www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/28/putin-backed-coup-threatens-europes-nuclear-supplies/
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While Syria was in the middle of one of the bloodiest civil wars in modern history, President Assad turned to his close ally, Russia, for help. Instead of committing conventional forces in Syria, Putin sent in Prigozhin. Syria provided Wagner Group with the perfect model – prop up dictators and make millions exploiting natural resources in the process. Prigozhin became Putin’s trusted fixer and had another side business, an internet troll farm that pumped out disinformation against those who disagreed with the Kremlin. He would soon turn his keyboard warriors on the United States and the pivotal 2016 election.
— Read on www.msnbc.com/on-assignment/watch/revolt-from-within-the-rise-of-wagner-prigozhin-s-expanding-enterprise-187309125963 -
“I feel pain, and I want revenge,” said Ms. Sulzhenko, 74. “I don’t have the words to say what we should do to them.”
When Zelensky spoke before the US Congress he said the longer this war goes on the more my people hate. He used some of his valuable time to express his concern, his deep feeling of tragedy about what this war was doing to his people.
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Russian missiles badly damaged a historic Orthodox cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa. CNN’s Alex Marquardt reports.
— Read on www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/07/24/odesa-transfiguration-cathedral-damage-ukraine-marquardt-sot-vpx-acostanr.cnn -
www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/23/this-is-barbarism-shock-at-russian-strike-on-odesa-cathedral
The cathedral, rebuilt after Ukraine gained independence, was consecrated in 2010 by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. Kirill has offered full-throated support for Putin’s war in Ukraine, blessing troops and stating in one of his sermons that Russian soldiers who die in battle are performing “a sacrifice that cleanses away all of that person’s sins”.
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Saturday 29 July 2023
CNN (7/29/23)
More than 100 troops from the Russian mercenary group Wagner are reported to be moving towards a thin strip of land between Poland and Lithuania called the Suwalki gap or corridor. They are reported to be near Grodno, a city in western Belarus.
There are thousands of Wagner troops in Belarus, moved there after their leader, Prigozhin, conducted an uprising in Russia.
Polish authorities warn that the Wagner troops are trying to destabilize the borer and may pose as illegal immigrants. Pushing migrants into Poland by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is a tactic used in the past.
“Though just 60 miles long, the corridor is strategically important to NATO, the EU, Russia and Belarus. The border region connects the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to Belarus and it is the only overland link between the Baltic states and the rest of the EU.”
As part of a deal with Prigozhin, Lukashenko asked Wagner to help train military in Belarus. There are plans to hold joint military exercises near the border with Poland even more likely to raise tensions.
Lukashenko joked with Putin at the recent African summit that Wagner troops were restless and wanted to go west on “an excursion.”
This is not the first time Lukashenko has made similar comments about Wagner troops.
In July, at least 3,500 Wagner troops were reported in Belarus, but the number is higher now. At the end of July, Ukraine’s border guard service stated that there are now at least 5,000 mercenaries in Belarus.
Recent satellite images also show 754 pieces of equipment at the Wagner camp near the village of Tsel.
Additional Sources:
How the War against Ukraine has changed lives in Poland
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/18/1099411575/poles-polish-youth-war-ukraine-russia-refugees
Wikipedia: Suwalki Gap
The Suwałki Gap, also known as the Suwałki corridor[a][b] ([suˈvawkʲi] (listen)), is a sparsely populated area immediately southwest of the border between Lithuania and Poland, between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast. Named after the Polish town of Suwałki, this choke point has become of great strategic and military importance since Poland and the Baltic states joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The border between Poland and Lithuania was formed after the Suwałki Agreement of 1920; but it carried little importance in the interwar period as at the time, the Polish lands stretched farther northeast, while during the Cold War, Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union and communist Poland belonged to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact alliance. The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact created borders that cut through the shortest land route between Kaliningrad (Russian territory isolated from the mainland) and Belarus (Russia’s ally). As the Baltic states and Poland eventually joined NATO, this narrow border stretch between Poland and Lithuania became a vulnerability for the military bloc because, if a hypothetical military conflict were to erupt between Russia and Belarus on one side and NATO on the other, the capture of the 65 km (40 mi)-long strip of land between Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast and Belarus would likely jeopardise NATO’s attempts to defend the Baltic states. NATO’s fears about the Suwałki Gap intensified after 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and launched the war in Donbas, and further increased after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. These worries prompted the alliance to increase its military presence in the area, and an arms race was triggered by these events.
Art Supplement
Dangerous Moonlight (1941) Polish flyer, Stefan Radecki (Anton Walbrook) meets an American war correspondent in Warsaw. After his men make sacrifices so he can be transferred out of the fighting, he does a concert tour for Poland. Even after developing a successful concert career and getting married to the reporter, he cannot keep himself from returning to Poland where is he killed in the war.
When he leaves Warsaw, he looks down on a city devastated by the Germans. He promises to return.
If you want to understand just why Wagner group members moving toward Poland is so terrifying, all you have to do is remember that these wartime scenes from WWII live in the minds of people who experienced them and their children and grandchildren.
Notes: TCM recently showed this movie. Some of the costumes were designed by Cecil Beaton. The film is best known for its score written by Richard Addinsell and orchestrated by Roy Douglas, which includes the Warsaw Concerto.
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The Yale professor on why the west got Putin wrong — and what the past tells us about the war in Ukraine
— Read on www.ft.com/content/9a23b1a7-da4e-466b-99f4-9f7f369fe128 -
The right-wing Israel government aims to limit judicial power to pave the way for settlers’ expansion into the West Bank.
— Read on theintercept.com/2023/07/26/intercepted-israel-protests-judicial-overhaul/ -
The Russia-linked mercenaries worked with Mali’s longtime U.S.-backed military to kill and loot with impunity, according to Human Rights Watch.
— Read on theintercept.com/2023/07/24/wagner-group-mali/ -
As Kyiv’s full operational design becomes clearer, we can expect decisive battlefield victories soon
— Read on www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/28/ukraine-is-on-the-verge-of-splitting-russias-army/ -
Ukraine is making gains around Bakhmut, but in the fog of war it is hard to know whether they are really ousting the invaders
— Read on www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/12/analysis-bakhmut-ukraine/ -
Russian president’s remarks came at summit in which he pledged free grain supplies and sought to exploit anti-colonial sentiment
— Read on www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/28/putin-quotes-nelson-mandela-russia-africa-relations-ukraine/ -
Wagner group leader applauds takeover as ‘a struggle of the people of Niger with their colonisers’
— Read on www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/28/general-abdourahmane-tchiani-niger-coup-declares-president/ -
Russians fear being caught in a pincer movement as Ukrainian forces advance on a village in the Donetsk region.
— Read on www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/28/russia-ukraine-war-latest-counter-offensive-zaporizhzhia/
