February 21, 2024: Russian Digest

10 years of war: A timeline of Russia's decade-long aggression against Ukraine

Almost immediately following the end of the EuroMaidan Revolution in Ukraine in February 2014, Russia swiftly moved to annex and occupy the Crimean Peninsula. Within a couple of months, unrest erupted in eastern Ukraine followed by Russian-backed militias taking over administrative buildings.

The events mark the start of Russia's 10-year invasion and occupation of Ukraine that continues to this day.

The Kyiv Independent has compiled a timeline covering the major events over the last 10 years of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Read More at Kyiv Independent

Exclusive: Iran sends Russia hundreds of ballistic missiles

Iran has provided Russia with a large number of powerful surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, six sources told Reuters, deepening the military cooperation between the two U.S.-sanctioned countries.

Iran's provision of around 400 missiles includes many from the Fateh-110 family of short-range ballistic weapons, such as the Zolfaghar, three Iranian sources said. This road-mobile missile is capable of striking targets at a distance of between 300 and 700 km (186 and 435 miles), experts say.

Iran's defence ministry and the Revolutionary Guards - an elite force that oversees Iran's ballistic missile programme - declined to comment. Russia's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The shipments began in early January after a deal was finalised in meetings late last year between Iranian and Russian military and security officials that took place in Tehran and Moscow, one of the Iranian sources said.

Read More at Reuters

Russia is preparing territorial claims against the United States in the Bering Strait

Russia is considering the possibility of refusing to implement the Soviet-American “Shevardnadze-Baker Agreement,” according to which the maritime space of the Bering Strait was demarcated.

An agreement signed in 1990, according to which the United States received about 30 thousand square meters. km of the exclusive economic zone of the USSR and more than 40 thousand square meters. km of shelf may be denounced in the near future. Rosa Chemeris, a member of the International Affairs Committee, stated this at a plenary meeting of the State Duma on Wednesday.

“The next one ( to be denounced - Ed.) will be the agreement on cooperation on the Bering Strait, concluded in 1990 between Shevardnadze and US Secretary of State James Baker,” Chemeris said. According to Interfax, her words were confirmed by Deputy Minister of Agriculture Maxim Uvaidov, who was also present at the meeting.

Russian officials began discussing the issue of the possible denunciation of the treaty, which is applied on a temporary basis since it was never ratified by the Russian parliament, in 2020. Then the prospects for the agreement were considered at a closed meeting in the Federation Council by relevant committees, as well as officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the FSB, and Rosrybolovstvo.

The idea of ending the agreement and de facto declaring the Russian part of the economic zone, which is now controlled by the United States, was expressed in October last year by Boris Nevzorov, a senator from the Kamchatka Territory. According to him, the Shevardnadze-Baker agreement was discriminatory and unfairly deprived Russia of a territory of 78 thousand square meters. km of the Bering Sea, including the continental shelf.

“With the introduction of 200-mile exclusive economic zones between our countries in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, which overlapped each other for 1,500 miles, the delimitation of maritime spaces in accordance with international practice should take place along the median line, equidistant from the coasts of the two countries. However, due to Shevardnadze’s concessions, the border of the disputed areas was drawn along the American orthodromic straight line,” explained Nevzorov. As a result, he said, Russia lost the opportunity to annually produce more than 500 thousand tons of fish and crab and also lost access to oil and gas fields worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Via The Moscow Times

Russia arrests US-Russian citizen for treason after she gave $51 to Ukraine, employer says

A US-Russian dual citizen was arrested in Russia on charges of treason for allegedly donating just $51 to a Ukrainian charity, according to the Californian spa where she worked.

Ksenia Karelina, a 33-year-old woman who lives in Los Angeles, was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg for allegedly “providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against Russia security,” according to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

Video shared by Russian state media RIA Novosti showed what appeared to be Karelina with a hat pulled over her eyes being escorted by a security official before being handcuffed and appearing in a courtroom holding cell.

Karelina, who became a US citizen in 2021, entered Russia on January 2 but the US did not learn of her arrest until February 8, a US official said.

She is accused of donating $51.80 to a Ukrainian charity in the US, according to a statement from her employer, a spa at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

Read More at CNN

Report: North Korean missile fired by Russia against Ukraine contained US and European components

A North Korean ballistic missile fired last month by the Russian military in Ukraine contained hundreds of components that trace back to companies in the US and Europe, according to a new report.

The findings mark the first public identification of North Korea’s reliance on foreign technology for its missile program and underscore the persistent problem facing the Biden administration as it tries to keep cheap, Western-made microelectronics intended for civilian use from winding up in weapons used by North Korea, Iran and Russia.

The UK-based investigative organization Conflict Armament Research, or CAR, directly examined 290 components from remnants of a North Korean ballistic missile recovered in January from Kharkiv, Ukraine, and found that 75% of the components were designed and sold by companies incorporated in the United States, according to the report shared first with CNN.

A further 16% of the components found in the missile were linked to companies incorporated in Europe, the researchers found, and 9% to companies incorporated in Asia. These components primarily comprised the missile’s navigation system and could be traced to 26 companies headquartered in the US, China, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland and Taiwan, the report says.

Last year, as CNN previously reported, CAR determined that 82% of components inside Iranian-made attack drones fired by Russia inside Ukraine were made by US companies.

Read More at CNN

Seizing Frozen Russian Assets Over Ukraine War Wins Endorsement of Legal Experts

Letter from scholars backing seizure is circulating in G-7
‘It would be lawful, under international law,’ 10 experts say

A group of legal experts sought to bolster the case for seizing frozen Russian central bank assets, arguing that such actions are allowed under international law given the scale of Russia’s continuing attacks in Ukraine.

The European Union, the Group of Seven nations and Australia have frozen about €260 billion ($280 billion) in the form of securities and cash, with more than two-thirds of that immobilized in the EU. They all agree that those funds should remain off-limits from Russia unless it agrees to help with Ukraine’s reconstruction, but so far they’re at odds over the legality of seizing the assets outright.

Read More at Bloomberg

Russia revamps GRU spy network to ‘disrupt adversaries’

Report says Moscow aims to weaken support for Kyiv by reprising methods drawn from Soviet espionage playbook

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Russia’s secret services are aggressively pursuing regime change and destabilisation across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, according to a report from a western think-tank. As part of a revamp sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, its GRU military intelligence unit is seeking to rebuild its European network of illegal and semi-illegal agents, using tactics recognisable to any reader of cold war spy novels. These efforts are bolstered by more overt GRU initiatives in Africa, which have taken over special operations formerly carried out by the mercenary Wagner Group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who died in a plane crash last year. In the Middle East, meanwhile, an anti-western public relations drive is being led by Ramzan Kadyrov, a loyalist warlord from the Muslim-majority Chechen region. The aim is to destabilise governments hostile to Moscow and disrupt western support for Ukraine. The methods used — a combination of disinformation, elite capture and violence — are drawn from the Soviet espionage playbook, according to the report published on Tuesday by the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London.

Read More at Financial Times

EU approves new sanctions package against Russia

EU members approved a 13th package of Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia on Wednesday, banning nearly 200 entities and individuals accused of helping Moscow procure weapons or of involvement in kidnapping Ukrainian children.

"EU Ambassadors just agreed in principle on a 13th package of sanctions in the framework of Russia's aggression against Ukraine," Belgium, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said on social media platform X, calling it "one of the broadest approved by the EU".

Read More at Reuters

Russian propagandist and serviceman Andrei Morozov (Murz) committed suicide

The day before, he revealed the figures for Russian losses in Avdeevka, which is why the command put pressure on him.

Russian Z-“military correspondent” and serviceman of the 4th motorized rifle brigade of the Russian Armed Forces Andrei Morozov (Murz), who ran the popular pro-military channel “People are writing to us from Ioannina” (more than 100 thousand subscribers), shot himself. This was reported by Igor Strelkov's wife Miroslava Reginskaya and lawyer Maxim Pashkov.

A suicide note appeared on Morozov's channel. In it, he explains his death under the pressure of the command of the brigade of the Russian Armed Forces, which was previously part of the “LPR” formations, as well as the command of the Russian Armed Forces as a whole. A few days ago, Murz reported on the colossal losses of the Russian army during the assault on Avdeevka - 16 thousand people irrevocably. He also said that the military prosecutor's office of St. Petersburg refused to consider the complaint of a soldier of regiment 1487 about the actions of the command during the assault.

According to Murza, the command decided to keep silent about the losses, allegedly because of criticism from propagandist Vladimir Solovyov.

Via IStories