Oct 13 Buonasera Mag
Day 233: PACE, Makariv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, AMRAAM, NATO Def, Borrell, Macron, Scholz, Kallas, RU teachers, Turkey, UN GA, Czech Rep, Protelion- A&Ps- Aslund, Shyshkavets, J6
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.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has recognized Russia a terrorist state. 99 members voted in favour, 1 abstained. A historic moment. According to UA rep Honcharenko, the resolution recognizes Russia's participation in the UN Security Council illegal.
Stories we’re following…
Kyiv regional governor, Oleksiy Kuleba, issued an update via his official Telegram channel just after 6am local time, saying: We have attacks on one of the communities of the region. Previously - an attack of kamikaze drones. Rescuers are already working.”
Critical infrastructure facilities in Makariv, a small town west of Kyiv, were destroyed after the area was struck with three drones overnight.
Ukraine’s state emergency service is actively searching for people trapped under rubble after a Russian strike on Mykolaiv. In a message on Telegram, the service said:
One of the rockets hit a five-story residential building in one of the districts of the city. As a result, the two upper floors were completely destroyed, the rest – under rubble.
Ukraine’s military destroys 5 ammunition depots in southern Ukraine. Ukraine’s Operational Command “South” reported that Ukrainian forces also killed 36 Russian troops and destroyed a tank, two fuel trucks, two armored vehicles, three artillery systems, and four helicopters.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of southern Ukraine's Kherson region, has asked residents to evacuate as fighting between Russian and advancing Ukrainian forces nears, Reuters reports. Saldo also publicly asked for assistance from Moscow on Telegram with transporting civilians to Russia.
General Staff: Russian troops receive orders to stop offensive in some front-line areas. Russian forces in some areas, particularly in Donetsk Oblast, have begun to receive orders from their leadership to stop offensive operations, Ukraine's General Staff reported on Oct. 13. The main reasons: "the extremely low morale and psychological condition of the recruits, numerous facts of desertion, and refusing to obey combat orders".
UK intelligence: Russian troops anticipate combat in Kherson. Russian forces have started to prepare for the evacuation of some civilians from occupied Kherson, which means they "anticipate combat extending to the city of Kherson itself," the U.K. Defense Ministry reported.
UK to supply air defence missiles to Ukraine. U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said the U.K. will deliver AMRAAM missiles to Ukraine. British AMRAAMs or advanced medium range air to air missile rockets will be used with a US ground rocket launcher system Their focus will be on protecting Ukraine's civilian infrastructure after the October 10 Russian attacks on Kyiv.
UK Def Sec Wallace: “Putin has just discovered that Russia is not a superpower. The superpowers lost wars: the USSR in Afghanistan, the USA in Vietnam. Large countries were repeatedly forced to accept defeat from a neighbor or another country.”
14 NATO members, Finland to create joint European air defense system. Defense ministers of 14 NATO allies and Finland have agreed to develop an air and missile defense system called "European Sky Shield Initiative" to strengthen NATO's ability to defend its members.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy Borrell: “A nuclear attack against Ukraine will not provoke a nuclear, but a powerful military response”.
Borrel has stated: "Any nuclear attack on Ukraine will bring a response, not a nuclear response, but a military response so powerful that the Russian army will be annihilated"
France is not part of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group as it has sought and received “strategic autonomy,” ergo its position is not that of NATO and its other two nuclear-armed states, the US and the U.K.
French President Macron: "The goals are clear - to restore the borders of 1991. Therefore, the question is whether these military objectives will be achieved by military means alone. The fact that we give them weapons does not mean that we can decide for them." France will supply Ukraine with air defense systems, including radars and missiles, in the coming weeks, President Macron said in an interview with French TV channel France 2 on Oct. 12.
Chancellor Scholz has accused Putin of waging “a crusade against our way of life”, in a shift of rhetoric. “They consider their war against Ukraine to be part of a larger crusade,” Scholz said in a video address to a summit of European socialist, liberal and green politicians and thinkers in Berlin.
PM Kallas: “Estonia just approved a new military aid package to Ukraine. We are sending winter gear, equipment and ammunition to Ukraine. We will deliver them fast. Let us all speed up our help, so Ukrainians can free their territories. This is the way to peace.”
Tass reports that officials at Russia’s NPP operator Rosenergoatom have begun the process of transitioning the Zaporizhzhia NPP to Russian processes, in particular “the storage system for spent fuel of the Russian Federation”. Energoatom, the Ukrainian operator of the plant, also accused the Russian forces occupying it of blocking attempts to refuel the site’s diesel generators.
Sources reveal that Russian soldiers mobilized near Kherson killed the commander who prevented them from surrendering, – the media report. They were transferred to one of the hottest areas of the front without training, equipment and with the order to stand until the end. They tried to negotiate with their commander about leaving, minimal training and receiving equipment.
Investigative journalists: Russia's irrecoverable casualties in Ukraine reach 90,000. troops. iStories, a Russian independent investigative journalism project, cited an anonymous source at the country’s Federal Security Service and a former intelligence officer.
The FSB has identified 12 people suspected of coordinating and carrying out the October 8 explosion on the Crimean Bridge. It named the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, its director Kyrylo Budanov, and its “employees and agents” as organizers of the explosion. The Ukrainian intelligence agency declined to comment, calling the FSB’s activities “nonsense.”
Russia’s mobilization campaign has kneecapped the country’s education system. A new investigation from the indie media outlet Verstka found that Russian teachers, who aren’t exempt from the draft, are going into hiding and fleeing the country in droves. Students and parents have begun writing directly to politicians, pleading for individual teachers to be made exempt.
Rodion Miroshnik, the self-styled ambassador to Russia of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR), has criticised the vote at the UN, saying developing nations had been forced to vote “at the point of an American gun”.
Dozens of Ukraine’s allies have pledged to send more military aid to Ukraine after more than 50 western countries met In Brussels on Wednesday. “A new era of air defence has begun in Ukraine,” Reznikov tweeted. “Iris-Ts from Germany are already here. Nasams are coming. This is only the beginning. And we need more.”
Ukraine’s admission to Nato could result in a third world war, the deputy secretary of the Russian security council, Alexander Venediktov, told Tass in an interview today.
Turkey’s aim is to stop the bloodshed in the Russia-Ukraine war as soon as possible despite hurdles, Turkish president Erdoğan has told a regional summit in Kazakhstan.
Putin floated the idea of a major gas hub in Turkey during talks with Erdogan today. Putin first suggested on Wednesday that Russia could create a major gas hub in Turkey by redirecting supplies intended for the damaged Nord Stream undersea pipelines, reports Reuters.
Czech Republic shuts border for Russian tourists. The Czech Republic will ban the entry of Russian citizens coming for tourism, culture, or sports purposes starting from Oct. 25. The ban applies to Russians holding Schengen Area visas issued by any country.
An investigation revealed the "German" IT company Protelion is in fact a cover entity of the Russian company Infotecs, founded in 1991 by ex-KGB officer Andrey Chapchaev. He received an Order for Merit to the Fatherland this year from Putin. Protelion/Infotecs sold software in Germany for years that scans IT networks for vulnerabilities *from the inside*. That means: They could report vulnerabilities to Russia, and since the software is installed by the administration, they'd be able to plant other software & time bombs in the network.
Germany forecasts recession, soaring inflation in 2023. The German economy will contract 0.4 percent next year and inflation will hit seven percent, the government forecast Wednesday.
Wolfgang Schmidt intelligence advisor: “We are getting into a situation that Americans have known for decades: people want us to lead. We are in the teenager years in that role,” he said, responding to criticism that Berlin has been slow to live up to the Zeitenwende or “epochal turn” on military and foreign policy.
Italy’s newly elected lawmakers will today take the first formal step in the handover of power after last month’s election by meeting to choose the presidents of the upper and lower houses of parliament.
UK- big question these days: how long has PM Liz Truss have left?
Anders Aslund: negotiating with Putin?
My experience of negotiations with and in the Russian government is that you always escalate for as long as you can. Then, all of the sudden, if the Russian government side realizes that it has lost, it gives up and comes to an agreement in no time. Everybody is happy.
Does Putin deviate from the standard Russian pattern? People point to his experiences in Chechnya & Syria, where he just escalated until he won, but there he could win because of Russia's greater force. Ukraine is so different.
Today, Ukraine has an active army of 750,000 men. Russia tried to attack Ukraine with 200,000 men & appears to have had only 100,000 in active reserves. Ukraine has plenty of modern Western weapon, while Russia has obsolete Soviet arms & not enough.
The free Ukrainian nation is more united than ever & defends its nation. The Russian slave army is only driven by repression. As long as the West provides Ukraine with enough arms & financing, Russia can only lose.
Putin's last card is his nukes. If he uses a small tactical nuke, the winds are likely to blow toward Russia & poison much of its fertile lands & the US is likely to take out the Black Sea navy & the weak Russian air force. If he goes big, it is Armageddon as Biden rightly said.
Putin is in a lose-lose situation. He is likely to call for negotiations at any price, but the West needs to hold on to its conditions: Full evacuation of Ukraine, return of deported Ukrainians, full war reparations & security guarantees.
Will Putin survive such a near capitulation? I don't think so, but we can leave that issue to the Russians. It is their task to end a term of an unconstitutional & illegitimate president.
US will soon need to deter two major nuclear powers for first time, White House says- The Guardian
Within a decade, the US will need to deter two major nuclear weapons powers for the first time, the Biden administration has warned, pointing to the Russian arsenal that is increasingly being brandished by Moscow and an expanding Chinese stockpile.
“The United States will not allow Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons,” the document says.
The Kremlin’s written instructions to propagandists tell a story of desperation, failure, and frictions with the media- Meduza
Early in October, a trove of 10 documents — all of them Kremlin-issued instructions to propagandists — was obtained by Meduza. The documents are all structured in a similar way. Each of them specifies a “main event” to be broadcast to the nation.
The memos also list the rhetorical key-lines, along which presenters and journalists should shape their message on any given day. On October 4, for example, the key themes were “Russia’s strengthening,” “the image of victory in the special military operation,” and “the new world order.” Let’s glance at each of them in turn.
UN GA vote "Territorial integrity of Ukraine: defending the principles of the UN Charter"
Against: Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Nicaragua, Syria. Abstained: China, India and Central & South East Asia, African and Latin American states
