Mar 10: Buonasera Mag
Day 380: UASitRep Georgia Kharkiv Kyiv Lviv Kinburn ZNPP Run! Transdneistria Pavel UN Portugal ForwardBank USIntel China Tucker-A&Ps-Nechepurenko Eckel DFRLab Dominion Passantino Browder NATO
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…
Russia launches mass attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Explosions were reported in the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, and Zhytomyr, as well as Poltava, Lviv, Vinnytsia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil and Odesa oblasts amid a mass Russian attack overnight on March 9. The attacks killed four in Lviv Oblast, injured two in Kyiv, and injured six people in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
On Thursday, Ukraine’s air force has issued a statement via Telegram on the wave of attacks from Russia overnight. In it, it claims that “the defence forces of Ukraine destroyed 34 cruise missiles … as well as 4 ‘Shahed-136/131’ unmanned aerial vehicles”. It claims that a total of 48 Kalibr-type cruise missiles had been fired by Russia.
Maksym Kozytskyi, governor of Lviv, has announced that a fifth person has been killed in overnight strikes. He posted to Telegram to say:
The number of people killed as a result of the fall of the rocket in the Zolochiv district has increased to five. The body of another man, born in 1963, was discovered under the rubble.
Oleh Synyehubov, governor of Kharkiv, has provided this update via Telegram on the situation overnight in his region. He wrote:
The enemy launched a massive rocket attack on Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region. At least 15 arrivals of S-300 missiles were recorded. Critical infrastructure objects are hit. In addition, a civil infrastructure object was damaged in the city of Kharkiv.
Speaking to the BBC, the Ukrainian MP Inna Sovsun said that she believed that Russia’s latest assault on the country was an attempt to make citizens feel as though the country was “not safe” to continue living in. Sovsun added that she believed the primary purpose of the attacks was to “make sure everybody feels scared” after a period of relative safety in the country’s capital, Kyiv.
Suspilne reports that the south command of the Ukrainian armed forces has claimed to have destroyed a Russian self-propelled artillery installation on the Kinburn spit. The Kinburn spit is a stretch of land that stretches out from Kherson oblast to the west, and is opposite the southern coast of Ukraine that runs from Odesa to Mykolaiv. It is currently occupied by Russian forces.
The Zaporizhzhia NPP was reconnected to Ukraine’s energy grid on Thursday, Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo said. Reuters reports that the Ukrainian state nuclear energy company Energoatom had said earlier on Thursday that power to the Russian-occupied plant was lost during Russian air strikes.
Emergency power cutoffs to be introduced in Ukraine after Russia's overnight attacks. Emergency blackouts will be introduced in Ukraine after Russia's overnight attacks, Serhiy Kovalenko, the CEO of energy supplier Yasno, said on March 9. Kovalenko added that this was a "preventative measure."
SBU blocks 26 Telegram channels that helped men evade mobilization. Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) announced that it blocked 26 Telegram channels from throughout Ukraine that aided men of military age in evading mobilization.
Reuters reports that local security services in the Moscow-backed breakaway Transdniestria region of Moldova said on they had thwarted a Ukrainian assassination attempt against the region’s leader, according to Russian state news agencies reported. In response, the Security Service of Ukraine said in a statement that the accusation “should be considered exclusively as a provocation orchestrated by the Kremlin”. It added:
“Lies and provocations are the weapons (Russia) actively uses. But today the entire world sees the true face of the aggressor country and does not believe the statements of Russia or its satellites.”
Reuters: “Many factories in Russia have suspended production and furloughed workers due to shortages of high-tech equipment because of sanctions and an exodus of Western manufacturers since Moscow invaded Ukraine last year. The local government in St. Petersburg has been negotiating with Kazakhstan to sell Hyundai’s Russia plant, Yonhap news agency reported, citing a TASS report.”
US intelligence chief: Russia may switch to defense due to lack of resources. Russia could shift to a strategy of holding and defending existing positions as it lacks the ammunition and troops to make significant territorial gains in Ukraine in 2023, Avril Haines, the director of U.S. national intelligence, said on March 8, cited by the New York Times.
AFP reports Lithuania’s military intelligence service on Thursday said it
estimated that Russia had enough resources to wage two more years of
war in Ukraine.
“Russia had been accumulating weapons and equipment over the long
years of the Cold War,” military intelligence chief Elegijus
Paulavicius told reporters.
“We estimate that (its) resources would last for another two years of
a war of the same intensity as today,” he added.Russia has a large amount of weaponry stored in its reserves, which
would allow them to “cause enormous damage and increase the costs of
restoration,” he said.It also raised the possibility that Russia’s failures on the
battlefield, further mobilisation and a sudden deterioration of the
economic situation “would have negative consequences for the stability
of the regime”.
Zelensky: Future of United Nations being decided in Ukraine. After his meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on March 8, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the future of the United Nations is now being decided in Ukraine as Kyiv "defends the goals and principles of the UN Charter."
EU ministers agree to provide Ukraine with 1 billion euros in immediate military aid. European Union defense ministers have agreed to supply Ukraine with one billion euros worth of ammunition from their stocks, EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said on March 8, cited by Ukrinform news outlet.
Media: German and Portuguese tanks to arrive in Ukraine by end of March. Ukraine will receive 18 Leopard 2A6 tanks from Germany and three from Portugal by the end of March, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, citing DPA News Agency.
National Bank of Ukraine liquidates Forward Bank. The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) decided on March 7 to revoke the license of and liquidate Forward Bank. Previously, Forward Bank was called Russian Standard Bank in Ukraine and changed their name in 2014. Russian Standard bank was founded by Russian oligarch Roustam Tariko, who was put under sanctions by Ukraine in October 2022.
Georgia's ruling party said on Thursday it was dropping a bill on "foreign agents" after two nights of violent protests against what opponents said was a Russian-inspired authoritarian shift that imperilled hopes of the country joining the European Union. Read the article below from The New York Times to understand the root cause of the protests.
Ivan Nechepurenko & Andrew Higgins, The Explosive Roots of the Georgia Protests- NYC
The immediate cause of the turmoil in Tbilisi for the past two days was the preliminary approval on Tuesday by Parliament of an innocuous-sounding draft law “on transparency and foreign influence.” It demanded that nongovernmental groups and news media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from a “foreign power” register as “agents of foreign influence.” Violators would incur a hefty fine.
The Georgian government, firmly controlled by the Georgian Dream party, insisted that the legislation simply aimed to promote greater openness about foreign funding and was inspired by an American law dating back to 1938.
Georgia’s draft law mimicked 2012 legislation in Russia that signaled the start of a determined push by Mr. Putin to crush civil society.
Mr. Putin “realized that what he did not do through tanks can be done in another way, through a political presence, and now this project is being carried out,” said Armaz Akhvlediani, a member of Parliament and a disenchanted former leader of Georgian Dream. The new “foreign agent” law, he added, was part of “an obvious, open Kremlin policy in Georgia.”
Factbox: What to look for at China's NPC meeting of parliament- Reuters
China's rubber-stamp parliament, the National People's Congress (NPC), began its annual session on Sunday and is expected to unveil the biggest government reshuffle in a decade after setting a modest target for annual economic growth.
Coming months after President Xi Jinping secured a norm-breaking third term as supreme leader, the sessions will further consolidate his authority and outline key government policy goals.
Here are key details and issues to look out for:
WHAT IS THE NPC?
The 3,000-member NPC is China's national legislature, and in principle the most powerful state body under the Chinese constitution, although in practice the ruling Communist Party wields more power.
Besides meeting annually to deliberate legislation and appoint government personnel, it oversees the State Council, China's cabinet.
Its top body, the roughly 170-member NPC Standing Committee, meets more frequently to pass legislation. The Standing Committee also has the power to amend semiautonomous Hong Kong's mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law.
Dominion Lawsuit against Fox- The Washington Post
What lawsuit? A voting systems company, Dominion, is suing the network for airing false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and that it was part of the plot. The trial starts next month.
Key takeaways: Fox’s hosts and executives repeatedly bashed President Donald Trump in private. One Tucker Carlson text: “I hate him passionately.”
What else to know: Other documents released last month showed that Fox’s executives doubted the conspiracy claims they were airing.
Programming note…
Extra reading for the natsec nerds…like me.
