Mar 6: Buonasera Mag
Day 376: Bakhmut UASitRep visas Prigozhin Kadyrov 200k TikTok Turkey EU LAT Maryinka Markarova Scholz EEelex Rishi-A&Ps-Chaze MacKay Lautman Sovsun Lucas United24 Iacoboni Alander Kolesnikov Snyder
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…
ISW: A turning movement aims to force the abandonment of prepared defensive positions & is different from an encirclement, which aims to trap/destroy enemy forces. Russia's slow and gradual advances don't suggest they will soon encircle Bakhmut, much less take it by frontal assaults.
The Russians have, rather, managed to push close enough to critical ground lines of communication from the northeast to threaten Ukrainian withdrawal routes from Bakhmut in a classical turning movement.
The Russians may have intended to encircle Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, but the Ukrainian command has signaled that it will likely withdraw rather than risk an encirclement.
The latest intelligence briefing from the UK’s Ministry of Defence says recent evidence suggests an increase in “close combat” in Ukraine, probably due to Russia’s shortage of “munitions”. It also refers to Russian mobilised reservists being ordered to assault a Ukrainian concrete strong point armed with only “firearms and shovels”. These shovels are likely to be the outdated MPL-50 entrenching tools used in hand-to-hand combat.
In Nova Kakhovka, in temporarily-occupied Kherson region, Russian forces are using Ukrainian civilians as "human shields." They're placing anti-aircraft defence weapons among residential buildings in the city.
Russia uses new 1.5-ton gliding bombs on Ukraine for first time. The UPAB-1500B guided bomb, first unveiled at a Russian arms expo in 2019, has since undergone full testing, been delivered to the Russian air force, and received its first orders for export, according to Defense Express.
On March 4, 2022, invading Russian troops murdered volunteers – Serhiy Ustymenko, 25, Maxym Kuzmenko, 28, and Anastasia Yalanska, 26 – in Bucha. The three had just delivered dog food to a shelter and were on their way back to evacuate Ustymenko's parents.
The Russian Foreign Ministry plans to conclude visa-free agreements with 11 countries, and these are: Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahamas, Barbados, Haiti, Zambia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Russian Deputy Minister Ivanov said.
Prigozhin has complained that the Russian ministry of defence is not supporting Wagner’s efforts in terms of men and ammunition. In a video address on Sunday, Prigozhin said:
If the private mercenary force Wagner retreats from Bakhmut, the whole front will crumble … to the Russian borders and maybe further.
Wagner is the cement … we are drawing the entire Ukrainian army on ourselves, breaking them and destroying them.
The head of the government of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in exile, Akhmed Zakayev, said Kadyrov has serious problems with kidneys. Some speculate that is why he did not attend Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s address to the Federal Assembly on Feb. 21. Bild also reported that the head doctor of the Burjeel Medical Centre’s Nephrology Department has recently arrived in Russia from the United Arab Emirates. Most likely, Kadyrov does not trust Russian doctors, the journalists said.
NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe said Russia has lost more than 200,000 troops since the start of its invasion in Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, describing the extent of the war as "unbelievable." He added that over 1,800 Russian officers were killed or wounded, German magazine Der Spiegel reported.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday that Ankara is working hard to extend a UN-backed initiative that has enabled Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia following its invasion. The Black Sea Grain Initiative brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last July allowed grain to be exported from three Ukrainian ports.
Russia looks to be successfully working around EU and G7 sanctions to secure crucial semiconductors and other technologies for its war in Ukraine, according to a senior European diplomat.
Politico: EU seeks non-member states to take part in joint military procurement scheme for Ukraine. The proposal would have countries pool funds into the European Peace Facility to negotiate centralized ammunition procurement contracts directly with defense enterprises.
Latvian prime minister: Supply of Western fighter jets to Ukraine 'a matter of time.' “If the Ukrainians need fighter jets, they should get them,” said Krisjanis Karins to Spiegel on March 4. Ukrainians have repeatedly proven the ability to quickly learn to operate new equipment, he said.
EU, Ukraine set up agency tasked with prosecuting Russian war crimes. Over a two-day accountability conference in Ukraine, an agreement is being signed to set up the International Center for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression in The Hague. The joint investigation team, part of Eurojust, the EU agency for criminal justice, will consist of the ICC, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, and Romania.
Ambassador: UK to provide twice the promised Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. The UK will give 28 Challenger 2 main battle tanks instead of the earlier promised 14, Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.K. Vadym Prystaiko told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty during an interview.
"A Rheinmetall factory could be built in Ukraine at a cost of about 200 million euros" ($213 million) to turn out up to 400 Panther tanks a year, firm President Armin Papperger told the Rheinische Post newspaper.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, has expressed gratitude for the unprecedented support that Ukraine has received from the United States and other Western allies in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"Do we have enough to win right now? Not yet. We need more capabilities in order to be able not only to defend and hold the line, but actually liberate our territory,”
Disinformation and influence operations have real effects. Look at the percentage of people in Italy who believe there should be a negotiated peace. Thank goodness Italy doesn’t really count in the grand scheme of things, and that the US and other European allied populations are in full support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovreignty.
Ukraine to use $460 million worth of confiscated Russian assets for reconstruction. The government will use the assets seized from two Russian banks, MR Bank and Prominvestbank, to rebuild the country, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said during a conference on March 4.
Chancellor Scholz told CNN it is “necessary” for Putin to understand he will not win the Ukraine war so negotiations to end the conflict can begin. “If you look at the proposal of the Ukrainians, it is easy to understand that they are ready for peace,” he added.
“My view, it is necessary that Putin understands that he will not succeed with this invasion and his imperialistic aggression – that he has to withdraw troops,” Scholz said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday. “This is the basis for talks.”
“If you look at the proposal of the Ukrainians, it is easy to understand that they are ready for peace,” he added. “There must be something done. This has to be done by Putin.”
The Reform party of Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, secured first place in Sunday’s parliamentary election, a result that should ensure Tallinn remains one of Europe’s most staunchly pro-Ukraine governments. Results with 98% ballots counted showed the far-right EKRE party in second place, with 16.1% versus 31.5% for Kallas’ liberal group, reflecting concerns among some voters over the rising cost of living in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right Republican in Congress, has called for the US to stop aid to Ukraine, giving added voice to a revolt in the party that threatens bipartisan support for the war against Putin. Yet she has emerged as a prominent voice in the House of Representatives after forging a bond with the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who vowed that Republicans will not write a “blank cheque” for Ukraine.
On Monday, PM Rishi Sunak struck a deal with the EU on post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland, but the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) continues to withhold its approval. While the unionists decide whether to bestow their stamp of approval, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed he would have a hard time supporting the deal.
Canada joins the list of countries banning TikTok on government-issued devices. The European Parliament became the latest EU body to ban the app from staff phones this week and a U.S. House panel approved a bill giving President Biden the power to ban the app altogether. TikTok is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, and there are concerns about whether China's government could harvest user data or advance its interests.
Ukraine's Four-Pawed War Heroes- RFE/RL
A team of volunteers and their highly trained dogs have become a vital part of Ukraine's war effort, searching for the living and retrieving the dead from buildings destroyed by Russian strikes.
Andrei Kolesnikov, Russia’s Second, Silent War Against its Human Capital- The Moscow Times
At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to draw up a package of measures to increase Russia's birth rates and life expectancy. He also expressed bewilderment at the falling birth rates in a number of regions.
Just a few days later, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed upping the age from which Russian men are required to perform their military service from 18 to 21 and increasing the upper age limit for conscription from 27 to 30. These proposals mean young men would be called up after earning their college degrees, and trained specialists would be pulled out of the job market to have their skills voided by military service.
There is a major discrepancy between these two objectives. If men go to war or emigrate en masse instead of fathering children, where will the children come from? The effect on the labor market will also be severe: conscription at such a productive age leeches the labor force out of an economy that is already expected to lose 3–4 million people aged 20–40 between 2020 and 2030 due to demographic trends.
Peter Dickinson, What if Ukraine had lost? Atlantic Council
If Putin’s initial invasion plan had succeeded and his troops had captured Kyiv in three days as anticipated, he would have deposed the government and installed a puppet regime drawn from Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin political forces. Much of the country would have quickly come under direct Russian military control and would have been subjected to months of mass arrests, summary executions, and forced deportations designed to break all resistance. Working with local collaborators across the country, the Russian occupation authorities would have targeted anyone viewed as a potential threat to the Kremlin.
This pattern of atrocities has been repeated systematically over the past year in every region of Ukraine occupied by Putin’s troops. International investigators have concluded that the crimes taking place in occupied regions are evidence of a “calculated plan” to destroy the Ukrainian nation. “Putin’s plan is to occupy Ukraine, subjugate the Ukrainian population to Russian rule, and destroy Ukrainian identity. This plan is becoming clearer as the evidence of war crimes proliferates and as our investigations progress,” commented British barrister Wayne Jordash, who leads the Mobile Justice Team of international lawyers investigating possible Russian crimes in Ukraine.
With less than 20% of Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia, the humanitarian consequences of the war have already been disastrous. Tens of thousands of civilians are feared dead and over a million have been subjected to forced deportation to the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, millions more have had to flee their homes and move elsewhere in Ukraine or cross the border into neighboring EU countries.
If Putin had managed to seize the whole of Ukraine, the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe would have been far greater. Tens of millions of Ukrainian refugees would have flooded into the European Union, while ongoing acts of resistance inside Ukraine would have led to a bloodbath of increasingly savage reprisals designed to terrorize the population into submission. Global audiences would have witnessed the previously unthinkable spectacle of a modern genocide unfolding methodically in the heart of Europe and livestreamed on social media.
