Atlantic? Are there political or security issues with using the Suez canal?
Once again, Vlad relies on the “wishing will make it so” strategy.
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From The Guardian liveblog earlier today.
Expect strikes ‘deeper and deeper’ into Russia, head of Ukraine military intelligence says
Further strikes deep in Russian territory should be expected, the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyrylo Budanov, has told the US TV channel ABC .
He added that the attacks would come “deeper and deeper” inside of Russia, without specifically saying whether Ukraine would be behind them.
Budanov said he would only be able to comment on his country’s responsibility for the attacks after the war was over.
Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the 26 December attack on Russia’s Engels airbase, which is located more than 800 miles from the Ukrainian border, but Budanov admitted he was “glad to see it.”
Of his visit to Bakhmut along the frontline in the Donetsk region in late December, he told ABC: “Soldiers showed me a section where dead bodies are piled up like something you would see in a movie.
“There are hundreds of dead bodies just rotting away in the open field, in places they are piled on top of other bodies like makeshift walls, when Russian troops attack on that field they use those bodies for cover, like a shield. But it’s not working. There are actual fields of dead bodies there.”
Budanov said he expects fighting to be the “hottest” in March, adding that Ukraine is planning a major push in the spring.
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Carsten L. also had access to a wealth of documents in his function as a unit head in the Technical Intelligence (TA) department. Investigators are still in the dark over how much information he may have supplied to Russian services and over what period of time.
…
Even if the intelligence service hasn’t always been respected by its partners in recent times, the TA had an excellent international reputation. One reason is that the BND still uses an outdated wiretapping method that other intelligence agencies have abandoned, and is thus able to intercept Russian military communications, for example. Since the outbreak of the war, the findings from signals intelligence at Pullach have been among the West’s strongest information that they have been able to supply to the Ukrainian armed forces in the war against Russia.And now it is this unit that has been hit by what is likely to be a dramatic leak. The consequences are hard to foresee.
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History something learn something repeat…
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Someone who has learned from history:
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Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior aide to Ukraine’s president, has dismissed Vladimir Putin’s calls for a temporary ceasefire to mark Orthodox Christmas.
The Kremlin earlier said Putin ordered his defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, to introduce a 36-hour ceasefire along the entire line of contact in Ukraine from noon tomorrow to midnight 7 January.
Ukraine “doesn’t attack foreign territory and doesn’t kill civilians” and “destroys only members of the occupation army on its territory”, Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
He said a “temporary truce” would be possible only when Russia leaves territory it is occupying in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1611030041139511297
Short thread:
https://twitter.com/Euan_MacDonald/status/1611024359363170304
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We’ve seen this several times before, but Ukraine’s military intelligence head Kyrylo Budanov should have pretty good sources.
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Now:
On the 3rd, Al Jazeera published Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon’s opinion piece partially on the Zambian nuclear engineering student who ended up dead in Wagner.
But Nyirenda’s family has insisted on an investigation into his recruitment, suspecting he may have been coerced. They also say he was wrongfully convicted; he had been working as a courier to support himself while studying in Moscow but was stopped and searched by the police, who found a package he was carrying with drugs in it.
…
It is quite ironic that Prigozhin alleges Nyirenda saw the Wagner Group as a source for good given that it has been at the forefront of Moscow’s extractive policies in Africa. Wagner has become infamous in Sudan and the Central African Republic for both its hired guns and its involvement in illicit mining operations.
And then there was this from Reuters.
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I can’t find a source right now, but apparently there’s a new joke doing the rounds in Russia: the Russian army is led by a man whose name begins with a P and ends with an N.
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With jokes like that going around, Prigozhin would be a fool not to have a food taster on his payroll.
[I hope he’s a fool]
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Interesting to see Sea Sparrows included. Apparently Ukraine has managed to modify their BUK launchers so that they are compatible.
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