Jun 28: E-Stories
RUattacksUA CombatSit BehindLines FR InRussia Allies PresDebate Euro2024 A&P ISW UKDef CDS Noel TimesRad Daractenus Kallas FT EUvsDISINFO CNN CSPAN LeMonde Obaji Avdeeva
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…
CDS: According to information provided by the Situation Center of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Russian forces shelled 12 regions of Ukraine over the past day. A total of 134 towns and villages and 259 infrastructure objects were attacked with various types of weapons. The number of casualties is being updated/clarified.
Russia hits nine-story residential building in downtown Dnipro, killing at least 1, injuring 5. At least one person was killed and five other injured, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said. The Russian attack destroyed four floors of the building.
Russia attacks Kharkiv with FAB-500 gliding bomb for first time, injuring 4. Russian troops attacked the city of Kharkiv with a FAB-500 bomb on June 26 for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale war, said Oleksandr Filchakov, head of the regional prosecutor's office. At least four people were injured and two more suffered from shock. Photo published by Maria Avdeeva
Russia struck the Odesa region with a ballistic missile, likely an "Iskander-M" with a cluster charge, setting fire to a wheat field. The fire has been extinguished, and there are no reported casualties or significant destruction. The extent of the damage is still being assessed.
The following video is a Russian promotional clip, a psychological warfare action, which shows that they intend to capture Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Chasiv Yar. From Ukrainian commentators we learn that this is the first thing that the Russians do when they occupy territory: they change the road signs into Russian.
Combat Situation Update
Ukraine repels Russian troops from eastern Chasiv Yar neighborhood, military says. Ukrainian troops pushed Russian forces out of the Kanal neighbourhood in the town of Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson for the Khortytsia group of forces, told Interfax Ukraine on June 21.
The Ukrainian Defense Forces hold the initiative on the Kharkiv direction and are close to seizing it in the Chasiv Yar area.
ISW: Slow and grinding Russian offensive operations in the Toretsk direction are in line with Putin's articulated theory of victory that posits that Russian forces will be able to continue gradual creeping advances indefinitely, prevent Ukraine from conducting successful operationally.
Russian forces have committed only limited forces to this operation so far, which suggests that Russian forces continue to prioritize gradual advances through consistent grinding assaults over operationally significant gains through rapid maneuver.
Russian offensive operations in the Toretsk direction suggest that the Russian military command does not consider a large-scale operation to advance towards Kostyantynivka from multiple operational directions feasible.
The West must proactively provide Ukrainian forces with the necessary equipment and weapons at the scale, timing, and regularity that Ukrainian forces require for operations that liberate significant swaths of occupied Ukraine and challenge Putin's belief that he can gradually subsume Ukraine should rapid total victory appear unreachable.
Ukrainian Artillery Group TIVAZ may have destryed an S-500 air defense radar by cluster ATACMS. This would be the first confirmed destruction of elements of this complex. Budanov recently confirmed Russia shipped this system to occupied Crimea.
Russia's offensive aimed to capture territory to bring heavy artillery closer to Kharkiv or even march on the city. However, within weeks, the offensive stalled in Vovchansk. Ukrainian forces, reportedly defeated the elite Russian 83rd Airborne Brigade, which has retreated after a costly three-week deployment.
ISW: Russia may have formed another combined arms army for deployment in Ukraine.
"The Russian military is currently undergoing large-scale reforms, however, including the creation of new combined arms army level formations, and Ukrainian sources' references to a '51st Army' may constitute an early indicator that Russia has formed another combined arms army for deployment to Ukraine."
Russia has sent around 10,000 immigrants who recently received citizenship to join military fighting in Ukraine, official says. In October 2023, Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin suggested that individuals who recently received Russian passports but declined to serve in the military could have their citizenship revoked.
ISW: Ukraine is beginning to receive the US military aid passed in April in enough quantity to allow it to more reliably stabilize its lines. Meanwhile, RUS is applying constant pressure across the frontline in Donetsk.
Behind the Lines
The Burshtynska Thermal Power Plant in the Ivano-Frankivsk region cannot be restored after being damaged, according to regional head Svetlana Onischuk. As a result, the city of Burshtyn may face a lack of hot water and heating during winter.
Lithuanian customs discover scheme to violate sanctions, export cars to Russia. The EU instituted a ban on the export of all new and used cars above a certain engine size (greater than 1.900 cm³) to Russia in the immediate aftermath of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Vienna has become 'Russia's new espionage hub,' intelligence officials tell WSJ.
"We are now becoming a liability for our neighbors because Russia is using us as an operational base," an Austrian intelligence official told the Wall Street Journal.
Ukraine to take part in special ASEAN conference, in first.
"An important event will be held in Jakarta on June 26 for the first time - a conference of ambassadors of countries that have joined the TAC (Treaty of Amity and Cooperation - ed.) in Southeast Asia," Hamianin said.
Le Monde: Man arrested with explosives near Paris airport was part of vast Russian sabotage campaign
The building targeted by the Russian-Ukrainian man, who was wounded on June 3 while making an explosive device in his hotel room, located near the Paris region's Charles de Gaulle international airport, was not a strategic one. Le Monde has learned the initial results of the investigation into the man indicate that he was preparing to attack an outlet of the home improvement store chain Bricorama, located in a commercial zone north of the French capital. His planned act was, however, part of a vast sabotage campaign orchestrated in Moscow, which targeted several European countries.
In the late afternoon of June 3, a sturdily-built 26-year-old man, a Ukrainian and Russian dual national, was taken to a hospital by firefighters, after suffering burns to his upper body, face and head. He initially said that they had been caused by an accidental explosion. However, the curious conditions of the incident and the man's suspicious profile led the emergency services to report the matter to law enforcement authorities, who quickly referred the case to France's domestic intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI). [continue]
Hackers from Cyber Resistance have hacked the email of Alexei Zaklyazminsky, one of the six personal assistants to Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council and Russia’s President from 2008 to 2012.
It is noted that the hacking of Dmitry Medvedev's entourage's correspondence took place at the beginning of 2024, and the hackers monitored Zaklyazminsky's email for six months.
Some of the obtained information is currently not subject to disclosure and is being used in the interests of the Ukrainian defence forces. However, some facts have been made public on the website of the InformNapalm.
The IN said that Zaklyazminsky's email documentation shows that Medvedev is involved in the process of transitioning the Russian economy to a wartime footing.
Meanwhile in Russia
Heads Up: The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Bastrykin, suggested canceling the moratorium on the death penalty. He stated that only the order of Putin is sufficient for this.
Sanctioned Russian Interior Minister attends UN meeting in New York. The U.S. announced sanctions against Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and other top Russian officials on Feb. 25, 2022, the day after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. Despite being sanctioned, Kolokoltsev does not appear on the U.S. Treasury's list of individuals barred from entering the U.S.
CBC News: A Caribbean shell company has smuggled at least $80 million worth of electronics into Russia under the disguise of a Canadian address, according to leaked Russian trade filings obtained by CBC News.
The scheme appears to be part of a Kremlin initiative involving a covert web of multinational buyers and producers that source sanctioned technologies from Western countries, the majority of which come from Chinese stockpiles and manufacturers, to help produce weapons for Russia's war with Ukraine.
"My initial reaction was that this looked like a really egregious breach of [Canada's sanction regime]," said Jessica Davis, an Ottawa-based financial crimes expert who viewed the data and previously worked with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
EBAM, Cameroon—It was the “most barbaric” act of violence Nas Ali said he has witnessed since the Central African Republic (CAR) welcomed Russian mercenaries from the infamous Wagner Group, which some have called Vladimir Putin’s “private army,” about four years ago.
While having a conversation with a female friend under a mango tree about 50 meters away from his home, and having a good view of his compound from where they both stood in the western CAR village of Bèzèrè, the 32-year-old said he watched from afar as about a dozen Russian paramilitaries, who appeared from nowhere, dragged the wives of two of his neighbors out of the compound, stabbed them in their abdomen and then disemboweled the two women.
“The women were screaming and begging for mercy,” Ali, who now lives as a refugee in Cameroon, told The Daily Beast. “The white soldiers [as many in CAR refer to Wagner mercenaries as] didn’t listen. They killed the women and removed their stomach and intestines.”
The incident, according to Ali and another witness, occurred on Dec. 6 last year. They said at least six other women in Bèzèrè were killed in the same manner across the village.
“As I was leaving the village, I saw the body of a woman who was pregnant,” Malik Tete, a 29-year-old bricklayer who fled Bèzèrè to Cameroon after the incident, told The Daily Beast. “They had cut her open, removed her baby and her intestines and left them on top of her dead body.” [continue]
Allied Support
Ukraine has signed 20 security agreements with allies, including the EU and the USA. These agreements will result in international partners providing Ukraine with military support worth €60 billion over the next four years, Prime Minister Shmyhal reports.
Politico: EU leaders greenlit former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa to be the next president of the European Council on Thursday and backed Estonia’s Kaja Kallas to be the bloc’s next top diplomat, three EU diplomats told Politico.
On Tuesday, six negotiators from the three main centrist political groups approved von der Leyen, Costa and Kallas for the roles. On Thursday, the other leaders supported those decisions.
Earlier in the week, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made clear to the other leaders she was angry about being left out of the negotiations, given that her political grouping in European Parliament is now the third largest after June’s European election. On Thursday night, she abstained from supporting a second term for von der Leyen and she voted against Costa and Kallas.
Now, von der Leyen faces a knife-edge vote in the European Parliament, which even her own party allies admit will be more of a challenge to pull off in comparison. That vote could come as soon as July 18.
Jun 27: President Zelensky met with out-going NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg at NATO headquarters yesterday.
The key focus was on preparations for the NATO Washington Summit. We expect decisions to enhance the Alliance's role in coordinating security assistance and training for Ukrainian troops, as well as long-term financial commitments to ensure stable support for Ukraine.
Ukraine receives another $2 billion tranche from EU's Ukraine Facility, PM Shmyhal says. The total budgetary support for Ukraine from the EU so far in 2024 has "reached nearly 8 billion euros ($8.6 billion)," Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said, adding that there is "more to come."
Finland announces $170 million in new military aid for Ukraine. The total amount of military assistance Finland has provided Ukraine now stands at 2.2 billion euros ($2.3 billion), the Finnish Defense Ministry said.
Poland, Czechia, Germany ask EU to help cover expenses for hosting refugees from Ukraine, Bloomberg reports. The leaders of three states sent a joint letter with their request for funding to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
FT: Ukraine, US, Israel in talks to send up to 8 Patriot systems to Kyiv. The outlines of the deal, which is not yet finalized, have been discussed between ministers and senior officials of the three nations, unnamed sources told the Financial Times. It may include Patriot systems being sent from Israel to the U.S. and then to Ukraine.
US Dept of State official readout regarding Hungary’s “Defence of National Sovereignty Act”:
The United States is deeply concerned by the Hungarian government’s implementation of the “Defense of National Sovereignty Act,” including this week’s draconian actions by the recently established “Sovereignty Protection Office” to target the operations of civil society and independent media organizations. The Hungarian government’s attempt to harass, intimidate, and punish independent organizations runs counter to the principles of democratic governance rooted in the rule of law. This law places no limit on this entity’s ability to target the human rights and fundamental freedoms of its own citizens and puts at risk any country, business entity, or individual that chooses to engage with them. The United States will continue to advocate for the protection of civil society organizations and media freedom in the face of these anti-democratic measures.
Daniel Freund, a German Green MEP, has sent a letter with 20,000 signatures to the European Council president calling for the upcoming Hungarian presidency of the Council of the EU to be suspended.
French election news: French President Emmanuel Macron does not want to rule out that French soldiers will also go to Ukraine in the long term, but far-right prime ministerial candidate Jordan Bardella thinks differently. "If I become prime minister, no soldiers will be sent to Ukraine." Bardella wants to continue supporting Ukraine in the fight against Russia.
Bardella also said Thursday: “I will not let Russian imperialism absorb an allied state like Ukraine,” Bardella said in a televised debate, pledging both “support for Ukraine and avoiding an escalation with Russia”.
EUvsDisinfo: Pro-Kremlin info manipulation intensifies 72h before the French elections. New website “France en colere” as part of Operation False Façade promotes a false site impersonating the political coalition Ensemble. Read more about this network.
AP: Bolivian general who appeared to lead failed coup is arrested. Just hours after the spectacle, the Bolivian general who appeared to be behind the rebellion, Juan José Zúñiga, was arrested after the attorney general opened an investigation against him.
The Financial Times: Chinese money launderers are facilitating the fentanyl epidemic and helping international drug traffickers, like Mexican cartels and the Italian mafia, launder the proceeds of crime. The FT investigates the connection between capital flight from China and global organised crime.
The Economist: China has become a scientific superpower
In the atrium of a research building at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (cas) in Beijing is a wall of patents. Around five metres wide and two storeys high, the wall displays 192 certificates, positioned in neat rows and tastefully lit from behind. At ground level, behind a velvet rope, an array of glass jars contain the innovations that the patents protect: seeds.
cas—the world’s largest research organisation—and institutions around China produce a huge amount of research into the biology of food crops. In the past few years Chinese scientists have discovered a gene that, when removed, boosts the length and weight of wheat grains, another that improves the ability of crops like sorghum and millet to grow in salty soils and one that can increase the yield of maize by around 10%. In autumn last year, farmers in Guizhou completed the second harvest of genetically modified giant rice that was developed by scientists at cas.
The Chinese Communist Party (ccp) has made agricultural research—which it sees as key to ensuring the country’s food security—a priority for scientists. Over the past decade the quality and the quantity of crop research that China produces has grown immensely, and now the country is widely regarded as a leader in the field. According to an editor of a prestigious European plant-sciences journal, there are some months when half of the submissions can come from China.
A journey of a thousand miles
The rise of plant-science research is not unique in China. In 2019 The Economist surveyed the research landscape in the country and asked whether China could one day become a scientific superpower. Today, that question has been unequivocally answered: “yes”. Chinese scientists recently gained the edge in two closely watched measures of high-quality science, and the country’s growth in top-notch research shows no sign of slowing. The old science world order, dominated by America, Europe and Japan, is coming to an end.
One way to measure the quality of a country’s scientific research is to tally the number of high-impact papers produced each year—that is, publications that are cited most often by other scientists in their own, later work. In 2003 America produced 20 times more of these high-impact papers than China, according to data from Clarivate, a science analytics company (see chart 1). By 2013 America produced about four times the number of top papers and, in the most recent release of data, which examines papers from 2022, China had surpassed both America and the entire European Union (eu).
Metrics based on citations can be gamed, of course. Scientists can, and do, find ways to boost the number of times their paper is mentioned in other studies, and a recent working paper, by Qui Shumin, Claudia Steinwender and Pierre Azoulay, three economists, argues that Chinese researchers cite their compatriots far more than Western researchers do theirs. But China now leads the world on other benchmarks that are less prone to being gamed. It tops the Nature Index, created by the publisher of the same name, which counts the contributions to articles that appear in a set of prestigious journals. To be selected for publication, papers must be approved by a panel of peer reviewers who assess the study’s quality, novelty and potential for impact. When the index was first launched, in 2014, China came second, but its contribution to eligible papers was less than a third of America’s. By 2023 China had reached the top spot. [continue]
The Biden-Trump Debate
I’m not American, so what follows is my opinion for what it’s worth. Americans will decide who they would like as their next president.
While in the first 30 minutes, Biden’s problems did come to the fore, and they are concerning, he should not have accepted doing a debate with someone who is a criminal. Biden put himself on an equal footing to someone who failed during a health emergency and who triggered a coup.
CNN should also have done their job, and held Trump and Biden to account for any lies, misinformation or bent statistics they put to the audience at home. The information needs to be debunked immediately or it will travel the world in a nano-second never to be rectified again. That goes for both candidates. They did bebunk Trump’s lies afterwards.
What saddens me is that the GOP would phathom putting a criminal on the ticket, knowing full well that he’s beholdened to foreign powers, and believes the presidency is there for his personal gain. I’m saddened by the total amnesia that has hit the American media and citizens, who have forgotten how Trump performed during his previous presidency.
The following clip addresses Biden’s disastrous performance. I usually listen to what Claire says because she is generally balanced, and true to form, she’s truthful in this segment. The Democrats today are scrambling and extremely worried. They expressed disbelief on social media and in private text messages. Some called on Biden to step aside for a younger candidate.
What Trump said about Russia’s war in Ukraine:
Former President Donald Trump claimed that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if he had been in power, and that he would decide the Ukraine conflict before his potential inauguration. He criticized Ukrainian President Zelenskyi for taking $60 billion from the US, called Putin's conditions regarding Ukraine unacceptable, and pointed out that Europe spends less to support Ukraine compared to the US. Trump also claimed that if Biden wins the upcoming election, there will be nothing left of the United States, calling him the worst president in history. The debate started with the opponents not shaking hands.
President Biden spoke at a rally today in South Carolina:
President Biden: "I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to... I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job...I know like millions of Americans know; when you get knocked down you get back up!"
CNN: Supreme Court limits obstruction charges against January 6 rioters
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Justice Department overstepped by charging hundreds of people who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, with obstruction in a decision that could force prosecutors to reopen some of those cases.
At the same time, the high court ruled that the charge could be filed against the rioters if prosecutors are able to demonstrate they were attempting not just to push their way into the building but rather to stop the arrival of certificates used to count electoral votes and certify the results of the election.
The high court’s decision means that special counsel Jack Smith is likely to continue to pursue the same charge against former President Donald Trump.
EuroCup 2024
The quarter final roster for the next four days is out for E-Stories’s football fans or those (like me) that like international matches. Living in Italy means you can’t get around the Italian matches: the world stops up and down the peninsula.
"...he should not have accepted doing a debate with someone who is a criminal. Biden put himself on an equal footing to someone who failed during a health emergency and who triggered a coup." - Agree. Nor should he have appeared in front of an international audience when less than 100% healthy.