Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

[Saif]

Nato to counter Russian ‘hybrid war’: Mark Rutte

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte yesterday said the alliance had agreed on “proactive measures” to counter Russia’s campaign of hybrid attacks against its members.

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Nato to counter Russian ‘hybrid war’: Mark Rutte

Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte yesterday said the alliance had agreed on "proactive measures" to counter Russia's campaign of hybrid attacks against its members.

The West has accused Moscow of being behind a string of sabotage attacks on European soil aimed at deterring Ukraine's backers from sending support to Kyiv.

"Allies are working very hard to make sure when it comes to sabotage, cyber-attacks, energy blackmail, that we take all the measures necessary to counter that," Rutte said after talks with Nato foreign ministers.

"These include enhanced intelligence exchange, more exercises, better protection of critical infrastructure, improved cyber defence, and tougher action against Russia's shadow fleet of oil exporting ships."

Nato officials said the alliance was working on a new strategy to combat Russian and Chinese hostile actions for a summit next June in The Hague.

The alleged hybrid campaign poses a problem for NATO as it exists in a grey zone often seen as beneath the level of threat that could trigger the alliance's mutual defence clause.​

 

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Russia says ready to defend by ‘any means’

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said he hoped Ukraine’s allies took ‘seriously’ Moscow’s recent use of a hypersonic missile in the conflict there, and warned that Russia was ready to use ‘any means’ to defend itself.

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Russia says ready to defend by ‘any means’
Agence France-Presse . Washington 06 December, 2024, 22:33

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. | File photo

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said he hoped Ukraine’s allies took ‘seriously’ Moscow’s recent use of a hypersonic missile in the conflict there, and warned that Russia was ready to use ‘any means’ to defend itself.

The United States and its allies ‘must understand that we would be ready to use any means not to allow them to succeed in what they call strategic defeat of Russia,’ Lavrov said in an interview with US media personality Tucker Carlson.

Two weeks ago, Russia fired its new Oreshnik hypersonic missile on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro in an escalation of the almost three-year war.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has since threatened to use the weapon on Kyiv in response to Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s territory, which took place after the United States authorized use of its ATACMS weapon system in such attacks.

‘We are sending signals and we hope that the last one, a couple of weeks ago, the signal with the new weapons system called Oreshnik... was taken seriously,’ Lavrov said.

While he insisted that Russia does not want to escalate the situation and wants to ‘avoid any misunderstanding’ with Washington and its partners, Lavrov warned that ‘we will send additional messages if they don’t draw necessary conclusions.’

Putin said the Oreshnik missile flies at 10 times the speed of sound and cannot be intercepted by air defenses.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has called the strike ‘the latest bout of Russian madness’ and appealed for updated air-defense systems to meet the new threat.

In the wide-ranging interview, Lavrov accused the United States of attempting to bully Russia and others on the international stage.

On Ukraine, he said Moscow was ‘ready for any eventuality but we strongly prefer peaceful solution through negotiations on the basis of respecting legitimate security interests of Russia.’

Describing what such a peace deal could look like, the top Russian diplomat said, among other demands, Kyiv would have to accept Russia’s claim of control over the regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia.

‘They are now part of the Russian Federation according to the constitution and this is a reality,’ he said.

He accused US president Joe Biden’s administration of escalating the conflict in Ukraine ‘to leave a legacy to the Trump administration as bad as they can.’

Lavrov described US President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office in January and has vowed to swiftly end the war without explaining how he would do so, as a ‘strong person.’

‘I think he’s a very strong person, a person who wants results, who doesn’t like procrastination on anything,’ he said.

He described Israel’s punishing military offensive in Gaza as inflicting ‘collective punishment, which is against international humanitarian law,’ on Palestinians.

Lavrov said Moscow was ‘very much concerned’ with a recent escalation of violence in Syria, where armed rebel groups have seized swathes of territory from the government of Bashar al-Assad, a Russian regional ally.

He said he planned to hold talks on Friday with Turkish and Iranian officials on the situation in Syria.

Carlson, a former Fox News host, is a right-wing journalist who is a key ally of Trump, and earlier this year was the first US journalist to interview Putin since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The media provocateur has spent years depicting the United States as a nation in decline, under assault by Democrats, so-called ‘woke’ protesters and communism. He has increasingly promoted right-wing conspiracy theories since leaving Fox.​

 

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Russian missiles batter Ukraine’s power grid

Russia launched a large-scale missile attack on Ukrainian energy facilities during the morning rush hour yesterday, Kyiv said, while explosions were heard in the Black Sea port of Odesa and other cities in western Ukraine.

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Russian missiles batter Ukraine’s power grid
Kremlin praises Trump’s criticism of Ukrainian strikes deep into Russia

Ukrainian people take shelter inside an underground parking of an apartment building during a massive Russian missile attack across the country, in Lviv, Ukraine yesterday. Photo: REUTERS

Russia launched a large-scale missile attack on Ukrainian energy facilities during the morning rush hour yesterday, Kyiv said, while explosions were heard in the Black Sea port of Odesa and other cities in western Ukraine.

Russian forces have been targeting Ukraine's electricity system for most of the year and it renewed its strike campaign last month, causing lengthy power cuts for millions of civilians as the war with Russia nears the 34-month mark.

"Russia aims to deprive us of energy. Instead, we must deprive it of the means of terror. I reiterate my call for the urgent delivery of 20 NASAMS, HAWK, or IRIS-T air defense systems," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote in a post on X.

Around a half of power company Yasno's 3.5 million consumers were without power yesterday morning.

The Kremlin had warned it would respond to Kyiv's use of ATACMS missiles and then praised Trump, who said using the weapons to hit deep into Russia was a "foolish" idea.

Russian forces are just 1.5 km (1 mile) outside the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk.​

 

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N Korean troops join Russian assaults: Kyiv

Russia has begun using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in Russia’s Kursk region, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday evening.

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N Korean troops join Russian assaults: Kyiv

Russia has begun using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in Russia's Kursk region, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday evening.

The Ukrainian leader said the more active use of the troops was a new escalation in the war and called for a global response, as Donald Trump's return to the White House next month fuels speculation of a coming push for peace talks.

"Today, we already have preliminary data that the Russians have begun to use North Korean soldiers in their assaults. A significant number of them," Zelensky told Ukrainians in his daily wartime address.

The North Koreans were being used in combined Russian units and only on the Kursk front for now, he said, adding: "We have information suggesting their use could extend to other parts of the front line."

Kyiv first said North Korean forces turned up in Kursk region in October and later reported unspecified clashes and casualties. It estimates there are 11,000 North Koreans in total, adding to a force of tens of thousands of Russians.

Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Koreans on its side.

Ukraine, nearly a fifth of which is occupied by Moscow's troops, launched an incursion into Russia's western Kursk region in August, carving out an enclave that it said could be used as a bargaining chip in any talks to end the war.

Ukraine has battled to hold the area, although some Western military analysts have questioned the incursion's rationale, arguing it has extended an already-sprawling front line, exposing Ukraine's manpower weakness as it battles a larger foe.​

 

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Russia captures villages in east Ukraine front

Russia on Sunday said its forces had captured villages in two key frontline areas of eastern Ukraine as they advance towards the supply hub of Pokrovsk and the industrial town of Kurakhove.

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Russia captures villages in east Ukraine front
Agence France-Presse . Moscow 15 December, 2024, 22:59

Russia on Sunday said its forces had captured villages in two key frontline areas of eastern Ukraine as they advance towards the supply hub of Pokrovsk and the industrial town of Kurakhove.

The defence ministry said in a daily briefing that troops had ‘liberated’ the village of Vesely Gai south of Kurakhove and the village of Pushkine south of Pokrovsk, both in the Donetsk region.

Russia has been grinding forward for months in the Donetsk region and its troops have recently accelerated their advance.

captured more Ukrainian territory in November than in any month since March 2022, according to AFP analysis of data from the US Institute for the Study of War.

Ukraine’s Khortytsia group of troops on Sunday reported ongoing ‘exhausting clashes’ on the outskirts of Kurakhove and in the town itself, as well as further north in the heavily battered hilltop town of Chasiv Yar.

‘The situation is complex and changing. Our troops are currently taking measures to improve the tactical situation,’ the group of troops said on Telegram.​

 

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Putin says large number of volunteers is turning the tide of Ukraine war in Russia's favour

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the large number of men signing up for the Russian military voluntarily was turning the tide of the Ukraine war in Moscow's favour and said he hoped his army would keep advancing. Putin, who said Russian forces had pushed the Ukrainian army out of nearl

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Putin says large number of volunteers is turning the tide of Ukraine war in Russia's favour
REUTERS
Published :
Dec 16, 2024 21:50
Updated :
Dec 16, 2024 21:53

Recruits undergo combat assault training under the supervision of officers of Russia's Southern Military District in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict, at a firing range in the Rostov region, Russia October 4, 2024. Photo : REUTERS/Sergey Pivovarov

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that the large number of men signing up for the Russian military voluntarily was turning the tide of the Ukraine war in Moscow's favour and said he hoped his army would keep advancing.

Putin, who said Russian forces had pushed the Ukrainian army out of nearly 200 settlements this year and held the initiative along the entire frontline, made the comments in a speech at the Defence Ministry at a time when his army is advancing at the fastest pace since 2022, according to open source maps.

"I would like to point out at once that the past year was a landmark year in achieving the goals of the special military operation (in Ukraine)," Putin told top generals.

"Russian troops have a firm grip on the strategic initiative along the entire line of contact. This year alone, 189 population centres have been liberated," he said.

He said roughly 430,000 Russians had signed army contracts this year, up from roughly 300,000 the year before, a factor he said had huge importance for Russia's war effort.

"This flow of volunteers is not ending. And thanks to this...we are seeing a turning point on the frontline," said Putin.

Andrei Belousov, Putin's defence minister, told the same audience that Russian troops had pushed Ukrainian forces out of almost 4,500 square kilometres (1,737 square miles) of territory this year and were advancing an average 30 square kilometres (11.5 square miles) per day.

Belousov also said that Russian military planning had to be ready for any scenario, including the most extreme such as a potential conflict with NATO in Europe in the next decade.

Putin in his own speech accused the West of pushing Russia to its "red lines" - situations it has publicly made clear it will not tolerate - and said Moscow had been forced to respond.

"They (Western leaders) are simply scaring their own population that we are going to attack someone there using the pretext of the mythical Russian threat," said Putin.

"The tactic is very simple: they push us to 'a red line', from which we can not retreat, we start to respond and then they immediately scare their population - in the old days it was with the Soviet threat and now it's with the Russian threat," said Putin.

He said that Russia was watching the US development and potential deployment of short and medium-range missiles with great concern and would lift its own voluntary restrictions on the deployment of such missiles if the U.S. did decide to deploy such weapons.​

 

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Russian army’s chemical weapons chief killed

The head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division was killed on Tuesday in a brazen attack in Moscow claimed by Kyiv — the most senior military figure assassinated in Russia yet as the Kremlin’s campaign in Ukraine drags on...

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Russian army’s chemical weapons chief killed
Agence France-Presse . Moscow 18 December, 2024, 00:12

The head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division was killed on Tuesday in a brazen attack in Moscow claimed by Kyiv — the most senior military figure assassinated in Russia yet as the Kremlin’s campaign in Ukraine drags on.

Igor Kirillov was killed along with his assistant when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off outside an apartment building in southeastern Moscow, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.

The attack took place in a residential area in the capital a day after President Vladimir Putin boasted of Russian troop successes in Ukraine, nearly three years after the Kremlin sent soldiers into its pro-Western neighbour.

Kirillov, 54, was the head of the Russian army’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit and in October was sanctioned by Britain over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service said it was behind the early morning explosion in what it called a ‘special operation’, calling Kirillov a ‘war criminal.’

Russia’s Investigative Committee said that an ‘explosive device planted in a scooter parked near the entrance of a residential building was activated on the morning of December 17 on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow.’

The blast shattered several windows of the building and severely damaged the front door, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.

Russian authorities said they were probing the attack as ‘terrorism’.

Ukraine’s SBU alleged Kirillov was responsible for using banned chemical weapons on the battlefield.

‘Kirillov was a war criminal and an absolutely legitimate target, as he gave orders to use banned chemical weapons against the Ukrainian military,’ the SBU source said.

‘Such an inglorious end awaits all those who kill Ukrainians. Retribution for war crimes is inevitable,’ the source added.

There have been assassinations on Russian territory before, but such attacks in Moscow — where fighting in Ukraine often feels distant — are rare.

Residents AFP spoke to said they had initially assumed the loud noise they heard came from a nearby construction site.

Student Mikhail Mashkov, who lives in the building next door, said he was woken up by a ‘very loud explosion noise’, thinking ‘something fell at the construction site’, before looking outside.

Home-maker Olga Bogomolova said she thought a container had fallen at the construction site but then realised ‘it was a very strong explosion’, saw ‘broken windows’ and that it was something else.

Previous targets included nationalist writer Darya Dugina — killed in a car bomb attack outside Moscow in 2022 — and pro-conflict military correspondent Maxim Fomin — blown up in a Saint Petersburg cafe in 2023.

But Kirillov is the most senior Russian military official to be killed.

He had been in the post of head of the Russian military’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence unit since 2017.

The unit does not oversee Russia’s nuclear weapons.

Kyiv had a day earlier charged Kirillov in absentia on allegations of committing ‘war crimes’ against Ukraine.

‘The official is responsible for the massive use of banned chemical weapons,’ Ukraine’s SBU Security Service said on Monday, alleging more than 4,800 cases of Russia using chemical munitions since February 2022.

Britain and the United States have accused Russia of using the toxic agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Chloropicrin is an oily liquid with a pungent odour known as a choking agent that was widely used during World War I as a form of tear gas.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons specifically prohibits its use.

The UK government in October slapped sanctions on Kirillov and his unit ‘for helping deploy these barbaric weapons’, charges that Moscow has denied.

Russia has said it no longer possesses a military chemical arsenal but the country faces pressure for more transparency over the alleged use of toxic weapons.

In lengthy televised briefings, Kirillov had regularly accused Kyiv and the West of running secret networks of bio-labs that were developing banned chemical agents across Ukraine — claims rejected by the West and independent fact-checking organisations.

The killing comes a day after Putin hailed 2024 as a ‘landmark year’ for its military offensive on Ukraine, saying his troops had the upper hand across the entire front line.​

 

[Saif]

Putin says Russia is ready to compromise with Trump on Ukraine war

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities. Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements and a

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Putin says Russia is ready to compromise with Trump on Ukraine war
REUTERS
Published :
Dec 19, 2024 20:00
Updated :
Dec 19, 2024 21:25

People watch the live broadcast of Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual televised year-end press conference and phone-in, in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict at a cultural centre in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, December 19, 2024. Photo : REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with US President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.

Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements and author of the 1987 book “Trump: the Art of the Deal”, has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, but has not yet given any details on how he might achieve that.

Putin, fielding questions on state TV during his annual question and answer session with Russians, told a reporter for a US news channel that he was ready to meet Trump, whom he said he had not spoken to for years.

Asked what he might be able to offer Trump, Putin dismissed an assertion that Russia was in a weak position, saying that Russia had got much stronger since he ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022.

“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Putin said, after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine.

“Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises.”

Reuters reported last month that Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv abandon its ambitions to join NATO.

Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

But he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine’s legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to be only the Ukrainian parliament.

Zelenskiy, whose term has technically expired but who has delayed an election because of the war, would need to be re-elected for Moscow to consider him a legitimate signatory to any deal to ensure it was legally watertight, said Putin.

Any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the early weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, he added.

Some Ukrainian politicians regard that draft deal as akin to a capitulation which would have neutered Ukraine’s military and political ambitions.

WAR

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Russia, which casts the conflict as a defensive special military operation designed to stop dangerous NATO expansion to the east, controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has taken several thousand square kilometres of territory this year.

Determined to incorporate four Ukrainian regions into Russia, Moscow’s forces have taken village after village in the east and are now threatening strategically important cities such as Pokrovsk, a major road and rail hub.

Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was “difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead... (but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation.”

Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Putin said Kyiv’s troops would definitely be forced out, but declined to say exactly when that would happen.

Russia, Putin said, had made proposals to Syria’s new rulers about Russia’s military bases there and most people that Moscow had spoken to on the issue favoured them staying.

Russia would need to think about whether the bases should remain or not, he added, but rumours about the death of Russian influence in the Middle East were exaggerated.

Asked about the fate of missing US reporter Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012, Putin said he planned to speak to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the new leaders of Syria about the issue. Tice’s family wrote to Putin asking for his help in finding him.

On the Russian economy, Putin said it was showing signs of overheating which was stoking worryingly high inflation.

Putin also touted what he said was the invincibility of the “Oreshnik” hypersonic missile that Russia has already test-fired at a Ukrainian military factory, saying he was ready to organise another launch at Ukraine and see if Western air defence systems could shoot it down.

“Let them determine some target for destruction, say in Kyiv, concentrate all their air defence and missile defence forces there, and we will strike there with Oreshnik and see what happens. We are ready for such an experiment, but is the other side ready?” he said.​