March 26, 2024: Russian Digest
Top stories I'm keeping an eye on!
March 26, 2024
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Mayor: Russian attacks destroy thermal power plant, all substations in Kharkiv
Russian missile and drone attacks have destroyed a thermal power plant and all the electrical substations in Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov told national television on March 24.
The mayor said that Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, experiences the most challenging energy situation.
Russia has recently once again intensified its attacks against Ukraine's critical infrastructure, launching over 150 missiles and drones against Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure on March 22 in one of the largest attacks against the country's power grid.
The March 22 strike damaged the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Plant, Ukraine's largest hydroelectric station.
Read More at Kyiv IndependentLukashenko discussed a possible attack on the Suwalki corridor
Self-proclaimed Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko has been discussing a possible attack on the Suwałki Gap, the territory of Lithuania and Poland located between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast.
Source: European Pravda; an excerpt from a conversation between Lukashenko and Alexander Naumenko, the commander of the North-Western Operational Command, posted by Belarusian pro-government Telegram channel Pul Pervogo
Details: In the video, Lukashenko, who is holding a white Pomeranian Spitz, asks Naumenko about the width of the Suwałki Gap, which "they [probably meaning Lithuania – ed.] are always yapping about".
"They shouldn’t be behaving like this. But now you will have to confront the Baltic republics... And you will take part of Poland," Lukashenko says upon learning the width of the Gap (42 km as the crow flies).
Lukashenko then asks the military commander whether he can hold the territory with "his troops". Naumenko assures him that "all actions have been planned, issues of combat readiness are being worked out, and personnel are being trained".
The Suwałki Gap – a land corridor between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad – is considered a very likely place of attack in the event of a potential Russian war against NATO’s eastern members.
Background: In October 2023, Pavel Muraveiko, First Deputy Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council, proposed "breaking through the gap" to Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast, causing outrage in Lithuania.
Via Ukrainian PravdaIn Absurd News…
FSB chief, citing no proof, blames Ukraine and U.S. in Moscow terror attack
Russia’s intelligence chief on Tuesday directly blamed Ukraine for orchestrating the assault on the Crocus City Hall concert venue with Western help, alleging without evidence that Kyiv “trained militants in the Middle East.”
The accusation by Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, seemed intended to deflect attention from his agency’s failure to prevent the attack, in which at least 139 people were killed, and to fan anti-Ukrainian rhetoric even as officials presented an increasingly convoluted narrative of what transpired Friday night.
“We think the act was prepared by the radical Islamists, but of course, the Western special services have aided,” Bortnikov told state media reporters, singling out the United States and Britain. “And the special services of Ukraine have a direct relation to this.”
Ukraine has strongly denied having any involvement in the attack. On March 7, the United States issued a warning of a potential terrorist attack in Russia, urging Americans there to avoid mass gatherings, based in part on intelligence reporting about the possible activity inside Russia of the Islamic State-Khorasan (ISIS-K), the Afghanistan and Pakistan arm of the militant group. Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking to the FSB board a week ago, dismissed that warning as an attempt by the West to “destabilize Russia.”
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Russia has charged four suspects, all citizens of Tajikistan, with carrying out the rampage. Bortnikov on Tuesday confirmed that the United States had passed on information about a potential attack but said it was “of general nature.”
Read More at the Washington PostLukashenko undermines Putin’s Ukraine claim on Moscow concert hall attack
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appears to have cast doubt on Russia’s claims that Ukraine was involved in the brutal attack at a Moscow concert hall last week.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacre, which killed at least 139 people, and released graphic footage of the incident, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that Ukraine had helped orchestrate it.
Putin on Saturday claimed that a “window” had been prepared for the attackers to escape to Ukraine, which Kyiv has denied.
But Lukashenko, one of Putin’s most loyal allies, on Tuesday appeared to contradict the Kremlin’s claims, saying that the attackers initially intended to enter Belarus rather than Ukraine.
“They could not enter Belarus. Their handlers… knew that it would be a very bad idea to try to enter Belarus because Belarus immediately reinforced security measures,” Lukashenko said, according to Belarusian news agency Belta.
Read More at CNNSome in Putin’s Own Circle See No Ukraine Link to Moscow Attack
There’s no sign Kyiv was involved, people familiar say
Putin says Islamists responsible, still pushes Ukraine role
While Vladimir Putin continues to argue that Ukraine may have had a role in the Moscow attack that killed 139 people, some of the Russian president’s own inner circle disagree with him.
There’s no evidence of involvement by Ukraine, according to four people with close ties to the Kremlin. Putin was present at discussions where officials agreed there’s no link to Kyiv, but remains determined to use the tragedy to try to rally Russians behind the war in Ukraine, according to one person with knowledge of the situation, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
Read More at BloombergPutin gave the green light to the nationalization of the property of businessmen-“saboteurs”
Bodies of the Prosecutor General's Office are working to return a number of large enterprises and property complexes to state ownership, President Vladimir Putin said at the department's board on Tuesday.
According to him, this is an “important moment” in the work of prosecutors, which is generally aimed at protecting the social and economic rights of citizens, as well as upholding the interests of the state and society.
Nationalization of business property “is justified in situations where assets were acquired in circumvention, in violation of the law and are used to the detriment of the state,” Putin said.
He added that “in each such case, one must act strictly according to the law, within the framework of clear legal procedures.”
Prosecutors in the courts achieved the return to the state of assets of strategic enterprises worth more than 1 trillion rubles, Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov reported to Putin.
We are talking about dozens of companies whose products are “critically important for strengthening the defense capability and development of the country’s economy,” he continued.
“They left the property of the Russian Federation illegally, including through corruption. Moreover, part of their funds was even used to finance terrorist activities on the part of Ukraine,” Krasnov said, adding that he instructs the prosecutor’s office to carefully deal with the illegal alienation of enterprises to transfer assets abroad.
The Prosecutor General’s Office arose an increased interest in the seizure of private assets and reviewing the results of privatization a long time ago, but after the start of the war, the nationalization process took on a “truly massive” character, Ilya Shumanov, director of Transparency International - Russia, previously indicated.
For 2022-2023 more than 180 private enterprises came under state control, and demands for nationalization that came to the courts in two years concerned almost two hundred companies. These are mainly enterprises producing military products, as well as the assets of businessmen who left the country.
It is important for the state to control enterprises working for the war, Shumanov points out. In addition, he continues, the state is interested in real estate and land, especially in Moscow, the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, and the southern regions, due to the high cost, and in the fishing sector, through nationalization, it is possible to take away fishing quotas, as well as the fleet.
The latest example of high-profile nationalization is the transfer to state control of three plants of the Chelyabinsk Electrometallurgical Plant (CHEMK). The court made a decision in mid-February, after which the owner of the plant, Yuri Antipov, was detained in a fraud case. He was later released on his recognizance.
The process of nationalization of CHEMK took place in record time - it took less than a month. The court considered the case behind closed doors, and its materials were not published.
Via The Moscow TimesInvestigation: Belarusian timber enters Poland under false documents, bypassing EU sanctions
Belarusian timber enters the EU market despite sanctions, being supplied to Poland under false documentation while passed off as Kazakh wood, according to an investigation by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Schemes project, the Polish outlet Gazeta Wyborcza, and the Belarusian Investigative Center.
The EU imposed wide-reaching sanctions against Russia and its ally Belarus in March 2022 in reaction to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The restrictions extended to Belarusian timber, which has been traditionally imported into the EU in an amount worth over $1 billion every year.
After the imposition of the sanctions, wood imports from Kazakhstan to Poland increased from $15 million to almost $74 million between 2022 and 2023, even though Kazakhstan has very little forested land and supplied meager volumes to the EU before the full-scale war.
The journalists analyzed a contract and accompanying documents for the purchase of about 1 million euros ($1.1 million) worth of timber between the Polish company PLRBL and the Kazakh company Nurr-electro.
A representative of Nurr-electro told the journalists that the Kazakh company had never concluded such a contract, and graphic design experts said that the seals and signatures on the documents had been falsified.
Read More at Kyiv IndependentRussian envoy ignores summons over missile that Poland says entered its airspace
The Russian ambassador to Poland ignored a summons to appear at the country's foreign ministry on Monday after Warsaw said a missile launched at targets in western Ukraine violated its airspace.
Poland's military said its defence radar systems recorded the missile entering the country's airspace for 39 seconds on Sunday, encroaching 2 km (1.24 miles) into Polish territory before returning into Ukraine.
"The ambassador of the Russian Federation ... did not attend
the foreign ministry today to explain the incident," foreign
ministry spokesperson Pawel Wronski told reporters.
Poland will decide on the next steps in coming days as it cannot ignore such "a sign of contempt", Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz told Polsat News television on Monday.
"These must be agreed decisions, because this is the response of the entire Polish state," Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
Read more at ReutersFormer Hungarian insider releases audio he says is proof of corruption in embattled Orbán government
A former Hungarian government insider turned critic released an audio recording on Tuesday that he says proves that top officials conspired to cover up corruption, the latest development in a scandal that has shaken Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s domination of the country’s politics.
The country’s largest protests in years erupted in early February when it was revealed that the president had issued a pardon to a man imprisoned for covering up child sexual abuses by the director of a state-run orphanage.
Close Orbán allies, including the president and Justice Minister Judit Varga, were forced to resign in the face of public outrage.
The latest allegations come from Varga’s ex-husband, Peter Magyar, a former political insider who says he has turned whistleblower to reveal the extent of impropriety within Orbán’s government.
Read More at the Washington PostMust read leaked data on Russia’s global plans…
Data leakage from the Kremlin administration – what lies ahead for Russia after the ‘elections’?
Ukrainian Hacktivists from the Cyber Resistance team, known for their numerous successful high-profile hacks, provided InformNapalm volunteer intelligence community with a cache of exclusive documents. These documents, personally signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, detail plans for the socio-political transformation of the Russian Federation after the upcoming elections. The leaked documents unequivocally reveal Russia’s preparations for a global conflict, signaling that the state’s internal control measures will only escalate, tightening their grip even further.
INION
The Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences (INION) is a Russian research center whose activities are rather poorly covered in open sources. One could easily mistake it for just another post-Soviet research institute, where elderly employees idly bide their time until retirement. For a long time, the Institute being located in Moscow appeared to be its sole noteworthy feature. However, there was an incident that occurred one day in 2015 and changed this perception somehow.
INION seized the spotlight of Russia’s leading media in 2015, yet not for the achievements of its scientists, but rather due to a massive blaze that swept through its premises. The event was deemed so remarkable that it merited a dedicated article in the Russian-language Wikipedia.
Read More at InformNapalm