Oct 29 Saturday Edition
Day 248: Sevastopol, UN grain deal, Kherson, Iran, Wagner, 300B, howitzers, Meloni- A&Ps- Putin's speech, Iran protests, Davis, trolling, Bubola, Higgins, Arthur Smith
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.
Up-date: Sources in the SBU confirm that as a result of night time explosions in Sevastopol, at least 3 Russian ships carrying “calibers” were damaged Among them is the frigate Admiral Makarov. There is a high probability that several ships are not just damaged, but sunk.
The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Fed announced Russia's withdrawal from the "grain agreement" after today's explosions in the temporarily occupied Sevastopol.
Wagner: Ukraine's special forces unit Khort claims that it has killed the Deputy Chief of Staff of Wagner Group.
Stories we’re following…
President Zelensky address at the Yale Yale School of Management on Friday: “Right now, and precisely in Ukraine, it is being decided whether our part of the world will be free and democratic. Ultimately, this is how the global fate of democracy will be determined. This fate should be determined by us – the free world, not terrorists. I believe that it will be so.”
Air Force: Russia runs out of missiles, stops attacking Ukraine's military bases. Due to a shortage of high-precision weapons, Russia has changed its tactics in Ukraine, attacking only critical infrastructure sites – not military bases, said Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat.
Russian forces in occupied Kherson are engaged in mass theft of medical equipment and ambulances in a bid to make the area uninhabitable, President Zelensky said on Friday evening. “Russia is trying to make the Kherson region a no man’s land,” he added.
FM Kuleba said he had received a phone call from Hossein Amirabdollahian, his counterpart, on Friday and that he had demanded that Tehran stop sending weapons to Russia. “I demanded Iran to immediately cease the flow of weapons to Russia used to kill civilians and destroy critical infrastructure in Ukraine,” Kuleba said in a tweet.
The EU has frozen Russian assets worth about 17bn euros since Moscow invaded Ukraine, the EU justice commissioner, Didier Reynders, said in an interview.
Assets belonging to Russian and Belarusian individuals seized by Ukraine could be used for the country’s massive post-war reconstruction effort, finance minister Serhiy Marchenko was quoted as saying. The government has frozen Russian and Belarusian assets in Ukraine worth some 44 billion hryvnias ($1.21 bn) since the start of Moscow’s invasion, according to the Economic Security Bureau, a state agency.
The lack of demand for Russian passports in the temporarily occupied regions, in particular in Enerhodar, led to the decision to automatically impose Russian citizenship on the residents of these territories, reports the mayor of Enerhodar Dmytro Orlov. Orlov noted that from October 30 they will consider residents of Enerhodar, who remain in the city, citizens of the Russian Federation.
High-ranking Wagner officer killed by Ukrainian special forces in close combat. Ukrainian special forces unit "Khort" reported that it had killed the deputy chief of staff of the Russian state-backed military company Wagner.
Russia said on Saturday that the accelerated deployment of modernised U.S. B61 tactical nuclear weapons at NATO bases in Europe would lower the “nuclear threshold” and that Russia would take the move into account in its military planning. “We cannot ignore the plans to modernise nuclear weapons, those free-fall bombs that are in Europe,” Deputy FM Alexander Grushko told state RIA news agency.
The UN secretary general has urged Russia and Ukraine to renew the deal that has seen more than 8m tonnes of grain exported from Ukraine and brought down global food prices.
The US continues to support Ukraine with additional military assistance. The Biden Admin alots a further $275 million in arms to Ukraine, which includes additional arms, munitions, and equipment from U.S. Department of Defense inventories. This brings U.S. military assistance for Ukraine to $18.5 billion.
EU freezes 300 billion euros from Russian Central Bank. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders told media that "from his point of view" it would be possible to keep these 300 billion euros as a guarantee until Russia voluntarily participates in the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Italia decided to transfer the 155-mm self-propelled howitzers OTO Melara M109L to the Ukrainian army, the exact number is unknown.
Canada will sell a government-backed, five-year bond to raise money for Ukraine and it will impose new sanctions on 35 Russian individuals, including Gazprom executives, prime minister Justin Trudeau said. “Canadians will now be able to go to major banks to purchase their sovereignty bonds which will mature after five years with interest,” Trudeau told an annual meeting of the Congress of Ukrainian Canadians in Winnipeg.
Meloni and Zelensky touched base on Friday. She “renewed the Italian government’s full support for Kyiv within the framework of international alliances on the political, military, economic, humanitarian and future reconstruction fronts,” and “confirmed Italy’s commitment to every diplomatic effort useful for the cessation of the Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine,” reads a note. She also had a call with NATO Sec-Gen Stoltenberg and reaffirmed Italy’s sull support of Ukraine, and the importance of strengthening NATO’s commitment to countering threats of various kinds.
Playing to Western Discord, Putin Says Russia Is Battling ‘Strange’ Elites- NYT
President Vladimir V. Putin declared on Thursday that Russia’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own citizens.
“There are at least two Wests,” Mr. Putin said.
One, he said, is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian values” for which Russians feel kinship. But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,” and trying to impose its “pretty strange” values on everyone else. He peppered his remarks with references to “dozens of genders” and “gay parades.”
‘Trolling helps show the king has no clothes’: how Ukraine’s army conquered Twitter- Financial Times
The defence ministry’s feeds intersperse grim reminders of the toll the war has taken on Ukraine with slickly produced and often irreverent messages — creating a narrative that Ukrainians are stoic in war, wry in difficult circumstances and magnanimous on their route to a victory made possible by western weapons.
The posts have spread across the Twitter feeds of their target audience — international decision makers, influential journalists and ordinary pro-Ukrainian westerners — who seem clearly hooked. Even as energy costs soar across Europe, such accounts help maintain popular backing for the Ukrainian war effort, say observers.
Explaining why it’s important to sustain Ukraine NOW…
Zelesnky pressed by Cremonesi of the Corriere on the energy crisis: “You are paying for your freedom, not for Ukraine, but it is only for this year because the EU will find alternatives. If you don't, Russia will decide for you and your children, even politically.”
Lorenzo Cremonesi is an Italian journalist, who has sustained the narrative that Russia’s war was caused by NATO and the Americans.
Emma Bubola, Using Adoptions, Russia Turns Ukrainian Children Into Spoils of War- NYT
As Russian forces laid siege to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol this spring, children fled bombed-out group homes and boarding schools. Separated from their families, they followed neighbors or strangers heading west, seeking the relative safety of central Ukraine.
Instead, at checkpoints around the city, pro-Russia forces intercepted them, according to interviews with the children, witnesses and family members. The authorities put them on buses headed deeper into Russian-held territory.
Charlotte Higgins, ‘It’s my frontline and I won’: the chef putting Ukrainian cuisine back on the map- The Guardian
In defiance of the Russian cruise missile and drone attacks that have hit Kyiv recently, Klopotenko, 35, was last week presiding over his bustling city centre restaurant. On the menu were dishes such as beetroot and herring salad with smoked pear from the Odesa region, venison from the Carpathians, and a dessert named “Kherson is Ukraine”.
Alongside a citrus semifreddo, the pudding included watermelon he had bought last season in Kherson and fermented. The region, which Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed last month but is now the site of fierce fighting, is famous for the fruit.
A 25-year-old London bus driver, Arthur Smith, from Battersea, has spent the past 7 months ferrying medical supplies to the front line and transported injured people out of occupied zones in Ukraine.
His idea to go and help went viral and led to hundreds of volunteers joining a convoy from the UK to Ukraine. Arthur’s team ended up transporting 14,000 people to safety, delivering 95 tonnes of medical supplies and 112 tonnes of food.
He’s now returned to work but hopes to get back out to Ukraine soon.