Jun 2 Buonasera Mag
Severodonetsk, US weapons to Ukraine, Merkel, Russian 'failure to pay', new oil fields, Russia's geo-political mind, Denisova, Russia Media Monitor
Happy Festa della Repubblica Italy!
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…
Street fighting rages in the eastern city of Severodonetsk, largely under the control of Russian troops.
Lugansk’s regional head Serhiy Haidai: "It's extremely dangerous" to carry out evacuation operations, he's told Ukrainian TV, urging civilians not to make any attempts whatsoever to leave their shelters.
Ukrainian FM Kuleba tweeted this morning: “Grateful to the U.S. and personally to my friend @SecBlinken for this important decision that we have all worked so intensively to make a reality. Advanced American systems will help our brave Armed Forces to defend Ukrainian land from Russian invaders.”
Ukraine fans celebrate historic win in Glasgow & in the trenches: Scotland 1- Ukraine 3.
Russian troops dress in Ukrainian army uniform to hunt for activists in largely-occupied Kherson Oblast. According to Ukraine’s military, Russians visit Ukrainian civilians and if they provide information about the positions of the Russian forces, the invaders kidnap them.
Ukraine’s military reported that the Russians are losing drones, and they have already begun using the ones owned by the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
Reuters reports that Russia in "failure to pay" credit event, investor committee says.
U.S. 'will not' pressure Kyiv, in private or in public, to make any territorial concessions, senior admin official says. "Ukraine's talks with Russia are not stalled now because Ukraine has turned its back on diplomacy; the Russians have actually shown no interest in good faith".
Slovakia will deliver eight self-propelled Zuzana 2 Howitzers to Ukraine, the defence ministry in Bratislava has said.
At an event in Berlin, Mrs Merkel who stepped down at the end of 2021, backed the work of the German government, the EU, US, Nato and others aimed at finding "an end to this barbaric war". "My solidarity goes to Ukraine, attacked and invaded by Russia, and to supporting its right to self-defence."
Germany's FM Baerbock has accused Russia of waging a war in the east of the country designed to wipe out any opposition and flatten civilisation. "First the missiles, then the planes with artillery, then the warplanes with artillery, and then, when everything is flattened, the tanks roll in," she told the German parliament.
The Netherlands and Germany will develop a new gas field in the North Sea together. This was announced by the Dutch government the day after Gazprom stopped gas supplying.
Apple is set to move some iPad production capacity out of China and to Vietnam instead as reported by the Spectator Index.
Kseniya Kirillova, Shrinking Russia Seeks China’s Aid
Russia and China are locked into an increasingly close embrace. That is partly because the two regimes share an ambition to torpedo the US-created global rules-based order, and its dominant currency — the dollar. Trade between the two soared by almost 30% in the first quarter of the year, fueled by significant shipments of coal to China, amid mutual expressions of affection and pledges of increasing strategic cooperation.
Andrew Wilson, Inside the Russian geopolitical mind: Pseudo-justifications behind the war in Ukraine
For Schmitt, the world is divided into different Großräume (“Great Spaces”); Russia prefers to talk of “civilisations”. The relevant civilisation for Russia and Ukraine is the “Russian World”. This is sometimes defined as the whole post-Soviet space; sometimes as the east Slavic core of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus; sometimes the Orthodox world; sometimes the Russian Orthodox world; sometimes the world of Russian-speakers; sometimes the “Russian-thinking” world.
The Russian Media Monitor
Helene Cooper, Russian Military Is Repeating Mistakes in Eastern Ukraine, U.S. Says
The Russian military, beaten down and demoralized after three months of war, is making the same mistakes in its campaign to capture a swath of eastern Ukraine that forced it to abandon its push to take the entire country, senior American officials say.
Former US Army Commander in Europe, Ben Hodges said in an interview with THC.ua that, "By the end of the summer, the UA Armed Forces will move to a counteroffensive in the Donbas. The situation with logistics in Ukraine is improving day by day, while in Russia it is slowly deteriorating."
Denisova fired
When initially reported, some media outlets had stated that the reason for Denisova’s dismissal was because she had exaggerated on the number of rapes at the hands of the Russian forces. Verify before posting. That’s not the story.
On our LiberiOltre show WTF last night, Livia and I spoke with Ilario Pegnarelli and Vadym Vetrov. Both confirmed that journalists are targets in Ukraine.
Decode 39, Salvini’s trip to Moscow and the endurance of the Italian government
The League’s leader is defending his announcement of a “peace trip” to Moscow and his meetings with Ambassador Razov. All of this was carried out without the government’s involvement, which raises questions about its health.
Krutov & Schreck, 'A Very Big Secret': Boat Crews Link Alleged Putin Superyacht To Russian Tycoons' Other Vessels
A superyacht that Kremlin opponents claim secretly belongs to Russian President Vladimir Putin shared the same construction manager and European crew members as several other yachts owned by Russian tycoons that Western governments have either seized or targeted with sanctions, an investigation by RFE/RL has found.
We’re signing off…thanks for reading…
Mo & Scott