Mar 25: The Saturday Edition
Day 395: Bakhmut Wagner Slovakia Finland F/A18s Leopards WB ICC Medvedchuk CreditSuisse Styii Lavra UAkids A&P Tsurkan EuromaidanPress USChinaComm Michta UKDef Seddon Jensen Galleotti StratcomCentre
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…
At least 10 civilians have been killed and 20 wounded as a result of long-range Russian bombardment in several parts of Ukraine on Friday, according to officials. Among them included two people who died in heavy Russian shelling of the town of Bilopillia in Sumy province in northern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office said.
At least five people, including three women, were killed after a Russian missile struck an “invincibility point” set up to offer refuge for Ukrainian civilians in the city of Kostiantynivka in the eastern Donetsk region, according to local officials.
About 10,000 civilians, many of them elderly and with disabilities, are living in “very dire conditions” in and around the besieged city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Several thousand civilians are estimated to remain in the city itself, the ICRC’s Umar Khan said.
Military: Ukraine will soon 'take advantage' of Russian troops' fatigue in Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut are preparing to "take advantage" of Russian forces' massive losses and fatigue, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander of the Ground Forces of Ukraine wrote on March 23.
Bloomberg: Wagner may scale back Ukraine operations, shift to Africa. After facing multiple setbacks on the Ukrainian frontline, Wagner group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin might be turning his focus to Africa, Bloomberg reported on March 23.
ISW: Prigozhin softened rhetoric towards Russian Ministry of Defense likely out of fear of losing his mercenary force in Bakhmut. Wagner Group financier said on March 23 that Ukraine has 200,000 reserves concentrating on attacking along the entire eastern front line.
Workers at Moscow’s City Disinfection Center are reportedly under orders to recruit army volunteers, even if it means approaching homeless people. The citywide recruitment goal here is apparently 1,100 men.
North Korea has tested a new nuclear-capable underwater attack drone, state media reported, as leader Kim Jong Un warned joint military drills by South Korea and the US should stop.
The air forces of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark have agreed on a goal to create a unified Nordic air defence aimed at countering the rising threat from Russia. Air force commanders of the four Nordic nations signed a declaration of intent to operate their fighter jets as one fleet, based on already known ways of operating under Nato, according to statements by the four countries’ armed forces.
Slovakia transfers first MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. Slovakia on March 23 transferred four of the 13 MiG-29 jets it has pledged to Ukraine, according to Slovakia's Defense Ministry website.
Finland to give 3 additional Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. Finland has pledged three more Leopard 2 tanks from its arsenal to Ukraine, bringing the total to six, MTV Uutiset reported on March 23. Defense Minister Antti Kaikkonen also confirmed that Ukraine had approached Finland's Defense Ministry about supplying F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets.
Ukraine submits request for F/A-18 fighters from Finland. Ukraine has submitted a request for trilateral negotiations between Kyiv, Washington, and Helsinki to discuss the transfer of F/A-18 Hornet fighter jets from Finland, according to sources cited by Helsingin Sanomat on March 23.
Spain to send Ukraine first Leopard 2 tanks next week. Spain’s Defense Ministry reported on March 23 it would transfer the first six of ten Leopard 2 main battle tanks it has pledged for Ukraine by the end of the next week.
At an industrial estate in Ukraine, two former Microsoft executives and a team of engineers are producing military drones that can travel over long distances and carry large payloads. We go inside the scramble for a "game-changer" drone fleet.
The World Bank, the European Commission, the UN, and the government of Ukraine revised the assessment of Ukraine's needs for post-war recovery. Now it is $411B, up from $349B, or more than twice the country's GDP, reported Bloomberg.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, has said the “friendship” between China and Russia has limits, and that Europe should welcome any attempts by Beijing to distance itself from Moscow’s war in Ukraine. He said China “has not crossed any red lines for us”, adding that Beijing’s proposals to end the war showed it did not want to fully align with Russia. The EU should welcome this, Borrell said, even if western officials have made clear they do not regard Beijing’s initiative as a fully-fledged peace plan.
Switzerland considers a program of support for Ukraine in the amount of at least 5B Swiss francs (over $5B). The Committee on Foreign Policy expressed conviction that Ukraine needs significant support for humanitarian aid,protecting the civilians, demining, peacebuilding.
Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andrii Kostin and the Registrar of the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) Peter Lewis signed an agreement on opening the ICC's office in Ukraine on March 23. Kostin called the document "another step towards ensuring full responsibility for international crimes," according to his office's report.
Austria will arrest Putin if he decides to come - Foreign Ministry Austria, as a party to the Rome Statute, is obliged to comply with arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court. This applies in particular to the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Journalists have found two new Russian oil companies with links to Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk’s family businesses.Tthe new enterprises emerged around the same time that he announced a new political movement from Russia.
The US authorities are checking the largest banks in Switzerland - Credit Suisse and UBS - for help with the circumvention of sanctions by Russian oligarchs, Bloomberg reports, citing sources familiar with the situation. According to them, the investigation began before Credit Suisse was on the verge of collapse and was bought by UBS for a measly $ 3.2 billion.
Russian citizen Dimitri Sytii was added to the European Union’s sanction list on February 25. According to the citation, Sytii, 34, “has a leading role within the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic (CAR), with close links to Yevgeny Prigozhin,” who heads up the Russian mercenary network that has a presence in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine.
Moscow Patriarchate members start to leave Kyiv Pechersk Lavra. Members of the Russian-controlled Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) have started to vacate the premises of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, Culture Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko said in a televised interview on March 23.
The son of a Russian regional governor who was due to be extradited from Italy to the US has disappeared, according to reports. US authorities have accused Artyom Uss, the son of the governor of the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk, of illegal oil and weapons trade, money laundering, and sanction violations.
The US treasury has imposed sanctions on three Belarusian state-linked entities and nine individuals in response to an ongoing crackdown on pro-democracy activists after a wave of protests following a presidential election that the west and Belarusian opposition denounced as a sham.
First: There are no "forever wars." Every war ends at some point. So, let's stop being breathless. Second: Considering that the latest Russian offensive has degenerated into a war of attrition, all eyes should be on Ukraine and its next move.
It may be a breakthrough, or it may end up in another stalemate. This is a binary, and each will have a direct political outcome, especially when it comes to Western support for Ukraine. Simply put, Kyiv needs a win-at least at the operational level, preferably strategic.
Never forget that Russia's claim that it's at war with the West, not with Ukraine. Listen to Putin's narrative; watch Russian propaganda talking heads. This means Western leaders must appreciate what's at stake. If Russia wins, it will see it as a civilizational win.
But also remember what Russia's defeat in Ukraine would accomplish. It would transform Europe's security landscape for decades, for generations even. It's time for Western leaders to imagine what a secure Europe could look like.
Michael Jensen, The Link Between Age and Extremism- Generations
The statistics on the Jan. 6 insurrection make it clear that the riot was not the result of a youth movement. The average Capitol defendant was nearly 42 years old on the day the riot occurred. Some of the most high-profile cases consist of individuals who should have been preparing for retirement rather than insurrection. For instance, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the anti-government Oath Keepers militia who was recently convicted of seditious conspiracy, was 55 years old on Jan. 6. The stiffest penalty handed down to a rioter thus far—10 years in federal prison for assaulting Capitol police—was given to a 56-year-old former officer of the New York Police Department. The oldest person prosecuted for participating in the events of Jan. 6 is an 81-year-old Army veteran from Pennsylvania.
While the sheer size of the Capitol riot makes it an outlier as far as extremist crimes go, the fact that middle-age and older individuals participated in it does not. My team at the University of Maryland has collected data on more than 3,200 individuals who have committed extremist crimes in the United States since the 1950s, and we have found that the typical extremist offender is often older than people might assume.
This milieu, which is made up of white supremacist and nativist groups, misogynists, anti-government militias, sovereign citizens, and Christian nationalists, recruits by weaponizing political discourse, casting common political debates as battles of good versus evil for the future of the country. These groups tend to craft extremist narratives around issues that have been consistently shown to resonate more with older Americans, such as immigration policy, public education, health and religion. In recent years, extremists and their mainstream supporters have been so successful in poisoning public debate with disinformation and conspiracy theories that Americans are increasingly basing their voting decisions on falsehoods. For example, a recent survey shows that an astonishing 25% of Republican voters, who tend to be older Americans, report believing in the QAnon conspiracy theory—the bizarre claim that former President, Donald Trump, and his military allies are secretly fighting a cabal of Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and global elites who are engaged in Satan worshiping and child sex trafficking. [continue reading]
Mark Galeotti & Anna Arutunyan, The Russo-Ukrainian war and the illegal arms trade- Global Initiative
Wars create the conditions for the accumulation of weapons, often outside direct state control; the ends of wars tend to lead to an illegal outflow of those weapons into the hands of criminal and insurgent groups both within the combatant nations and beyond.
Despite some over-heated claims, there is currently no substantial outflow of weapons from the Ukrainian conflict zone. However, every precedent suggests that, especially if the threat is not addressed proactively and imaginatively, when the current war ends, Ukraine’s battlefields could and will become the new arsenal of anarchy, arming everyone from insurgents in Africa to gangsters in the streets of Europe.
This report explores the current situation in Ukraine in terms of the spread of weapons into non-state hands and clandestine supply chains. It considers the prospects for more serious levels of proliferation after the end of hostilities, and makes practical recommendations for Ukraine and its foreign partners.
In bookstores…
