-
THURSDAY 12 JANUARY 2023
News Notes:
NYT
- Months of fighting in Soledar.
- Poland and Britain are still considering sending tanks to Ukraine.
- Giving these tanks to Ukraine raises fears of more direct Western involvement in the war.
- While most of Ukraine lies in destruction, West fears giving tanks to Ukraine will provoke Putin. (Note: Ridiculous).
- Poland is urging Western nations to band together and send tanks.
- Germany says it won’t be the first nation to send in tanks. Poland has to get Germany’s approval to send in German-made tanks.
- Aleksei Navalny’s wife is asking the Russian government to provide jailed Navalny with appropriate medication.
- Navalny is in a “punishment cell” 2 by 3 meters. He is kept from lying down all day even though he has a temperature.
- More than 200 Russian doctors sent a letter to Putin asking Putin to stop abusing Navalny.
-
Wednesday 11 January 2023
News Update:
From the Internet: New York Times
- Bakhmut
- Wagner Group claims to have taken Soledar, north of Bakhmut.
- If true this would be the first Russian military success in months.
- Many, including Zelensky, have questioned Russia’s apparent obsession with capturing Bakhmut. There are a number of different theories. For some, the determination to take Bakhmut with almost exclusively Wagner Group troops is both an effort to built a reputation for Wagner and also to bolster a power move by its founder Prigozhin.
- Prigozhin wants to present Wager as being the only effective fighting group on the Russian side.
- The purported capture of Soledar is intended to complete an envelopment of Bakhmut from the north.
- The fighting in Bakhmut is different from fighting in other areas where the Ukrainians have avoided direct confrontations and adopted a more nimble and smart method of fighting.
- The struggle for Bakhmut is said to have symbolic value for both sides.
- According to a report from Reuters, Prigozhin has stated that Wagner wants access to the vast underground cities that exist near Bakhmut and have multiple entrances near Soledar. These cities are disused salt mines.
- Tank and infantry can move around freely in these underground tunnels and it is thought the military that controls the unused mines can outflank the other.
- Others have noted the strategic positive of the salt and gypsum still in the mines.
- The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) thinks that Wagner is interested in exploiting the natural resources in the undergraound complex of tunnels and cities
- Russian Economy
- Russia posts a $47 billion budget deficit for 2022.
- Mikhail Mishustin, Russian prime minister.
-
TUESDAY 10 JANUARY 2023
NEWS NOTES: Ukraine: The Latest Podcast
- Intense fighting around Bakhmut continues. Fierce fighting for a number of weeks.
- This seems to be the “main immediate operational objective” of Russia according to British Intelligence. Russia is trying to envelope to the north of Soledar.
- Soledar is the location of entrances to extensive salt mines. The mines are disused, but there is an extensive network of underground tunnels and there is a fear that the military force that controls these tunnels can outflank the opposing forces.
- Soledar is the location of two foreign aid workers who have disappeared.
- Institute for the Study of War (ISW) is noting the Wagner Group is using the limited success in Soledar to boost Wagner’s reputation as the only effective force Russia has in the field. Prizochin (head of Wagner Group) is claiming that Wagner is exclusively fighting around Soledar.
- https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-wagner-says-it-controls-ukrainian-town-soledar-fighting-continues-2023-01-10/
- The Russian government is maintaining that Russia is fighting the West and NATO, and above all the US and Britain. This is the narrative because they can’t be losing to Ukraine, they portray themselves as confronting the entire West.
- The more the conflict is portrayed as being against “The West” it deters other countries from getting more involved.
- Britain has not made a final decision about whether to send tanks to Ukraine. The provision of these tanks would help unleash other countries to release tanks. They are all waiting for who is going to make the first move.
- Sending the tanks is a big decision. We can’t always look at these decisions or this reluctance as obstinacy.
- A decision about sending an air defense system to Ukraine is being made in Italy despite of the far-right government.
- Patrushev (Russian leader) is a believer in conspiracy theories about the US intending to harvest organs from Ukrainian children. He was in that initial public meeting between Putin and the Russian military leaders about the invasion.
- Some are seeing him as a possible successor of Putin. If Putin were ousted the replacement might be worse. He wants to ramp up military support. He says that Russia has the right to use nuclear arms.
- There are people calling for a further escalation in Ukraine.
- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-ally-s-latest-move-shows-growing-strain-with-putin/ar-AA16ajtm
- The EU has pledged new sanctions against Belarus.
- Belarus may become more important in the near future. There has been speculation that Russia may launch a further attack from Belarus.
- Sources
- https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/01/sviatlana-tsikhanouskaya-belarus-russia-lukashenko-putin/672666/
Wagner Group
- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-wagner-group-advances-in-donbas-captures-much-of-salt-mining-town/ar-AA16bI1b
- https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/russian-mercenaries-from-the-wagner-group-owned-by-a-key-putin-ally-are-stoking-influence-in-resource-rich-central-african-republic/ar-AA16boSl
- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/wagners-prigozhin-looks-to-punch-his-meal-ticket-in-soledar/ar-AA16bpfh
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/10/russia-wagner-group-fighting-heavy-bloody-battles-control-soledar
- https://www.thedailybeast.com/wagner-groups-secret-squadron-of-executioners-accused-of-killing-their-own-men-in-ukraine
- https://special-ops.org/wagner-group-notorious-private-military-company/
- https://www.newsweek.com/russia-wagner-group-recruiting-prisoners-belarus-war-1770932
- Personalities https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/02/22/the-personal-politics-of-putins-security-council-meeting-a76522
- Alexander Bortnikov, FSB Director
- Nikolai Patrushev, Security Council Secretary, KGB background, Leningrad/St. Petersburg background, conspiratorial worldview.
- Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu
- Valentina Matviyenko, Federation council speaker
- Dmitri Medvedev, Deputy Chair of the Security Council.
-
The small city of Soledar in eastern Ukraine has become a focal point of fierce fighting in recent days, part of a broader push in the Bakhmut area that Russia sees as important to achieving its goal of occupying all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
While the area is still highly contested, many have asked how a tiny city became such a focus. Even in his overnight address, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mentioned Soledar, and said: “What did Russia want to gain there?”
The most critical factor is perhaps not what Russian forces hope to gain in Soledar, but rather what a mercenary group fighting on the front there has to gain in terms of reputation if it manages to seize the city. In Bakhmut, the Wagner Group, the private military contracting company that has recruited prisoners into its ranks, has become the main force leading the offensive for Russia, and the fighting has become bloodier.
Russian forces and the Wagner Group are likely now in control of most of Soledar after intense fighting over the past four days, Britain’s defense ministry said in its daily intelligence update on Tuesday. The capture of the city, which is about six miles north of the city of Bakhmut, is likely to be part of “an effort to envelop Bakhmut from the north, and to disrupt Ukrainian lines of communication,” the update said.
Mr. Zelensky said that the fighting in Soledar was “extremely difficult” for Ukrainian forces, but that their resilience had “gained additional time and additional power for Ukraine.” “Everything is completely destroyed — there is almost no life left,” he said.
The Ukrainian leader also said that thousands of fighters on Russia’s side had been killed there. “The whole land near Soledar is covered with the corpses of the occupiers and scars from the strikes,” he said. “This is what madness looks like.”
The tactics employed by the Wagner Group have resulted in a high number of casualties. In recent days, reporters for The New York Times embedded with a Ukrainian drone crew on the front line saw the bodies of Russian fighters scattered across open ground in the area around Bakhmut. Images and videos on Ukrainian social media in recent days also appear to have come from these aerial reconnaissance missions and show similar scenes.
Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a caterer and businessman who now leads the Wagner Group and is a close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, is thought to want a victory in Bakhmut to boost his own political standing at home. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group, noted in an analysis on Monday that Mr. Prigozhin “continues to use reports of Wagner Group success in Soledar to bolster the Wagner Group’s reputation as an effective fighting force.”
Mr. Prigozhin has emphasized that the group is the only Russian force fighting in Soledar, although Ukrainian officials and the Russian military say that Wagner is not the only group fighting for the city on Moscow’s behalf.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Prigozhin said that Ukrainian forces were putting up a strong fight for Soledar and for Bakhmut.
Some Ukrainian messaging around the battle for Soledar on Tuesday appeared to suggest that losing control of the city to Russian forces would not be a major setback. Mr. Zelensky emphasized the importance of his forces’ broader goal of retaking the eastern Donbas region.
“The result of this difficult and long battle will be the liberation of our entire Donbas,” he said in his overnight address.
The larger battle is the fight for Bakhmut. For Russia, capturing it would be the most significant success in months. -
Monday 2 January 2023
NEWS NOTES
- MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace noted tonight that the DOJ was receiving “undue pressure” to prosecute Trump and his minions. Jesus how ignorant when her program nightly goes through crimes committed by Trump and his people.
- Emails released today by the Jan. 6 Committee show Trump staffers bemoaning their dismal employment prospects after the Jan. 6 coup attempt. Sad that participating in a coup damages your job prospects. One woman said she had been crying for hours over the loss (of her career).
- Jan. 6 was not an “intelligence failure.” This is a cop out on a grand scale. The lack of law enforcement at the capital was the result of deliberate actions on the part of government officials. Since we can’t hold anybody accountable, it becomes an “intelligence failure” for which nobody is responsible. Therefore, it will happen again.
- There were pro-Russian demonstrations in Mali over the weekend. Russia has invested heavily in unstable governments in Africa.
- According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon sent security teams to protect high-level officers in the military on Jan. 6. They did not send these teams to the capitol. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/01/steven-sund-capitol-police-book-jan6/
- A good part of a segment on Nicolle Wallace tonight is detailing all the information available to the government about the possibility of violence on Jan. 6. But, nobody will come to the obvious conclusion – the EVIDENCE, INFORMATION, INTELLIGENCE WAS IGNORED. It wasn’t some kind of vague, nebulous, “intelligence failure.” Information, intelligence was ignored because the men in the position to do something, politically agreed with the perpetrators. Jesus, how can it be clearer?
- Right-wing media is full of complaints about the Proud Boys members being tried in D.C. According to them, “everybody” knows that you can’t get a fair trial in D.C.
- Washington Post ( https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/01/proud-boys-jury-selection/ )reports that defense attorneys of the five Proud Boys being tried in D.C. “are looking for jurors who not only lack a negative perception of the Proud Boys but express no strong feelings about the Holocaust, the Black Lives Matter movement, women’s rights or gay rights.” What kind of imbeciles are they going to wind up with? Holocaust? What Holocaust? No, I don’t have strong feelings about that, whatever it is.”
- This country is driving me mad.
-
NEWS/UKRAINE JOURNAL 2023
Monday 2 January 2023
Ukraine: (BBC)
- Donetsk attack by Ukrainians. Hundreds thought dead.
- Figures for the dead are at odds between those reported by the Russians and the Ukrainians.
- Eastern Donetsk attack. Ukrainians say 400 killed and 300 wounded. A school was being used as a base by the Russians. Russian reports on state media is that HYMARS were used. Russians are saying that 15 were injured.
- Russian military bloggers are saying that hundreds have been killed and wounded. Base was being used for conscripts. There has been a lot of anger, saying that Russian commanders should be punished. Some of them say that 1000 conscripts were there waiting to be deployed.
- This could be the largest attack with casualties in the war.
- Another night of attacks on Kyiv, civilian population.
- Global prices are higher because of the war especially in Africa. Some of Africa has strong ties with Russia and Wagner Group has been operating in West Africa.
- Demonstrations in support of Russia have occurred in Mali, there is waving of Russian flags and chants of anti-french sentiments. French forces fighting extremism have withdrawn. The American ambassador to the Ivory Coast has commented on the Wagner Group involvement in the region. “We cannot exist in the same space as those groups who do not respect human rights.” He said. “the presence of Russian mercenaries in any country…has become poorer and less secure…they are not very good fighters and they commit terrible human rights abuses and they are just a destabilizing force.”
- A UN vote to condemn Russia’s actions divided the participants, half voted in favor, 17 abstained, Eritrea voted alongside Russia.
- The House passed a bill to counter Russian investment in Africa.
- This may have alienated some. Some consider it unfair to punish African countries for associating with Russia economically.
- The African Union has avoided taking sides in the war.
-
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday that 63 service members had been killed in the strike in the city, Makiivka, which is in the Donetsk region. Ukraine claimed that “about 400” Russian soldiers had died. Neither figure could be independently verified. Nyt
A spokesman for the Russian-installed proxy government in the Donetsk region, Daniil Bezsonov, called the strike “a massive blow” and hinted at errors by Russian commanders.
“The enemy inflicted the most serious defeats in this war on us not because of their coolness and talent, but because of our mistakes,” he wrote in a post on Telegram.Kyiv has shifted in recent weeks from using the American-made rocket systems to hit ammunition dumps and supply lines to targeting barracks and other troop concentrations, said Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va.
Accounts by pro-war military bloggers — who have become influential opinion-makers in Russia amid the censorship of mainstream media — suggested that the strike in Makiivka had proved so deadly partly because of a litany of errors by Moscow’s forces, some of which have been repeated throughout the war.
Ilya Yashin, an anti-Kremlin activist and politician who was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in December for “spreading false information” about atrocities committed in the Ukrainian city of Bucha by Russian troops, wrote on Friday that he had been transferred to a jail in Izhevsk, a city 600 miles east of Moscow.
-
Convicts Thought to be from Wagner Group Escape in Ukraine
- Six convicts escaped from a training camp in Ukraine run by the Wagner Group.
- Russian authorities posted leaflets around Rostov-on-Don warning residents.
- The men were thought to have escaped on 22 December.
- They are likely from the new batch of recruits specifically signed up from prisons.
- Head of the Wagner Group, Progizhin, toured remote prisons in Russia to recruit drug dealers and murderers.
- In November of 2022, the Wagner Group released a video where one of their fighters was smashing in the head of a deserter with a sledgehammer. (Note: They have also mailed a sledgehammer to officials.)
- Prigozhin praised the video.
- Prigozhin said about the escapes: ““Many villains are being detained whom you don’t even need to know about. So sleep well.””
- The Wagner Group has been accused of human rights abuses in the Middle East and in Africa where they also functioned as proxies for the Russians.
- A mercenary was arrested in Rostov in December after escaping.
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Law, Power, and Justice 