Sept 23 Buonasera Mag
Day 213: current UA battles, RU eco, deportations,, UN Report, China, France, NATO, Slovakia, Kallas, Berlusconi, Orban, Finland-A&Ps-Shekhotsov, Mongolia, Davis, Applebaum, Polymeropoulos, Amanpour
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…
Ukraine's military: Russia attacks Odesa with Iranian kamikaze drones, kills 1 civilian. Russia attacked Odesa with Iranian Shahed-136 drones from the sea, killing one civilian and destroying an administrative building in the port area, Operational Command "South" reported.
General Staff: Ukraine liberates Yatskivka in Donetsk Oblast. Ukraine's Armed Forces have established control over the village of Yatskivka in Donetsk Oblast and regained previously lost positions in the Bakhmut direction, General Staff reported on Sept. 23.
UK MoD: “Ukraine is now putting pressure on territory that Russia considers essential to its war aims”, with fighting along the Oskil River, and a Ukrainian assault on the town of Lyman, Donetsk, which Russia captured in May.
The UN has said its investigators have concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, numerous executions, torture and horrific sexual violence. The team of three independent experts had launched initial investigations looking at the areas of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions where they were “struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited”, and the frequent “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats”.
Defense of Ukraine: Exhuming procedures of the FIRST mass grave in Izyum are being completed today. In total, 436 bodies of victims of russian occupation have been exhumed. Most bear evidence of a violent death, and 30 were tortured.
Two sources familiar with U.S. intelligence say that senior officers in Russia’s intel community are getting fed up with Putin. There are indications critics there want to replace him with a current intel official, and a person may have been chosen.
SBU: Russia's proxies in Donetsk Oblast plan to involve teenagers in 'voting' on joining Russia. Ukraine's Security Service has exposed the plan of Russia's proxies in Donetsk Oblast to involve children aged 13-17 in pseudo-referendums.
Governor: Armed Russian proxies knock on doors, demand locals to 'vote' on joining Russia. Russia's proxies in occupied Luhansk Oblast come to locals' houses accompanied by armed men and force them to take part in the pseudo-referendum, said Serhii Haidai, oblast governor.
Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to president Zelensky: “Today, there is no legal action called a “referendum” in the occupied territories. There is only – 1. Propaganda show for z-conscription. 2. The territory of Ukraine that needs an immediate release.”
G7 to react to sham referendums with new sanctions on Russia. The G7 nations will not recognize the pseudo-referendums that Russia is preparing to hold in the occupied territories of Ukraine, said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock on Sept. 22.
Zelensky: Russia's mobilization is admission of failure. President Zelensky called on Russians to "protest, fight back, run away or surrender to Ukraine," in his daily address. "You are already complicit in all these crimes, murders, and torture of Ukrainians because you remain silent. It's time for you to choose, for men to choose to die or to live," Zelensky said.
Putin now wants to hike Defense spending by 43% in preparation for a long war AFTER the budget surplus disappeared and the Finance Ministry told state agencies they would need to slash spending by 10% in 2023.
Long lines of vehicles continue to form at Russia’s border crossings on the second day full day of Vladimir Putin’s military mobilisation, with some men waiting over 24 hours as western leaders disagree over whether Europe should welcome those fleeing the call-up to fight in Ukraine.
Pentagon: Putin's nuclear rhetoric will not affect aid to Ukraine. U.S. Defense Department press secretary Patrick Ryder said on Sept. 22 that Russia's announcement would not influence the U.S. and its allies' support for Ukraine.
Roman Starovoyt, the governor of Russia’s Kursk region, has announced extra payments for people from his region who are mobilising to fight in Ukraine.
Day 1 of "partial mobilization" in Russia brings mass mobilization of ethnic minorities and the impoverished Far East, and draft notices handed to anyone who protests anywhere else.
Buryat University students are being drafted into the Russian military. This explicitly violates the Kremlin's pledge that students would not be subject to partial mobilization.
The Russian central bank has issued a statement welcoming the announcement earlier that key workers in the financial, IT and communications sectors are to be excluded from Russia’s partial mobilisation by the ministry of defence. (This isn’t true. There are multiple reports from various companies that have received drafts.)
Russian forces have forcibly deported between 900,000 and 1.6 million Ukrainians, the US ambassador to the UN’s human rights council, Michele Taylor, said.
Chinese FM Wang Yi called for “neutrality” and urged Russia and Ukraine to commit to “dialogue without preconditions” speaking at the UN’s security council yesterday. China supported investigations into violations of international humanitarian law, but they should be “objective and fair based on facts rather than an assumption of guilt” and “must not be politicised”, Wang said.
Kuleba: France, Ukraine working on new Caesar howitzers delivery. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna on Sept. 22 to discuss a wide range of topics, including support for Ukraine and the shipment of additional arms.
Zelensky rebukes Israel for 'zero' military support, slams China's 'ambiguous' position on war. In an interview with French newspaper Ouest-France, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Israel "has not given anything" to Ukraine since Russia launched its al-out invasion.
Slovak Defense Ministry: Mobilization will lead to Putin's end. Slovakia's Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad has called Vladimir Putin's address to the nation "pitiful" and said that mobilization "will end up in the overthrow of Putin as president of the Russian Federation," Euractiv reported on Sept. 22.
PM Kallas told her nation overnight that power blackouts are possible if Russia kicks the Baltic states from the joint power grid.
Hungarian state daily Magyar Nemzet on mobilization: “The war starts now… Soon, as many as 2 million Russian soldiers armed to the teeth could begin rubbing out the territory known for the past few decades as Ukraine from the map.”
PM Orban told his ruling Fidesz party that sanctions against Russia imposed by the European Union should be scrapped, the pro-government daily Magyar Nemzet reported late on Wednesday.
“Iran has shut off the internet in parts of Tehran and Kurdistan, and blocked access to platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp, in an attempt to curb a growing protest movement that has relied on social media to document dissent.”
Finland seizes assets of Russian businessmen Arkady Volozh, gas tycoons Boris and Arkady Rotenberg. Finnish media Helsingin Sanomat reported that Finnish authorities seized the holdings of Russia's largest technology company Yandex after the EU added the company's founder and CEO Arkady Volozh to its sanctions list. Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had extensive business interests in Finland. They had their assets seized by the state.
Berlusconi cookoo: “Putin was pushed by the Russian people, by his party, by his ministers to invent this ‘special operation’,” Berlusconi said on Rai1’s flagship political talk show last night. Moscow’s plan was originally to conquer Kyiv “in a week”, replace Ukrainian president Zelensky with “a government of decent people” and get out “in another week”, he added. “I haven’t even understood why Russian troops spread around Ukraine while in my mind they should have only stuck around Kyiv,” Berlusconi insisted.
Meduza, A guarantee of the country’s destruction’ Russian political scientists on Putin’s mobilization announcement
What exactly “partial mobilization” entails, how it will look in practice, and whether it will help Russia turn things around on the battlefield is anybody's guess, but it's undeniable that Russian society is in for some major changes. To get a better idea of what to expect, Meduza spoke to a number of leading Russian political scientists and sociologists.
Anne Applebaum, The Kremlin Must Be in Crisis- The Atlantic
In part, the crisis stems from Putin’s fears that he will lose whatever counts as his international support. No ideology holds together the global autocrats’ club, and no sentiment does either. As long as they believed Russia really had the second largest army in the world, as long as Putin seemed destined to stay in power indefinitely, then the leaders of China, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, along with the strongmen running India and Turkey, were happy to tolerate his company.
Marc Polymeropoulos, Rely on US intelligence to call out Putin’s nuclear bluff- The Atlantic Council
The US Intelligence community (IC) is without a doubt laser-focused on the Russian tactical nuclear weapons inventory, which includes air, sea, and land-based systems. Given Putin’s rhetoric, there is no more important a priority for the IC. I am confident that US collection posture will provide the world a requisite early-warning mechanism.
Since the conflict began in February, the United States has not yet detected any movement of tactical nuclear weapons, and the US administration has repeatedly been quite open about that.
Christiane Amanpour: I politely declined
Protests are sweeping Iran & women are burning their hijabs after the death last week of Mahsa Amini, following her arrest by the “morality police”. Human rights groups say at least 8 have been killed. Last night, I planned to ask President Raisi about all this and much more.
This was going to be President Raisi’s first ever interview on US soil, during his visit to NY for UNGA. After weeks of planning and eight hours of setting up translation equipment, lights and cameras, we were ready. But no sign of President Raisi.
40 minutes after the interview had been due to start, an aide came over. The president, he said, was suggesting I wear a headscarf, because it’s the holy months of Muharram and Safar.
I politely declined. We are in New York, where there is no law or tradition regarding headscarves. I pointed out that no previous Iranian president has required this when I have interviewed them outside Iran.
The aide made it clear that the interview would not happen if I did not wear a headscarf. He said it was “a matter of respect,” and referred to “the situation in Iran” - alluding to the protests sweeping the country.
Again, I said that I couldn’t agree to this unprecedented and unexpected condition.
And so we walked away. The interview didn’t happen. As protests continue in Iran and people are being killed, it would have been an important moment to speak with President Raisi.
What Ukraine will need as winter approaches…
