Sept 20 Buonasera Mag
Day 210: UA IT hackers, RU navy, Melitopol, Izyum, Kadyrov, sham ref, mobilisation, US tanks, AdF, Lithuania, GER, SLO, Osechkin-A&Ps- Def UA, Lautman, Davis, Sebastian, Draghi, Mackay, Etkind
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.
Fedorov: Ukrainian IT Army hacks website of Russian-controlled mercenary Wagner Group. “We have all personal data of mercenaries! Every executioner, murderer, and rapist will be severely punished,” Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on Telegram on Sept. 19.
Stories we’re following…
UK Intelligence: Russian Navy relocates submarines from occupied Sevastopol to Russia. The U.K. Defense Ministry said the security of the Russian Black Sea Fleet base in occupied Crimea has now been directly undermined.
Mayor: 2 explosions heard in Russian-occupied Melitopol. Mayor Ivan Fedorov said smoke is seen near the local grain elevator. On Sept.19, Fedorov said explosions were reported at the airfield near Melitopol. Explosions had already been heard at the same airfield on Sept. 16.
Governor: Most bodies exhumed from mass burial site in Izyum were civilians. Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov reported on Sept. 19 that 146 bodies have been exhumed from the mass burial site in liberated Izium, most of which were civilians, including two children.
Police: Torture chamber found in liberated Izium. Russian forces used a police station in Izium, Kharkiv Oblast, as a prison and torture chamber prior to the city’s liberation by Ukrainian forces, reports the Kharkiv Oblast Police.
Looks like Russia may be ready to take things up a gear in Ukraine. The Duma just passed a bill introducing the concepts of “mobilization” and “martial law” into law. The upper house could approve it tomorrow, after which Putin will sign it.
Kadyrov says additional forces are arriving in Donbas. The stated aim is to "fight Satanists".
President's Office: There will be no diplomacy if Russia holds pseudo-referendums. Russia's plans to hold sham referendums on occupied territories will not affect the position of Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine's Armed Forces, said Zelensky's spokesman Serhii Nykyforov.
General Staff: Russian proxies in Donetsk Oblast seek to mobilize 500 factory workers. The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said Russian proxies in Donetsk Oblast canceled the mobilization deferment for around 500 Yenakiyeve Metallurgical Factory workers.
Russia has been threatening nuclear warfare through its propaganda vectors at least since 2014 since the seizure and annexation of Crimea. Please see Kremlin File’s episode with Joe Cirincione and EuroFile@6 space as well for more information on the complexity of strategic nuclear warfare.
U.S. defense official said "tanks are on the table" for Ukrainian forces but Ukraine will need to show the ability to maintain more modern variants to receive them. Western countries have already provided Ukraine with Soviet-era tanks.
Germany, Slovenia agree to transfer 28 M-55S tanks to Ukraine. Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed on an “exchange” in which Slovenia will receive military equipment from Germany in return for transferring tanks to Ukraine.
Right-wing Alternative for Germany party delegation visits Russia, eastern Ukraine. The party said the purpose of the trip to eastern Ukraine is to "form their own impression of the humanitarian situation," according to an AfD press release.
Lithuania plans to ban citizens of Belarus from entering the country This was stated by Minister of the Interior of Lithuania Agne Bilotaite. "I can see very clearly that the Belarusian regime is also involved in combat operations, conducting a hybrid attack," Bilotayte said. One of the first countries to be hit was Lithuania back in the 1990s when it began giving assistance to Belarusian opposition leaders and activists.
On September 17, Russia withdrew from the European Court of Human Rights, where it had participated for 24 years. The withdrawal from the ECHR, which Russia initiated shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, will weaken the instruments for protecting the rights and interests of ordinary Russians.
There was an assassination attempt against Gulagu founder Vladimir Osechkin in France. They fired at him into his apartment, but he got down in time because he saw a red dot on the wall. He was thankfully unharmed, along with his wife and children who were there.
Clare Sebastian, Cheaper oil and Ukraine war are blowing a hole in Russia’s finances- CNN
There are new signs of strain in the Russian economy as energy prices fall and nearly seven months of war in Ukraine prove increasingly costly.
Russia’s budget surplus all but disappeared over the summer, according to data published by the Russian finance ministry this week. At the end of June, the surplus stood at 1.37 trillion rubles ($23 billion); by the end of August it had fallen to just 137 billion ($2.3 billion.)
Jamie Mackay, Italian politics has been in trouble for decades. Now it’s heading for a new low- The Guardian
But Peppa Pig doesn’t fill piazzas. Indeed, the most unsettling thing by far about this election is the near-total invisibility of Meloni’s supporters. A few days ago, I paid a visit to a Brothers of Italy rally in an anonymous concrete arena in the suburbs of Florence. A few volunteers were handing out leaflets, but none of them seemed to know what the party stood for beyond its conservative, family values. When I asked them to name a single policy, a young man thrust a “puzzle book’” into my hands, a small pamphlet of crosswords and maze games challenging the reader to spell out the names of various pro-EU “Traitors of Italy”.
Bernard-Henry Lévy on Rai3: "There are traitors from the homeland, from Italy, who negotiate in the back room with the envoys of the Russian embassy".
Draghi awarded the Word Statesman Award
Ukraine, human rights, global solidarity. These are some of the themes that Mario Draghi touched upon in his speech at the 57th edition of the Annual Awards Dinner of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, the foundation that awarded him the Word Statesman award as statesman of the year . A recognition previously went to Michail Gorbachev, Angela Merkel and Shinzo Abe.
The Italian premier was thanked by American President Joe Biden, in his message to the foundation, for the "powerful voice" with which he promoted human rights .”
Trump doned a ‘Q’ pin at his last rally, bringing this marriage between the conspiracy theorists and his GOP party out of the closet so to speak. Observers of the QAnon can tell you that the union between the two took place as far back as 2017, and perhaps the seeds of QAnon were planted well before that. Please see our conversation with Marley Clements on her Vice series…
Alexander Etkind, The Unbearable Lightness of Western Pundits- The Moscow Times
For some reason, the war in Ukraine merged the Right and the Left of the Western political spectrum in weird combinations. On the Right, people such as Niall Ferguson believe that post-Soviet Russia is a successful country that uses its natural resources and military strength to bring law and order to a dangerous world. Some of these people think that contemporary Russia, a source of economic chaos and nuclear threats, restrains the Antichrist from bringing the world to an end.
Now Nato is powerful…new narrative
Ron DeSantis, the sneaky devil…
“A fake brochure promising eight months cash assistance, food, job training/placement, help with housing + more was given to migrants who were lured by Gov Ron DeSantis into boarding a flight to martha’s vineyard.”
Queen Elizabeth II- Final journey
