attacked by Russia.
Ukrainian leaders told a major international summit that their devastated country needs $750 billion for a three-stage reconstruction plan following Russia’s full-scale invasion and destruction of its cities and infrastructure.
If the Russian State Duma abrogates its 2010 treaty with Norway, it could seek to reclaim 175,000 square kilometers of the Barents Sea from Norway A major escalation between Russia and Norway in the Arctic looms over Svalbard.
Daily Beast, Putin’s Lies Have Kremlin TV Flailing and Fighting On-Air
Instead of helping Putin’s regime, the angry bluster by the state media’s propagandists only highlights the senselessness of a conflict that even Russia’s own population struggles to grasp. The cartoonish promises of taking over the world fail to overshadow the fact that Russia’s economy is descending into the abyss. No territorial gains could ever justify the unbearable human toll.
WaPo, After invasion of Ukraine, a reckoning on Russian influence in Austria
“Polizei!” barked the officers who stormed a third-floor apartment in the Austrian capital, moving to intercept a thickset man standing near a kitchen nook. The suspect — a long-serving official in Austria’s security services — sprang toward his cellphone and tried to break it in two, according to Austrian police reports.
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, A French lesson for Blair and Bush
Predictably, perhaps, the post World Trade Center transatlantic love affair soured fast. Dominique de Villepin, Chirac’s grand-standing Foreign Secretary (an obsessive collector of Napoleoniana, he has taken on some of the traits of his hero), came to speak to the UN General Assembly one year after the attacks, on 12 September 2002, and again on 14 February 2003, to urge jaw-jaw and not war.
WaPo, Opinion Vladimir Kara-Murza: Prison doesn’t give me many views of the sun
June is my favorite month in Moscow. Summer has finally arrived, but the heat is not as overwhelming as it can be in July or August. The days are long. And the Boulevard Ring — the circular road around the center of the city — is covered with the rich foliage of lindens, poplars and maples. The Boulevard Ring is among the most picturesque areas of Moscow; there was a time when I took the tram along it every day, to school and back. In recent years I haven’t taken it very often, but on the day of my arrest in April, I happened to drive home along the ring, as if saying farewell.
Yikes Boris— The Game of Thrones moment
Will Boris face the shame of getting booted out or will be resign before that happens?
Between 6pm on Tuesday and 4pm on Wednesday 38 MPs resigned from the government. I’m following this closely and it doesn’t seem he’ll survive the end of the day.
16:39— Boris Johnson admits (for the first time?) that he met with former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev without officials when he was Foreign Secretary – days after a crucial NATO summit on the Salisbury poisonings.
17:56— a delegation of 4 cab ministers - Zahawi, Schapps, Hart and Lewis (who is currently in Belfast) have made it clear to chief whip it’s time for PM to go. This trio say his position now untenable. They have told him that it’s best to resign and not face the shame of getting booted out.
18:24—1922 Committee will not change the rules for now but it may be changed on Monday in a meeting.
Programming Note
EuroFile@6 is pleased to announce that Scott and I will be talking with David Pepper, ex-chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, best selling author of ‘Laboratories of Autocracy’, and the king of the whiteboard democracy explainers.
We’ll be talking about the current threats to democracy in the US and in Europe.
We’re signing off. Thanks for reading…
Mo & Scott