Mar 17: Buonasera Mag
Day 387: DroneVideo UASitRep 75RUattack RUwindfalltax Ramstein Assad Baikonur 3Bn ChipMixer Raiffeisen Trump GeorgiaA&P Eckel Revishvili Pennsylvania FreedomConvoy AntAC Nechepurenko Schogol KyivIndie
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.
CNN: The US military's European Command has released footage of the Tuesday encounter between a US surveillance drone and a Russian fighter jet as it played out over the Black Sea. The video shows the camera of the MQ-9 Reaper drone pointed backward toward its tail and the drone’s propeller, which is mounted on the rear, spinning. Then, a Russian Sukhoi SU-27 fighter jet is shown approaching. As it draws closer, the Russian fighter dumps fuel as it intercepts the US drone.
On its way down, two US officials told CNN the operators remotely wiped the drone’s sensitive software, mitigating the risk of secret materials falling into enemy hands before it crashed into the water. [continue reading]
Stories we’re following…
General Staff: Ukraine repels 75 Russian attacks in past 24 hours. Ukraine’s military repelled over 75 Russian assaults in five areas over the past day, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces reported in its morning briefing on March 16. Russian forces are concentrating their efforts on conducting offensives toward Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Mariinka, and Shakhtarsk in Donetsk Oblast.
3 killed, 20 injured as Russia attacks 8 Ukrainian regions over past 24 hours. Russian troops struck civilian infrastructure in Ukraine's eastern city of Kharkiv on the morning of March 15, said Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov.
ISW: Wagner Group offensive on Bakhmut appears to be nearing culmination. The number of attacks in and around Bakhmut has significantly markedly decreased particularly over the last few days, the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest assessment on March 15.
Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed leader in occupied Donetsk, has told state-owned news agency Tass that he does not see any signs Ukraine is withdrawing from Bakhmut. He is quoted as saying “In Bakhmut, the situation remains complicated, difficult, that is, we do not see that there are any prerequisites there that the enemy is going to simply withdraw units.”
UK estimates between 20,000–30,000 regular Russian forces, Wagner fighters have been killed, wounded in Bakhmut since last May. A U.K. official said during his speech in Vienna on March 15 that Russian military leaders have sacrificed military units and squandered strategic resources for small tactical gains. "Russia is suffering extremely heavy casualty rates," military advisor Ian Stubbs said.
Russia’s defence ministry will start a new recruitment campaign on 1 April, with the aim of recruiting 400,000 professional soldiers to the Russian army, according to a report. Radio Svoboda has reported that the Russian defence ministry has already sent orders to regions indicating the number of people with whom military contracts should be signed.
Russia’s Ministry of Finance plans to levy a one-time windfall tax on all large businesses, with the exception of oil and coal companies. The ministry hopes to generate an additional 300 billion rubles (around $3.9 billion) for the state budget.
Russia has proposed suspending its double taxation agreements with what it calls “unfriendly countries” – those that have imposed sanctions on Moscow, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.
Putin and al-Assad have met on March 15 in Moscow. Reuters reports that in the televised meeting, Assad said Russia was fighting neo-Nazis and “old Nazis” in Ukraine, according to a Russian translation.
Russian travel clampdown aims to prevent defection of disaffected officials – British intel Some officials have likely had to forfeit their passports to the FSB and Kremlin officials are banned from all international leisure travel.
Moscow hosted on March 14 an event that organizers touted as the first international gathering of Russia lovers. In attendance, Steven Segal, FM Lavrov, and Konstantin Malofeyev as keynote speakers. The founding congress of the so-called “International Russophile Movement” describes itself as a meeting of “those who sincerely love our country, its history and culture,” the state-run RIA Novosti news agency said.
Ahead of the Black Sea grain agreement expiring this weekend, the United Nations emphasized that the deal states it would be extended for 120 days — even though Russia said it agreed to a 60-day extension of the deal after negotiations in Geneva on Monday.
Reznikov 'optimistic' following latest Ramstein format meeting. Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said the tenth round of the Ramstein format meeting, which was held on March 15, "inspires optimism." According to Reznikov, this enthusiasm relates to strengthening air defense, ammunition supplies, training soldiers and forming what has has called an “armored fist.”
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda has announced that his country will send Ukraine at least four MiG-29 fighter jets in the coming days. Duda’s announcement makes Poland the first Nato member country to fulfil Kyiv’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes. The Polish leader did not say if other countries would be making the same move.
The White House has said Poland’s decision to give Ukraine MiG-29 fighter jets is a “sovereign decision” that will not prompt President Joe Biden to supply Kyiv with American F-16 aircraft.
Ukraine can defend a $3bn Eurobond lawsuit brought by Russia, the UK’s supreme court has declared in a long-awaited ruling. Britain’s top court ruled that Ukraine could defend the lawsuit, which was brought in 2016, on the basis that Russia’s threats of military force amounted to illegitimate pressure on Ukraine to assume the $3bn debt, Reuters is reporting.
Turkey is planning to approve Finland’s application for Nato membership – independently from Sweden’s – before parliamentary and presidential elections that will take place on 14 May, two Turkish officials told Reuters on Wednesday.
Italian intelligence last week informed the country's government that the Kremlin was allegedly planning an assassination attempt on Defense Minister Guido Crozetto, for which a reward of $15 million was set. Italian special services, according to Il Foglio, intercepted the request of the ex-president of the Russian Federation to assassinate the Minister of Defense for 15 million dollars, which was allegedly addressed to Wagner's private military company.
An international law enforcement operation has taken down ChipMixer, a dark web “mixer” that helped criminals launder over $700 million, Europol and other policing agencies announced on Wednesday. Amongst its users were North Korean hackers and Russian spies, according to the Department of Justice. ChipMixer charged a small fee to take in clients’ cryptocurrency and spread it across different accounts, in order to complicate law enforcement tracking of criminal proceeds, police said.
According to The Financial Times, Raiffeisen Bank hopes to exchange €400 million ($424.2 million) worth of profits trapped in Russia against Sberbank’s frozen cash in Europe. The Austrian lender is trying to reduce its exposure to the Russian market.
Federal prosecutors in New York involved in the criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s social media company last year started examining whether it violated money laundering statutes in connection with the acceptance of $8m with suspected Russian ties, according to sources familiar with the matter. Towards the end of last year, federal prosecutors started examining two loans totaling $8m wired to Trump Media, through the Caribbean, from two obscure entities that both appear to be controlled in part by the relation of an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin, the sources said.
Keep Alfa Bank Kremligarchs and all Putin’s close associates under sanctions- AntAC News
We, representatives of Ukrainian and international civil society and academia, are outraged about the recent instances of lifting sanctions from pro-Kremlin actors and their associates, as well as attempts to exclude certain kremligarchs from sanction lists and whitewash their reputation.
On 1 March, Leonid Volkov, the chairman of Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation from russia, suggested in Bloomberg article that EU and UK officials should lift sanctions from certain kremligarchs that he finds acceptable as an incentive for other russian tycoons to break with Vladimir Putin. He argued that “only with an exit strategy will sanctions be effective” and that oligarchs who condemn the war “have to be presented with a clear option – do this and this and sanctions will be lifted.” In particular, Volkov cited billionaire Mikhail Fridman and his partners in the Alfa Bank as examples of tycoons deserving of sanctions relief as he did not believe that “they were somehow connected to Putin’s regime” or “should be held responsible for his crimes”.
Reasons for keeping Alfa Bank kremligarchs under sanctions remain the same and are derived from overwhelming public sources that any reasonable anti-corruption investigator can easily verify. These reasons include proximity to Putin, his Kremlin circle and russian intelligence, undermining sovereignty of Ukraine, funding of russian defense industry and strategic exports/trade, outright corruption in oil deals micro-managed personally by Putin and Sechin, multiple instances of corporate raiding, undermining of Western institutions and security, and attacks on US, UK and other media, civil society and activists with the goal to silence free speech and criticism.
We strongly urge the Council of the European Union, the EU Court of Justice, UK Government and all other relevant EU/UK Institutions that are engaged in the review process of sanctions on russia:
– Keep Alfa Bank kremligarchs and all Putin’s close associates under sanctions until the end of the war and full reparations are paid by russia to Ukraine
– Publish more information about crimes of russian oligarchs as we know Western law enforcement has additional information on their activity still kept away from public eyes
– Disclose the information about the exact amount of frozen assets in each country in relation to each sanctioned person and company
– Expand sanctions on russian oligarchs and expedite reparations from them to Ukraine’s war effort, recovery, and reconstruction
Jeff Schogol, Is Russia’s Wagner Group recruiting US veterans to fight in Ukraine?- Task & Purpose
The Wagner Group, Russia’s notorious private military company accused of war crimes and identified as a “significant transnational criminal organization” by the U.S. Treasury Department, may be trying to recruit American veterans as mercenaries.
Set to a pulse-pounding techno soundtrack, the video features ample B-roll footage of U.S. service members training and fighting, especially Marines. In fact, it appears that whoever made the video lifted footage directly from the Marine Corps’ 2012 recruiting commercial “Toward the Sound of Chaos.”
A narrator with a thick Russian accent appeals to veterans who joined the military because they “dreamed of doing much to make America great again,” only to be disillusioned by witnessing countries destroyed and civilians killed.
After sprinkling some news footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, the video uses a scene from the 2000 Mel Gibson movie The Patriot as the narrator explains how the United States is no longer the country its Founding Fathers dreamed of. Instead, it has become “the focus of the evil that is destroying the whole world.”
Jason Blazakis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, said he believes it is highly likely that either Wagner or an associate of the company produced the video that targets American military veterans.
“The video is fitting with the high-end productions the group has produced in the past; it is also a propaganda piece aimed at American audiences – and we know that this is a common Prigozhin tactic dating back to the 2016 elections,” said Blazakis, director of the institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.
Programming notes…
Most of what Query opines on is about France’s love of Russia and its roots.
