.
Europe
Hungary
01.08.2023 A vote in Hungary’s parliament to ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO was adjourned due to the absence of ruling party lawmakers yesterday. Last week, Hungary said it would back Türkiye's decision on Sweden's bid to join NATO. Ahead of a NATO summit in July, Turkish President Erdogan agreed to forward to parliament Sweden's bid to join NATO following a trilateral meeting with NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg and Swedish Prime Minister Kristersson in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Although Türkiye approved Finland's membership to NATO, it is waiting for Sweden to fulfill its commitments not to provide shelter to terrorists and supporters of terrorists and not to greenlight their actions. Following Türkiye's move, Hungarian FM Szijjártó said his country's ratification of Sweden's NATO bid is now 'only a technical question.' (Source: AnadoluAgency)
Poland
Tue, Aug 1, 2023 Earlier today, residents living near the border with Belarus reported witnessing helicopters with Belarusian insignia flying overhead, and some shared photos of the aircraft. Poland has reported a violation of its airspace in the Białowieża area near the border with Belarus. NATO has been informed of the incident. Poland's Ministry of Defence has reported that two Belarusian military helicopters, that were training near the border, violated Polish airspace during a training exercise. The Belarusian side had previously informed Poland about the training drills. The border crossing reportedly took place in the Białowieża area at a very low altitude, making it difficult to detect by radar systems. Initially, Poland's military denied any airspace violation by the Belarusian helicopters. Minsk denies any infringement of airspace. The Belarusian Ministry of Defense stated: "The accusations of violation of the Polish border by Mi-24 and Mi-8 helicopters of the Belarusian Air Force are too far-reaching and created by the Polish military and leadership to justify the concentration of troops and equipment on the Belarusian border." Belarus and Poland have been on high alert along the border in recent weeks after the Wagner Group's mercenary fighters were relocated to Belarus close to the border with Poland. Błaszczak, Poland's Minister of Defence has ordered the number of soldiers on the border to be increased. Over the past two years, a significant number of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa have been attempting to enter Poland and Lithuania. European countries view this migration influx as a potential effort by Belarus, which is allied with Moscow, to create instability in the region. Polish government has accused Belarus and Russia of using migrants as a form of warfare to destabilise the country. (Source: Express)
Moldova
01.08.2023 Moldova’s Information and Security Service (SIB) said yesterday that it has terminated its partnership agreement with Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). It plans to withdraw from a cooperation agreement with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Saying that cooperation with Russian special services was stopped as of Feb. 24 last year, the SIB noted that such agreements “no longer meet Moldova’s national interests.' Official notifications have been sent to the relevant Russian authorities. (Source: AnadoluAgency)
Russia
01.08.2023 In April, a Russian court sentenced Kara-Murza, an opposition politician and Kremlin critic on charges of treason, spreading 'false information" about the Russian military, and leading an "undesirable" organization. Three judges and two prosecutors as well as an "expert witness" have been sanctioned for their roles in the sentencing of dual British national Kara-Murza, who is facing 25 years in a penal colony after the rejection of his appeal, the British Foreign Office said. Last month, the European Council also blacklisted nine Russians in response to Russia's 25-year prison sentence against Kara-Murza. (Source: AnadoluAgency)
1 Aug 2023 At least two people were killed by Ukrainian shelling of the city of Donetsk, the Russian-installed head of the region said. The governor of Belgorod region said that Ukraine fired at settlements multiple times. Gladkov said 12 artillery shells were fired at the village of Shchetinovka and that mortar shells also landed on the villages of Novaya Tavolzhanka, Krasnoe and Leninsky. The governor of Bryansk region said a Ukrainian drone hit a police station overnight but there were no casualties. Russian Defence Minister Shoigu said Moscow intensified strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure in retaliation for attacks on Russian-controlled territory. He said Western weapons are only prolonging the war and not leading to success on the battlefield. Mexican President Lopez Obrador called for an end to the “irrational” war in Ukraine and urged upcoming peace talks in Saudi Arabia to include Russia. He said Mexico would only take part in the talks if both sides were present. The Russian foreign ministry said Moscow will continue dialogue for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine crisis with China, Brazil and African partners. Export prices for Russian wheat remained at elevated levels last week after spiking a week earlier due to Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal. According to the IKAR agriculture consultancy, the price of 12.5 percent-protein Russian wheat scheduled for delivery in the second half of August was $241 per tonne last week, down from $242 per tonne a week earlier. (Source: AlJazeera)
1 August 2023 The Russian defence ministry, in a message on Telegram today, said its anti-aircraft units had “thwarted a terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime” and downed two drones in the suburbs west of the city centre. But another drone, having been “hit by radio-electronic equipment and, having run out of control, crashed on the territory of the complex of non-residential buildings” in Moscow City, the ministry said, referring to a business district in the capital. Earlier, Moscow Mayor Sobyanin said the building hit today was the same one struck in a drone attack on Sunday, July 30. “The facade has been damaged on the 21st floor. Glazing was destroyed over 150 square metres,” he said. “There is no information on casualties,” he added. Ukraine began its long-awaited counteroffensive in June but has made modest advances in the face of stiff resistance from Russian forces on the front line. (Source: BBC)
Ukraine
Tue, August 1, 2023 During World War I, 41,000 Britons and 67,000 Germans required amputations. Since the beginning of the Russian military aggression, the number of Ukrainians left without one or more limbs has reached 20-50,000. Estimates by the Houp Foundation charity show that 200,000 people were seriously injured during the war, while amputations are frequently necessary in about 10% of major injuries. Due to the length of time required to register patients following an operation, the actual number may be higher. After being injured, some people don't have their limbs amputated for weeks or months. The prostheses are not cheap, with some prices reaching EUR 50,000. The Ukrainian authorities pay the wounded up to 20,000 euros. Civilians who are injured find it difficult to afford treatment. (Source: Yahoo / UkrainskaPravda)
Aug 1 2023 Ukraine's new fleet of crowd-funded kamikaze attack UAVs - 'Bober' (Beaver) drones, these long-distance weapons are believed to be responsible for a recent spout of attacks on Russia as they can fly for over six hours at a range of 500 miles. They are also nifty at evading Russia's air defense systems owing to their aerodynamic "duck" system that allows for a rapid change in flight altitude. Costing around £86,000-a-piece, Kyiv has been ramping up production of the Ukrainian-invented and Ukrainian-manufactured drone. 'Ukraine currently has the highest level of UAV production in the world,' said Kamyshin, Ukraine's minister responsible for increasing military production, adding that Ukraine already has over 100 companies producing drones. Ukrainian influencer Lachenkov helped crowd-fund for the Bobers. And 'prominent TV personality Prytula' on the weekend posed in front of freshly-made Bobers. He raised over £4million to buy them for Ukraine's army, which wants a fleet of over 100. On the weekend, he declared: 'Muscovites! Shudder from the sirens. Go to bomb shelters. Watch as it flies into strategic objects. Do not sleep from the work of air defense.' Last night, footage showed a massive explosion after a fresh drone strike hit a skyscraper in Moscow that houses the Russian Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Communications. (Source: TheU.S.Sun)
1 AUG 2023 President of Ukraine Zelenskyy mocked claims that the Ukraine and Russia war could last for three decades. Zelenskyy, 45, believes that 70-year-old Putin won't live another decade. He told Brazil’s TV Globo: 'It can’t, Putin won't live that many years. He did not fight in Syria at the pace he is fighting us. That is why he will not stand 30 years. He will not exist, he will die. This, obviously, is absolute.' He vowed that he and his generation would resist any future bid by Russia to regroup and seek to defeat Ukraine. 'As long as we are alive, we will not let them become as strong as they were,' he said. (Source: DailyStar)
August 1, 2023 'Ukrainians are always looking for ways to give the middle finger to Russia.' Spending money on an anti-Russia gesture, Kyiv’s Motherland monument gets a makeover - but at what cost? Ukrainian authorities are replacing the 62-meter-tall statue of the woman monument’s hammer and sickle with a trident. Affectionally known locally as Baba, it has stood atop a hill on the right bank of Kyiv since 1981. Sternly looking east, she holds a 16-meter-long sword in her right hand and an eight-meter-long shield in her left. On the shield are the hammer and sickle, symbols used as the emblem of the former Soviet Union. On Sunday, July 30, workers started dismantling the Soviet emblem and replace the hammer and sickle with the coat of arms of Ukraine, a trident. Not everyone is pleased of using the country’s wartime resources. The view from the frontline, said Ukrainian combat medic Prylypenko, is that changing the statue is 'a waste of money.' “It is also a symptom of the lack of creating a state military strategy for civilian spending,” he added. The Ministry of Culture and Information Policy has said repeatedly the state has not spent a single hryvnia on the project, which is estimated to cost 28 million hryvnias (around €700,000), and that cash is coming from big businesses. 'We’ve been working on this project since last year when 85 percent of Ukrainians supported the change via online voting,” Tkachenko, now Ukraine’s former culture minister, said 'earlier this month'. Zelenskyy issued a video statement on July 20 urging the government to fire Tkachenko. The state must focus its maximum attention on defense needs, Zelenskyy said. "Culture during the war is as important as drones,' Tkachenko said in a statement on Friday, July 28, the same day the Ukrainian parliament approved his resignation. 'This is €700,000. This is more than 2,000 FPV drones, for example, or 240 sniper rifles, 350 thermal imagers of good quality, or much more. Why changing the coat of arms of the USSR to a trident right now is a more urgent need than strengthening the technical support of the army is a mystery to me,' Stavska, a dentist from Kyiv, who also buys supplies from volunteers for the Ukrainian army, wrote in a Facebook post. While people are fighting over her, Motherland Monument still dominates the skyline over Kyiv. According to the Ministry of Culture, Metinvest Group, owned by Akhmetov - Ukraine’s wealthiest man and owner of football club Shakhtar Donetsk - is going to make the trident to be held by the Motherland monument, as well as one of the financial partners for the project. The steel for the trident was supposed to come from the local firm Zaporizhstal but on July 25 the ministry said European steel be used instead as the local steel did not meet the technical requirements. Zaporizhstal protested the decision, claiming its steel is perfectly suited for the job. (Source: Politico)
1 August 2023 In the region of Kherson, the head of President Zelensky's office, Yermak, said four people were killed in what local officials called merciless Russian shelling. A dormitory was damaged in an overnight Russian drone attack on Kharkiv, says the mayor of the north-eastern Ukrainian city 'Earlier this month', the UN said there have been some 25,671 civilian casualties since Russian launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, but the true figure is likely to be far higher. (Source: BBC)
August 1, 2023 Ukraine’s plan 'if Russia assassinates Zelenskyy.' Caesar’s murderers failed in their goal of saving the doomed Roman Republic from dictatorship, but instead only triggered the civil wars that accelerated the seemingly inevitable transition to the imperial system of the Caesars. Ukraine it is far from the decaying Roman Republic, whose days were almost certainly numbered whether the Ides of March slaying was successful or not. 'And Europe is already at war'. 'Assassinations of autocrats produce substantial changes in the country’s institutions, while assassinations of democrats do not,' a data-driven paper written by academics Jones and Olken for America’s National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded on the effect on institutions and war of the 59 assassinations of national leaders that took place between 1875 and 2004. If there’s a weak link in the scenario it’s probably not in Ukraine but among its allies. When Zelenskyy was asked by CNN last month whether he was worried by Russian attempts to kill him, he answered he couldn’t afford to be. 'Of course, my bodyguards should think how to prevent this from happening, and this is their task. I don’t think about it.” The risks now are less than they were in the first chaotic weeks of the war. But no one in the Ukrainian government or the country’s parliament doubts the danger remains high. Ukrainian officials tend to brush off requests to discuss what would happen were Russia to succeed - or they decline to go on the record, worrying the topic appears far too macabre. And yet, despite the reluctance to publicly engage with the question, there is a plan in place. Indeed, U.S. Secretary of State Blinken said as much: “The Ukrainians have plans in place - that I’m not going to talk about or get into any details on - to make sure that there is what we would call ‘continuity of government’ one way or another,” he told last year. Formally, under the constitution, the line of succession is clear. “When the president is unable to fulfill his duties, the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine [the Ukrainian parliament] takes over his responsibilities,” said Knyazhytsky, an opposition lawmaker from the western city of Lviv. “Therefore, there would be no power vacuum.” The chairman of the Verkhovna Rada - Stefanchuk, a member of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party - doesn’t have an especially high trust rating in opinion polls. It is around 40 percent, less than half of Zelenskyy’s. And he’s not popular with opposition lawmakers. The governing council would most likely consist of Stefanchuk as the figurehead, along with Yermak, the former movie producer and lawyer who’s the head of the office of the president, Foreign Minister Kuleba and Defense Minister Reznikov. Zaluzhny would remain as the country’s top general. Ukrainians have a balanced view of Zelenskyy, seeing both strengths and weaknesses. While he has been praised for his fine wartime leadership, he has also been criticized for missteps - notably for failing to better prepare for an invasion he thought unlikely. His shutting out of opposition lawmakers now and his thin-skinned brusqueness with even constructive criticism have been noted, as has his tendency to blame others for mistakes. TV personality Prytula now runs major charitable initiatives and has a sky-high public trust rating, said Karatnycky, author of “Battleground Ukraine: From Independence to the Russian War.” He noted that Ukraine has created 'a well-honed' administrative, military and diplomatic machine. 'I don’t want to say that Zelenskyy is hardly irrelevant to this,” he added. “But I think the country’s unity is the indispensable thing.” “It is important to remember that the key factors in Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression are the resilience of the armed forces, the skill of its command and victories on the front', said Knyazhytsky. 'This is what matters most in terms of Ukraine’s political stability.' Zelenskyy's rhetoric and oratory 'have captured the hearts of audiences from Washington to London and Brussels to Warsaw'. His elimination would likely leave many of those same people stunned and unsure of what to do next. Nonetheless, this isn’t a one-man war. And in Ukraine at least, few doubt that other leaders, just as worthy, would rise to the occasion as they have done since the invasion. It could add to pressure for negotiations and compromise. (Source: Politico)
August 1, 2023 A report last week from the U.N. humanitarian office said lack of funding “is hampering operations, adding to the challenges imposed by insecurity and other obstacles.” The $3.9 billion UN humanitarian appeal for Ukraine is only 30% funded, UN aid official says. The country starts preparing for a second winter with more residential buildings damaged and destroyed and thousands of people homeless following the collapse of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam, and emptying of its reservoir on the Dnieper River on June 7, Brown, the country’s U.N. humanitarian coordinator said yesterday. Brown said a government-led assessment is under way with support from the U.N., European Union and World Bank on needs following the dam collapse and should be ready “in a couple of weeks.” She said acute needs have been managed, but “longer-term needs are very large.” She told a virtual news conference from Kyiv that 17 million Ukrainians need aid and the U.N. is targeting between 11 million and 12 million - but funding is becoming a serious issue. By the end of June, it said, the U.N. and its humanitarian partners reached 7.3 million people but in some parts of Ukraine’s south, east and north, more than 25% of targeted people couldn’t be reached “due to a combination of funding shortages and other operational challenges.” A top priority is ensuring shelter for people who have lost their homes this year. Another priority is the growing need for psycho-social support for people who have struggled through 17 months of war, she said. Ukraine is far from alone in facing a serious funding shortfall. On Friday, July 28, a top U.N. official said the United Nations has been forced to cut food, cash payments and assistance to millions of people in many countries because of “a crippling funding crisis” that has seen its donations plummet by about half as acute hunger is hitting record levels. Skau, deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told a news conference that at least 38 of the 86 countries where WFP operates have already seen cuts or plan to cut assistance soon - including in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and West Africa. (Source: AP)
.
