Oct 6: E-Stories
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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…
Russian attack on Nikopol injures 1. Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast was targeted by Russian artillery and an attack drone during the day, injuring one civilian, Governor Serhii Lysak reported on Oct. 4.
In Beryslav, Kherson region, Russians hit the local hospital. The fourth floor was completely destroyed, another floor was partially destroyed. Emergency vehicles were also damaged by enemy fire. Two medical workers, a 39-year-old paramedic and a 60-year-old driver, were injured.
Today has been a tragic day. Russian forces attacked a grocery and a cafè in the village of Hroza, Kupyansk district. Right now 55 (number is rising) people are known to have died. Among them is a child, a 6-year-old boy. Among the wounded is a little girl. President Zelenskyy has called the Russian attack “genocidial aggression”.
Russia’s war of terror against the Ukrainian civilian population
Please remember the Russian attacks on the Mariupol Theatre that killed at least 300 people, Kramatorsk railway station on 8 April last year killing 50 people; a Russian missile strike which hit a five-storey apartment block in Chasiv Yar that killed 43; the civilian convoy of cars trying to flee Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine was been hit by Russian missiles near Zaporizhzhia on 30 September last year killing 12 and injuring 88 people and an apartment building in the city of Dnipro which was split in two with its middle reduced to rubble after a Russian missile strike on 15 January this year, killing 46 people including 6 children.
Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko clarified the attack with more details.
"It was a store, next to a cafe. There were local residents in the store, there were also locals in the cafe, where the memorial service for a local fellow villager was held. In total, there were about 60 people on the territory. 49 people died, among them a 6-year-old girl."
The IRC said it had witnessed an increased number of attacks on critical infrastructure, even in places which had previously been considered relatively safe. “Intense shelling and deaths caused by landmines and other unexploded ordnance are now a daily reality,” it said.
As temperatures plummet, Ukraine will likely suffer from intensified barrages of missile strikes, and a more widespread destruction. The combination of ongoing conflict, destroyed infrastructure, and harsh weather conditions can make life incredibly tough for the people in affected areas.
Combat Situation Update
In the early morning hours of Oct 5, Ukrainian drones attacked substations in Sudzha and Glushkovo in the Kursk region in Russia. A total of 67 settlements are reported to be left without electricity, as a result of which important military facilities of the Russian Armed Forces were left without electricity.
Military: Russia intensifies attacks in Lyman-Kupiansk direction.
Russia is intensifying attacks in the Lyman-Kupiansk direction of the front line in Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts, using both ground forces and air strikes, Illia Yevlash, the spokesperson for the Eastern Grouping of Forces.
Eight skirmishes have been recorded in this area over the past day, the spokesperson said.
Russia is also actively using its air forces, deploying both jet planes and military helicopters, he added.
The USA will hand over thousands of confiscated Iranian weapons and ammunition to Ukraine. CNN sources report that US Central Command is expected to announce such a decision as early as this week.
Ukrainian UAV strikes in the Bilhorod region were reported during the night.
Minister: Ukrainian hackers behind massive attack on Russian airports. Ukrainian hackers paralyzed Russia’s largest airports in a recent attack, Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Oct. 5. Ukraine’s “IT Army” flooded the Russian airline booking system Leonardo with internet traffic in a massive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on Sept. 28.
Behind the Lines
Britain has accused Russia of plotting to sabotage civilian tankers loaded with Ukrainian grain by planting sea mines on the approaches to the country’s Black Sea ports.
Based on what it said was declassified intelligence, the UK said Russia did not want to directly attack merchant ships using Ukraine’s newly created humanitarian corridor with missiles, but instead try to destroy them covertly.
Russia would then seek to blame Ukraine for the loss of any shipping in an attempt to evade responsibility, the British Foreign Office continued, and the UK said it was going public in order to deter Moscow from carrying out the plan.
Next week, another meeting of the contact group in the Ramstein format will take place in Brussels. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Charles Brown, will attend the meeting.
The Russians have opened a new "camp" in occupied Yevpatoria, where children will be taught the basics of military service, human rights representative of the Supreme Council of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets reports. Lubinets noted that by spreading propaganda related to the war, the Russian occupiers are trying to erase the Ukrainian identity in children, to break their connection with their native country.
NGO Save Ukraine rescues 19 more children from Russian occupation. Save Ukraine, a Ukrainian humanitarian NGO, said it rescued 19 children from Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation, the organization's founder, Mykola Kuleba, said on Oct. 5. The 12th rescue mission brings the total number of children returned by the organization to 196, Kuleba wrote on Facebook.
UN report officially rejects Russian claim that HIMARS caused Olenivka prison explosions. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) categorically dismissed Russia's claim that the Olenivka prison massacre was caused by a Ukrainian HIMARS rocket in a new report released on Oct. 4. Between July 28 and 29, 2022, an explosion at a prison in Russian-occupied Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast killed over 50 Ukrainian prisoners and injured 75 more.
German police and customs officers on Thursday searched several properties in southern Germany, which a source familiar with the matter told Reuters belonged to a Russian national targeted by European Union sanctions over Ukraine.
The source said that Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov was the target of the operation, a Russian-Uzbek businessman who was sanctioned in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“There can be no reason for suspicion against Mr Usmanov, who has always duly declared the personal property that was lawfully acquired by him, in addition to disclosing the funds with which he acquired these assets,” said a spokesperson for Usmanov in response to a Reuters’ request for comment.
Meanwhile in Russia
Lukoil in October began supplying Russian oil to the STAR refinery in Turkey, controlled by Azerbaijan's SOCAR, as part of a new long-term agreement between the companies, three sources familiar with the details of the deal said. According to them, as part of the agreement, Lukoil will provide a loan to SOCAR in the amount of $1.5 billion, which will allow STAR to restore purchases of Russian raw materials. Reuters could not find out the timing of the deal and the loan repayment period.
Russian mercenary group Wagner in 2022 signed a contract with a Chinese firm, Beijing Yunze Technology Co Ltd, to acquire two satellites and use their images, aiding its intelligence work as the organisation sought to push Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to a document seen by AFP. The contract was signed in November 2022, over half a year into Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The satellite images were also used to assist Wagner’s operations in Africa and even its failed mutiny in June which has led now to the de-facto break up of the group followed by the death of Prigozhin and other key figures in an air crash in August, a European security source told AFP.
Putin at the Valdai Forum in Sochi. Putin said that the United States was seeking to impose its crumbling hegemony across the world and that the war in Ukraine showed how far the West had lost touch with reality.
"The era of colonial rule is long over. We are faced with the task of building a new world. Russia is capable of making a huge contribution to the new world order, but some have misunderstood our readiness as submission. Nobody was going to listen to Russia, the arrogance of the West was simply off the charts. The prosperity of the West was largely achieved through the plunder of the entire planet and endless expansion."
"Russia did not start the war in Ukraine but is trying to end it. It was not us who terrorized the Donbas, not us who murdered children. You can powder the brain of millions but we all know what happened in Donbas. It was not Russia that tried to threaten Donbas with bombings and intimidate Crimea. For 10 years it was bombed and people were killed. Nobody in the west cared about that.
The crisis in Ukraine is not a territorial conflict. We are the largest country in the world, not looking for new lands. We will and still have to explore and develop Siberia and the Far east.
Putin also said on Thursday that Russia had successfully tested a potent new strategic missile and declined to rule out the possibility it could carry out weapons tests involving nuclear explosions for the first time in more than three decades.
On Prigozhin and Utkin’s death, Putin said the plane crashed because the Wagner leadership got drunk, then set off a hand grenade during the flight.
Monique: In case anyone has any doubts about Russian war aims after everything that Putin said in Sochi, have a listen to the leader of pro-Russian militants of Donetsk, Pavel Gubarev, who says that Russia will not be able to kill all Ukrainians, so it will have to create concentration camps in Ukraine to "re-educate" the local population.
Monique: While Putin was speaking in Sochi, the Russian armed forces struck civilian targets in Ukraine killing 55 people in one attack, and levelling a hospital in another, injuring 3 people. He attacked Ukraine, the United States and other allies, and indirectly threatened the world with nuclear strikes. The Russian forces will continue and intensify their strikes against civilian targets, and aim for Ukrainian infrastructure. What Ukraine’s allies are waiting for to provide all the weapons necessary to defeat the Russians and push them out of Ukraine I do not know.
Slovakia halts military aid to Ukraine following election. Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová has opposed sending additional military assistance to Ukraine following the election of pro-Russian Prime Minister, Robert Fico, the Slovak news outlet Dennik N reported on Oct. 4. According to the report, the Slovak Defense Ministry had prepared a new assistance package for Ukraine that Čaputová could have signed while Fico's predecessor was still in office, but the president declined, saying the parliamentary elections must be respected.
Allied Support
President Zelenskyy met with 40 European leaders of the European Political Community in Granada, Spain, on Oct 5. This was his evening address and message:
We are ending this long and eventful day. The day of the European Political Community Summit. Many meetings, important negotiations.
We will have more air defense systems - there are clear agreements. This is crucial as we approach winter. Spain, Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom - thank you!
There will be more artillery for our warriors. There will be more long-range weapons. And there will certainly be more justice.
Today, our main message to the world is: evil cannot prevail. And only now, only in Ukraine, can this principled moral position be maintained. But together, all together!
Zelenskyy also held a meeting with Macron in Spain.
"Strengthening the air defense of Ukraine, as well as the security of the Odesa region and the Black Sea, is critically important for the stability of our entire Europe and the world. We are working together towards this goal. All our previous agreements on strengthening the defense of Ukraine are being implemented. There will be more good news for our soldiers. I thank President Macron and the French people for their firm and constant support for Ukraine," he emphasized.
The Biden administration is considering using US state department grants to send additional military aid to Ukraine, according to a Politico report.
The White House is weighing a range of options as it scrambles to find funds after Congress on Saturday approved a last-minute spending bill that did not include the $6bn in military assistance that Ukraine said it urgently needed.
The administration has warned for weeks that funds allocated for aid to the Ukrainian war effort have nearly been exhausted.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden said “there is another means by which we may be able to find funding for that” but did not elaborate.
Moldova introducing free gas transit for Ukraine during winter months. The Emergency Situations Commission of Moldova called on the regulator of Moldova’s gas transmission system to ensure a free flow of European gas to storage facilities through four points on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border.
Greek ports in Thessaloniki and Alexandroupolis can become another alternative route for the export of Ukrainian grain. The developed plan envisages transporting part of the Ukrainian grain by rail through Romania and Bulgaria to these Greek ports.
Italy intends to provide Ukraine with the eighth package of military assistance. Now, the country is considering what equipment can be transferred to Kyiv, according to Italian Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto.
Turkey is preparing to host the third international gathering of national security advisers working to build support for a peace summit Ukraine wants to hold later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
"The US and the EU are looking for legal options that would allow Ukraine to transfer $300 billion of frozen Russian assets," Head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak said.
Hungary issues more demands following suspension of OTP Bank from 'international sponsors of war' list. Hungary "still needs guarantees," that the Hungarian OTP bank will not be reinstated to Ukraine's international sponsors of war list, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Oct. 4. The temporary suspension of the bank from the list on Sept. 29 represents a "step in the right direction," Szijjarto said at a press conference in Budapest.
Around the World
The French Ministry of the Armed Forces says it will be withdrawing its troops from Niger this week. Niger authorities have announced that the French airbase in Niamey will close before the end of 2023.
"Coordination with the Nigerien army is essential to the operation's success. All measures have been taken to ensure that the movements proceed in good order and security," the Ministry emphasizes.
Trump: So they put it down at 18 million, and they said I overvalued it because we had it valued at a much lower number than it's worth. And by the way, my financial documents are much less than my actual value, which nobody even knows.
Keir Giles, The Hunka Case- It’s a little more complicated than that
When it’s easier to make up something to put on a t-shirt than looking at the facts
Everybody knows that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has even got its boots on.
And the ongoing turmoil over Canada’s parliament recognizing former SS trooper Yaroslav Hunka highlights one of the most important reasons why.
Something that’s untrue but simple is far more persuasive than a complicated, nuanced truth — a major problem for Western democracies trying to fight disinformation and propaganda by countering it with the truth, and one reason why fact-checking and debunking are only of limited use for doing so.
In the case of Hunka, the mass outrage stems from his enlistment with one of the foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, fighting Soviet forces on Germany’s eastern front. And it’s a demonstration of how when history is complicated, it can be a gift to propagandists who exploit the appeal of simplicity.
This history is complicated because fighting against the USSR at the time didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi, just someone who had an excruciating choice over which of these two terror regimes to resist. However, the idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide. And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp.
Canada’s enemies have thus latched on to these simple narratives, alongside concerned citizens in Canada itself, with the misstep over Hunka being used by Russia and its backers to attack Ukraine, Canada and each country’s association with the other.
According to Russia’s ambassador in Canada, Hunka’s unit “committed multiple war crimes, including mass murder, against the Russian people, ethnic Russians. This is a proven fact.” But whenever a Russian official calls something a “proven fact,” it should set off alarms. And sure enough, here too the facts were invented out of thin air. Repeated exhaustive investigations — including by not only the Nuremberg trials but also the British, Canadian and even Soviet authorities — led to the conclusion that no war crimes or atrocities had been committed by this particular unit.