March 1, 2024: Russian Digest

Ukraine destroyed 13 Russian military aircraft in 2 weeks. How?

Ukraine reported the downing of 13 Russian warplanes within the last two weeks, among the highest Russian Air Force losses since the early days of the full-scale invasion.

This list includes 10 Su-34 fighter bombers, two Su-35 fighter jets, and one more rare A-50 military spy plane. Another A-50 aircraft was downed a month prior. The last three Su-34s were reportedly destroyed in a single day on Feb. 29 over eastern Ukraine.

The rapid destruction of aircraft comes amid Russia's attempts to advance on the battlefield after the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Avdiivka and three villages in Donetsk Oblast, in addition to Ukraine's widely mentioned ammunition shortage.

Read More at Kyiv Independent

Ukraine to Get 155mm Artillery Shells Found in Czech-Led Effort

Ukraine’s military is set to receive the first of what may be hundreds of thousands of 155mm artillery shells as part of an international effort to forage foreign stockpiles as US efforts to send more aid remain hung up in Congress.

Ukraine could see the first shells arrive within weeks under the initiative, which has the Czech Republic serving as the middleman to link governments willing to finance the purchase of excess 155mm shells in third countries, Jan Jires, the country’s director general for defense policy and strategy, said in an interview in Washington.

Read More at Bloomberg

Putin demanded that the FSB prevent a rebellion over Navalny's death

The Kremlin held a series of meetings with senior generals of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a colony above the Arctic Circle, two senior Russian government sources told The Moscow Times.

According to them, Navalny's funeral caused unrest among the country's top leadership, despite the ostentatious self-confidence demonstrated by President Vladimir Putin.

“Navalny’s funeral is a stress test for the Russian authorities. This topic was one of the most important at meetings involving Kremlin officials, FSB generals, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” a senior Russian official told The Moscow Times on condition of anonymity.

According to the source, the special services were tasked with carrying out an “operation” to “protect the constitutional order from threats.” And propaganda plays an important role in it. “The task was set to prevent a picture similar to the farewell to [Andrei] Sakharov,” says the official. In 1989, hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral of the dissident Soviet physicist, winner of the 1975 Nobel Prize, in Moscow.

“The leadership does not need a repetition of this,” explains the source of The Moscow Times: “Therefore, the special services are working according to their plan. And the state media were given the order to fill the airwaves, including with the president’s speech promising trillions of dollars in investments, as well as stories that the new elite are ordinary people.”

Navalny died in the Polar Wolf colony in the village of Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, where he was transferred in December 2023 and was serving a 19-year sentence. The Federal Penitentiary Service claims that the death of the politician was due to a suddenly detached blood clot. The oppositionist's comrades call Navalny's death a murder and believe that the Kremlin is behind him. Authorities refused to hand over Navalny's body to his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya for more than a week, demanding that she not hold a public funeral.

Via The Moscow Times

Libya: Russia's Wagner Group makes further inroads

Moscow is expanding its "security for resources" blueprint in Libya under the lead of the new Wagner Group's General Andrei Averyanov. What does this mean for the democratic transition?

Years of war and chaos, an ongoing political stalemate, the devastating flood in September 2023, and the absence of a democratic path have made Libya prone to the influence of foreign militias, such as the Russian Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group has had a foothold in Libya since 2018.

However, according to a recent report by the London-based military think tank Royal United Services Institute, or RUSI, Russia is about to step up efforts even further in the form of an "Entente Roscolonial'' — a group of states that actively seek to assist Russia — in the Middle East and Africa.

Read More at DW

The DGSI is investigating an attempt to destabilize the European elections by pro-Russians in France

The French internal intelligence services are interested in the constitution of a list serving the interests of Moscow, carried by the former French MEP Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, himself helped by pro-Russian figures close to the extreme right.

France was slow to understand that, in a war, propaganda is as dangerous as cannons. The General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) opened an investigation in the fall of 2023 into suspicions of an attempt to destabilize the European elections of June 9. According to the elements gathered by Le Monde, confirmed by a source within the Ministry of the Interior, they relate to the constitution of a list in France serving the interests of Russia and able to benefit from the support of Moscow. Other European Union (EU) countries would be targeted by similar threats aimed at weakening the anti-Moscow front born from the war in Ukraine. On January 3, Josep Borrell, the head of the European diplomacy, warned that in this election year, “Europe is in danger.”

For the moment, the DGSI's investigations are only administrative, but they have already been the subject of numerous technical and human surveillance. None of the people among the alleged actors of this operation have been questioned and, according to our information, the French counter-spies have not yet established formal links between the Russian regime and its French relays. Nevertheless, the main European intelligence services give enough credence to this threat to meet in mid-March to coordinate their efforts and respond to this vast concerted attack.

The DGSI has been monitoring for months the draft European list carried by a former French National Front MEP (the former name of the National Rally, RN), Jean-Luc Schaffhauser, aided by pro-Russian figures close to the extreme right, such as the former soldier Pierre Plas, the journalist Dimitri de Kochko or ex-members of the RN like Guillaume Pradoura. Mr. Schaffhauser was interviewed, in 2023, at the National Assembly by the Parliamentary Commission of inquiry into foreign interference in French political life. He was involved in the National Front obtaining two loans intended to finance Marine Le Pen's party, notably the one issued in 2014 by a Russian bank.

Read More at Le Monde

Russia’s Next European Target: Moldova

Ukrainian soldiers protect the rest of Europe as they hold the line against Russia, and anyone who thinks Vladimir Putin would stop after taking Kyiv should look at this week’s developments in Moldova.

Transnistria is a pro-Russian breakaway territory that Mr. Putin is using to foment political turmoil in the rest of Moldova, a small country located between Ukraine and Romania. On Wednesday separatist officials there claimed they’re enduring “socio-economic strangulation” as Moldova “unleashed an economic war against our people.” They appealed to the Russian Federation Council and Russian State Duma to “implement diplomatic measures to protect/defend Transnistria.”

After Mr. Putin launched his full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, all of Transnistria’s trade has passed through customs and border points under the authority of the Moldovan capital of Chișinău. Moldova wants to reintegrate Transnistria, and this year it introduced regulations requiring companies in the breakaway region to pay import and export duties that will go toward Moldova’s national budget.

From 2001 until this year the duties paid by Transnistrian companies have been a revenue stream for the separatists. Russia’s proxies are now citing Moldova’s recent policy change as a pretext for Wednesday’s appeal to Moscow. But the real issue is that Moldova has been moving closer to the West, and under President Maia Sandu it has become a candidate to join the European Union.

Read More at WSJ

German Ministry Says Rosneft Wants to Sell Deutschland Unit

Third extension of trusteeship likely to be decided shortly
Kremlin was opposed to nationalisation of the Russian assets

Rosneft PJSC has begun a sales process for its German unit that owns assets including an oil refinery and would favor Berlin keeping the business in trust until that happens, Germany’s economy ministry said.

Germany seized Rosneft Deutschland GmbH not long after the war in Ukraine began and put it into trusteeship. A more recent idea was to nationalize it, a step that the Kremlin was opposed to.

Read More at Bloomberg

Deep Dive…

A most wanted man: Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek exposed as decade-long GRU spy

Fugitive Wirecard COO Jan Marsalek wasn’t just responsible for Germany’s largest financial fraud in history. He was also a decade-long Russian spy.

Read Investigation at The Insider

Another great investigation into Jan Marsalek

He’s Wanted for Wirecard’s Missing $2 Billion. He’s Now Suspected of Being a Russian Spy.

Jan Marsalek, the jet-setting former COO of now-defunct Wirecard, enabled Moscow to fund covert operations around the world, officials say; ‘whiff of Silicon Valley’

Soon after payment-processing giant Wirecard reported in June 2020 that nearly $2 billion had gone missing from its balance sheet, its chief operating officer Jan Marsalekboarded a private jet out of Austria. After a landing in Belarus, he was whisked by car to Moscow, where he got a Russian passport under an assumed name.

Western intelligence and security officials now say they have reached the unsettling conclusion that Marsalek had likely been a Russian agent for nearly a decade.

Read More at WSJ

Rutte signs Dutch-Ukrainian long-term security agreement in Kharkiv

President Volodymyr Zelensky and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte signed a 10-year agreement on security cooperation between Ukraine and the Netherlands in Kharkiv, Zelensky announced on March 1.

"The document includes 2 billion euros in military aid from the Netherlands this year, as well as further defense assistance over the next ten years," Zelensky said.

"It also prioritizes the provision of air defense, artillery, sea, and long-range capabilities, with a particular emphasis on strengthening Ukraine's air force."

The Netherlands joins the U.K., Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, and Canada, which have signed similar deals to help Ukraine repel Russia's aggression based on a pledge made by the Group of Seven (G7) last July.

Rutte's visit to Kharkiv, which lies 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the border with Russia, was not announced in advance for security reasons. Russian forces target Kharkiv and the surrounding region on a daily basis.

Read More at Kyiv Independent

EU, G7 indirect Russian diamond ban comes into effect

The initial stage of a European Union and G7 ban on imports of Russia-origin diamonds via third countries came into effect on Friday, the Belgian government said in a statement.

The 27-member EU agreed to ban non-industrial Russian diamonds in December last year when it passed its 12th package of sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Belgium holds the EU's rotating presidency until the end of June.

Read More at Reuters