Nov 14 Buonasera Mag
Day 264: Kherson, UA ground war, Biden-Xi, Lavrov, Burns, US sanctions, Canada, France, Scholz, Istanbul- A&Ps- Fulda, Dixon-Belton, night train, Troy, Kyiv Independent, Sumlenny, Dmitri
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.
Zelensky: Crimea will greet our soldiers with Ukrainian flags like in Kherson. "We'll certainly see how our forces in Crimea will be met with Ukrainian flags, which they are keeping there, and there will be hundreds of them on the streets on the day of liberation," he said.
What’s happening in Kherson…
President Zelensky visited Kherson today: We are moving forward,” he told troops. “We are ready for peace, peace for all our country.”
Kremlin spokesman Peskov expressed his outrage by saying that Kherson belonged to Russia. I think he didn’t get the memo.
Utility companies in Kherson are working to restore critical infrastructure mined by fleeing Russian forces, regional officials said on Sunday. The governor of the region, Yaroslav Yanushevych, said the authorities had decided to maintain a curfew from 5pm to 8am and ban people from leaving or entering the city, as a security measure, Reuters reported.
Yuriy Sobolevskiy, first deputy chairman of Kherson regional council, added to Ukrainian TV: “Most houses have no electricity, no water and problems with gas supplies.” The head of Ukrainian state railways said train service to Kherson was expected to resume this week.
The Russian defense line along the Dnipro River is almost 400km long. Russia will have to allocate a tremendous amount of troops to defend it and the best part is that Ukraine can completely go around it.
Stories we’re following…
The General Staff: The increase in the grouping of Russian troops in the Melitopol region is noted. Fortifications and fortifications are being built around the perimeter of the city.
Russian sources say that the battle in Russian-occupied Luhansk has severely intensified today. Kreminna is directly attacked from the forest, artillery strikes on Svatove and a push from Makiivka.
Putin signed a decree allowing foreign citizens to be conscripted into the Armed Forces.
Intelligence: Russia, Iran prepare deal for ballistic missile supplies. Russian shortage of modern weapons due to the Western sanctions is pushing Moscow to purchase weapons from world pariahs, according to Vadym Skibitskyi, a representative of the Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate.
Ukrainian intelligence: Russia faces medicine shortages due to sanctions. Russia's Health Ministry has issued an order obliging all country's regions to create a stockpile of medicines for four months, according to the Defense Ministry's Intelligence Directorate.
Russian bank seeks to regain access to SWIFT as part of grain talks. Russian Deputy FM Vershinin said that Moscow was hoping to reconnect Rosselkhozbank to the SWIFT international messaging network as part of UN talks on Ukrainian grain exports.
Members of the Wagner Group kidnapped and executed a recruited prisoner who had been captured by the Ukrainians and expressed his desire to fight for them against Putin. Evgeny Nuzhin was executed with a sledgehammer to the head. Head of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, commented the video: "As for the one who was killed with a sledgehammer, this show shows that he did not find happiness in Ukraine, but met with unkind but fair people. I think this movie is called 'The dog deserves a dog's death'". (I won’t be posting pictures or the video about this.)
Putin threatens to strip passports from people who acquired Russian citizenship. Vladimir Putin proposed amendments to a bill that would enable Moscow to strip passports from non-birth citizens who acquired Russian citizenship if they criticized the war in Ukraine.
The United States is set to announce a further package of military support to Ukraine in the next few weeks, according to national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
We remain solid in providing security assistance. You know there is one assistance package that we have just announced, there will be another in the next few weeks - after a similar amount of time and the same amount that we have been sticking to for the past weeks and months.
UK defense ministry: Military training program for Russian schools to be drafted by end of 2022. The program is likely to mimic a Soviet-era initiative that included contingencies for a chemical or nuclear attack, first aid and handling and firing Kalashnikov rifles.
Kuleba calls on ASEAN summit members to stop Russia's 'hunger games with the world.' On the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Cambodia, FM Kuleba said that Russia's participation in the Black Sea Grain Initiative was insufficient and that steps must be taken to ensure Russia does not intentionally delay shipments, forcing global prices to rise, Reuters reports. He made make the case that Russia’s invasion is causing an environmental as well as humanitarian catastrophe, with fossil fuels a key catalyst of the country’s destruction. Two dozen Ukrainian officials are present at COP27.
Ukraine has dispatched two dozen officials to the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to spell out the links between the war launched by Russia in February, the soaring cost of energy due to Russia’s status as a key gas supplier and the planet-heating emissions expelled by the offensive.
In a 3-hour meeting, President Biden and President Xi Jinping, have reiterated their agreement that a nuclear war “should never be fought”, in a long-awaited meeting in Bali earlier today, the White House said. Xi Jinping during negotiations with Biden said that the independence of Taiwan is impossible and Biden replied that the US would oppose any unilateral change in the status quo on the island.
China’s readout from the meeting differed slightly, with the New York Times reporting: “Unlike the White House’s account, the Chinese account did not mention Xi and Biden agreeing on opposing Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war.”
The UN’s secretary general Antonio Guterres said he is “hopeful” Russia will extend the Black Sea Grain Initiative. The UN is “working non-stop” to renew the “essential” deal that gives safe passage to Ukrainian grain shipments, Guterres said during a press conference at the G20 summit in Bali.
Before the G20 Summit, FM Lavrov said the West was "militarizing" Southeast Asia to contain Russian and Chinese interests, setting the stage for a confrontation between Russia and Western leaders at the G20 summit in Bali. Lavrov arrived in Bali today amid a bit of mystery. AP reported that he was wisked off to hospital but Kremlin spokesperson Zakharova said that this was false and they published this picture below. Why would AP lie?
CIA Director Bill Burns met with his Russian counterpart Sergey Naryshkin in Ankara today to discuss detained US citizens and nuclear risk, NSC spokesperson tells me, confirming Kommersant. Spox emphasized though that Burns was “not conducting negotiations of any kind.”
Telegraph: UK, EU to stage walkouts when Russian delegates speak at G20. The U.K. and the EU also plan to confront Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the delegation at the G20 summit over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, The Telegraph reported citing unnamed officials.
The US has announced fresh sanctions targeting a transnational network that has been working to procure technology to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. The sanctions target 14 individuals and 28 entities, including family members of Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, as well as people that it says worked as financial facilitators in Suleiman’s network. The US treasury department also blacklisted Milandr, a Russian microelectronics company that it says is part of Moscow’s military research and development structure. It has also imposed sanctions on major military industrial companies in Russia. The US commerce department has cut off exports of American-made components and US technologies that have been used in some of Russia’s military hardware.
Vive la France!
Canada will provide Ukraine with a further $500m (£425m) in additional military assistance in addition to sanctions on nearly two dozen more Russians, prime minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement on Monday as the G20 summit began.
Scholz pledges new Iran sanctions for drone supplies to Russia, crackdown on protests. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the EU foreign ministers are expected to agree on the sanctions against Iran during a meeting on Nov. 14.
CNN: An explosion rocked central Istanbul on Sunday afternoon, with injuries reported in what is a popular tourist area. The governor of Istanbul, Ali Yerlikaya, tweeted that the explosion took place on Istiklal Street in Beyoglu Square. “Our police, health, fire and AFAD teams were sent to the scene,” he said, adding that there are deaths and injuries.
Former Kremlin advisor Sergei Markov noted the close proximity of Turkey’s terror attack to the Russian Consulate. Markov suggests it could be motivated by attacking Turkey as a gas supply or protesting Turkey’s sanctions circumvention measures
Robyn Dixon & Catherine Belton, Loss of Kherson city shatters Putin’s war goals in Ukraine- WaPo
Analyst Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of the R. Politik political analysis group, said the sense of betrayal among Russia’s “party of war” posed no threat to Putin, who remains convinced that Ukraine will lose Western support next year, forcing Kyiv to capitulate to his terms.
Stanovaya said Putin merely wanted to buy time until Western support for Ukraine disappeared, while Kolesnikov dismissed Putin’s signals he was ready to negotiate as “pure PR,” with the sides too far apart.
Stanovaya said Putin did not expect Russia to win the war through military means but regarded Ukraine as a nonstate that would eventually collapse.
Taking The Night Train Across War-Torn Ukraine- RFE/RL
Every night, around 80 to 100 long-haul trains crisscross the country, and another more than 200 regional trains run through the early hours. Beside Poland, international trains depart for Vienna and Budapest. Going east within Ukraine, the trains run right up to the areas occupied by Russian forces -- Kramatorsk, Pokrovsk, and Izyum.
At midnight, we set off on the 12-hour journey, and after 20 minutes we're already in Ukraine. Just before Lviv, two female border guards with guns check passengers' passports. They ask your reason for travel, stamp your papers, and move on to the next person. Outside the window it is pitch black as most cities turn their lights off at night to save electricity. I had hoped to stretch my legs at the Lviv station, but the train only stops for 2 minutes and the conductor won't let me disembark.
US Midterm Elections…
More importantly from the NYT: Every election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls.
Exit Trump…enter DeSantis?
From celebrations on Saturday…
The poster is giving information about Putin’s…small…
Programming Note:
