Nov 9: E-Stories
Day622 UAinEU MOL Kherson Zapo Avdiivka Dnipro Filiponenko Latvia InRussia BehindLines Allies Israel Trump NED NATO G7 A&P Zelensky Sandu Noel ISW UKDef Krutov Iacoboni ERIC Kenyon Dickinson Horowitz
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.
Historic!!!!! Ukraine to begin EU accession along with Moldova!!!!
Stories we’re following…
Russian attacks killed three people in an eastern Ukrainian village on Wednesday, Kyiv has said. Ukrainian emergency service said that two men and a woman had been killed in the village of Bagatyr, in the eastern Donetsk region, AFP reports. The village, in an industrial region that the Kremlin claimed to have annexed last year, lies about 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the town of Avdiivka, a recent hotspot in the fighting.
Russian forces are undermining critical infrastructure in the occupied areas of the Kherson region, in southern Ukraine, and this could indicate that they intend to destroy them in view of a future retreat: the main intelligence directorate of the defense ministry wrote on Telegram Ukrainian (Gur), as reported by Rbc-Ukraine. According to military intelligence, the Russians are placing explosives near critical infrastructure such as electrical substations and thermal power plants. “The actions of the occupiers demonstrate their probable intention to destroy elements of critical infrastructure when they have to withdraw,” comments the Gur.
Russian strikes damage infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. Russian forces launched two missile strikes on the civilian infrastructure of a settlement in the Zaporizhzhia district, the regional governor Yurii Malashko reported on Nov. 7. Earlier the same day, Russian forces hit an infrastructure facility near Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Governor Serhii Lysak wrote.
Central Election Commission: Elections are not held during wartime. According to Ukraine's legislation, elections are not held during wartime under martial law, the Central Election Commission's deputy chair, Serhii Dubovyk, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) on Nov. 7.
Monique: There is no way to provide for the safety of those who will be voting. They would be targets for Russia’s terror missile strikes. The Ukrainian government simply cannot provide the security measures necessary for citizens and candidates.
Combat Situation Update
Ukraine is preparing for a renewed Russian assault on Avdiivka, after several recent unsuccessful attempts by Moscow’s forces to surround it, AFP reported. “The third wave will definitely happen. The enemy is regrouping after a second wave of unsuccessful attacks,” Vitaliy Barabash, head of the Avdiivka military administration, said.
Left bank of the Dnipro: There are more areas on the left bank where the Ukrainian military can operate, Defense Express Director Serhiy Zgurets said.
"We are talking about at least three sections. In particular, from two bridges, a railway and a road bridge near Antonivka. Another foothold is being expanded near Krynky, where the enemy unsuccessfully tried to recapture this settlement. But I don't want us to fall into excessive expectations again," Zgurets said.
Ukrainian forces are moving closer to Bakhmut, and Ukrainian defenders crossed the railway near Andriivka & now 10 km left to the city, - ISW reports.
Zelensky: First Dutch F-16 jets already in Romania. Five Dutch F-16 fighter jets have already arrived at a training center in Romania to help prepare Ukrainian pilots for flying the aircraft, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Nov. 7.
Newly-delivered NASAMS systems enter service in Ukraine. Ukraine's military is already using additional National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) recently delivered by Kyiv's partners, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Nov. 7.
A new contingent of Ukrainian soldiers has begun training on the use of the HAWK anti-aircraft missile system performed by the 74th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment as part of the activities of the European Military Assistance Mission to Ukraine.
Ukraine’s military spy agency claimed responsibility for the assassination of a Russia-backed lawmaker, Mikhail Filiponenko, with a car bomb in the occupied eastern city of Luhansk on Wednesday, an operation it said it had conducted with local resistance forces. Mikhail Filiponenko, a politician in a Russia-installed local assembly, had been active in Luhansk’s pro-Russian separatist movement since 2014. He had served as one of the top commanders in the army of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic. (Me: that’s him)
Behind the Lines
Mark Krutov: As Planet satellite images show, the Scheherazade, infamous Putin's yacht previously seized by Italian authorities, was launched into the water and placed in a neighboring section of the shipyard between September 10 and September 11, 2023.
Jacopo Iacoboni: I officially asked the Italian Minister of Economy, who is in charge of Putin's yacht, if the yacht was going to be let go. The answer was: “No. the yacht is still 'frozen'. the boat has been put in the water for maintenance work”. Of course, we will continue to be vigilant
Latvia says Russian aircraft violated its airspace. The unspecified aircraft was recorded by the air radar of the Latvian military and returned to the Russian side after breaching the Latvian airspace, the Defense Ministry said.
Reporters Without Borders said Tuesday it was planning to launch a digital platform aimed at providing Russian speakers with access to independent news.
Reporters Without Borders said it had signed a contract with global satellite operator Eutelsat to launch a digital platform called Svoboda, which means freedom in Russian, AFP reports.
The platform, which is expected to be launched in the coming weeks, will feature “news programs to offer a comprehensive and objective view of global events”, said the Paris-based media watchdog, known by its French acronym RSF.
Christophe Deloire, the secretary general of RSF, called the project “an ambitious initiative that intends to reverse the logic of propaganda”.
“It will allow independent media outlets to broadcast toward human beings that do not enjoy their right to information,” Deloire added.
Research by Russian media outlet Mediazona suggests that, as of October 2023, 76 cases of railway sabotage had reached court since the invasion, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) said in its latest intelligence update. At least 137 people, with the vast majority aged under 24, had been prosecuted, it added.
Ukraine sanctions companies linked to Russian oligarch Fridman. President Volodymyr Zelensky implemented on Nov. 7 the decision by the National Security and Defense Council to sanction nine companies linked to Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman.
Russia’s kidnapping of children from the Ukrainian occupied territories leads to this as well: when these children come of age, they are recruited into the Russian armed forces. This means they will be asked to fight against their own people. The practice is not new. The Romans, British and French did it in past as colonial powers, but after 1950, Russia was the only large nation to do so. They practiced it in Afghanistan, for example.
Meanwhile in Russia
Military cooperation between Russia and China is becoming increasingly important, but the two countries do not intend to build a cold war-style military alliance, Vladimir Putin said as he hosted the aide to a top Chinese general.
The Russian security council secretary, Nikolai Patrushev, said that the “destructive” policies of the US and its allies were increasing the risk that nuclear, chemical or biological weapons would be used, Reuters reported. (Me: Yawn)
The Russian Orthodox Church (sort of): agent Kirill in the clip below says that everyone who is Orthodox is Russian, especially the Ukrainians and Belarusians. I can’t help but think that since the communist ideology no longer serves to keep Russians together, the regime pivoted to religion in order to give the regime its legitimacy which it sought internally and externally through aggression.
Yermak-McFaul Group: October 2023 customs data suggests that almost all seaborne Russian crude oil was sold above the price cap, with the average price at $79.2/barrel.
Russian authorities have demanded an eight-year prison term for an artist and musician who was jailed after speaking out against Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the Associated Press reports. Sasha Skochilenko was arrested in her native St Petersburg in April 2022, on charges of spreading false information about the military after replacing supermarket price tags with anti-war slogans decrying the invasion. This is how she spread information about the war.
Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, expects a sharp cooling of the mortgage market after an expected 80% rise in mortgage lending this year, chief executive Herman Gref has said. Gref said the value of mortgages issued by the bank for the whole of 2023 was expected to reach 4.6tn roubles (£40.8bn), Reuters reports. The central bank last month increased its key interest rate by a higher than expected two percentage points to 15% in response to inflationary pressure and a weak rouble, and has now raised it by 7.5 percentage points since July.
Russia is currently financing an ongoing, well-funded disinformation campaign across Latin America to undermine support for Ukraine and propagate anti-U.S. and anti-NATO sentiment, State Dept says.
What is Russkiy Mir? Watch this video by ERIC to find out.
NATO suspends European Conventional Armed Forces treaty after Russia's withdrawal. "While recognizing the role of the CFE as a cornerstone of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture, a situation whereby Allied States Parties abide by the Treaty, while Russia does not, would be unsustainable," NATO's press service wrote.
Allied Support
Zelensky reports that additional NASAMS systems delivered by western partners are now on combat duty in Ukraine. "Timely reinforcement of our air defense before winter," he adds.
Nato allies have condemned a decision by Russia on Tuesday to withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, a key post-cold war agreement, and said they would suspend its operation in response. The United States said it would suspend treaty obligations as from December.
The heads of the US treasury, defence and state departments called on Congress to fund $11.8bn in Ukraine aid as part of President Joe Biden’s supplemental spending request, according to a letter released on Tuesday.
“This funding benefits from an unprecedented level of robust oversight and transparency, and is bolstered by significant budget support from the European Union, other G7 partners, and the International Monetary Fund,” the secretaries, along with the USAid administrator, wrote to congressional leaders.
Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican effort to win quick approval for a bill providing emergency aid to Israel that passed the US House of Representatives last week, but that provides no assistance for Ukraine.
“Time is of the essence and it’s imperative that the Senate not delay delivering this crucial aid to Israel another day,” Republican senator Roger Marshall said.
Democrats objected, stressing the importance of providing aid to Ukraine as well as Israel, in addition to humanitarian aid, border security funding and money to push back against China in the Indo-Pacific that was in a $106bn funding request Joe Biden sent to Congress last month.
“Our allies in Ukraine can no more afford a delay than our allies in Israel,” senator Patty Murray, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said.
US Congress took a step in transferring frozen Russian assets of the Russian Central Bank to Ukraine. The Committee on International Relations introduced a bill that would require the US administration to transfer frozen Russian assets to Ukraine.
Estonia's parliamentary commission backs using frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine. The Constitutional Commission of the Estonian parliament supported the government's bill to use frozen Russian assets for Ukraine funding, the Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported on Nov. 7.
Belgium has created a fund to support Ukraine, to which it will transfer €1.7 billion using windfall profits on Russian frozen assets. The tax proceeds are used to support Ukraine. Half of the aid will be used for military support and the other half for civilian support.
EU countries will next week start debating a proposal for a 12th package of sanctions on Russia that will focus on a ban of Russian diamonds, EU diplomats and an EU official told Reuters. So far, the EU has not sanctioned the Russian state-owned diamond miner Alrosa, even though major western jewellers are already boycotting stones coming from Russia. The Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has said the bloc would look at banning Russian diamonds, freezing assets and imposing travel restrictions on 100 new individuals, and at tightening the implementation of the G7’s $60 a barrel price cap on Russian oil.
Dutch voters cast their ballots on 22 November in a snap parliamentary election called after the collapse in July of the outgoing coalition government headed by Mark Rutte, the EU’s second longest-serving leader after Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
The departure of the Dutch political scene’s great survivor means that for the first time in more than 13 years and four different coalition governments, the Netherlands will get a new leader. Quite who it will be, however, is very hard to say.
Three parties – Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), a Green-Labour alliance (GL/PvdA) and New Social Contract (NSC), a brand-new party led by a popular former Christian Democrat MP – are vying for the lead in the polls.
Russia targets Meloni—Decode39
Meloni is “a target” for Putin, says top official. Speaking to Radio24, Alfredo Mantovano – Undersecretary to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and among her closest allies, who also oversees intelligence matters – stressed that the phone incident and the details that have emerged since the matter became public confirm the fact that she is a target for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“There has been an attempt to get her to make some communication mistakes,” he said, noting that it was because the PM told the Russian pranksters who duped her office “the same things she says in public.”
It’s a hybrid war. As we reported, that sophisticated operation was just another example of Russia’s multifaceted hybrid aggression against all those who oppose its invasion of Ukraine – Italy especially, as it used to be closer to the Kremlin. “Cyber and hybrid threats have multiplied,” noted Undersecretary Mantovano, stressing that Russian-aligned attacks are now a daily occurrence – “but the system is equipped to deal with them.”
When Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky travelled to Rome in May, Russia-linked threat actors NoName057 flooded institutional websites with DDoS cyberattacks. And it’s not unlikely that parallel cybercriminal groups have supported the most recent wave of pro-Palestine attacks against Italian ports and airports.
“We expect more [hybrid attacks] between now and the European elections because this is the new frontier of war,” said Mr Mantovano.
Poltico: Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa resigned on Tuesday, after police raided his official residence as part of a corruption investigation. Cops searched Costa’s official residence and detained his chief of staff, Vítor Escária, Portugal’s attorney general said earlier Tuesday. The investigation is linked to lithium exploration schemes in the north of the country and a green hydrogen mega-project in Sines.
Monique: Chinese and Russians are trying to corner the market on lithium mining. Inorganic protests were organised before 2022 in Serbia at a lithium mine that saw the Australians pull out of the deal because of the unrest.
Michael A. Horowitz, Russian operations in Paris—Le Monde
According to a report by Le Monde, French Intelligence services believe the two couples responsible for the star of David's graffiti in Paris were all in contact with the same person, Moldovan businessman Anatoli Prizenko, and were tied to a #Russian disinformation network.
The operation was exploited by a network called Doppelgänger "RRN" (Reliable Recent News) on twitter and Facebook, which largely distributed and covered the graffitis.
The network was already exposed as a Russian disinformation operation, including in an official statement by the French Foreign Ministry in June. In conjunction, the Doppelgänger network also published articles emphasizing the rise of antisemitism in France since the Hamas attacks, accusing French authorities of doing nothing to protect its citizens.
Prizenko is a pro-Russian Moldovan businessman, who was a former candidate for the Europsceptic and pro-Moscow Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova. The first couple is suspected of having already executed identical operation in other European countries - unrelated to the Middle East - but linked to issues of societal debate
Around the World
Israel may have 'security responsibility' for Gaza for 'indefinite period' after war ends, Netanyahu says. Israel may govern Gaza for an “indefinite period”, after the war ends, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested in an interview with the US’ ABC News.
Those who don’t want to continue the way of Hamas … It certainly is not – I think Israel will, for an indefinite period will have the overall security responsibility because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it. When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.
NYT: Nearly a month after Israel began its bombardment of Gaza, the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry said more than 10,000 people had been killed and more than 25,000 injured. The figures could not be independently verified, but a Pentagon spokesman said that “we know the numbers are in the thousands.” Israel’s military said yesterday that its troops had cut off Gaza City, effectively splitting the Gaza Strip in half, which it said would make it harder for Hamas to control the enclave.
Narges Mohammadi, the imprisoned Iranian human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize this year, began a hunger strike after she was denied medical treatment.
China’s political leaders are steering the economy on a new course, away from real estate and local debt and toward manufacturing and central government borrowing.
Trump in Court for Fraud Case—NYT
Donald Trump, a leading contender to win the U.S. presidential election a year from now, took the witness stand in his civil fraud trial in Manhattan. In chaotic testimony, the former president lashed out at his accusers and denied their claims, even while conceding involvement in some of the conduct at the heart of the case.
Trump attacked New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, as a “political hack,” derided the proceeding as “very unfair” and scolded the judge overseeing the case, Arthur Engoron, for having decided before the trial that he had committed fraud. “He called me a fraud, and he doesn’t know anything about me,” he said, pointing at the judge, who flashed a grin.
Trump is accused by James of inflating his net worth to defraud banks and insurers, and he acknowledged helping to assemble annual financial statements submitted to the banks. The judge, who will decide the outcome of the case, repeatedly admonished Trump for not directly responding to questions from James’s team.
Ivanka Trump testified today in court. James: Ivanka Trump secured, negotiated loans to obtain favorable terms based on fraudulent statements of financial conditions and she will attempt to distance herself from the company but the facts will reveal that she was very much involved.
Arming Ukraine is cheap compared to the far higher price of Russian victory—Peter Dickinson
The most immediate costs of a Russian victory would be felt by the Ukrainian population, of course. With much or all of Ukraine under Russian control, the war crimes already witnessed in occupied areas of the country would multiply. Tens of thousands would be executed or imprisoned, while millions would be subjected to forced deportation. These horrors would create major humanitarian challenges for the wider European community, with a massive new wave of Ukrainian refugees flooding across the border into the EU.
Vindicated and emboldened by victory in Ukraine, Putin would almost certainly seek to go further. The Russian dictator has already made clear that he sees the reconquest of Ukraine as part of a broader mission to correct the perceived injustice of the Soviet collapse and the fall of “historical Russia.” His next targets would most likely be Moldova, Armenia, and the countries of Central Asia. If the West proves unwilling or unable to stop Russia in Ukraine, there will be little to deter further aggression against smaller and more vulnerable former Soviet republics.
With NATO discredited by the fall of Ukraine, Putin would then be tempted to test the resolve of the alliance in a more fundamental manner by threatening the Baltic states. Would a demoralized and divided NATO go to war with a resurgent Russia over an isolated incident on the Estonian or Latvian border? If not, Putin would exploit this weakness. Failure to defend the territorial integrity of a NATO member state would spark the rapid unraveling of the entire alliance, plunging the whole of Europe into chaos.
Even if the worst case scenario of a direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO could be avoided, a Russian victory in Ukraine would inevitably oblige Western leaders to boost defense spending to levels not witnessed since the end of the Cold War. This would require sums far in excess of the money currently being allocated to Ukraine. Outgoing US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Mark Milley recently warned that a Russian victory in Ukraine would lead to a potential “doubling” of defense budgets. Others have suggested the cost would be much higher, noting the need to establish and indefinitely maintain a dramatically increased military presence in Central and Eastern Europe.
While the direct financial and security costs of a Russian victory in Ukraine are already alarming, the geopolitical price would be even greater. The recent escalation in Israel is a direct consequence of the West’s indecisive response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine. If Putin’s invasion is seen to succeed, other authoritarians will be encouraged and international instability will spread even further. The entire world will face decades of insecurity marked by mounting militarism, mutual suspicion, and multiplying acts of international aggression. The opportunity cost to the global economy will be measured in the tens of trillions.
None of this is inevitable. On the contrary, it can all be avoided by providing Ukraine with the tools to defeat Russia. The Ukrainians are ready and able to do the fighting themselves; all they ask is for their international partners to stop dithering and deliver the necessary weapons without delay.
Opponents of continued military aid to Ukraine often say it is too expensive. In reality, it is infinitely cheaper than the alternative. They also claim supporting Ukraine risks provoking World War III, but in truth, nothing is more likely to provoke Putin than Western weakness.
With his genocidal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian dictator has burned his last remaining bridges and is now completely committed to confrontation with the West. He will not stop until he is stopped. The longer Western leaders delay, the higher the price they will pay.