Russian Digest
Top weekly stories I'm keeping an eye on
Russian air attack kills 12 in Ukraine, gas infrastructure targeted
Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles on Ukraine on Saturday, killing 12 people and damaging dozens of residential buildings as well as energy infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said.
Ukraine's Emergency Services said that a Russian missile struck a residential building in the central city of Poltava, killing eight people. Emergency services had earlier reported 17 injured, including four children.
The Ukrainian air force said Russian forces launched 123 drones and more than 40 missiles. Its air defence units shot down 56 of the drones and redirected 61, it said. The air force provided no figures on how many missiles were intercepted.
Read More at Reuters
North Korean Troops Pulled From Front Lines in Russia
Ukrainian officials said the soldiers haven’t been spotted for more than two weeks after suffering significant losses
North Korean troops appear to have been pulled back from the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after suffering heavy casualties during barely a month of combat, Ukrainian officials said.
The North Koreans hadn’t been spotted along the front for more than two weeks, officials said. The troops have been withdrawn “due to significant losses,” one Ukrainian security official said, adding, “We expect them to come back.”
Around 12,000 North Korean troops arrived in Russia late last year and were soon deployed to the Kursk region, where they joined Russian forces fighting to oust Ukrainian troops, who have occupied part of the region since August. The arrival of North Koreans on the battlefield signaled deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, and sparked concern in Western capitals about the war growing into a global conflict.
Read More at WSJ
Emergency power cuts temporarily introduced across Ukraine after Russian missile attack
Emergency power outages were introduced temporarily in seven Ukrainian oblasts on Feb. 1 following a Russian missile attack to prevent the collapse the energy system.
The restrictions were applied in Kharkiv, Sumy, Poltava, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, according to Ukraine's state grid operator Ukrenergo.
Three hours later, Ukrenergo announced that restrictions were lifted across the country.
"The enemy continues its energy terror," said Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushenko in response to the attacks.
Read More at Kyiv Independent
Kremlin-run bot network uses spoof websites to spread articles on “catastrophe” awaiting Europe after U.S. cuts aid to Kyiv
The Kremlin’s “Doppelgänger” bot network has launched a campaign to spread pseudo-journalistic articles claiming that the decision of the newly sworn-in U.S. President to freeze aid programs for Ukraine is the right move — and that Europe should also stop supporting Kyiv.
These articles have been published on fake websites mimicking the German outlet Der Spiegel and French newspaper Le Parisien. The “opinion pieces,” allegedly written on behalf of German and French citizens, were identified and shared with The Insider by the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny). The central narrative of these pseudo-publications is that after Trump’s decision, the financial burden of supporting Ukraine will fall entirely on Europe.
Read More at The Insider
At least 11 Baltic cables have been damaged in 15 months, prompting NATO to up its guard
With its powerful camera, the French Navy surveillance plane scouring the Baltic Sea zoomed in on a cargo ship plowing the waters below — closer, closer and closer still until the camera operator could make out details on the vessel’s front deck and smoke pouring from its chimney.
The long-range Atlantique 2 aircraft on a new mission for NATO then shifted its high-tech gaze onto another target, and another after that until, after more than five hours on patrol, the plane’s array of sensors had scoped out the bulk of the Baltic — from Germany in the west to Estonia in the northeast, bordering Russia.
The flight’s mere presence in the skies above the strategic sea last week, combined with military ships patrolling on the waters, also sent an unmistakable message: The NATO alliance is ratcheting up its guard against suspected attempts to sabotage underwater energy and data cables and pipelines that crisscross the Baltic, prompted by a growing catalogue of incidents that have damaged them.
Read More at AP
Russian Oligarch Held Stake in Musk’s SpaceX Through Trust While He Was Sanctioned
Citigroup administered Heritage Trust and decided it didn’t need to block the trust’s assets after Suleyman Kerimov was sanctioned in 2018, according to people with knowledge of the matter
Billionaire Suleyman Kerimov held the SpaceX stake through Delaware-based Heritage Trust starting in 2017, according to four people, including two former senior US national security officials. They asked not to be identified to discuss sensitive matters. The trust initially held approximately 1% of SpaceX, according to three of the people.
The SpaceX holding started the year before Kerimov and others were sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, in response to what it called Russia’s “malign activity around the globe.” Treasury’s actions sought to block his assets and prevent him from doing business with US companies. Citigroup Inc., which handled day-to-day administration of Heritage Trust, sought guidance from the Treasury Department and decided there was no requirement to block the trust and associated entities after Kerimov was sanctioned, and the trust kept going, according to another person familiar with the matter.
Read More at Bloomberg
NATO: There was officially a Russian plot to kill European weapons chief
A senior NATO official has confirmed that there was a Russian scheme to kill Armin Papperger, the head of German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall.
The plot, which was foiled by United States and German intelligence, was part of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe, according to NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary-General for Innovation, Hybrid, and Cyber James Appathurai.
It is the first time a senior NATO, German or American official has confirmed on the record that there was a plot to kill Papperger, which was widely reported on by global media outlets in July 2024.
Read More at Politico
Exclusive: U.S. wants Ukraine to hold elections following a ceasefire, says Trump envoy
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - The United States wants Ukraine to hold elections, potentially by the end of the year, especially if Kyiv can agree a truce with Russia in the coming months, President Donald Trump's top Ukraine official told Reuters.
Keith Kellogg, Trump's special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said in an interview that Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections, suspended during the war with Russia, "need to be done".
"Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so," Kellogg said. "I think it is good for democracy. That's the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running."
Trump and Kellogg have both said they are working on a plan to broker a deal in the first several months of the new administration to end the all-out war that erupted with Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
More at Reuters
Note: Last week, a leaked plan—almost certainly authored by the Kremlin—surfaced. I documented it to track whether any of its objectives materialize. One key point focused on elections in Ukraine, a topic Russia has been targeting with disinformation for years.
Another pointer from the leaked plan (discussion with Putin in late January)
Trump says he and Putin could do something ‘significant’ toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine
Trump on Friday said his administration has already had “very serious” discussions with Russia about its war in Ukraine and that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin could soon take “significant” action toward ending the grinding conflict.
“We will be speaking, and I think will perhaps do something that’ll be significant,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “We want to end that war. That war would have not started if I was president.”
Trump did not say who from his administration has been in contact with the Russians but insisted the two sides were “already talking.”
Asked if he has already spoken directly with Putin, Trump was coy: “I don’t want to say that.”
Read More at AP
US aid was long a lifeline for Eastern Europe. Trump cuts are sending shockwaves through the region
Trump’s abrupt freeze of U.S. foreign aid is sending shockwaves through Eastern Europe, leaving pro-democracy groups, independent media, civil society initiatives, and local governments scrambling to make ends meet in a region often defined by rivalries between East and West.
The U.S. State Department said that the 90-day freeze aims to root out waste and block so-called woke programs to expose U.S.-funded activities “that run contrary to our national interests” — as Trump aggressively rolls out his “America First” agenda.
Read More at AP
EU lets Russian LNG slip in new sanctions package
The proposal will not include a blanket prohibition of LNG imports, as scores of EU hawks have been urging.
The EU will not attempt to fully ban Russian liquefied natural gas purchases in its latest sanctions package, two EU diplomats told POLITICO, defying pressure to outlaw imports of the supercooled fuel.
The European Commission is set to formally present its 16th sanctions package against Russia to EU capitals on Wednesday, according to the two diplomats, who were granted anonymity to speak freely.
The proposal will not include a blanket prohibition of LNG imports, as EU hawks have been urging. Instead, it would only stop Russian LNG from going to EU terminals not connected to the EU’s gas system — a restriction that won’t affect the majority of LNG imports.
Read More at Politico
Kidnapped Belarusian soldier fighting for Ukraine paraded on Belarusian state-controlled television
Branded a terrorist by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko’s regime for taking part in Ukraine’s fight against Russia, Vasyl Verameichyk was paraded on state-controlled television in late January for a two-part interview titled "Confessions of a Militant."
During the so-called interview, Verameichyk spoke of plans for an alleged incursion into Belarus, similar to the Ukrainian military's operation in Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Verameichyk also acknowledged some of the challenges he faced during his military service in Ukraine, which Belarusian state-controlled television tried to distort and use to portray Ukrainian military life as rife with drug abuse, corruption, and a pervasive fear of death by the hands of one’s own fellow soldiers.
After being arrested in Vietnam in November, Verameichyk was swiftly extradited to Belarus. It is believed that he was targeted in a coordinated operation by Lukashenko’s security services for having served in the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment of Belarusian volunteers fighting for Ukraine.
Read More at Kyiv Independent
Russian Nuclear Weapons Center Employee Accused of Treason, Sent to Prison
A Nizhny Novgorod court sentenced Dmitry Kizhmenev, an employee of the design bureau of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center — All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC — VNIIEF), to 13 years in a maximum security penal colony. He was found guilty of treason, attempting to leave the country while having access to state secrets, and document forgery, Mediazona reports. Kizhmenev, 39, must also pay a fine of 300,000 rubles. The verdict was handed down on January 16. The details of the case are unknown.
Kizhmenev was arrested in August 2023 and transferred from Sarov to Moscow. At that time, he was an employee of KB-12 RFNC-VNIIEF, which is engaged in the "development of products on a special subject." He himself indicated this information on his page on the social network "VKontakte". Initially, Kizhmenev was accused only of document forgery (part 4 of article 327 of the Criminal Code). On December 13 last year, the case was sent to court and two more articles were added to it: high treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code) and violation of requirements for the protection of state secrets (part 1 of article 283.2 of the Criminal Code with the application of part 3 of article 30).
In 2019, Kizhmenev worked as an assistant to Lyudmila Kolotukhina, a deputy of the Sarov City Duma. When registering for the 2015 elections, she indicated that she was a leading specialist at RFNC-VNIIEF. The center is part of Rosatom and is engaged in the development and production of nuclear weapons. In Soviet times, an atomic and hydrogen bomb was created here. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the enterprise fell under sanctions from the US, UK, EU, Canada, and Japan. The city of Sarov itself has the status of a closed administrative-territorial entity ( ZATO).
Over the past few years, a wave of arrests of scientists who were conducting research in the field of hypersonic missiles swept across Russia. A case of "high treason" was opened against Anatoly Maslov, Alexander Shiplyuk, Dmitry Kolker, Valery Zvegintsev, and Vladimir Galkin, who worked at the Institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The first three were accused of passing secret data to China. Dmitry Kolker was arrested right in the hospital with stage four cancer and died three days after being taken into custody. Shiplyuk received 15 years in a maximum security penal colony, Maslov - 14.
In addition to them, physicist Anatoly Gubanov, who headed a department at the Zhukovsky Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI), was sentenced to 12 years. According to investigators, he passed on secret information to one of the European countries about the HEXAFLY-INT hypersonic civilian aircraft, in the development of which, in addition to Russia, Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands participated. Gubanov's subordinate, MIPT professor and Doctor of Technical Sciences Valery Golubkin, received a similar term on the same charge.
A total of 12 Russian scientists involved in hypersonic research have been arrested on treason charges over the past six years, the BBC Russian Service has calculated .
Via Moscow Times
Ukraine deploys long-range drone capable of 2,000 km strike, military says
Ukrainian soldiers are now using a long-range drone capable of traveling up to 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) and carrying a 250-kilogram air bomb, the Unmanned Systems Forces said on Jan. 31.
The drone is described as a “unique development” and a potential game changer on the battlefield. The military did not disclose the number of drones in service or additional details about their capabilities.
"Russian propaganda constantly claims to have 'shot down' such aircraft, but explosions at military-industrial complexes, refineries, and ammunition depots suggest otherwise," the statement read.
Read More at Kyiv Independent
Hacking Democracy: How Elon Musk Is Disrupting European Politics
The richest man in the world is backing far-right parties against a political establishment that has failed to deliver.
Elon Musk became the richest man in the world by taking on established industries with disruptive start-ups like PayPal, Tesla and SpaceX. He’s now using a similar playbook to upend European politics.
Mr. Musk has been using the algorithmic influence of his social media platform X to place bets on far-right upstart parties, like Alternative for Germany (known as the AfD) and Britain’s Reform Party, that challenge the status quo.
His taboo-shattering stunts — like his straight-armed salutes at Donald Trump’s inauguration event — have garnered plenty of attention and outrage. On Saturday, two days before the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he told an AfD rally that Germany had “too much of a focus on past guilt.”
But there’s a deeper reason the establishment is worried: His provocative efforts are aimed at a system that is already in crisis. The legacy European parties that used to represent huge constituencies no longer command the trust and support of voters.
Read More at New York Times
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