Oct 28 Buonasera Mag
Day 247: Deportations, Zaporizhzhia, Ufa, RU informants, Energoatom, Israel, no gas, Biden, Iran, Cosco, Pelosi, Musk, RU hackers, China-A&Ps-Scott Kelly, Zelensky, Moutet, Radicalized Pod
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…
General Staff: Russians may stage terrorist attacks on occupied territories when retreating. During their retreat, Russian troops are likely to blow up residential buildings and cause a man-made disaster at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the General Staff reported.
Crimea head Sergei Aksyonov says that "civilian evacuations" (deportations) in Kherson are complete.
Moscow-appointed official Vladimir Rogov said yesterday: “From today [Thursday] in the Zaporizhzhia region, law enforcement officers have begun a selective preventing check of the mobile phones of citizens”. He said those subscribed to “propaganda resources of the terrorist Kyiv regime” will receive a warning, before being fined.
In Ufa, Russia, a series of electric transformers were set on fire on the main railway line on Thursday. Five such fires were set in the past 2 days. Ufa is believed to be the location of one of Putin’s hideouts.
Two informants in Donetsk region who passed on information about the location of infrastructure objects were convicted, – the Office of the Prosecutor General. The prosecutors proved in court that from November 2021 to February 2022, the convicts, following the enemy's instructions, photographed the buildings of state institutions, military facilities, bridges, video surveillance cameras, electric substations, railway timetables, etc.
Energoatom: Around 100 Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant employees signed contracts with Russia. Ukraine’s state nuclear operator Energoatom said on Oct. 28 that the rest of the plant’s roughly 6,700 employees have refused to collaborate with Russia, despite coercion.
Kyiv received generators and heat guns from Israel, said Volodymyr Bondarenko, Deputy Mayor, Secretary of the Kyiv City Council. A total of 10 generators and 20 heat guns were obtained.
Mobilization is allegedly completed in Russia. 300,000 have already been mobilized, 82,000 of them have been sent to the front, Shoigu told Putin
President Biden expressed scepticism yesterday about Putin‘s comment that he had no intention of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, Reuters reports. “If he has no intention, why does he keep talking about it? Why is he talking about the ability to use a tactical nuclear weapon?” Biden said in an interview with NewsNation.
“He’s been very dangerous in how he’s approached this,” Biden said.
In an interview earlier on CNN, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said, “They often blame others for that which they are doing themselves or about to do. So that’s why we have to take that seriously. I’ll also tell you that we’re not seeing any signs, even today, that the Russians are planning to use a dirty bomb or to even make preparations for that.”
The US and its allies condemned Russia for wasting the time of the UN security council and spreading conspiracies by again raising its accusation that the US has ‘military biological programmes’ in Ukraine. “How much more of this nonsense do we have to endure?” the UK’s ambassador to the UN, Barbara Woodward, asked the council.
Via Politico- Stoltenberg: Stoltenberg appealed to the anti-China sentiment that runs through both major U.S. political parties. A victorious Moscow, he said, would “be bad for all of us in Europe and North America, in the whole of NATO, because that will send a message to authoritarian leaders — not only [Russian President Vladimir] Putin but also China — that by the use of brutal military force they can achieve their goals.”
Dozens of Iranians have gathered in Kyiv in protest of Iran’s government allegedly delivering drones to Russia. The demonstrators gathered in the city’s Maidan Square holding signs reading “the Iranian people stand with Ukraine”, and waving both countries’ national flags.
The EU has appointed Polish general, Piotr Trytek, to lead a new training operation with Ukrainian troops. He is commander of Poland’s 11th armoured cavalry division who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was chosen by the bloc as it sought to step up military support for Ukraine.
Former Commission VP and current MEP Andrus Ansip has doubled down on his claims that French satellite operator Eutelsat is contributing to Russian disinformation in a letter to the company’s CEO, Eva Berneke. Slamming Eutelsat as a “partner in war crimes,” the Estonian politician said the satellite was carrying Russian channels like Rossiya 1, Perviy 1 and NTV. She had told Ansip in a letter obtained by POLITICO that blocking a channel without a legal basis is “a very serious responsibility.” EU Commission VP Věra Jourová has slammed Eutelsat as “shameful” this week. The French state has a 20 percent stake in the company.
The backlash against Olaf Scholz’s decision to allow China’s Cosco to take a stake in a Hamburg port terminal is fierce. It stretches across the government, mainstream parties, the media & academia. A stronger response than to Merkel’s short-lived CAI deal in Dec 2020.
Norway- Russian Spy: Norwegian authorities named the real identity of the fake "Brazilian researcher"-José Assis Giammaria: his name is Mikhail Mikhushin, born 1978.
Speaker Pelosi's office says that Pelosi's husband, Paul, was "violently assaulted" by an assailant who broke into the Pelosi residence early this morning. "The assailant is in custody and the motivation for the attack is under investigation." Paul Pelosi is in the hospital.
Elon Musk has reportedly completed his $44bn takeover of Twitter, taking control of the company. Shortly after taking the helm of Twitter, Musk reportedly fired several senior figures, including chief executive Agrawal, Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, and Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust and safety. Will Trump and other banned accounts be allowed to return to the platform?
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” he said in a tweet earlier on Thursday.
Mart Kuldkepp on Negotiations
The people who are against military interventions because they don't work, are often completely naive about diplomacy and think that it always works. The fact is that there can be no negotiations without leverage.
When a group of criminals have cornered you, they have no incentive to negotiate with you to find out whether they're allowed to take your phone and wallet or not. They will just take them because they can.
Western military aid serves the purpose of giving Ukraine the leverage it needs to 1) enter negotiations when it's ready and 2) to back up its interests with force, which is the only language that Russia understands.
It's only then that diplomacy has its time and place.
Putin at Valdai Club meeting yesterday: "To be honest, I just now thought about this: frankly, the only real, such a serious guarantor of Ukrainian statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity could be only Russia, which created today's Ukraine."
Putin is ready to resume negotiations with Ukraine and the United States, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said.
Reports of Federal Security Service personnel descending on the Kremlin had circulated yesterday afternoon but it wasn’t clear exactly what was happening. This may have been Putin’s attempt at strengthening his image at home.
A group of Kremlin-affiliated Russian hackers recently targeted the website of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, according to a Wednesday report, and this also happened:
Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Get ready for a sickening Anglo-French bromance- The Telegraph
Superficially they could have been cloned. Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron are the same height (5’7), almost the same age (42 and 44, respectively), dress in the same dapper, expensive narrow suits, have both been photographed in hoodies at their workplaces. Although Macron would never serve his team Yorkshire (or even Mariage Frères) tea, in mismatched mugs from the office kitchen. It’s usually little demitasses brought on a platter by a Garde républicaine in uniform.
This Dutch gentleman doing his part for Ukraine…
Portugal joins global probe into illegal Chinese police stations- Radio Free Asia
U.K., Spain and Netherlands among countries investigating claims the stations are used to force Chinese to go home.
Portuguese police launched an investigation into China's alleged overseas police "service stations", the Attorney General’s Office confirmed to the Expresso newspaper on Thursday.
The authorities are paying “special attention” to the Chinese Embassy in Lisbon after Portuguese lawmakers raised concerns about a report by human rights group Safeguard Defenders in September that Chinese authorities operate 54 “police stations” overseas, including three in Portugal.
In the tweet below, the Chinese Embassy spokesperson is warning the UK government that it should not be protecting or aiding dissidents from Hong Kong. This is a direct reference to Drew Pavlou, a human rights defender from Hong Kong.
He was the guest at Oxford Union on October 24, where he said: “Honoured to deliver an address to the Oxford Union today on human rights activism against the Chinese government. Will never stop fighting until my Uyghur, Tibetan, Hong Konger and Chinese friends have justice!”
Latest episode from Radicalized Pod…
Mariage Frères 🫖! Anne Elisabeth Moutet rules!