Ukraine Invasion: Part 36

[MagicFox]

Slava Ukraini 🇺🇦 Thanks as usual to all contributors and lurkers

hey @Sandunesandseashells =)

It might explain the high numbers yeah.

Numbers generally have been going up too, which could be due to the Bakhmut or Kreminna fights.

Ukr is openly saying it's going to go for Kreminna and Russians have been reinforcing there, but the hardware losses have not been rising all that fast compared to previous Ukrainian offensives.

In Kherson region, a 13-year-old boy came under Russian fire twice - in the evening of December 31, he was returning home with his sister when the Russians attacked the village of Nadnipryanske. The boy was taken to the hospital in serious condition.
And in the first minutes of January 1, the occupants shelled Kherson Regional Children's Clinical Hospital, where the child was in intensive care. The windows in the boy's ward were smashed. Now he was evacuated to Mykolaiv.

This is so sad. Poor boy, his family. This is what relentless Russian shelling is doing.

mobile.twitter.com/WarMonitor3/status/1609931519140966402 War monitor says that Russia keep making the same mistake of grouping their troops together in buildings and not camouflaging their vehicles. This makes it easy for AFU

mobile.twitter.com/SlavaUk30722777/status/1609809109213417474 video Slava Ukraini

www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/01/2/7383307/

The Governor of Sevastopol in Crimea is moving his children and pets to Cyprus. Good vote of confidence ...

in hints of much worse news:

Barak Ravid
@BarakRavid
1 \ BREAKING: New Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen signaled a policy shift on Ukraine in his 1st speech hinting the new government will take a more pro-Russian line. He said he will speak on Tuesday with Russian FM Lavrov – 1st such call since the Russian invasion of Ukraine

2 \ In his speech Cohen hinted that unlike his predecessor Yair Lapid he will not condemn Russia publicly. “On the issue of Russia and Ukraine we will do on thing for sure – speak less in public”

3 \ The new Israeli FM said he is going to draft a “responsible” new policy on the war in Ukraine and stressed the foreign ministry “will prepare a detailed presentation to the security cabinet on this issue”. He also said the Israeli humanitarian aid to Ukraine will continue

4 \ Why it matters: Cohen’s predecessor Yair Lapid led a tough line Russia, condemned it publicly & even said the Russian military committed war crimes. Since the invasion Lapid didn’t speak to Lavrov & after he assumed office as caretaker prime minister he didn’t speak to Putin

Cyprus has been a haven for the Russians for a long time.

It has indeed..

www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/03/28/war-in-ukraine-unease-in-cyprus-land-of-asylum-for-russian-oligarchs_5979189_4.html

I am afraid that this new government is bad news all round (and I say this as a very strong Israel supporter), so I can't say I am surprised, although it is disappointing as some of the first statements of Netanyahu at least on Ukraine were better than expected. Unfortunately we are dealing with an extreme right wing that have managed to win control of the government - think Trump in 2016 and Breitbart type influence, or perhaps think the sorts of thing that Boris would have done if he was only able to govern with the support of UKIP MPs. The government is a disaster, and the best hope I have is that, like Trump, it will alienate enough people that it will be turfed out next time. And it has enough of a "everybody hates us, we don't care" attitude that is going to make it very difficult to influence - which it why it was so important to support people like Lapid who are decent human beings because when they aren't supported, people turn round and say - well it makes no difference, they hate us whatever, so there is no point taking the view of the rest of the world into account. Sorry for the rant, it is just awful and they are threatening to tamper with the democratic fabric of the country by having a go at the Supreme Court (does this sound familiar).
I suppose that if not making statements means that fewer Iranian drones end up in Russia (because it makes Russia less willing to give Iran what it wants) maybe ultimately there is a benefit to all concerned, but that is giving a lot more credit to this government than it almost certainly deserves.

That's grim news @Naem

How long is the govt elected for in Israel?

Is there any chance the election was influenced by Russia, as seems likely with Trump and with Brexit?

Edward Lucas posted a link to an English translation of the Danish article DucksOfWar mentioned a couple of days ago. I'll put it in the 'interesting, hmm' pile. Putin - Pain - Cancer feature.

www.berlingske.dk/internationalt/danish-military-intelligence-suggests-drug-induced-megalomania-may

The link destination will ask you about cookies in Danish.

If this was about the strike in Makiivka yesterday (which certainly seems to be the case), it omits reports that the Russians cleverly stored large stocks of ammunition in the same warehouse as the mobiks. This neglect of force protection is shocking, even for the bloody Russians.

Isn't Cyprus an EU member state? How does it get round EU sanctions against the Russian oligarchs to be able to offer save haven to them?

Three years, so not as long as some other places.

To be fair, probably not that influenced by Russia. The problem is that Netanyahu is, while being a complete narcissist, a very smart strategist - and he will do whatever it takes to be and stay Prime Minister (particularly as he is being pursued for corruption charges, and has some level of immunity if Prime Minister - note by the way that while some of these relate to money, and those relating to his wife primarily do, the rest not so much, more of them relate to buying influence with newspapers etc, I'd say he is more interested in power than money, although power gives you the ability to dish out largesse). And he manipulated the system very effectively by welding three lunatic right wing parties together so that together they got over the threshold, so he then had enough votes to form a majority. Each one of these three is horrible, but in different ways, one of them is specifically anti LGTBQ, and only has one member in Knesset, and would never have gotten in if that party hadn't been part of this three part joined party that Netanyahu constructed. And the left wing parties didn't unite like this, so a number of votes were lost because people voted for parties that didn't get over the threshold. Whether the fact that the parties opposed to Netanyahu didn't unite was due to Russian influence, I suppose it is possible, but I think they were just ideological enough and the differences between them felt significant enough to them that they wanted to run independently, but it was a bad, bad mistake.

But now Netanyahu has to govern with these horrible coalition partners, plus the ultra orthodox religious parties (not that they are so nice either, but they just want control of housing as there is a desparate shortage for their growing population and money for their yeshivot and to keep their boys out of the army and in yeshiva and away from secular subjects that could mean they could be productive earners in the future, they traditionally don't care about foreign policy or even much domestic policy beyond that) who all give him his majority (if pretty much any of them walk, his government falls - as he has 63 in the Knesset out of 120). So the right wing three parties that got in as one have an enormous amount of power, even though there are only six of them. And they are real ideologues, so not for turning.

At least 15% of Israeli citizens speak Russian. Although they, or their ancestors, reached Israel throughout its existence, there has been a significant post-Soviet influx.

In recent years there has been a clear, if somewhat diverse, population bloc to address (and express itself) in elections in what is a single national constituency PR list system.

Some figures for FSU migration to Israel:

www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/total-immigration-to-israel-from-former-soviet-union

I know of two female contemporaries who have migrated to Israel. One, who I would only count as a friend of a friend, migrated from Russia for the better life she perceived she would have. She had a 'Right Of Return' due to her maternal grandmother being Jewish. In my eyes (and I stress I didn't know her well but did talk to her about her motivation prior to her migrating) she was secular post-Communist and was not at all religious. This seems to be common. On social media it was clear she had joined the IDF and had heavily bought into an Israeli identity.

Not all Russian speaking Israelis trace directly back to Russia. Avigdor Lieberman, for instance, was born in Moldova. He has had a significant impact on the Israeli political calculus over the past 20 or so years.

Good question, no idea TBH...

Very true...and on the other hand it looks like a nice bit of work in terms of actioning intelligence, etc by the Ukrainians...

It depends on whether they’re fleeing to Northern or southern Cyprus as only the Greek south is in the EU.

And as for southern Cyprus it’s well known as a way into EU citizenship of you have enough money as You can buy Cypriot citizenship fairly easily.

I think we've crossed....I was responding to @MissConductUS post, but with regard to the Cyprus situation I think a lot of the Russians are supposedly in the South of the island, in/around the Limassol area - so much so some folks started to refer to the place as "Limassolgrad" a some time ago, well before the war started)...

More coverage on the stike from the BBC:

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64142650

One thing that tipped off the Ukrainians was the presence of uncamouflaged military vehicles parked next to the warehouse. Like the Ukrainians don't have drones or access to western satellite images. Such amateurs.

Many thanks for the link..

In return I'll offer this:

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/mobile-phone-data-leads-ukraine-to-russian-barracks/ar-AA15SUm5?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=2425d53e42eb4738975e0c169ca2385b

May or may not be true - I'm surprised there's been any comment from the Ukraine side TBH.......

mobile.twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1609979035223744513 Ukrainian flag flying over Potyomkin island UNCONFIRMED

Avigdor Leiberman has indeed. But Israel Beytanu only got 6 seats in the last election (that is Avigdor Leiberman's party - a secular Russian origin party) and they are now in opposition. I have just checked the figures, and in fact Netanyahu has a majority of 64, of which 14 in total are this three party group (now split back into 7,6 and 1), and then there are two different ultra Orthodox parties. Netanyahu's Likud holds (32) Shas (ultra Orthodox middle eastern Jews) holds 11, UTJ (ultra Orthodox European Jews) holds 7. And:

"In his first act in office, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich instructed ministry officials Sunday to roll back tax hikes on single-use plasticware and sweetened drinks put in place by his predecessor, Avigdor Liberman." Smotrich is heads one of the three parties and has been made Finance Minister! He will rotate during the term with Areyeh Deri, who is head of Shas (ultra orthodox middle eastern Jews) and is also a convicted criminal (financial crimes).

Grim is precisely the word.