Mar 9: Buonasera Mag
Day 379: UASitRep Georgia Bakhmut YaltaConf Kharkiv Germany SouthKorea DonetskMedics Prigozhina Roldugin A&Ps-Standish UKDef Davis RobLee Kyslytsya Decode39 Kirillova AtlanticCouncil RosAtkins
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.
The Insider: Zurab Japaridze, leader of the Georgian Girchi More Freedom party, was arrested and beaten along with other politicians who took part in the March 7 protests. According to the party's Twitter, the police hit him in the head with a baton and also continued to beat him already at the police station. Earlier, on March 8, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia reported that 66 people were detained during a protest rally held the day before in Tbilisi.
Stories we’re following…
Zelensky says capture of Bakhmut would give Russia 'open road' to other cities of Donetsk Oblast. "This is tactical for us… after Bakhmut, they could go further. They could go to Kramatorsk, they could go to Sloviansk," President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN. "That's why our guys are standing there."
The press service of Prigozhin has said that Russian forces now fully control the east of the city. The claims have not been independently verified.
UK Defense Ministry: Ukrainian forces have 'likely stabilized' their defensive perimeter in Bakhmut. The report comes a day after President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an address to Ukrainians that there was consensus between him and Ukraine's top military leadership that Ukrainian forces should continue to hold the city.
Official: Less than 4,000 civilians remain in Bakhmut. Less than 4,000 civilians — including 38 children — remain in the city in Donetsk Oblast, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on national television on March 7.
Governor: Situation 'stable and under control' in Luhansk Oblast as Russia pauses attacks. Russian forces in Luhansk Oblast have largely ceased attacking over the past 24 hours to replenish their reserves, according to Luhansk Oblast Governor Serhiy Haidai.
Russia is unlikely to capture significantly more territory this year, according to the US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines. She told a Senate hearing that the military will probably be unable to carry on its current level of fighting, even with the possible capture of Bakhmut.
CNN: China's Foreign Minister compares hypothetical military aid for Russia to US aid for Taiwan. “Why does the US ask China not to provide weapons to Russia while it keeps selling arms to Taiwan?” Qin Gang said during a news conference on March 7.
The 2023 Yalta International Economic Forum will be held in Moscow due to “certain logistical peculiarities”. The Yalta International Economic Forum, which has been postponed for the last several years, may be held in Moscow in September 2023, according to Sergey Aksyonov, the Moscow-appointed head of Crimea. Aksyonov said that the forum will be held “jointly with the new regions,” referring to the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” and Ukraine’s occupied Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and that it will coincide with the anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the territories.
Reuters: Sergey Roldugin, a concert cellist linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, moved millions of francs through Swiss bank accounts without any proper checks, Swiss prosecutors will allege on Wednesday at the opening of a trial of four bankers accused of helping him. Prosecutors say that Sergey Roldugin, sanctioned by Switzerland, deposited millions of francs in Swiss bank accounts between 2014 and 2016. The four bankers appeared at Zurich District Court at the start of their trial on Wednesday, accused of lacking diligence in financial transactions. Prosecutors allege they failed to do enough to determine the identity of the beneficial owner of the funds, according to the indictment seen by Reuters.
Alexander Lukashenko says a “terrorist from Ukrainian intelligence” has been arrested for involvement in a recent airfield explosion in Belarus. He accused Kyiv of working with the CIA against Minsk.
More than 55,000 people have signed a petition demanding the return of Masha Moskaleva - the 13-year-old girl was placed in an orphanage when her father was prosecuted after she made an anti-war drawing in school.
Julia Davis: “During Vladimir Solovyov's show on Russian state TV, a Professor argued that Ukrainians are animals and that should determine Russia's future course of action. When Russians massacre Ukrainian civilians and POWs, this is how they justify it.”
Minister: Poland to send 10 more Leopard tanks to Ukraine this week. Poland has led Western efforts in providing Ukraine with modern Leopard main battle tanks, having delivered the first batch on Feb. 24. In total, Warsaw pledged to supply 14 Leopard 2 tanks.
Zaluzhnyi meets with top military officials of UK, US, Poland. Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces Valerii Zaluzhnyi reported that he met with four military leaders of Western countries on March 7.
Last night Kharkiv’s street lights were switched on for the first time since the start of the war, the city’s Mayor said.
“For more than a year, the only source of light in Kharkiv during the dark hours of the day has mainly been car headlights. During this time, there were many road accidents in which people were injured,” Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.
An EU court has struck down the sanctions against Violetta Prigozhin, the mother of the Russian mercenary leader, arguing the family connection was not enough to target her. She had appealed to the Luxembourg general court after she was added to the EU sanctions list in February 2022, on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Judges concluded that the EU council of ministers, the decision-making body, had failed to demonstrate that she owned any companies with links to her son.
Germany’s defence minister has urged caution around reports that the Nord Stream pipeline was sabotaged by a pro-Ukrainian group, raising the possibility of a false flag operation designed to shift blame for the attack to Kyiv. “It could just as easily been a false [flag] operation, designed to shift the blame to pro-Ukraine groups”, Boris Pistorius told broadcaster Deutschlandfunk. “The likelihood is equally high”.
South Korea’s government approved export licenses for Poland last year to provide Ukraine with Krab howitzers, which are built with South Korean components, a defence acquisition official in Seoul told Reuters on Wednesday. “We reviewed all the documentation and possible issues inside DAPA... then we made decision to give out export licence to Poland,” he told Reuters in an interview at DAPA headquarters on the outskirts of Seoul.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was in Kyiv on Wednesday and met with President Zelensky to discuss the continuation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative in all its aspects, as well as other pertinent issues, as reported in the Secretary General’s official account.
President Zelensky thanked the UN secretary general. Alongside a video clip of them meeting in Kyiv today, the Ukrainian president wrote:
Right now, Ukraine is at the forefront of not just a struggle, but a real war for all the principles on which international life is based. Right now, it is Ukraine that is defending the goals and principles of the UN Charter. Hence, it is now and in Ukraine that the future of the UN and the global role of the United Nations are being decided.
I personally thank the secretary general, his team and the United Nations as a whole, who share our view of the need to protect universal values and the international order.
Reid Standish on Russo-Chinese relations
A yearlong study by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy found that China and Russia have grown closer together in the information space amid the war in Ukraine, often parroting each other's talking points across state-owned media as part of a wider strategy to undermine the West.
Reid Standish spoke with Etienne Soula, one of the report's authors, who told me that "there has definitely been a pro-Russian convergence" from Chinese state-backed media in the last year.
Soula said, "China's support for Russia isn't unequivocal" but the "information space is the low-hanging fruit. No one says they will put sanctions on China for supporting Russia there."
"It keeps Russia happy, and it also serves Beijing's broader interests by accelerating a loss of Western influence in places like Africa, where only China really has the capacity to fill the void left by Western powers," he added.
China Underground Bank in Italy- Decode39
“China underground bank” is what investigators of the Guardia di Finanza (Italy’s Finance Corps) call a suspected shadow credit institution that might be syphoning off billions of euros from Italy towards China by offering special services to unique clients. The ongoing investigation has found alleged “branches” in Rome, Florence, Padua, Prato, Naples and Reggio Calabria, reported La Repubblica. Europol has been notified.
Enquirers talk of “an organised and complex underground system” capable of laundering up to two billion euros yearly and sending the money into accounts held at the most prominent Chinese state banks.
Its “clients” range from mafia-linked drug traffickers to North-Eastern Italian entrepreneurs, Russian oligarchs (who cannot make traceable purchases in Italy due to sanctions) and the Chinese super-rich who want to shop in the great Italian fashion streets.
That’s an order of magnitude above the well-known practice of Chinese expats sending small remits back home through the shadow Chinese economy, as recounted by Italy’s intelligence in its latest annual report.
Ksenia Kirillova, An insidious plan to enforce the Constitution: a series about spies in the United States was released in Russia, which became the culmination of propaganda- Forum Daily
This winter a new spy series, “The Russians,” appeared on Russian screens – about the work of Russian illegal spies in the USA. On 14 February in the on-line movie channel Premier the final episode of 12 was aired, and the film is expected to premiere on the one of the main Russian propaganda channels, NTV. If one is to believe the show, Russian spies spared no effort preventing any possibility of a decent future for their own country.
“The Russians” vs. “The Americans”
The creators do not hide the fact that the new screen opus is their response to the American cult serial “The Americans,” also concerning the activities of Soviet illegals during the Cold War. In an attempt to deliver a “decisive blow” to foreign cinema, the prototypes of the characters played the main roles: former spies Andrey Bezrukov and his wife Yelena Vavilova, who were expelled from the United States in 2010 following their discovery. They were co-authors of “The Russians” script, and Yelena Vavilova’s book, “The Woman Who Can Keep Secrets,” formed the basis of the series.
The pair of former spies do not hide the fact that the product created with their participation is more propaganda than entertainment. In Vavilova's words, upon watching the serial “The Americans,” she “immediately felt a desire to tell how the work of illegal spies is really carried out overseas.” “The serial is correct and based on real life,” the screenwriter assures us in the hope that after watching, young people “will not fear intelligence work” and will wish to simulate her espionage career.
In case you missed it…
Please join the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center for a special online event: What is the trajectory of Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic future?