Oct 1 - Saturday Edition
Day 221: : Lyman, Zaporizhzhia, Balbek, nukes, Gazprom & ENI, Czech Rep, IOC, ICAO- A&Ps- Carpenter, Meduza, Applebaum, Oksanen, FIDU, Halushka, Burgess, Ben-Ghiat
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…
A new map from Rybar: Lyman and Zarichne confirmed liberation.
Lyman is under Ukrainian control. Russian forces have completely withdrawn from the settlement. Remaining pockets of resistance are being removed.
Russia confirms defeat in Lyman, Donetsk Oblast. According to Russia's Defense Ministry, Russian troops have pulled out of the strategic city, fearing encirclement.
ISW: “Russia will struggle to hold the territory it claims to have annexed. Putin likely intends annexation to freeze the war along the current frontlines and allow time for Russian mobilization to reconstitute Russian forces.”
Christo Grozev: “Russian militants’ channels tell of Ukrainian soldiers advancing on Lyman in thirty-men strong rows, and despite being pummeled with machine gun fire, continuing to walk forward. ‘I was flabbergasted, I hit them and they walk forward.’ This will create Ukraine’s new epic.”
A major explosion at the Balbek Military Airport in Crimea: Russian authorities say that a plane skidded off the landing strip and caught fire. Military analysts are reviewing video to assess the causes.
Sergiy Haidai (Luhansk): Around 5 thousand Russian soldiers are stuck in Lyman. According to him, they asked their commanders to leave the city that has been cut off. The commanders turned down the request.
Chechen leader Kadyrov says Russia should consider using low yield nuclear weapon in Ukraine after Lyman defeat.
Chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian MoD, Budanov: Ukraine will liberate Crimea “quite soon”.
Russian authorities have informed the IAEA that the head of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP was “temporarily detained” for questioning.
President Zelensky has warned recently mobilised Russians that Moscow is sending troops to Ukraine without identification tags in order to disguise losses and advised them to get a tattoo of their full name “so we can inform your family when you are killed.”
US sees no signs yet that Russia will use nuclear weapons. U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken said on Sept. 30 that, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “loose talk” about the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the U.S. has not seen Russia “take these actions.”
Putin signed an order on simplified procedures for granting citizenship to foreigners who sign a contract to serve in the armed forces of the Russian Federation. The document has been published on the official web portal for legal information.
Russia's first administrative lawsuit against a military commissariat and draft commission has been filed in a St. Petersburg court. The plaintiff claims the draft commission’s decision to conscript him is unlawful and demands to be made exempt from mobilization, according to St. Petersburg’s court press service.
Turkey which has been at the centre of mediation between the west and Russia, rejected Russia’s annexation of Ukraine, calling the decision a “grave violation” of international law.
Reuters reports that Russia did not receive enough votes to remain in International Civil Aviation Organisation’s 36-nation governing council, during the agency’s assembly which runs through Oct. 7 in Montreal.
Russia’s Gazprom has suspended gas deliveries to Italy’s Eni, blaming a transport problem in Austria, AFP reports. Before the war in Ukraine, nearly 45% of Italy’s imported gas came from Russia through the pipeline in Austria. The percentage of imported gas from Russia has been reduced by PM Draghi’s intervention.
On Friday, EU energy ministers failed again to agree on a price cap on natural gas, the key driver of Europe’s inflation since Vladimir Putin weaponized it. Fourteen countries supported Italy’s call to set the measure (which PM Draghi has been calling for since March). Still, the opposition of several States prevented the Commission from tabling it.
Germany has decided to implement its own price cap – to the tune of € 200B while opposing it in Brussels. “Faced with the common threats of our times, we cannot divide ourselves according to the space in our national budgets,” said Italian PM Draghi.
Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader who is expected to head the next Italian government, said that Rome will start putting national interests first. In the election campaign, she warned that “the good times are over” for Europe.
UK PM Liz Truss The UK was updated on developments in the situation unfolding in the Baltic Sea as she engaged in talks with her Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, in Downing Street today.
Czech Republic's largest aircraft manufacturer, Aero Vodochody Aerospace, ends up being owned by the Hungarian state through a national defense holding company. Given the visible Russian influence over the Orbán gov't, debates in CZ politics are expected.
NYT: Pentagon to set up new command to arm, train Ukrainian soldiers. The U.S. Defense Department plans to establish a new command based in Germany that will coordinate the equipment and training of Ukraine's military, the New York Times reported, citing U.S. military and administration officials.
The IOC president Thomas Bach has been accused of violating the game’s principles by suggesting that Russian athletes might be allowed to return to competition provided they did not support the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reports.
Meduza’s Editorial on Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territory
Russia’s “containment strategy” implies a hierarchy of weapons use (and threats of using certain kinds of weapons). It includes both conventional and nuclear means of pressuring the adversary. This strategy can be aimed not solely at the enemies’ military potential, but also at their “will to persevere.” The current annexation of Ukrainian regions (that is, the formal extrapolation of Russian sovereignty onto those regions, and their inclusion in the Russian Federation), as well as Putin’s promise to “defend” them by all available “powers and means” is a trigger for launching a “containment” operation against Ukraine and the NATO countries that support it.
The Kyiv Independent reports that Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov, has said Ukrainian authorities have found the bodies of 20 people in a civilian convoy near the city of Kupiansk, who Governor Syniehubov believes were killed while they attempted to flee Russian soldiers.
Anne Applebaum, Putin’s Newest Annexation Is Dire for Russia Too- The Atlantic
Russia’s actions under these circumstances show contempt not only for international lawyers in European capitals, but also for Chinese politicians who like to talk about sovereignty and African diplomats who have agreed that borders matter, even when they are arbitrary. In the upside-down reality that Putin has created, he will now claim that Ukrainians, by defending their own land and their own people, are somehow attacking Russia. He will even raise the stakes, will try to frighten Ukraine and the West by calling Ukraine’s self-defense an existential threat to Russia that requires an extraordinary response—perhaps even a nuclear response, echoing a threat he has made repeatedly since he began his invasion.
A Holy War…
Sofie Oksanen,The past is a prologue: Russia’s bogus referenda come from the USSR playbooks- Estonia World
About the “referenda” in Ukraine. Many have asked, why would Russia even make the effort to stage the “referenda” that look so fake to any Western country. But let’s go back a bit and look at the Baltic states under the Soviet occupation.
Across the Baltic states, we know this “referendum” play very well: the USSR (the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) occupied the Baltic states through performances that bear striking similarities to these “referenda”.
Amie Ferris-Rotman, MAs Protests Erupt Over Putin’s Draft, a More Ominous Threat Surfaces- New Lines
But there is a corner of Russia where these protests are taking on a different flavor. In the mostly Muslim North Caucasus, the protesters’ message for the Kremlin is stark: “This is not our war.”
“Our” says a lot here. The string of small republics along Russia’s southern flank has long opposed Moscow’s rule, resistance that goes back centuries, and the threat of separatism is an ever-present thorn in the Kremlin’s side. A simmering Islamist insurgency, low standards of living and widespread racial discrimination make these most fragile of Russia’s regions a veritable tinderbox.
Christopher Burgess, Karma Would Be Russia’s Newest Citizen Edward Snowden Getting Conscripted- Clearance Jobs
At yesterday’s State Department press briefing, Ned Price, Department Spokesperson was asked about the change in Snowden’s citizenship and if that changed anything? Price commented wryly, “Our position has not changed. Mr. Snowden should return to the United States, where he should face justice as any other American citizen would. Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that, as a result of his Russian citizenship, apparently now he may well be conscripted to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine.”
Dan Maurer, A U.N. Security Council Permanent Member’s De Facto Immunity From Article 6 Expulsion: Russia’s Fact or Fiction? Lawfare
This post questions the key premise: premise number 2. Rather than swiftly dismissing the ability of the U.N. to expel Russia, a close reading of the U.N. Charter’s text and a mostly forgotten decades-old discussion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) may reasonably suggest that the General Assembly does have that legal authority, regardless of any vote taken or not taken by the Security Council.
