Mar 24: Buonasera Mag
Day 394: Zaporizhzhia Kyiv DU T54/55 RUprotests 60squadrons Japan $15.6B IOC France RUgas/oil Meloni Surgut Kallas EUCO A&P Davis Vadym FriendlyKozak Alburov Kirby BadBalticTakes Zelensky
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.
President Zelensky has not lost his passion for communicating with Ukrainians, outlining clearly what has been done in terms of defence, and what still needs to be done.
Stories we’re following…
Intelligence: Russia shifting missile and drone strike tactics after failed campaign against infrastructure."The Russians will now slightly reorient the direction of the strikes," deputy intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky said in a March 22 interview to RBC Ukraine. "These can be military facilities, concentrations of troops, and the logistics system of our units."
Death toll in Russia's overnight drone attack on Kyiv Oblast rises to 6. The death toll in Rzhyshchiv, Kyiv Oblast, has risen to six people after Russia's overnight drone attack, State Emergency Service of Ukraine Spokesperson Viktoriia Ruban told Ukrainska Pravda on March 22.
Gen Syrskyi, commander of Ukraine's ground forces, reports on his Telegram channel, “The aggressor doesn't give up hope of taking Bakhmut at any cost... and is losing “considerable strength” and “very soon we will take advantage of this opportunity, as we once did near Kyiv, Kharkiv, Balakliya and Kupiansk”, all areas that Ukraine has previously liberated from Russian occupation.
President Zelensky visited Kherson yesterday, where he toured local infrastructure that he has promised to rebuild after Russia’s invasion. In a Telegram post showing him inspecting energy infrastructure, the Ukrainian president wrote:
We have to ensure full restoration and protection of our energy sector. I am grateful to everyone who works for this and returns the light to our people.
UK Official: Supplying Ukraine with depleted uranium ammunition not 'nuclear escalation.' U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly countered Russian accusations that supplying Ukraine with ammunition containing depleted uranium is "nuclear escalation," Reuters reported on March 22.
ISW: Russian forces dusting off ancient tanks T-54/55 tanks to compensate for significant armored vehicle losses. The Russian military has lost so many tanks since Feb. 24, 2022 that it is apparently calling up ancient armored vehicles to make up for its current battlefield losses, according to findings of the Tbilisi-based open-source Conflict Intelligence Team.
Moscow is poised to alter the taxation of Russian oil companies in order to increase state revenues by tapping into crude oil sales that exceed the G7-imposed price cap.
Russia offers incentives to recruits ready to join assault units in Ukraine to help drive the Ukrainians back and earn bonus money by the mile. In Yaroslavl region, those who sign a contract are eligible for a sign-up bonus of 295,000 rubles (about $3,800) and a monthly salary of 200,000 rubles (or $2,600). Further bonuses are offered for “active participation in assault operations.” Advancing the Russian frontline is said to be rewarded by 50,000 rubles ($650) per kilometer.
Journalists at Mediazona counted 536 service-related felony cases filed in Russian garrison courts against Russian soldiers since the full-scale invasion started. Most of these charges involve AWOL offenses, particularly by draftees, though more and more courts are following the Russian Supreme Court’s lead and concealing statistics about “crimes against military service.”
Journalists at Verstka Media found that military wives are complaining about a “collapse in the army bureaucracy” as Russia’s Armed Forces are flooded with new soldiers, and men are transferred chaotically between units (in 52 different regions, wages have reportedly been arriving late or not at all since January)
Ukraine’s army has established 60 new attack-drone squadrons, at least one in every brigade, with separate staff and commanders, the 1st reform of its kind in the world. The army is to gain “significant and high-tech capacity” in the coming weeks and months.
President's Office: Ukraine wants Japan among its security guarantors. "Security guarantees how Ukraine sees them are not only weapons. Sanctions, financial aid, non-lethal aid are also security guarantees. And again, it is one of our peace formula's points," President's Office deputy head Ihor Zhovkvu said on March 22. "Therefore, it would be very desirable to see Japan among such security guarantors."
Moldova blocks five more Spuntik propaganda sites. In response, Russia calls for economic sanctions. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Moldovan authorities already blocked Sputnik, but they then created new sites.
US sec of state, Antony Blinken, has said China is watching “very carefully” to see how Washington and the world respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The stakes in Ukraine go well beyond Ukraine ... I think it has a profound impact in Asia, for example. I think if China’s looking at this - and they are looking at it very carefully - they will draw lessons for how the world comes together, or doesn’t, to stand up to this aggression.
The IMF has agreed a package of support for Ukraine of $15.6bn (£12.8bn). The loan, the first the Washington-based lender will make to a country at war, could represent one of the biggest tranches of financial support for Ukraine so far. It still needs to be signed off by the IMF’s executive board, a process that should conclude within weeks.
Brazil, following South Africa, announced its readiness to arrest Putin. Brazil followed the Republic of South Africa in announcing its readiness to arrest Putin. There they confirmed that they will implement the decision of the International Court of Justice and arrest the Kremlin dictator in case of entering the country.
Kyiv School of Economics: Russia's war has caused over $140 billion in damages in Ukraine. As of February 2023, the total amount of damage caused by Russia to Ukraine’s infrastructure during the full-scale war has increased by another $6 billion and is now estimated at $143.8 billion. According to the school’s experts damages to infrastructure, education, energy, transport, trade, and healthcare continue to grow.
IOC president says Olympics, its ruling body can’t be ‘referees of political disputes.’ Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, defended the IOC’s plan to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in the 2024 Olympics under a neutral flag.
Le Figaro: War in Ukraine: the National Assembly ready to accuse Wagner of terrorism. The text of the resolution, which will be submitted to the Assembly, does not need to be long to achieve its objective. It is a question of asking for the inscription “ of the private military entity Wagner on the list of the European Union of terrorist organizations ”. The list of crimes attributed to the militia is substantial. If Yevgueni Prigogine is already targeted by European reprisals and Wagner was affected by sanctions in 2021 and 2023, parliamentarians want to go further.
This is how you do it…
Zelensky was out and about in Bakhmut. Here he’s in a service station. Master trolling.
EU leaders meeting for Summit- The Guardian
EU leaders are meeting for two days. On the agenda: the war in Ukraine, although tensions between France and Germany over nuclear energy and combustion engines as reported yesterday. UN Secretary-General António Guterres will be joining the summit for the first day.
Among the items on the agenda over the next two days are, according to the council:
accountability of perpetrators
further increasing collective pressure on Russia
the use of frozen assets for the reconstruction of Ukraine
support to help meet Ukraine’s military and defence needs
global food security
address high energy prices
reducing gas demand
ensure security of supply
phase out dependency on Russian fossil fuels
Wording on the summit points out that the EU has “made available” total of €67bn (US$73bn) to Ukraine since the start of the war. That’s equivalent to around 27% of Ukraine’s total GDP for 2021, before Russia invaded.
President Zelenksy has renewed his call for more long-range weapons from western allies, as he addressed EU leaders meeting in Brussels. The Ukrainian president was speaking to the EU summit via video link, from a moving train in an undisclosed location in Ukraine, where he recounted news from the frontline. His account of the “devastating” scenes he had witnessed was said to be emotional and have had a big impact on the 27 EU leaders and top officials in Brussels listening to him. On one occasion the secure line cut out, but was soon reconnected.
Leaked government reports shed light on political protest in Russia- iStories
While analyzing the massive data leak from the Russian censorship agency Roskomnadzor, the investigative journalism project iStories discovered that the state censor has been compiling internal reports on protest incidents across Russia.
The greatest number of demonstrations (109) took place in the Khabarovsk region. Most of them (91) were in support of the region’s former governor Sergey Furgal, the target of a highly dubious prosecution. St. Petersburg came in second in the number of protests (61); Moscow (41) and Bashkortostan (41) shared the third place. Almost half of all protests in Russia are single-person demonstrations, and only one in five gathers more than ten participants.
The main triggers of protest were the invasion of Ukraine (180), dissatisfaction with officials and political persecutions (162), environmental degradation (71), and infrastructure problems (67).
Russian oil finds ‘wide open’ back door to Europe, critics say-Politico
Significant quantities of Russian hydrocarbons, particularly oil, are still flowing around sanctions and into the European market, they say, earning payments that fund Vladimir Putin's war machine.
Crude oil is notoriously difficult to track on global markets. It can easily be mixed or blended with other shipments in transit countries, effectively creating a larger batch of oil whose origins can't be determined. The refining process, necessary for any practical application, also removes all traces of the feedstock's origin.
“Since the introduction of sanctions, the volumes of crude oil Russia is exporting have remained more or less steady,” said Saad Rahim, chief economist at global commodities trading firm Trafigura. “It’s possible that Russian oil is still being sold on to the EU and Western nations via middlemen." [continue reading]
The saga of "Surgut"- The Dossier Centre
How friends of Vladimir Putin control one of Russia's largest oil companies
Surgutneftegaz is the most mysterious company in Russia. It actually does not belong to anyone and keeps about 4.25 trillion rubles in accounts. To hide its owners, Surgut created a complex scheme of dozens of legal entities. But for many years the activities of the organization were associated with Vladimir Putin's entourage. His friends Pyotr Kolbin and Gennady Timchenko controlled almost half of Surgutneftegaz's total exports, and this share would have been higher if not for the sanctions, the Dossier Center found out. Interlocutors familiar with Putin are sure that such participation of Kolbin and Timchenko in the life of Surgutneftegaz is proof that Putin can be the main beneficiary of Surgut.