February 20, 2024: Russian Digest

Ukraine war latest: Kyiv asks UN, Red Cross to investigate execution of Ukrainian POWs in Avdiivka

Ukraine’s Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Feb. 20 that he appealed to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to investigate the killings of Ukrainian prisoners of war at the Zenit strongpoint in Avdiivka.

Ukrainian forces withdrew from Avdiivka just north of Russian-occupied Donetsk in eastern Ukraine on Feb. 17 after months of resisting Russia’s intensified offensive against the town.

During the withdrawal, several seriously injured Ukrainian servicemen could not be evacuated from the Zenit strongpoint due to continuous bombardment and the complete encirclement of the area, Ukraine’s 110th Brigade said on Feb. 19.

Ukrainian forces reportedly contacted organizations negotiating with Russia on prisoner exchanges to provide assistance to the wounded, unarmed Ukrainian soldiers.

“The enemy informed the coordinators of this process that they agreed to evacuate our wounded, provide them with assistance, and exchange them later. Our soldiers were ordered to save their lives,” the brigade wrote on Facebook, saying that Russian troops broke their promise and shot the Ukrainian soldiers.

Read More at Kyiv Independent

Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials

The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.

Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue[s] to be felt to this day.”

Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.

Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

Read More at CNN

Estonia thwarts Russian hybrid operation, arrests 10

Security services disrupt campaign aimed at sowing discord, with high-profile vandalism among the tactics used.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas claimed on Tuesday that the country’s security service had broken up a Russian hybrid operation.

The operation involved damaging property and defacing monuments, including an attack on the car of Interior Minister Lauri Läänemets and a vehicle belonging to Andrei Šumakov, editor of news website Delfi.

“We know the Kremlin is targeting all of our democratic societies. Our answer: be open and reveal their methods,” Kallas wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

State Prosecutor Triinu Olev said 10 people had been arrested, including both Russian nationals and dual Russian-Estonian citizens; six remain in custody.

The Russian operation aimed to spread fear and create tension in Estonian society but failed to do so, the Estonian Internal Security Service stated.

“Sooner or later, we will catch those who are trying to endanger the security of the Estonian state,” said Margo Palloson, ISS director.

Read More at Politico

Kyiv says it will 'firmly respond' if Moscow attempts to involve Transnistria in the war

Kyiv will "firmly respond" to any attempts to involve the Russian-controlled Moldovan region of Transnistria in Russia's war against Ukraine and destabilize the situation in Moldova, the Foreign Ministry said amid increased Russian pressure on the Eastern European country.

Transnistria is internationally recognized as part of Moldova. Russian troops have occupied Transnistria since the early 1990s when Russia invaded the region under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians.

Moldova has called Russia's military presence in Transnistria illegitimate and called for the withdrawal of Russian forces.

There have been heightened tensions between Moldova and Transnistria since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine when there were fears that armed conflict could erupt in Moldova.

Vadim Krasnoselsky, the Russian proxy leader in Transnistria, called for increased military drills and heightened readiness on Jan. 22 in what he claimed was a response to alleged provocations from Moldova.

Read More at Kyiv Independent

German lawmakers twist Scholz’s arm on long-range missiles for Kyiv

Lawmakers in Germany’s ruling coalition are set to vote this week on a motion that could finally push Chancellor Olaf Scholz to deliver long-range precision Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. A draft resolution prepared by the three groups in the government’s parliamentary majority and seen by the Financial Times requests “the delivery of additionally necessary long-range weapon systems” for Kyiv that could strike “far in the rear area of the Russian aggressor”. While non-binding, the successful passage of the motion could leave Scholz symbolically isolated. With the mainstream opposition Christian Democratic Union in favour, the chancellor’s resistance to the missiles’ delivery to Kyiv would be seen as being supported only by MPs of the hard left and hard right. In a sign of the ongoing sensitivity around dispatch of this type of ordnance, the text does not mention Taurus by name, even though it is the only weapon in the German military arsenal that meets the criteria set out in the proposal. The debate over delivering Taurus, a bunker-busting missile with a range of 500km, has rumbled on for months in Berlin.

Read More at Financial Times

Russian Pilot Who Defected to Ukraine Is Believed Dead in Spain

The apparent death in Spain of Maksim Kuzminov is likely to fuel speculation that it was the work of Russia’s intelligence services.

Maksim Kuzminov pulled off a daring escape last summer when he defected to Ukraine and handed his military helicopter over to Ukrainian commandos in exchange for half a million dollars.

Ukraine trumpeted the defection as a major coup. But in Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia, he was guilty of the most grievous sin anyone can commit: Treason. Ukrainian intelligence officials warned Mr. Kuzminov that his life was in danger and urged him not to leave the country.

But he ignored them, and was believed to have moved with his money to a small resort town of pastel houses on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.

Now Mr. Kuzminov, 28 at the time of his defection, appears to have met the harsh fate Ukrainian officials warned of. Two Spanish police officials with knowledge of the case said the body of a man found riddled with bullets last week in the coastal town of Villajoyosa belonged to Mr. Kuzminov.

Read More at NYTimes

Russian spies are back—and more dangerous than ever

The Kremlin’s intelligence agencies have learned from their mistakes over the past two years

It is unusual for spymasters to taunt their rivals openly. But last month Bill Burns, the director of the cia, could not resist observing that the war in Ukraine had been a boon for his agency. “The undercurrent of disaffection [among Russians] is creating a once-in-a-generation recruiting opportunity for the cia,” he wrote in Foreign Affairs. “We’re not letting it go to waste.” The remark might well have touched a nerve in Russia’s “special services”, as the country describes its intelligence agencies. Russian spies botched preparations for the war and were then expelled from Europe en masse. But evidence gathered by the Royal United Services Institute (rusi), a think-tank in London, and published exclusively by The Economist today, shows that they are learning from their errors, adjusting their tradecraft and embarking on a new phase of political warfare against the West.

The past few years were torrid for Russian spies. In 2020 operatives from the fsb, Russia’s security service, botched the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, the recently deceased opposition activist. He mocked them for spreading Novichok on his underwear. Then the fsb gave the Kremlin a rosy view of how the war would go, exaggerating Ukraine’s internal weaknesses. It failed to prevent Western agencies from stealing and publicising Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine. And it was unwilling or unable to halt a brief mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, last year. The svr, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, saw its presence in Europe eviscerated, with some 600 officers expelled from embassies across the continent. At least eight “illegals”—intelligence officers operating without diplomatic cover, often posing as non-Russians—were exposed.

Read More at The Economist

In Outrageous News…

Britain Charges Ex-Head of Annexed Sevastopol With Breaching Sanctions

It was not clear how or when the former Russian official acquired British citizenship despite being placed under sanctions.

A London court has charged the former Moscow-installed head of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea with violating sanctions and money laundering, BBC Russian reported Tuesday.

Dmitry Ovsyannikov was appointed as the governor of Crimea's largest city in 2016, around two years after the Kremlin invaded and subsequently annexed the Ukrainian peninsula. He stepped down from the industry and trade ministry in April 2020 after launching into an expletive-laden tirade at an airport in central Russia.

Britain sanctioned Ovsyannikov in December 2020 for undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity, a designation that limited his access to money and financial services.

British media reported that he was arrested at his home in London on Jan. 22, though it was not immediately clear when Ovsyannikov arrived in the United Kingdom.

Following last month’s arrest, Ovsyannikov was reportedly charged with seven counts of violating sanctions and two counts of money laundering.

According to BBC Russian, he was released from custody on the condition that he surrender both his Russian and British passports to U.K. authorities, abide by a nighttime curfew, wear an electronic ankle bracelet and check in with the police daily.

It was not clear how or when the former Russian official acquired British citizenship despite being placed under sanctions.

Read More at The Moscow Times

The police were ordered to compile lists of everyone bringing flowers to Navalny memorials

The Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow ordered the “identification” of activists bringing flowers to memorials in memory of Alexei Navalny. This was reported in the order of the Moscow Ministry of Internal Affairs, a copy of which was published by the human rights project “Walk through the Forest.” As the founder of the project, Grigory Sverdlin, explained, a copy was sent to him by “brave people.”

The order obliges Moscow police to establish a 24-hour watch at two monuments to victims of political repression from February 17—at the Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka and at the “Wall of Sorrow” on the Garden Ring—and to “identify” everyone who brings flowers to them. Citizens bringing flowers are ordered to be identified “in order to prevent possible offenses and identify persons violating public order.” Police officers must report the results of their work daily to the department to combat extremism.

Via The Moscow Times

The son of Rosneft head Igor Sechin, Ivan, has died

Note: There is a complete media blackout on this and I will continue to monitor and news surrounding this alleged death.

The son of Rosneft head Igor Sechin, Ivan, died on February 5 at the age of 35. The first to write about this was the former manager of YUKOS Leonid Nevzlin, who referred to an entry in the register of inheritance cases.

The death of Ivan Sechin and its causes have not previously been publicly reported.

“Mediazona” checked the entry in the RND and made sure that it was registered in the name of Ivan Igorevich Sechin, born in 1989, who lived in Moscow at Swedish Deadlock, building 3. This building was previously mentioned in RBC as a “house for Putin’s associates”; the publication wrote that Igor Sechin also lived there.

According to leaks from Russian databases, Ivan Sechin worked for Rosneft and declared income of 61.8 million rubles in 2021. It is known that he held a leadership position in the company since 2014, when he was 25 years old.

In January 2015, 26-year-old Sechin was awarded the medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, II degree, “for his great contribution to the development of the fuel and energy complex and many years of conscientious work.”

Via Mediazona

Los Angeles woman arrested on treason charge in Russia’s Yekaterinburg

Russia’s Federal Security Service announced Tuesday the arrest of a 33-year-old woman on treason charges, accusing her of taking part in pro-Ukraine protests outside Russia and of sending aid to Kyiv.

The woman, a dual American Russian citizen, was not identified in a statement issued by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which said she “was involved in providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against the security of our country.”

Russian media, however, identified her as Ksenia Khavana and reported that she was married to an American.

The FSB statement described her as a “resident of Los Angeles.” It was unclear how long she had lived in California or when and why she returned to Russia.

The FSB published video of a woman dressed in a beige outfit with a white hat pulled over her face being led by a masked security agent down several flights in a building in Yekaterinburg, a city just east of the Ural Mountains.

Read More at the Washington Post

And finally don’t miss the new episode of Kremlin File

Kremlin File's Substack

S.4 Episode 1: Catching Up on Ukraine with Maria Avdeeva

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