Jun 4 Buonasera Mag
Fierce battles in Severodonetsk, Skete of All Saints, Macron, Sanctions hit Russia, Baryshnikov letter, Estonia
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…
In the key city of Severodonetsk, Ukraine says it has recaptured part of the territory that was lost to Russian forces. Moscow is increasing air strikes in the eastern Donbas region - the focus of its fight - UK military intelligence says.
According to Yuriy Kotenok, on June 3, the Ukrainian forces launched a counterattack in the area of Severodonetsk, as a result of which Rosgvardia's "Kadyrovtsy" units suffered unknown losses.
Russian forces have shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane near the Black Sea port of Odesa, as well as hitting an artillery training centre in the Sumy region in a missile strike, Moscow says.
Ukraine’s intelligence services are in communication with the captured Azovstal steelworks fighters and Kyiv is doing all it can to ensure their release, according to Ukraine’s interior minister, Denys Monastyrskiy.
Bloomberg: Russian default won’t win the war. In its recent editorial, Bloomberg wrote that keeping financial pressure on Russia is “justified" but "is no game-changer,” adding that the West should target Russia's main economic vulnerability, exports of oil and gas.
CNN: Amid some slow gains by Russia in eastern Ukraine, US officials have been meeting regularly with the British and Europeans to discuss potential frameworks for a ceasefire and/or a negotiated settlement. Ukraine is not directly involved in those discussions.
Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two Russian men accused of assassinating the former spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London, died of Covid in a Moscow hospital on Saturday.
In an interview with French newspapers published today, French president Macron cautioned that the West "must not humiliate Russia". This was important "so that the day when the fighting stops we can build an exit ramp through diplomatic means". "I am convinced that it is France's role to be a mediating power," he said. It is rumoured that Macron has spoke to Putin for 100 hours since February 24.
FT, ‘Everything is gone’: Russian business hit hard by tech sanctions
Russian companies have been plunged into a technological crisis by western sanctions that have created severe bottlenecks in the supply of semiconductors, electrical equipment and the hardware needed to power the nation’s data centres.
More fires in Russia
The victims of a fire in a business center in Moscow has increased to four.
Catherine Belton, Putin thinks West will blink first in war of attrition, Russian elites say
Russia is deliberately seeking to create high prices, mass hunger and a new flow of refugees to destablise Europe. And that’s how Putin plans to ‘win’.
David Rothkopf, How Biden Can Help Ukraine Win the Long War
The real test of the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy is yet to come. For all the support it has shown the Zelensky government—and in terms of military aid that support has been unprecedented—it is what will happen in the months ahead that will determine whether Biden and his team will be viewed as having successfully risen to what is very likely the defining foreign policy challenge of the president’s first term in office.
Mikhail Baryshnikov's Open Letter to Vladimir Putin
Mister President,
Your cronies, seized by fear, were ordered to ban our website — the website of TRUE RUSSIA. Their fear is so very predictable. But it is this very fear that invests us with greater confidence in our chosen path.
In my childhood, the role of occupant was imposed upon me, the son of a Russian officer in Latvia, yet it didn’t stick. I learned the Latvian language, and at the age of 26, rejected all roles that your thin-necked precursors tried to impose upon me. I rejected them forever. I have lived as a person of the free world for almost 50 years now – with no roles forced onto me by others, and without fear, but people still consider me Russian, as they consider my friend Boris Akunin a Russian writer, and Sergei Guriev a Russian economist.
People like us have brought more honor to the Russian world than all of your not-so-precise precision-guided munitions. Your Russian world, the world of fear, the world in which they burn Ukrainian textbooks, will not live on as long as there are people like us — True Russians immunized from the disease of fear. It is our world that will live on despite all your bans, and it is your Russia that will die from its own horror unless it wakes up.
You know what you fear. You know whose munitions are precise.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
Reid Standish- Interview: What's Next For Finland, Sweden's NATO Bids?
Finland and Sweden’s historic moves to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine currently face opposition from Turkey, which is threatening to veto the enlargement of the military alliance.
The Turkish resistance stems from accusations launched by Ankara that both countries are harboring people linked to groups it deems terrorists, including the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and has taken issue with Helsinki and Stockholm’s decisions to halt arms exports to Turkey in 2019.
Wagner Group patch
“Death is our business and business is going well.”
Estonia’s PM calls for new government talks as coalition collapses
Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, has called for talks on a new government after her ruling coalition fell apart, urging unity because of security concerns over neighbouring Russia. “More than ever, Estonia needs a functioning government based on common values,” Kallas said on Friday, according to the Baltic news agency. “The security situation in Europe does not give me any opportunity as prime minister to continue cooperation with the Centre party.”
Remember them
Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989
We’re signing off. Thanks for reading…
Mo & Scott