Mar 2: E-Stories
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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.
Katie Shioshiashvili: “Meanwhile Ukrainian citizens in Tbilisi unfurled a massive banner: Make Ruzzia Pay for Everything. Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine.”
Video: Formula News (English)
Stories we’re following…
Russia shells 10 communities in Sumy Oblast, injuring 1. Russian forces struck 10 communities along the Sumy Oblast border in 27 separate attacks on Feb. 29, injuring one person, the regional military administration reported.
Russian attack on Kherson Oblast’s Beryslav injures 2. A Russian drone dropped explosives on a house in Kherson Oblast’s town of Beryslav on Feb. 29, wounding two residents, the regional administration reported.
Prosecutor's Office: Russian airstrike in Donetsk Oblast injures 3. Russian forces launched an airstrike on the village of Shcherbynivka in Donetsk Oblast, wounding three people and damaging multiple houses, the regional prosecutor's office reported on Feb. 29.
CDS: According to a survey conducted by the Vilnius office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM Lithuania) in 2023, 75% of Ukrainian refugees currently residing in Lithuania express their intention to return to their homeland when conditions are deemed safe. Approximately 17% remain undecided.
Combat Situation Update
Russians have made it to the southern outskirts of Novomykhailiivka, south of Mar'inka, after securing the eastern outskirts. The town is still ~80% Ukrainian controlled.
"Comrade Saldo. Krynki is not cleared. In addition, the enemy is present in Kozachi Laheri in the east, but they haven't connected to the troops in Krynky. We won't get far on lies....," Russian warblogger 'call sign OSETIN' reports, known for having contacts fighting in the occupied part of the Kherson region. Map: Noel Report
General Staff: Ukraine hit Russian troops clustered in Olenivka, 19 soldiers killed. Ukrainian forces killed 19 Russian soldiers, including the deputy commander of a military unit. Also, 12 people, including the commander of that unit, were injured.
Zelensky replaces Logistics Forces commander. President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Oleh Huliak from the position of commander of Ukraine's Logistics Forces, replacing him with Volodymyr Karpenko, according to his decrees published on Feb. 29.
ISW: Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec Head Sergei Chemezov stated on February 29 that Rostec plans to produce A-50 long-range radar detection aircraft on an unspecified schedule because Russian forces require more A-50 aircraft.
"Russian pilots need to take risks to strike deeper. For the bomb to fly deeper, you need to fly closer, because the bomb is gliding, it does not have its own engine, it flies, reducing its speed. That's why they need to take risks, and by taking risks they get into stories like today," said the spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Yuriy Ignat.
The Ukrainian Air Force reports the downing of 2 more Su-34 fighter jets in the Avdiivka and Mariupol directions this morning. If all confirmed, that would make 13 in 11 days.
A vessel belonging to the coast guard of the Russian FSB Border Service reportedly caught fire in the Sea of Azov today. The fire engulfed the wheelhouse, resulting in the loss of five crewmembers. The crew of the Russian vessel requested an evacuation team. The GUR released intercepted communication.
British MP says Scholz revealed sensitive information on UK military support to Ukraine. British MP Tobias Ellwood accused German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of a "flagrant abuse of intelligence" when he mentioned to journalists that the British and French support Ukraine with missile guidance, the Telegraph reported on Feb. 28.
Behind the Lines
CDS: The Russian occupation authorities claim that they have already distributed over 2 million Russian passports in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. As stated by Chief Oleg Agarkov of the Rostov Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the issuance of documents is among the top priorities.
As of today, at least 208 Ukrainian citizens are held in detention facilities in Crimea due to politically motivated and/or religious criminal persecution by the Russian Federation, with 125 of them being representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people. At least 36 political prisoners are in urgent need of medical assistance.
Ian Urbina: allegations of a robust, clandestine industry of North Korean forced-labor exportation. Having hired investigators to contact North Koreans who said they worked in China in seafood-processing plants, Urbina records allegations of abuse, coercion, and stolen pay. All the anonymous workers mentioned by Urbina are female.
While Polish protestors are blocking Ukrainian trucks with grain, their trucks are actively driving to Belarus for goods, "UP" investigation. Hundreds of Polish cars a day cross the Belarusian border, load up with products there and drive back. At the same time, last year, Poland imported $450 million worth of products from Belarus. And in the first year of the Great War, it imported €428.2 million worth of agricultural products from Russia.
“[the Baltics] know Putin, they know what he is capable of. And frankly, if Ukraine loses, I really believe that NATO will go to war with Russia." US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin before the House Armed Services Committee
Five countries have already announced the possibility of sending non-combat troops to Ukraine.
French President Emmanuel Macron was the first to announce this and explained that his statement was completely deliberate and considered.
Prime Minister of Estonia Kaia Kallas supported him. "We have to do everything so that Ukraine wins and Russia loses this war," she said.
Lithuanian officials are also considering the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine for military training, Lithuanian presidential adviser Kyastutis Budris said.
The Netherlands has become the fourth country whose chief of defense staff, General Onno Eichelsheim, does not rule out the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine, but notes that now is "not the time to talk about such a scenario."
Canada is open to sending a limited number of military personnel to train Ukrainian troops within Ukraine, so long as such an operation took place far from the front lines of the war with Russia in a clear, noncombat role, Defence Minister Bill Blair says.
Meanwhile in Russia
Putin is watching you…scary stuff.
After 'the regime in Kyiv', Lavrov is now talking about the 'Regime in Chisinau', referring to the government of Moldova. Lavrov stated that the Moldovan government is following in the footsteps of Ukraine.
Kuleba: Russia excluded from Danube Commission due to its attacks on Odesa Oblast. Russia was expelled from the Danube Commission, an international intergovernmental organization developing free navigation on the Danube River, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba reported on March 1.
Chinese drone manufacturer DJI is openly selling Starlink satellite terminals on their website in Russia. On February 15, 2024, Starlink said it does not do business with Russia.
Putin threatens NATO, says nuclear weapons use possible. There will be "tragic consequences" if NATO troops are sent to Ukraine, and the West's support for Kyiv "risks a conflict using nuclear weapons," Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed during a two-hour State of the Nation address on Feb. 29.
Politico: Huge crowds of Russians gathered Friday in Moscow for the funeral of Putin opposer Alexei Navalny.
Among those in attendance on the outskirts of Moscow were Boris Nadezhdin, the anti-war candidate who was disqualified from running against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election this month, and Yevgeny Roizman, the former mayor of Yekaterinburg and a prominent Putin critic.
Several Western ambassadors were also spotted in live video footage, including the U.S., French and German envoys.
The rights group OVD-Info reported that four people had been detained as they set out from the southern city of Voronezh to attend Navalny’s burial service and funeral. One person detained was a local campaign coordinator for Nadezhdin.
Allied Support
European Parliament calls on EU to 'give Ukraine whatever it needs to defeat Russia.' The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Feb. 29 calling on EU member states to support Ukraine with "whatever is needed for Kyiv to win its war against Russia," including long-range weapons.
Good news. In the coming weeks, Ukraine is set to receive the first batch of projectiles as part of the Czech initiative to purchase 800,000 artillery shells, Jan Jires, Deputy Minister of Defense of the Czech Republic said to Bloomberg.
France will deliver 100 Delair DT 46 kamikaze attack drones to Ukraine by the summer. In total, an order for 2000 of such drones was placed for the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, the French Ministry of Defense reports.
Bulgarian Defense Minister Todor Tagarev confirmed that the 100 pledged BTR-60 will be sent to Ukraine within several days. Previously, there was an issue on who should pay for transportation.
President Zelensky: “We already have security agreements with six countries: the UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Canada, and Italy. Each such agreement expands our opportunities, global interactions, and strength. At the same time, each such agreement reinforces the rules-based international order. The closer we interact, the faster the Russian terrorists will be defeated. I am grateful to every leader and every state that helps Ukraine!”
Canada imposes additional ban on imports of Russian diamonds. Canada has banned indirect imports of Russian diamonds weighing one carat and above, Canada's Foreign Ministry announced on March 1.
Switzerland has joined the 13th package of European Union sanctions adopted against Russia. Switzerland also introduced additional trade sanctions "to further prevent Russia from buying industrially important goods and technologies for the Russian army."
Greece is preparing to transfer new security assistance to Ukraine, which may include air defense and anti-aircraft weapons. These are weapons that are no longer used by Greece's own armed forces.
"We are supplying Ukraine with everything we can and everything we have been asked to supply to the best of our ability," says Spiros Lampridis, Greece's special representative to Ukraine said.
The UK government has privately urged Germany to provide long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. The UK even offered a swap deal that would see Britain supply Ukraine with more of its own Storm Shadow missiles, and Germany then restock the UK with Taurus.
Bundestag Chairman of the European Committee, Anton Hofreiter, accused Scholz of lying about the need for Bundeswehr soldiers to deploy the Taurus and claimed that Scholz is driven by baseless fears and stuck to 20 years of wrong policy towards Russia.
The President of Argentina, Javier Milei, said that he plans to hold a summit of Latin American countries in support of Ukraine, FT writes. They als confirm that Argentina has already sent two Mi-171E multi-purpose helicopters to Ukraine.
Johnson says House will consider Ukraine aid 'as soon as government is funded.' U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson told the Voice of America (VoA) on Feb. 29 that his chamber would consider $60 billion in aid for Ukraine "as soon as the government is funded."
The Biden administration is considering providing Ukraine with arms and ammunition from US stockpiles, despite a lack of funds to replace the munitions. The move would serve as a short-term measure until Congress approves a larger military aid package.
House Republican Brian Fitzpatrick is preparing a discharge petition to bypass House Speaker Johnson and expedite aid to Ukraine. Fitzpatrick said he hasn't decided what version of Ukraine aid the discharge petition would try to bring to the floor.
US Congress passes bill to avert government shutdown without Ukraine aid. Both chambers of the U.S. Congress approved a short-term stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown, sending it for signature to President Joe Biden, Reuters reported on Feb. 29.
CNN: Biden signs stopgap bill to avert government shutdown
President Joe Biden on Friday signed a stopgap bill into law to avert a partial government shutdown at the end of the week. Congress had been confronting a pair of shutdown deadlines on Friday and March 8.
To provide additional time for full-year funding bills to be finalized and passed, the stopgap measure will extend funding on a short-term basis and set up two deadlines on March 8 and March 22.
The Daily Show: Trump’s trial delays make sense.
The U.S. will airdrop aid to Gaza, said President Biden, who linked the killing of Palestinians near a convoy to desperation for supplies. Many questions remain unanswered about the killings around the aid convoy on Thursday, for which the Israeli military and Gazan officials offered divergent accounts. Gazan health authorities said more than 100 Palestinians were killed.
Trump is set to meet privately with Hungarian Prime Minister Orban at Trump's Mar-a-Lago next week. Orban, a right-wing nationalist, has been a longtime ally of Trump and shares close ties with the US populist conservative movement.
Ukraine, Turkey agree to extend permit-free movement of cargo trucks. Ukraine and Turkey agreed to extend the liberalization of rules for two-way cargo transportation and transit of cargo trucks "at least until the end of the war," the Ukrainian Infrastructure Ministry reported on Feb. 29.
The Insider, A most wanted man: Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek exposed as decade-long GRU spy
For more than four years, Jan Marsalek, the former chief operating officer of the disgraced German financial services company Wirecard, has been living in Russia under this assumed identity, a year-long investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel, ZDF, and Der Standard has uncovered. Wirecard, the German equivalent to PayPal was once a DAX-30 listed company, one of the wealthiest traded entities on the German stock exchange, with a valuation of $28 billion. Then came June 2020, when, in the midst of an audit, Wirecard could not locate €1.9 billion in assets it claimed were being held somewhere in the world – Russia, the United Arab Emirates or the Philippines. In fact, the money didn’t exist. Wirecard’s worth was predicated on commissions supposedly earned from three companies, Al Alam, Senjo and PayEasy, based in Dubai, Singapore and Manila, respectively. Wirecard money flowed into all three but the only documented flows in reverse existed in the German conglomerate’s imagination. Or, as the now imprisoned former CEO Markus Braun claims, it had been funneled away to a complex web of offshore accounts controlled by his then number two, Jan Marsalek. [continue]
Programming notes…
Dr Stephen Hall on Times Radio: Vladimir Putin made further nuclear threats against the West in a major speech ahead of the Russian presidential elections.
Dr. Stephen Hall, professor in Russian and post-Soviet politics details the likelihood of this threat as we enter the third year of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.