Nov 28 Buonasera Mag
Day 278: Mariupol Bakmut blackouts ZNPP grain FireFighters RUcollaborators Taran China oil prices Kuleba Jong-un Taiwan-A&Ps-Scarr Reinsalu Applebaum Lawrence Cordell
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…
Emergency blackouts resumed in all of Ukraine on Nov. 28. The measures were resumed due to the rapid growth of the power deficit, which currently constitutes 27%, according to Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant remains under Russian control, the Russia-installed administration of the occupied city of Enerhodar, home to the facility, has said. “The media are actively spreading fakes that Russia is allegedly planning to withdraw from Enerhodar and leave the [nuclear plant]. This information is not true.”
Fighting around the key eastern Ukraine town of Bakhmut has descended into a bloody morass with hundreds of dead and injured reported daily, as neither Russian or Ukrainian forces were able to make a significant breakthrough after months of fighting.
ISW: “Fighting along the front lines is likely to pick up once the ground freezes over in the coming weeks, making it easier to maneuver without getting bogged down in muddy conditions, according to the Institute for the Study of War.”- as per WaPo.
Russian forces have likely deployed mobilized personnel to the primary lines of defense and pulled experienced, professional units to the secondary and tertiary lines of defense, a deployment pattern that could lead to more rapid Ukrainian advances.
Minister: Ukraine's grain exports won't reach 3 million tons this month. Ukraine's grain exports will fail to reach 3 million tons in November as Russia intentionally limits ship inspections, Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said on Nov. 27. In October, Ukraine exported 4.2 million tons of grain under the Black Sea Grain Initiative, Kubrakov said.
The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkievych, has said there will be no drinking water supply to the southern Ukrainian city after Russian forces damaged a pumping station in the neighbouring Kherson region. “During a missile attack, Russian terrorists damaged a pumping station of MKP Mykolaivvodokanal, located in the Kherson region. Therefore, for an indefinite period of time, we are forced to supply technical water to the city from the Bug estuary.”
The SSU neutralized the group that aimed Russian missiles at schools in Sloviansk. They transmitted information about the movement of military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as the geolocation of Ukrainian schools.
Interior Ministry: Only 3% of Russian attacks hit military targets. The estimate was provided by Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin. About 32,000 civilian sites and more than 700 critical infrastructure facilities have been hit by Russia so far, according to Yenin. “Like any terrorists, they (Russians) are targeting civilian sites,” he said on TV.
National Resistance Center: All Russian collaborators have left Nova Kakhovka near Kherson. The collaborators who left were not only those who held positions in the occupation administration but those who participated in joint raids with Russian forces against the local population and intimidated and forced residents into cooperating with Russian demands, the Ukrainian military’s National Resistance Center reported on Nov. 27, citing the local underground resistance.
Russia is preparing for a new missile attack. In the Black Sea, for the first time in a long time, a missile carrier appeared on duty. It has 8 Calibers on board, said Humenyuk, the spokeswoman of OC "Pivden".
In a strange plane crash in France, a Russian billionaire crypto businessman, who alledgedly had connections with the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, died. Russian-born entrepreneur Vyacheslav Taran (Libertex Group, Forex Club) was heading home to Monaco in a Monacair helicopter that crashed on the Cote d'Azur on Friday. The pilot also died, Taran was his only passenger.
The most effective solution to the energy problem for Ukraine is the transfer of missiles with a range of 800 kilometers to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
The Pentagon is considering a Boeing proposal to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs fitted on to abundantly available rockets, allowing Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines, according to a Reuters report. Boeing’s proposed system, dubbed Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GLSDB), is one of about a half-dozen plans for getting new munitions into production for Ukraine and America’s eastern European allies, industry sources told the news agency.
UNHCR: 4.7 million Ukrainian refugees receive temporary protection status in Europe. According to the latest numbers by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 4,751,065 refugees from Ukraine have registered for temporary protection status or similar statuses as of last week. Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic are in the lead. In total, around 7.8 million Ukrainian refugees have been recorded across Europe.
Russia has postponed nuclear disarmament talks with the US planned for this week, according to Kommersant newspaper, citing the US embassy. The Russian foreign ministry confirmed in a statement that talks between Moscow and Washington in Cairo will no longer take place this week.
FM Kuleba says that the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Poland will be held without a representative of the Russian Federation. This is the first time this has happened. Kuleba added,”And it is right, there is nothing for him to do there. They are only imitating negotiations. They are only imitating diplomacy. They have made their choice: this choice is war and war crimes.”
Ukraine expects that the EU will impose restrictions against the banking sector of Russia in the ninth package of sanctions, says Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. "In the 9th sanctions package, we expect a full-scale disconnection of Russian banks from SWIFT and a ban on the entry into the EU of citizens of the terrorist state," says Shmyhal.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un may have chosen his daughter as his heir experts have said, after she appeared with him in public for only the second time.
Anne Applebaum, ‘Lukashenko Is Easier to Unseat Than Putin’- The Atlantic
A band of Belarusians is resisting the threat of a neo-Soviet empire by taking up arms in Ukraine.
No revolutionary posters line the streets, “flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues,” as they did when George Orwell left Barcelona to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Nor can you hear loudspeakers “bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night,” as Orwell did in 1936. Instead, gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, the Belarusians preparing to leave Warsaw to join the Ukrainian army look more like a bunch of computer programmers getting ready for a long car trip.
Maybe that’s because they are a bunch of computer programmers—or anyway, some of them are—gathered in a basement on a quiet, tree-lined street, getting ready for a long car trip. Canned food, dried sausage, and bags of nuts and raisins are neatly stacked on the floor beside a pile of backpacks.
The New World Order…
This is the concept that is currently being disseminated through a variety of vectors: Their propaganda says that Russia represents the ‘new world order’, and is far from being isolated- it is the pivot around which all other countries rotate. The collective ‘West’ isn’t beating Russia: it’s winning the war because it is standing up to 1 billion people.
Edward Lawrence: A statement from the BBC on what happened to me in Shanghai last night while doing my job. I understand at least one local national was arrested after trying to stop the police from beating me. Thanks very much for the kind words and messages of concern.
It appears the authorities also briefly arrested my Swiss colleague Mic Peuker.
BREAKING: Taiwan just announced that wearing masks outdoors will not be mandatory from Dec 1
Russia Traffics in Ukrainian Children- The New York Times
The children left this town in August for a free summer camp sponsored by the Russian occupiers, enticed by assurances of gifts and of safety from constant shelling.
“The Russians promised it would be two or three weeks, and then the children would be back,” Nadia Borysenko, 29, told me. Her 12-year-old daughter, Daria, was among 25 children from this town in northeastern Ukraine who boarded a bus to the camp.
Russia did not return them, however. Daria and other children are now across the border in Russia, and Moscow is making it very difficult for families to recover their children.
