Sept 11: E-Stories
Day 564: IhnatIgual Kyiv CombatSit Freuding MeanwhileinRU BehindLines Finland SKorea US Sweden Blinken China G20Joke A&P CitLab UKDef Rybar ISW Reznikov Putin Carpenter TimeRad
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…
Air Force: 26 of 33 Shahed drones shot down flying toward Kyiv Oblast. Ukraine's air defense forces destroyed more than two dozen drones over Kyiv during Russia's overnight drone attack, Kyiv City Military Administration Head Serhii Popko reported on Sept. 10.
Foreign volunteers' car struck by Russian artillery in Chasiv Yar: 2 killed, 2 wounded. Road to Relief said Anthony Ihnat, a Canadian, died in the attack on Sept 9, along with Spanish aid worker Emma Igual,who studied at the University of California at Berkeley. The volunteers, from the NGO Road to Relief were driving near the front-line town of Chasiv Yar around 10 a.m. when the attack took place, the organization reported.
Ruben Mawick, a German medical volunteer, and Johan Mathias Thyr, a Swedish volunteer, were seriously injured as well. The four volunteers were trapped inside the van as it flipped over and caught fire after being struck by shells near the town of Chasiv Yar, the organisation said on its Instagram page, according to AP.
Overnight Shahed attack injures 4, damages over 100 buildings in Kyiv Oblast. Damage from the overnight drone attack on Kyiv Oblast is more serious than previously reported, according to the Kyiv Oblast Military Administration.
Combat Situation up-date:
Southern forces liberate another 1.5 square kilometers near Robotyne. Ukrainian forces liberated 1.5 square kilometers of territory near Robotyne in the past 24 hours, Tavria grouping spokesman Oleksandr Shtupun said on Sept. 10.
"And in the Mar'inka area, the Ukrainian military repulsed 15 enemy attacks. The occupiers do not stop trying to take the ruins that used to be the city," he added.
"The Ukrainian military conducted a successful operation south of Avdiivka, during which they liberated a part of Opytne while battles occur in the rest of the settlement with the aim to restore full control," head of the Avdiivka Military Administration Vitaly Barabash reported
"The AFU has a certain stronghold on the left bank of the Dnipro," spokeswoman of the Operational Command South Nataliya Humenyuk said. "Yes, there are positions, there is a certain consolidation, but the development of events still requires informational silence," she added.
"Russia has deployed 46 launchers of the Iskander missile complex along the border with Ukraine," Deputy Head of the State Security Service Vadym Skibitskyi said. He added that these complexes are aimed at civil infrastructure objects.
Top US General: Ukraine has about 30-45 days for the offensive before weather worsens. Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said on Sept. 10 that Ukraine likely has about 30 to 45 days for the counteroffensive before the weather worsens on the ground.
It is too early to say whether Ukraine’s summer offensive has failed, the head of the US military, Gen Mark Milley has said.
Speaking to the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Gen Mark Milley said: “That offensive kicked off about 90 days ago. It has gone slower than the planners anticipated. But that is a difference between what Clausewitz called war on paper and real war. So these are real people in real vehicles that are fighting through real minefields, and there’s real death and destruction, and there’s real friction. And there’s still a reasonable amount of time, probably about 30 to 45 days, worth of fighting weather left.”
Yalta European Security: Brigadier General Christian Freuding gives a clear message: We are ready and prepared for a long-lasting war.
Ukraine’s MoD, Rustem Umerov, has called on the allies to increase deliveries of heavy weapons, amid a long and difficult counteroffensive against Russian forces. “We are grateful for all the support provided … we need more heavy weapons,” Umerov said in an embargoed speech released on Saturday.
FT: Biden edges nearer to resolution on supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles. “A choice may very well be coming quickly,” one senior Biden administration official stated.
Budanov: “Ukraine will continue their counter-offensive even after the start of winter,” head of the GUR Budanov said.“The fighting will continue one way or another. It is more difficult to fight in the cold, damp and mud. The fighting and our counter-offensive will continue," he said.
Meanwhile in Russia
Media: Russia investing in military bases along Finnish border. Russia has begun stocking its military bases on the Finnish border, according to satellite images posted by Finnish publication Yle. In the images it shows that Russia has built new warehouses to store and service military vehicles, and equipment has gone up at the military depot in Petrozavodsk and the Alakurtti military base.
Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal “the same day” as Moscow’s conditions for export of its own grain and fertilisers to the global markets are met, the country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters on Sunday. Russia quit the deal in July, a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, complaining that its own food and fertiliser exports faced obstacles and that insufficient Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need.
Russian air defence forces destroyed a Ukraine-launched drone over the Bryansk region on Sunday morning, the defence ministry said. The ministry’s statement on Telegram did not report any damage or casualties, Reuters reported. The Bryansk region in south-west Russia borders Ukraine.
Behind the Lines
Locals report explosions and smoke in Kostohryzove, occupied Kherson Oblast on Sept 10. Locals report about explosions and the work of air defense in Melitopol on Sept 10 as well.
Military: Russia's illegal Crimean bridge unable to function normally. Russia's illegally-built Crimean bridge, which connects occupied Crimea to Russia's Krasnodar Krai, is still unable to function normally after a July explosion damaged the bridge, Southern Operational Command's spokesperson Natalia Humeniuk reported on Sept. 10.
These so-called elections are illegitimate and an affront to the UN Charter. Russia’s actions demonstrate blatant disregard for the principles of state sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence that underpin global security and stability.
Some in the Russian government are concerned about the perceived legitimacy & voter turnout for the elections in the occupied areas. The outcome is pre-determined and manipulated: we have information that the Russian government will fabricate results across the occupied areas.
Exiled mayor: Russia building cell towers in occupied Melitopol to eavesdrop on residents. Proxy officials in the Russian-occupied city of Melitopol in Zaporizhzhia Oblast have set up cell towers to eavesdrop on residents and search for "dissidents," exiled mayor Ivan Fedorov reported on Sept. 10.
Bucharest demands end to Russian attacks after finding drone debris on Romanian territory. Romania's Foreign Ministry summoned the head of the Russian mission in the country to answer for how Russian drone debris ended up in Romanian territory on Sept. 9.
On Sept 28, Kremlin File will be releasing a great interview with Nathalie Vogel, Fellow at the Institute of World Politics, Intermarium Studies. She spells out who the Russians recruit and how they do it. Watch for it. In the meantime, in this interview former KGB agent is explaining that Russian agents always were trying to recruit “greedy, eccentric, filthy rich people without moral values”.
Ukraine’s head of military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, last night spoke at the Yalta European Strategy forum in Kyiv. Budanov had this to say on Russia’s tactics:
“In terms of creativity and flexibility, we still have an edge over them, they are rather outdated. But they are adapting, they are trying to change tactics, to alter the way they use forces, they miserably fail with their strategy, but their tactics do have some improvements.”
South Korea pledges $2.3 billion in humanitarian aid for Ukraine. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol pledged $2.3 billion in aid for Ukraine to help the country rebuild itself and provide humanitarian support to those in need amid Russia's ongoing full-scale war, Seoul-based news agency Yonhap reported on Sept. 10.
Ukraine and Sweden will jointly produce the CV-90 IFVs with better all-terrain performance and reinforced multilayer armor, with a goal of arming Ukrainian forces with 1,000 vehicles, Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar said today.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, condemned the lack of progress in the creation of a special tribunal on Russian leaders and in the transfer of frozen assets.
"Unfortunately, we are at a certain impasse on both issues, because we have differences on the first issue, and there is clearly not enough will on the second," he said.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that the Hungarian government plans to switch the Paks Nuclear Power Plant from Russian to French nuclear fuel in the future.
The earthquake in Morocco killed at least 2,122 people and injured another 2,400, Al Jazeera reported, citing data from the country's Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The largest number of victims (1,300) were registered in the Al-Hauz province, where the epicenter was located, and more than 450 bodies were found in the Taroudant province. 1,404 people are in critical condition.
According to World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, the consequences of the earthquake affected 300 thousand residents. Morocco declared three days of mourning.
The G20 summit in Delhi ended on Sunday as India handed over the bloc’s presidency to Brazil, while both the US and Russia praised a consensus that did not condemn Moscow for the war in Ukraine but called on members to shun the use of force.
The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, asked the group’s leaders to hold a virtual meeting in November to review progress on policy suggestions and goals announced at the weekend.
Russia is tickled pink- super pleased about the consensus that stopped short of attributing blame for its aggression against Ukraine. The Kremlin said the bloc’s leaders had acted in the interest of conflict resolution.
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, has become the latest figure to praise the G20 summit declaration. The world’s biggest economies adopted a consensus declaration in Delhi on Saturday that avoided condemning Russia for the war, but highlighted the human suffering the conflict had caused and called on all states not to use force to grab territory.
Putin can attend next year’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro without fear of arrest, the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has said. Brazil is a member of the ICC and is obliged to arrest Putin as soon as he sets foot on Brazilian soil.
"What I can say is that if I am president of Brazil and he comes to Brazil, there is no chance he will be arrested," Lula da Silva said.
I was Ukraine’s defence minister. Here’s my message for our allies: we must not lose sight of victory—Reznikov
The objective of the civilised world must be to stop Russia
Impunity for Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 brought about its occupation of Crimea in 2014; impunity for the occupation of Crimea led to the occupation of Donbas; impunity for the occupation of Donbas allowed for Russia’s aggressive intervention in Syria; impunity for Syria and inattention to events in Crimea and Donbas resulted in the full-scale war in Ukraine – with hundreds of thousands killed, millions of refugees and humanitarian and ecological disasters.
Do we want this list of suffering to be extended?
You have to realise that you are responsible for the entire future of humanity; that is why it is vital that you act decisively. Russia and its partners have challenged not just the independence and sovereignty of one European country, but the entire world order – including international law and humanitarian and security institutions. Whether the civilised world will be able to avert a third world war will depend on its response to Russia’s actions and how the war in Ukraine ends.
Russia won’t be stopped by “freezing” the conflict, an armistice or concessions
In 1938, striving to prevent what would become the second world war, an infamous agreement was signed in Munich, transferring the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich. We know from history that this did not stop Hitler. Soon the Third Reich had complete control over what was left of Czechoslovakia, including its considerable military arsenal, which later played an important role in the invasion of Poland and France.
Putin’s actions follow a similar pattern. Russia demands the recognition of the occupied territories of Ukraine as its territory in exchange for the end of the war. However, this is obviously for the sake of one thing only – to buy some time, regroup and “finally solve the Ukrainian issue” using new resources. Russia does not recognise the existence of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people; its goal is the destruction of Ukrainian statehood and the assimilation of Ukrainians.
Its ambitions will not stop at Ukraine. I believe that letting Russian obtain Ukraine’s resources, including a large recruiting fund, will only increase the Kremlin’s ambitions and lead to a big new war in eastern Europe, which will inevitably involve Nato – with all the resulting risks.
Russia’s nuclear threat may be solved by your decisiveness
Russia has consistently withdrawn from most of the key international agreements on nuclear weapons, such as Start 2 (it left the treaty on 14 June 2002), New Start (Russia suspended participation on 21 Feburary 2023) and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty (it withdrew on 3 July 2019).
Moreover, on 25 May 2023 Russia and Belarus signed a document on the deployment of nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory. Given this trend, it is currently impossible to claim with certainty which countries Russian nuclear missiles and nuclear weapons’ technologies can still reach and what the consequences might be.
While the war continues, an international strategy for minimising the risks of engagement of Russian nuclear weapons and the proliferation of Russian nuclear weapons’ technologies to other countries should be developed and approved as soon as possible. This should contain components of military strategy and sanctions as pressure mechanisms, as well as the future architecture of international treaties regarding Russian nuclear weapons.
Russian war criminals must face justice
Evil must be punished to prevent more people becoming victims in future. The sooner an international tribunal for Russia’s crimes in Ukraine is established, the sooner this war will end. The tribunal should assess all facts of Russia’s alleged war crimes, including genocide, cultural genocide, ethnocide, ecocide, forced deportations, child abduction, terror against energy production, mass executions of civilians and prisoners of war and missile and artillery attacks against objects of civilian infrastructure.
Victory for Ukraine is not a dream, but a reality
The recipe for this victory is clear: it is restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, the withdrawal of the remnants of Russian troops, the punishment of war criminals, reparations, the introduction of the amendments to international law that will prevent similar aggressions in the future, and participation of Ukraine in the architecture of international security.
The victory of Ukraine will be the triumph of international law over the arbitrariness of the strong. It will demonstrate that it is unacceptable to change internationally recognised borders through military aggression. It will be the unity of the free world against the tyranny of unfreedom.
Dear colleagues, ministers of defence, I trust in your virtues and desire to make this world better. Therefore I urge unity, bravery and consolidated action – that is the only way for us to save this world from the catastrophe of a third world war.
Finally I would like to ask you to be even more responsive and supportive to my successor. Rustem Umerov is a competent and professional person capable of continuing the initiatives we have launched. Together, you will accelerate the moment of Ukraine’s victory.
It was my honour to serve my country and work with you. Glory to Ukraine!
Nothing about 9/11 today?