Oct 15- The Saturday Edition
Day 234: Kherson, GER-UA aid, RU dissent & defection, UN report, Starlink, IMF, Hunt, Hungary, Meloni -A&Ps- MacKay, Tenzer, YouGov, Surovikin, Lautman, Buziashvili, Soldatov, Ilves
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…
Occupation government: Ukrainian troops launch offensive in Kherson Oblast. Kirill Stremousov, a deputy head of the Russian illegal occupation government in Kherson Oblast, said that the Ukrainian military is trying to launch an offensive near the village of Dudchany.
Russia fires 10 missiles at Zaporizhzhia again. Zaporizhzhia Oblast Governor Oleksandr Starukh reported early on Oct. 15 that Russian forces had used S-300 missile systems to attack the regional capital, damaging “a number of energy and industrial facilities” there as well as the Kyiv area.
Ukraine's military struck multiple Russian command posts in Donbas over last 24 hours. Ukrainian forces struck four Russian command posts and 15 other areas where Russian manpower and military equipment were concentrated, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said.
Germany hands over 16 Biber bridge-layer tanks to Ukraine. The German Defense Ministry pledged the delivery in late July, saying that the tanks “will enable Ukrainian troops to cross waters or obstacles in combat.”
The US and Germany are to deliver sophisticated anti-aircraft systems to Kyiv this month to counter attacks by Russian missiles and kamikaze drones, Ukraine’s defence minister said.
General Staff: Mortality rate of seriously wounded Russian soldiers more than 50%. The high rate is due to low quality of medical care and a reluctance of the Russian command to evacuate the seriously wounded to Russia, the General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said.
For context: Russian forces have taken over civilian hospitals in temporarily-occupied Ukraine. Large numbers of wounded militants are being admitted. "In one of the hospitals of the city of Donetsk, about 100 wounded people arrived this week. Hospitals are overcrowded in the city of Tokmak, Zaporizhzhya region." General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine op info at 06:00 on 15 October 2022.
The Kremlin on the hunt for dissenting voices- Putin purges nine Russian milblogger and ultra-nationalists Girkin, Wargonzo and Rybar: "They discredit the armed forces". Propagandist Maxim Fomin said that Girkin hadn’t posted anything on his TG channel for several days. Girkin’s wife published a photo of him in a Russian military uniform, and it’s been confirmed by Rob Lee. There is an international arrest warrant against Girkin because of the shoot-down of MH17.
Meduza: police officers and draft officials have started waiting on the first floors of apartment buildings so they can find people who have failed to report to the commissariat after receiving multiple draft orders.
Olga Lautman: “An employee of Wagner and an employee of FSB requested political asylum from France, Osechkin, head of Gulagu net project, told The Insider. According to him they are giving evidence that will help the international investigation of Russia's war crimes. What’s also interesting if true is that Osechkin claims several intelligence officers have left Russia over the past few months, sought asylum, and are providing testimony.”
Russian troops have raped more than 100 Ukrainians with victims as young as FOUR as part of military strategy that has seen troops equipped with Viagra, UN says.
Ukraine files court papers against 45 suspected war criminals, of whom 10 have been already convicted since Russia invasion Another 186 suspects in absentia notified of charges.
Crimean "authorities" have reportedly issued an order to "evacuate" (meaning: steal) Crimean museum exhibits to Russia, - General Staff of Ukrainian Army.
President Biden officially announces $725 million in military aid to Ukraine. U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the assistance in a memorandum on Oct. 14. The package is expected to include munitions and vehicles.
The US has warned it can impose sanctions on people, countries and companies that provide ammunition to Russia or support its military-industrial complex, as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Moscow over the war in Ukraine.
Pentagon 'assessing options' to keep Ukraine connected to Starlink satellites. A U.S. senior defense official said the U.S. trying to do what it can "to help keep these satcoms for the Ukrainian forces," according to a U.S. Defense Department news release.
International Monetary Fund member countries issued a near-unanimous call for Russia to end its war in Ukraine, the IMF’s steering committee chair said on Friday, calling the conflict the single biggest factor fueling inflation and slowing the global economy.
A newly discovered hacking group has attacked transportation and logistics companies in Ukraine and Poland with a novel kind of ransomware, Microsoft said on Friday. Researchers found the hacks closely mirrored earlier attacks by a Russian government-linked cyber team.
Ukrainians have raised 600,000 € for medical treatment of the 'AzovStal' defender Mykhailo Dianov, released from Russian captivity, but he has decided to donate the entire sum to the armed forces of Ukraine. His treatment was paid for by a group of businessmen.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is making the media rounds this morning: Hunt was quizzed about Truss's corporation tax U-turn on Friday. The new chancellor offers a defence of his boss, saying he would "rather have a PM who listens and learns". A mini-budget unveiled by Truss's former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng last month spooked the markets and prompted a drop in the value of the pound.
Hungary: In District 6, Budapest, a long line of elderly people waiting to buy potatoes on special offer. Food prices have doubled over the last year in Hungary where even officially registered inflation is by far the highest in the EU. Below a photo from yesterday’s teachers protest.
Westerners in no mood for concessions to Russia in Ukraine, poll finds- The Guardian
The YouGov-Cambridge globalism project, which gauged public opinion in 25 of the world’s largest countries, also found strong support for maintaining, and often toughening and expanding, military and economic measures against Moscow.
The polling, between 24 August and 22 September, found that of 13 western or anglophone countries – France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Poland, the UK, US, Australia and Canada – a “core group” of 10 backed maintaining economic sanctions on Russia. Greece, Hungary and Italy were outliers.
Militarily, there was substantial backing for Nato aid to Ukraine’s forces, including the supply of arms, intelligence and out-of-country training; cyber and information warfare aimed at the Russian government; and even for military advisers inside Ukraine (as long as they stayed out of the fighting).
A majority in all 10 core western countries also favoured deploying non-violent “hybrid warfare” measures, such as targeting Russian media with alternative information – but there was little core western support (30-40% in most countries, falling to just 20% in Germany) for direct Nato military involvement.
“For all the public noise this year about the dangers of global nuclear catastrophe erupting from the war, a lot of western voters are undaunted in their view that Nato should continue sustaining the Ukrainian war effort,” Rogers de Waal said.
“What’s striking is how generally low the level of support is for giving concessions to Russia in any of those scenarios – and how the difference between Russia relinquishing all of its newly occupied Ukrainian territory and none makes only a limited difference to the overall result,” Rogers de Waal said.
In the west, most respondents overwhelmingly rejected the narrative spun by Moscow to justify its invasion of Ukraine and broadly accepted the alliance view of what was causing the war, the YouGov-Cambridge study found.
“If the Kremlin has failed to achieve its original military aims on the ground in Ukraine, so it has also struggled to prevail in the wider information war to define the causes of and justifications for the conflict,” Rogers de Waal said.
General Sergei Surovikin: Who is Putin's hard-line new commander in Ukraine? - BBC News
General Sergei Surovikin, nicknamed General Armageddon, is President Vladimir Putin's new tactic in the war against Ukraine.
His appointment was announced hours after the attack on the Crimea bridge. And the new leader's first day at work saw Ukraine hit by a huge wave of Russian missiles - one of the widest series of strikes witnessed for months.
But Gen Surovikin is not actually new to the faltering war effort. He's been commanding troops on the front in southern Ukraine and, the day before the war began, was sanctioned by Europe for his military influence and relationship with President Putin.
Eto Buziashvili on the infowar
The Ukrainian defense ministry’s intelligence department (GUR) has claimed that Russian operatives used deepfake technology in an attempt to discredit Ukraine’s partnership with Turkey.
According to a GUR Telegram post from October 9, Russian intelligence services attempted to use deepfake technology to call Haluk Bayraktar, CEO of of Baykar Defense, the Turkish defense company providing Bayraktar drones to Ukraine.
GUR claimed that Russian intel tried to impersonate Ukraine’s PM Denys Shmyhal in the video call with Bayraktar. However, instead of speaking with the Bayraktar executive, GUR said Russian intel was connected to an “equally fake” individual impersonating a Bayraktar employee.
GUR added that Russian intel made pronunciation errors when speaking in Ukrainian. Specifically, the speaker used the Ukrainian expression babyne lito (бабине літо, “Grandmother’s summer” or “Indian summer”), but used Russian pronunciation bab’ye lyeto (бабьє лєто) instead.
FSB Seizes a Greater Role in Russia’s Shadow War- Borogan & Soldatov
The FSB, Russia’s supposedly omnipresent security service, is now attempting to turn the crisis to its advantage. It has ground to make up — the FSB’s reputation was shattered at the beginning of the war when atrocious intelligence from its Fifth Service completely missed Ukraine’s unity and fighting ability. The agency will hope that it can use this new situation to improve its standing in eyes of the one man whose opinion matters – Vladimir Putin.
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, former PM of Estonia
The shambolic Bardak that is Russia's invasion, a mirror of the country writ large, with all of its drunken incompetence, its broken infrastructure, its gratuitous and purposive violence and its mad sprint from taking responsibility for its actions, individual or collective, has now come face-to-face with competence and determination, a will to succeed in the restoration of justice and right, a willingness to accept responsibility.
And finds itself a complete loser in the competition between authoritarianism and democracy. An empirical finding.
Putin won't go nuclear — if he does, he may be overthrown- The Washington Examiner
Autocrats can indeed be very dangerous when they are cornered because of their own mistakes. They can become unstable. I believe in never saying “never” when speaking about what dictators may or may not do. I doubt, however, that Putin is seriously thinking about going nuclear because he knows that such a move would much more likely bring about his own and Russia’s downfall as a federation than even a protracted and unsuccessful war.
If anything, by suggesting the possibility of using nuclear weapons, Putin may have advanced the date of his removal from power. I believe it is now more likely than not that his circle will remove him. His talk of going nuclear is a far greater threat to keeping the Russian Federation together than anything else.
Meloni - Is she being blackmailed?
Tit for tats exchanged yesterday between Silvio Berlusconi, newly elected senator and head of FI, and FdI’s Giorgia Meloni, slated as Italy’s next prime minister. La Repubblica published a photo of Berlusconi’s notes he was flipping through during the voting process for the speakers of the Lower and Upper chambers. It read: "Giorgia Meloni, judgemental, bossy, arrogant, offensive, ridiculous. Adverse to change, she is someone we can’t get along with.”
She was asked about the contents of the note and responded, “there’s one thing that’s not on that list: ‘I’ can’t be blackmailed.” It begs the question: who is being blackmailed?
