Nov 30 Buonasera Mag
Day 280: ISW Kursk Starlink SBU Grain SurrenderHotline Wagner RUstockpile China Iran Madrid Odesa UKSanctions EU- A&Ps-Tokariuk Mongelli Abrams UkraineDefence
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…
Russian official claims Kursk Oblast shelled by Ukrainian troops. The region’s governor, Roman Starovoit, said that the Sudzha district, bordering Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast, had been attacked by Ukrainian forces. Ukraine has not commented on the allegations.
Financial Times: Starlink prices nearly double in Ukraine since March. Starlink terminals will cost $700 for new Ukrainian consumers, according to the company’s website, a rise from about $385 earlier this year. Cost of a monthly subscription will now rise from $60 to $75.
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officials found weapons and Russian cash on Wednesday after searching properties in around Kyiv linked to a pro-Russian former politician, the agency said. In a statement, the SBU said its searches of homes and offices belonging to Yevhen Murayev, who it said was “hiding from justice abroad”, and his associates were part of a criminal investigation into treason.
The head of Zelensky’s office, Andriy Yermak, spoke to Biden’s natsec adviser Jake Sullivan this morning. They discussed the US’s support for the Grain from Ukraine scheme, which is running to get grain out of the port of Odesa, and its support for Ukraine over the winter months.
The “I Want to Live” scheme was started in September by Ukraine, and gives Russian troops a way to give themselves up to Ukrainian forces. It includes a hotline and a messaging app. Officials in Kyiv told the BBC they have had 3,500 inquiries from personnel, both on the frontline and in Russia before deployment, and their families.
First of all, we hear a voice, mainly male. It’s often part-desperate, part-frustrated, because they don’t fully understand how the hotline works, or whether it’s just a set up. There’s also curiosity because many call not to surrender but to find out how they could if needed. It’s different every time.
Media: Russia's Wagner Group recruits prisoners in Africa to fight against Ukraine. Wagner Group is releasing rebels from jails in the Central African Republic and sending them overseas, including to Ukraine’s Donbas, the Daily Beast reported.
Intelligence: Russia stockpiles missiles for next mass missile strike. Vadym Skibitsky, Defense Ministry’s Intelligence Directorate representative, said Russia was conducting reconnaissance for its next mass missile strike. He said Russia had enough weapons to bombard Ukraine.
Moscow has promoted the chief engineer of the Zaporizhzhia NPP plant, Yuriy Chernichuk, to become its head, according to Russia’s nuclear agency Rosenergoatom. The position has been vacant since October, when Kyiv says the plant’s boss Ihor Murashov was abducted by Russian authorities.
Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, has threatened that if Patriot anti-ballistic missile systems are shipped to Ukraine, they will become "a legal target" for the Russian invaders.
Reuters: Russia, China conduct joint air exercise over Sea of Japan, East China Sea. South Korea’s military reportedly dispatched fighter jets when two Chinese and six Russian warplanes, including TU-95 bombers and SU-35 fighter jets, entered its air defense zone on Nov. 30.
A security officer at Ukraine’s embassy in Madrid was injured when he opened a letter bomb addressed to the ambassador on Wednesday, and Kyiv ordered a bolstering of security at all its representative offices abroad. The security officer suffered light injuries and went under his own steam to hospital for treatment, Spanish government official Mercedes Gonzalez told broadcaster Telemadrid.
The head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, discussed nuclear issues and Ukraine in a meeting this month with the CIA director, William Burns, the RIA news agency reported.
The city council of Odesa has voted to remove and relocate a monument to Empress Catherine the Great of Russia that has been daubed with red paint at least twice.
The UK has announced a fresh round of sanctions against 22 Russians, including those the Foreign Office says were involved in enlisting criminals to fight in Ukraine.
Bloomberg: EU spends record $13 billion on Russian LNG. According to Bloomberg, European Union members spent 12.5 billion euros on Russian liquefied natural gas between January and September, five times more than during the same period in 2021.
The EU Commission gave an update on today on its plans to freeze and confiscate Russian assets after the invasion of Ukraine. “We have blocked €300bn of the Russian Central Bank reserves and we have frozen €19bn of Russian oligarchs’ money,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU’s executive said in a statement.
The EU will try to set up a court, backed by the UN, to investigate and prosecute war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, according to the EU Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen.
Russia must pay for its horrific crimes, including for its crime of aggression against a sovereign state. This is why, while continuing to support the international criminal court, we are proposing to set up a specialised court backed by the United Nations to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression. We are ready to start working with the international community to get the broadest international support possible for this specialised court.
Russia must also pay financially for the devastation that it has caused. The damage suffered by Ukraine is estimated at €600bn. Russia and its oligarchs have to compensate Ukraine for its damage and for the costs for rebuilding the country.
The UK is to sign a new digital trade agreement with Ukraine that will give the country access to Britain’s financial services industry. Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, will sign the agreement with the UK’s trade secretary, Kemi Badenoch, on Wednesday. Officials say the deal – based on a similar agreement earlier this year between the UK and Singapore – will support digital commerce through the facilitation of cross-border data flows.
Oleksandra Matviychuk, the interview on RFE/RL
Committing war crimes has become an integral part of how Moscow wages war and we shouldn’t wait to bring alleged Russian perpetrators to justice, argues Oleksandra Matviychuk, head of the organization that jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize this year. In an interview with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service in Kyiv, Matviychuk, a lawyer, says that all crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces invading Ukraine have a systemic nature, but the world is not yet interested in ensuring justice.
Tondo, Borger, Mamo, Onset of winter in Ukraine – a photo essay- The Guardian
Please read and view the photo essay. It shows us what Ukrainians are enduring.
The defining image of the current state of the war in Ukraine – and at the same time a metaphor for the entire country – is the snow-covered rubble of a residential building split in two by a Russian bomb in the town of Borodianka.
Some people who lived in that building have died as a result of the conflict. Others have managed to escape, joining the great exodus of refugees toward Europe. Some are now living in a dormitory on the outskirts of the town, struggling, like millions of other Ukrainians, with the nightmare of what is expected to be the hardest winter in the country’s history since the second world war.
Lawrence Abrams, 5.4 million Twitter users' stolen data leaked online — more shared privately- Bleeping Computer
Last July, a threat actor began selling the private information of over 5.4 million Twitter users on a hacking forum for $30,000.
While most of the data consisted of public information, such as Twitter IDs, names, login names, locations, and verified status, it also included private information, such as phone numbers and email addresses.
This data was collected in December 2021 using a Twitter API vulnerability disclosed in the HackerOne bug bounty program that allowed people to submit phone numbers and email addresses into the API to retrieve the associated Twitter ID. Using this ID, the threat actors could then scrape public information about the account to create a user record containing both private and public information, as shown below.
