Chris Johns
I write a (short) daily post for Powerscourt, a Strategic Communications company, based in London and Dublin. The idea is to summarise the news flow around the war in Ukraine - not so much the news that makes the front pages but more the stuff that we find interesting/relevant. News that may have not attracted the attention it deserves. Anyone interested in receiving the short email on a daily basis is welcome to contact Powerscourt here: insights@powerscourt-group.com.
And for those who haven’t listened yet, please download our latest podcast (or any episode in the extensive archive).
Monday 5th December
Russian and Iranian military officials are reported to have met in Tehran over the weekend. Al-Jazeera states that they talked about continuing shipments of arms, especially drones. General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces, and Colonel General Alexander Fomin, Russia’s deputy defence minister are said to have met on Saturday.
Ukraine’s latest estimates for the costs of post-war rebuilding of the country has reached $1 trillion.
The latest briefing from the UK’s Ministry of Defence cites an ‘independent Russian media outlet’ that has gained access to an internal survey conducted by Russia’s Federal Protective Service. That survey suggests waning domestic support for the war, with 55% of respondents favouring peace talks and 25% wanting the war to continue. That’s compared with 80% who supported the war back in April and is consistent with other recent surveys seen by the MoD.
President Zelensky tweeted on Saturday about Ukraine’s shipments of grain. ‘We ship food, we ship hope’, said Ukraine’s President, a reference to a ship carrying 25,000 tonnes of wheat that arrived over the weekend in the port of Doraleh, Djibouti. The wheat is ultimately destined for Ethiopia. This is the first shipment of humanitarian aid arising out of the ‘Grain from Ukraine’ program launched a couple of weeks ago. Nine more grain ships sailed from Black Sea ports over the weekend.
Julia Davis of The Daily Beast provides an invaluable service, regularly translating Russian news and current affairs TV programs. The head of RT, a state-owned news agency, which until the invasion of Ukraine had a major presence in the U.K., seems to be getting worried about potential post-war trials in The Hague. Margarita Simonyan ‘admitted that the Kremlin’s collaborationist elite has concerns about the possibility of being tried for war crimes.’ The host of the show, Vladimir Solovyov, reassured Margarita that she won’t be going to jail as The Hague won’t exist, along with most of the rest of the West, since they will be ‘reduced to ashes’ by nuclear weapons in the event that Russia loses the war.
Tuesday 6th December
Hal Brands is a top US foreign policy scholar, occupying the Henry Kissinger Professorship of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins university. He is also one of Bloomberg’s leading columnists. Writing in the aftermath of the Ukrainian drone strikes deep into Russian territory, Brands lays bare some of the tensions between the US and Ukraine. He talks about Ukraine’s ‘asymmetry of ingenuity’ deployed to counter Russia’s ‘asymmetry of forces’. There is another asymmetry, a moral one: Brands highlights the logical absurdity of raised US eyebrows when Ukraine stages an occasional foray into Russia, a country that is laying waste to Ukrainian infrastructure and other civilian targets. Escalation, of course, is Biden’s fear. The restraint the US imposes on Ukraine is pragmatic, if not logical.
CNN has been talking to a Russian soldier involved in the fighting for Bakhmut. The unusual aspect of the story is that individual interviewed is fighting on the Ukrainian side. Given the code name Caesar to protect his identity, the Russian in Ukrainian uniform mentions about 200 of his countrymen who have also decided to fight in Zelensky’s army. One oddity about the story is that the CNN attempt to conceal the man’s identity is somewhat spoiled by the fact that his picture is also published.
The owner of a major arms manufacturer, CSG group, has said it will take 10 to 15 years to replenish Western stocks of artillery shells. CNBC quotes Michal Strnad who says Ukraine is firing 40,000 shells a week, a figure that would be much higher if NATO countries would only supply more. The problem is that NATO country stocks of munitions are now running low. Anybody else thinking of starting a war might have noticed.
On that cheery note, Nial Ferguson, another leading academic and Bloomberg columnist, thinks that China’s reopening could have a downside. If it leads to a massive surge in Covid cases and deaths, Xi Jingping might find himself backed into a corner. To escape accusations of gross incompetence, Ferguson reckons Xi might just be tempted to try a Taiwan invasion.
Wednesday 7th December
The US agreed to sell 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks to Poland, just months after a sale of 250 M1A2 tanks was authorised. The latest deal, which includes other vehicle and munitions, could be worth up to $3.75bn, reports Reuters, quoting Pentagon sources. Poland is also accepting a German offer of deployment of a Patriot missile defence system. The Poles had wanted the system to be placed in Ukraine, something Germany would not accept. So it is going to Poland instead.
Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer prize-winning US journalist, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a globally acknowledged expert on Eastern European politics. She is married to a Polish ex-defence minister and has Polish citizenship. She has written for decades about the history of communism and was warning about Putin before most people in the West had heard of him. Yesterday, she called for Hungary to be kicked out of the EU after the latest Viktor Orban stunt which blocked the EU’s latest aid package for Ukraine, worth €18bn. Meanwhile in Hungary itself, the government had to abandon its ludicrous petrol price cap (they have the lowest prices in the EU) after filling stations began running out of fuel.
Ukraine has yet to admit to any of the recent drone attacks inside Russia. Somebody, as yet also unidentified, is having a go at Moscow’s financial system. VTB, a state-owned bank, Russia’s second largest, issued a statement yesterday saying it had been hit by an ‘unprecedented’ cyber attack. Unconnected - we think - to the attack, VTB also announced Tuesday that it has temporarily suspended coupon payments on a number of subordinated bonds. Reuters reports that a VTB payment on a perpetual Eurobond was one of the ones due on Tuesday.
Months before the invasion, the US sent a crack team of specialists from the National Security Agency to help with cyber defence. That team, according to NSA Director Paul Nakasone speaking yesterday at the Reagan National Defence Forum, stayed in Ukraine for 74 days and left before the war began. One of the big surprises of the war has been the relative absence of successful Russian cyber attacks on Ukraine. Perhaps we now know why. Your columnist makes no connection between any of this and the cyber attacks on Russia’s financial system.
Thursday 8th December
Over 100 countries are signatories to a treaty that bans cluster munitions. These are weapons that scatter over large areas and often have delayed impact, such that they become akin to mines. They are a really nasty piece of military kit, designed to inflict maximum harm to anybody that strays in their path. Russia has been using cluster bombs for months. Ukraine has an outstanding request to Joe Biden for the US to release its extensive supply of similar arms. CNN reported yesterday that the Biden administration is sitting on Ukrainian appeals for cluster bombs, leaving open the possibility that, as a last resort, Ukraine might get them.
Ukraine has protested at the opening season of Italy’s most famous opera house. Teatro Alla Scala staged the Russian opera ‘Boris Godunov’, sparking protests that this represents a promotion of Russian culture. The new Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, attended the opera along with Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and the Italian President, Sergio Mattarella. Von der Leyen urged us not to conflate Russian culture with Putin.
The UN summit on biodiversity, Cop15, currently taking place in Montreal, has also been affected by the war. President Zelensky accused Russia of committing ‘ecocide’, particularly in relation to Ukraine’s dolphin population which has been devastated. Russia said that Cop15 was an ‘inappropriate’ forum for such remarks.
The war is now affecting Wimbledon, with the Association of Tennis Professionals slapping a $1 million fine on the Lawn Tennis Association for last year’s ban on Russia and Belorussian players. Paris, the host of the upcoming 2024 Olympic Games, is beginning to agonise over whether or not to allow Russia and its allies to participate.
One of the targets of Ukrainian drones this week was Engels, a place named after one of the co-founders of communism. An airbase just outside the town of 300,000 people was hit, suggesting the whole Volga basin is now within reach of the mysterious, presumably Ukrainian, drones. Al-Jazeera reports that the drones were from the Soviet era, circa 1979. But they were manufactured in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. And Ukraine seems to have retained a few - and to have adapted them.
Friday 9th December
The exchange of Brittney Griner, WNBA star, for arms dealer Viktor Bout, is being portrayed on Russian state media as an example of decadent Western values. It is claimed that an American held by Russia as a spy, Paul Whelan, would have been a more ‘worthy' candidate for a prisoner exchange. Whelan, a former Marine, has been held by Russia on espionage charges since 2018.
’Someone who fought for the motherland is ignored in favour of a drug-taking basket ball player’ is Moscow’s narrative (Grier was arrested for possession of a single gram of cannabis oil). NBC reported yesterday the State Department as saying ‘we did everything to get Whelan out. They are treating him differently. They say he is an espionage case. They said the choice was either one [Griner] or none.’
America’s ABC news is claiming an exclusive with a story about Ukrainian special forces. Earlier this week, spotters on the ground guided drones to their targets deep inside Russia, said ABC, quoting an anonymous source close to President Zelensky.
According to The Economist, the value of Microsoft’s support for Ukraine has reached $400 million. Microsoft has announced that it will extend tech support to Ukraine until the end of 2023, free of charge. The cyber war between Ukraine and Russia attracts less headlines than the physical war, for obvious reasons - we still don’t know, for example, the full story behind Bletchley Park’s activities during the second world war. Some secrets stay that way. But it is becoming increasingly clear that Russia has not had a good cyber war.
Vladimir Putin does not drink alcohol. But a video of him apparently holding a champagne flute has emerged on Twitter. While holding the glass, Putin seems to sway slightly while taking about the justification for Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. “Drunk Putin’ has gone viral.