Nov 13: 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.
Maria Avdeeva- November 11: Celebration of the liberation of Kherson. A residential area was hit by Russian missiles. This is the reason why elections cannot be held in the coming year.
Russian shelling in Kherson kills 1, injures 2 on 1-year anniversary of liberation. The local media outlet Most reported that shelling struck the home of a member of the Kherson Regional Council, Ihor Yosypenko, causing a fire. It was unknown if there were injuries as a result.
Stories we’re following…
For the first time since September, Kyiv has been the target of a Russian attack. Kyiv came under air attack this morning and big explosions were heard, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
Russian attack damages 18 homes in Kyiv Oblast. Several non-residential premises were also damaged, but there were no hits to critical infrastructure. No casualties were reported. Russian forces launched a missile strike at Ukraine's capital on the morning of Nov. 11 for the first time in 52 days.
Overnight, Russians targeted a library in Kherson from 200km distance with a multi-million dollar missile, destroying over 1,000,000 books.
Russian attacks on energy infrastructure impact 6 oblasts, thousands without power. Russian attacks hit energy infrastructure in several locations in Ukraine, leaving thousands without power in six different oblasts, Ukraine's Energy Ministry said on Nov. 11.
Ukraine regains control of village in Kharkiv Oblast, raises flag. Ukrainian forces on Nov. 11 regained control of the town of Topoli in Kharkiv Oblast and raised the national flag on video, the State Border Service reported.
President Zelensky’s Evening Address: I thank all of our partners who helped in strengthening Ukraine’s air defense. These countries include the U.S., Germany, France, the UK, Norway, Italy, Romania, Sweden, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Czechia, Bulgaria, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and others.
Combat Situation Update
Zelensky holds Supreme CinC Staff meeting to discuss further actions on battlefield. President Zelensky chaired another meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, as Zelensky reported on Telegram. In addition, the commanders reported on the current situation on the battlefield in all key sectors: Kupiansk, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Melitopol and the left-bank part of Kherson region.
“An important Staff meeting. A strategic vision for de-occupation of our land and concrete steps for its implementation. Clarification of all plans and calculations for the continuation of active actions," the President noted. “We need to become more self-sufficient in terms of ammunition, missiles, drones, armored vehicles,” Zelensky noted.
Russia increases activity near Avdiivka. Russian forces became once again more active near Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast, resulting in heavy losses on their side, the Ukrainian army's Tavria group spokesperson Oleksandr Shtupun said on television on Nov. 11.
"In the eastern direction, Russia has switched from defensive to active defense and is trying to recapture the positions it previously lost. Near and south of Bakhmut, Russia is trying to put pressure on our forces," Lieutenant Colonel Volodymyr Fityo, a spokesman for Ukraine's ground forces said.
Ukrainian naval drones sank two small Russian landing boats in Crimea, the Reuters news agency reports. An initial report from Ukraine’s military intelligence said the two small, amphibious Russian ships had been hit overnight. A Friday evening update from Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said the attack had been carried out by naval drones. It identified one landing craft as an Akula class vessel, the other a Serna class.
Ukraine’s counteroffensive has stalled, with progress on the two principal axes on the southern front. Kyiv’s forces have advanced about 10km south of Velyka Novosilka and 9km south of Orikhiv and there appears no prospect of a breakthrough as the weather turns.
Ukraine has been unable to break through dense Russian minefields, now laid to a depth of 15 to 20km, Zaluzhnyi said. The Zemledeliye remote truck mine laying system can lay down football fields of mines far faster than dismounted Ukrainian sappers can remove them, and the fear is that with more time Russia can develop a system of deep trenches beyond its existing fortified positions.
“We all hoped we would make more progress than we have,” said Yurk Sak, a former adviser to Ukraine’s defence ministry. “By now we were hoping we would be in control of Tokmak,” a strategic town on the road to Melitopol, which still lies 20km south of the furthest Ukrainian advance. Breaking Russia’s land brid
"Russia is preparing for a long war against Ukraine. Ukraine's victory will help preserve peace in Europe. The west must arm Ukraine to keep Russia from future global adventures," Latvian president Edgars Rinkēvičs said.
Behind the Lines
Russia sentences Crimean political prisoner to additional 4.5 years in prison. A Russian court sentenced Crimean political prisoner Oleh Prykhodko to four and half years in prison in addition to the five-year sentence he is already serving, Suspilne Crimea reported on Nov. 10, citing his daughter, Nataliia Shvetsova.
In temporarily occupied Melitopol, partisans blew up a russian headquarters which was set up in the premises of a Nova Poshta building. According to the GUR, the attack was carried out during a meeting of FSB and Russian Guard officers. Three officers were reportedly killed.
Russian media: 'Unknown people' derail train in Russia's Ryazan Oblast. The previous day, a fire also broke out at a gunpowder plant in Kotovsk, a town in Russia's Tambov Oblast. Russian law enforcement said 15 train carriages had been derailed south-east of the capital, while MZhD reported the number as 19.
Update: Russian investigators have determined that the freight train that was derailed yesterday in Russia’s Ryazan oblast was caused by a homemade bomb on the railway line. Authorities have opened a terrorism investigation into the derailment. While Kyiv has not yet commented on the incident, but Russian officials have previously blamed pro-Ukrainian saboteurs for several attacks on the country’s railway system.
Julia Davis-Meanwhile in Russia: “Zakhar Prilepin says that Russia no longer has to pretend to be good and can openly join another axis, along with Syria, North Korea, Iran and others. Prilepin absurdly compared Crimea to Gaza, falsely claiming that Kyiv "rejected it."
Monique: they aren’t hiding it anymore.
Lincoln Project: The video reviews the totalitarian governments that have plagued the world in history in recent times. We often think: “it can’t happen here.” It can. Universal suffrage is something that the contemporary democratic world has enjoyed for very few years: it became the norm in our democracies after the Second World War. We’ve only just begun to grapple with the issues that challenge our democracies within, and are faced to counter attacks from authoritarian regimes without. We’re the generation that is called to buckle up and face these challenges.
Meanwhile in Russia
Russia: A bill has been submitted to the State Duma, which proposes to exempt from criminal liability those mobilized who have committed minor or moderate crimes before service.
An air defense complex appeared in Sochi, not far from President Vladimir Putin’s Bocharov Ruchey residence. The installation was placed right on the beach in the Mamaika area, and a video of it was posted by Sirena.
On September 20, a kamikaze drone attacked Sochi. It crashed into a Rosneft oil depot several tens of kilometers from the residence of the head of state. The strike hit an area that is approximately 550 km from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory.
UK Defense Ministry: Russia publishes collection of pseudo-history to justify war against Ukraine. The documents are representative of the Kremlin's "weaponization of history," the U.K. Defense Ministry said, which is "intensifying" and "aimed at inculcating anti-Westernism in the minds of the Russian population and intimidating its immediate Western neighbors."
The initiative of a number of regions that have introduced administrative liability for “inducing” women to have an abortion should be extended throughout Russia, said Patriarch Kirill. He called for the adoption of a corresponding federal law.
According to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the number of abortions in the country remains high. “Thank God, separate initiatives are appearing at the legislative level aimed at reducing the number of abortions. Not so long ago in Mordovia, for example, a law was passed banning inducement to abortion. I hope that this initiative will be supported in other regions and at the federal level,” said Kirill ( quoted by TASS).
Allied Support
Zelensky: Partnership between Ukraine and Poland makes Europe stronger. President Volodymyr Zelensky marked Poland's Independence Day and offered his congratulations "on behalf of the Ukrainian people" in a post on X on Nov. 11. The partnership between Ukraine and Poland "makes both of us and our entire Europe stronger," he said.
Borrell: US support for Ukraine will 'most likely' decrease, EU should be ready. The EU has the necessary means to continue supporting Ukraine, the EU's top diplomat Josep Borrell said, but it should be prepared for the likelihood that the U.S. may not sustain its contribution at current levels.
AP: Proposed US funding bill excludes Ukraine aid as political battle looms. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson revealed on Nov. 11 a new proposal to keep the federal government open, a plan which excludes additional funding for Ukraine, AP reported.
Bild: German government plans to provide 8 billion euros in military aid to Ukraine in 2024. While four billion euros ($4.3 billion) was the amount initially allocated for military aid for Ukraine in the draft 2024 budget, the government made the decision to increase that number to eight billion euros ($8.6 billion).
Latvian president: West must arm Ukraine to prevent further Russian aggression. Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs told the AP on Nov. 11 he believes Moscow is well prepared for a long war and that the West must keep providing Ukraine with security assistance or else Russia will be emboldened to threaten other countries in the future.
Around the World
CNN: President Biden’s highly anticipated meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping is set for next Wednesday in the San Francisco Bay Area, senior US administration officials said, setting up a test of whether the two men can slow a downward spiral in relations at a moment of heavy global turbulence.
Syria's Bashar al-Assad - the war criminal who massacred 100s of 1000s of Syrians and used gas and chemical weapons on civilians - in visit to Saudi Arabia for Gaza.
Israel reveal why they have sent troops into Gaza to destroy Hamas's terror tunnels once and for all to end the war: 'These sons of bi***es are hiding under houses and hospitals to maximise civilian casualties. It's pure evil'
By David Patrikarakos in The Daily Mail
Beneath Gaza sprawls a 300 mile-long network of tunnels that criss-cross deep underground in all directions.
They form an entire subterranean world that is so vast it has been described as a 'metro system' - but one far larger than even the London or Paris undergrounds.
The recently released 85-year-old Israeli hostage Yocheved Lifshitz revealed that Hamas had hidden her and other hostages in a tunnel system that 'looked like a spider web.'
When I was last in Gaza in 2016, the influence of the tunnels was everywhere. Thousands of people have found work in them and tens of thousands more, from drivers to shopkeepers have benefitted from the money flowing into the Gazan economy from the work they provided. But they were of course totally invisible.
It is a disconcerting feeling, walking around with the knowledge that beneath your feet, a terrorist army is, smuggling goods, plotting attacks, and burrowing away, day and night.
The Israelis recently uncovered a tunnel exit on a beach in northern Israel – giving Hamas the ability to attack via the sea.
The tunnels are a living, breathing force - and they need fuel and oxygen to function. One of the reasons Israel has been so reluctant to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza is its knowledge that Hamas is siphoning off badly-needed supplies to keep the tunnels operational.
The situation is both stark and brutal: Hamas has massive stockpiles of fuel to light its tunnels, while ordinary Gazans are rushed to hospitals that have barely enough electricity to power their equipment.
Anne Applebaum, The West Must Defeat Russia
The allied fight against Russia in Ukraine has damaged Russia’s ability to project negative power in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. But despite his extraordinary losses, Putin still believes that time is on his side. If he can’t win on the battlefield, he will win using political intrigue and economic pressure. He will wait for the democratic world to splinter, and he will encourage that splintering. He will wait for the Ukrainians to grow tired, and he will try to make that happen too. He will wait for Donald Trump to win the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and he will do anything he can to help that happen too.
Right now, Putin’s bets are on the Republicans who repeat Russian propaganda—Senator J. D. Vance, for example, echoes Russian language about the Ukraine war leading to “global disorder” and “escalation”; Representative Matt Gaetz cited a Chinese state-media source as evidence while asking about alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis at a congressional hearing; Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP presidential candidate, has also called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a Nazi. Putin will have been cheered by the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, who is knowingly delaying the military and financial aid that Ukraine needs to keep fighting. The supplemental bill that he refuses to pass includes money that will keep Ukrainians supplied with the air-defense systems they need to protect their cities, as well as the fiscal support they need to sustain their economy and crucial infrastructure in the coming months.
Part of the Republican resistance to helping Ukraine fight an American adversary is simply the perverse desire to see President Joe Biden fail. Another part comes from the fear that Ukraine is not able to win. The Ukrainian summer counteroffensive did have some success, especially in the Black Sea, where a combination of drones and missiles has badly weakened Russia’s navy and forced some of its ships to leave the Crimean port of Sebastopol. But the progress on land was slow. Ukraine’s ability to inflict huge casualties on Russia was not enough to create a backlash, or a reconsideration, in Moscow. General Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian commander in chief, has recently spoken of the war as a “stalemate.”
Although Zaluzhny has also described, in detail, the technology he needs to move his army forward and break that stalemate, his statement has renewed talk in the West of a truce or a cease-fire. Some are calling for a cease-fire in bad faith. In fact, they want a Russian victory, or at least a defeat for Biden. Others, however, advocate a truce with the best of intentions. They believe that because Putin will never give up, the damage to Ukraine must be limited. Lately, I’ve heard several well-meaning people, all supporters of Ukraine, argue that this conflict could end the way the Korean War once ended, with the borders frozen on the current front line and the rest of Ukraine, like South Korea, protected by an American security guarantee and even U.S. bases.
All of these suggestions, well-meaning or otherwise, have the same flaw: A cease-fire, temporary or otherwise, means that both sides have to stop fighting. Right now, even if Zelensky agrees to negotiate, there is no evidence that Putin wants to negotiate, that he wants to stop fighting, or that he has ever wanted to stop fighting. And yes, according to Western officials who have periodic conversations with their Russian counterparts, attempts have been made to find out.
Nor is there any evidence that Putin wants to partition Ukraine, keeping only the territories he currently occupies and allowing the rest to prosper like South Korea. His goal remains the destruction of Ukraine—all of Ukraine—and his allies and propagandists are still talking about how, once they achieve this goal, they will expand their empire further. Just last week, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president, published an 8,000-word article calling Poland Russia’s “historical enemy” and threatening Poles with the loss of their state too. The message was perfectly clear: We invaded Poland before, and we can do it again.
In this sense, the challenge that Putin presents to Europe and the rest of the world is unchanged from February 2022. If we abandon what we have achieved so far and we give up support for Ukraine, the result could still be the military or political conquest of Ukraine. The conquest of Ukraine could still empower Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the rest of Putin’s allies. It could still encourage China to invade Taiwan. It could still lead to a new kind of Europe, one in which Poland, the Baltic states, and even Germany are under constant physical threat, with all of the attendant consequences for trade and prosperity. A Europe permanently at war, an idea that seems impossible to most people in the West, still seems eminently plausible to the Russian president. Putin spent a memorable part of his life as a KGB officer, representing the interests of the Soviet empire in Dresden. He remembers when eastern Germany was ruled by Moscow. If it could be so once, then why not again?
The stark truth is that this war will only end for good when Russia’s neo-imperial dream finally dies. Just as the French decided in 1962 that Algeria could become independent of France, just as the British accepted in 1921 that Ireland was no longer part of the United Kingdom, the Russians must conclude that Ukraine is not Russia. I can’t tell you which political changes in Moscow are necessary to achieve that goal. I can’t say whether a different Russian leader is required—maybe or maybe not. But we will recognize this change when it happens. After it does, the conflict is over and negotiating a final settlement will be possible.
To reach that endgame, we need to adjust our thinking. First, we need to understand, more deeply than we have done so far, that we have entered a new era of great-power conflict. The Russians already know this and have already made the transition to a full-scale war economy. Forty percent of the Russian state budget—another conservative estimate—is now spent annually on military production, about 10 percent of GDP, a level not seen for decades. Neither the U.S. nor its European allies have made anything like this shift, and we started from a low base. Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute told me that, at the beginning of the war, the ammunition that the United Kingdom produced in a year was enough to supply the Ukrainian army for 20 hours. Although the situation has improved, as production has slowly cranked up all over the democratic world, we are not moving fast enough.
Secondly, we need to start helping the Ukrainians fight this war as if we were fighting it, altering our slow decision-making process to match the urgency of the moment. Ukraine received the weapons for its summer fighting very late, giving the Russians time to build minefields and tank traps—why? Training by NATO forces for Ukrainian soldiers has in some cases been rushed and incomplete—why? There is still time to reverse these mistakes: Zaluzhny’s list of breakthrough technologies, which includes tools to gain air superiority and better wage electronic warfare, should be taken seriously now, and not next year.
But the path to end this war does not only lead through the battlefield. We need to start thinking not just about helping Ukraine, but about defeating Russia—or, if you prefer different language, persuading Russia to leave by any means possible. If Russia is already fighting America and America’s allies on multiple fronts, through political funding, influence campaigns, and its links to other autocracies and terrorist organizations, then the U.S. and Europe need to fight back on multiple fronts too. We should outcompete Russia for the scarce commodities needed to build weapons, block the software updates that they need to run their defense factories, look for ways to sabotage their production facilities. Russia used fewer weapons and less ammunition this year than it did last year. Our task should be to ensure that next year is worse.
500-year-old Crimean Tatar music sounds in Paris. It was written by the Crimean Khan and poet Ğazı II Giray.