Russian Digest
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UN: 'At least' 501 children killed in Ukraine since start of full-scale invasion
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) confirmed that "at least" 501 children have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Russia's all-out war, Executive Director Catherine Russell reported on April 3.
"This is just the UN-verified number. The real figure is likely far higher, and the toll on families affected is unimaginable," Russell wrote.
Approximately 1,000 children have sustained injuries, including those that will last a lifetime.
"Children and families in Ukraine are paying the highest price for this brutal war," Russell added.
According to Russell, UNICEF is providing Ukrainian children impacted by the war with psychosocial care and support.
"He was a crazy idiot." Putin fired the general who failed the attack on Vuhledar
Colonel-General Rustam Muradov has been relieved of his post as commander of the Eastern Military District (VVO) and removed from command in Ukraine, two military sources told The Moscow Times.
Muradov, 50, a former commander of Russian forces in Syria and later a peacekeeper in Nagorno-Karabakh, has been sacked after a failed offensive in eastern Ukraine.
Near Ugledar in February, Muradov threw his army into minefields and under fire from Ukrainian artillery, losing in three days two elite marine brigades, 103 pieces of equipment, including 36 tanks (according to Oryx calculations). At the same time, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost only 20 pieces of equipment.
Earlier, the pro-military z-channels reported Muradov's resignation just 7 months after his appointment (October 5, 2022). The general was removed from his post due to military setbacks and losses, a source in the BVO confirmed to The Moscow Times. The capture of Vuhledar could allow the Russian army to bypass the Ukrainian fortifications around Avdiivka and open the way for a broad offensive into the Donbas.
But despite the losses, which the Ministry of Defense of Britain estimated at 500 people a day, the army failed. “Muradov was suspended because he was a crazy idiot who could order soldiers to die,” a source told The Moscow Times. “Many complained about him.”
Igor Girkin (Strelkov), the former defense minister of the DPR, who was convicted in The Hague for attacking a Boeing over the Donbas, called the command near Vuhledar “complete cretins,” and Gray Zone, the Wagner PMC’s semi-official telegram channel, threatened to “two hundred” commanders who sit at headquarters.
“Muradov repeatedly sent forces to attack in small mechanized formations through minefields and open terrain, and they did not achieve anything near Ugledar,” says military analyst Michael Kofman.
However, a change in a commander in an important sector of the front is unlikely to help the army make any progress, he said: “There are key problems with the quality of forces, with junior commanders, which cannot be easily solved. It's not a matter of changing tactics."
In absurd news:
The National Anti-Terrorism Committee linked the murder of Tatarsky with the "Ukrainian special services" and the FBK
According to the national anti-terrorist committee, the explosion in the restaurant where Vladlen Tatarsky spoke was planned by the "Ukrainian special services" and the FBK.
According to the committee, "the attack in St. Petersburg was planned with the involvement of agents from among the persons collaborating with the Navalny Anti-Corruption Fund, of which the detained Trepova is an active supporter."
Propagandists blamed security officials, feminists, and each other for the death of Tatarsky
The murder of "military correspondent" Vladlen Tatarsky (Maxim Fomin) caused a strong reaction among Russian propagandists and Z-channels - in the traditional search for traitors and the guilty, the war chanters quarreled among themselves and accused the security forces of incompetence.
Margarita Simonyan, as usual, asked herself a question (this time more detailed than "And?"). "Well? Forget? Excuse me?" she wrote on social media. The Russian propagandist Andrey Medvedev, known to many for his history with his “opera friend,” answered her. Medvedev said that "the people will not forget and will not forgive," which cannot be said about "responsible persons." In fact, Medvedev criticized the security forces and their leadership, which, in his opinion, are not actively repressing the population.
For example, Andrey Kurshin, a former militant of the LNR, and now the author of the Moscow Calling Telegram channel. They should be "engaged", according to Medvedev, because of the criticism of the army and the authorities.
“We have bloggers who write every day about how ugly our army and country are at the same time. One such citizen blogger has access to state secrets, for a second. And what? And nothing. Feels fine,” wrote the propagandist. The Z-channel "Turned on the Z-war" also blames the security forces and Kurshin for the explosion in the center of St. Petersburg.
“So that you understand who Andrei Kurshin is. This is the author of the TG channel shown in the screenshots, who lives in Moscow. In his channel, he constantly accuses the Russian army of war crimes, calls for the overthrow of power, and so on. <...> Our law enforcement agencies absolutely do not care about the activities of this citizen. With such a negligent attitude of the police and the FSB to their direct duties, one should not be surprised later that the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine easily arranges terrorist attacks in St. Petersburg.
Z-channels also criticized the Moscow blogger Andrey Morozov (“Fighting Cat Murz” in LiveJournal). Morozov has been serving in the “People’s Militia of the LNR” (the 14th Territorial Defense Battalion “Prizrak”) since 2014, where he maintains drones and communication systems.
The blogger wrote that he regrets the death of Vladlen Tatarsky because he wanted to “on occasion, shake his throat tightly” for words about the death of Morozov’s battalion due to lack of communication. The blogger writes that this is a lie and there was a connection and also calls Tatarsky a “media prostitute” who says what the “buyer” needs. The last Tatarsky, according to Murza, was "acquired" by the PMC.
“Tatarsky was not “on our side”, he was on his side, he was an ordinary mercenary, de facto a media prostitute. It was necessary for a career - fraternizing with dill on television, while there were fierce "truces" here, it was necessary for a career - yelling: "Dills are fag races!" It was necessary (somewhat earlier, during the period of “ascent to glory”) - he was the “beloved wife” of the media workers of the 2nd AK of the NM of the LPR, he told how everything is fine with us. They hired private traders - he began to tell how everything in the People's Militia sucks, go, they say, username, to freelancers.
In response, Morozov received threats from the Z-channel Older Edda, who called the blogger a “fat stupid prostitute with a tail” and promised to “ask in full.” Later this post to Murza was deleted.
But another one appeared - with accusations against the "anti-military" and again Andrei Kurshin.
“As the murder of Max Fomin shows, all “anti-military workers” are a potential weapon of the enemy. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that after the death of Max, something will seriously change and the internal Ukrainian will start fighting for destruction. P * doras, the stalker of women and just a scumbag Kurshin will continue to write in his vile canal, and the crooked covens in fashionable Moscow taverns will continue to collect donations for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
This post was ridiculed in his channel by the historian Alexander Shtefanov, who published it with the phrase “these covens, are they in the same room with you now?”. In response, Shtefanov received death threats. And with him, of course, Kurshin and blogger Igor Dimitriev.
The Ministry of Finance reported on the fall in the price of Russian oil to a new "bottom"
The Kremlin's decision to cut oil production by 500,000 barrels per day proved powerless to raise prices for the Russian-grade Urals.
In March, the average price of the main Russian export brand fell to $47.85 per barrel, the Ministry of Finance reported on Monday.
Compared to February, Urals quotes sank another $1.71 (3.4%), compared to January they turned out to be lower by $1.63, and in annual terms, they collapsed almost 2 times.
The Urals discount to the North Sea Brent, however, slightly decreased: according to Argus, in March it was $29.6 per barrel against $33.2 in February and $33.8 in January.
We are talking about indicative prices in European ports, where, after the embargo introduced in December, Russian oil is not delivered. In the ports of the Russian Federation on FOB terms (when the ownership of oil is transferred to the buyer at the port of shipment), Urals was even cheaper in March: $44.5 per barrel in Primorsk, $44 per barrel in Novorossiysk, which is $26 lower than the level set in the Russian budget.
The number of clients for offshore deliveries of Russian oil has shrunk to four countries. At the same time, 70% of exports went to India, Reuters notes, citing traders and data from Refinitiv Eikon.
China remained in second place with about 8% and Turkey in third with 7%. The fourth largest buyer was Bulgaria with a 5% share, the only European country allowed to buy offshore Russian oil after the EU embargo.
FSB confiscates passports from Russian officials and directors of state-owned companies — FT
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin's paranoia over potential leaks and defections has led to the actions, the FT wrote.
Prominent figures and former officials are being asked to hand over their travel documents and these measures have intensified since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
"The increased pressure reflects deep suspicion in the Kremlin and FSB, the KGB's successor agency, about the loyalty of Russia's civilian elite, many of whom privately oppose the war in Ukraine and are chafing over its impact on their lifestyles," the article reads.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov admitted that Russia has increased restrictions on travels abroad for those who work in "sensitive" areas.
"There are stricter rules for that. Somewhere they are formalized, somewhere they depend on a specific decision regarding specific employees,” he said.
A Soviet-era holdover law, Russian officials with access to medium-level state secrets must leave their passports in a safe kept by a "security department" in their ministries or other entities, the FT recalled. Russian security services have rarely enforced the rule though, according to former officials and executives.
Read More:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/fsb-confiscates-passports-russian-officials-132500915.html
Panic and emotional pain as alleged deep-cover Russian spies vanish
Halfway through a trip to Malaysia in January, Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich stopped messaging his girlfriend back home in Rio de Janeiro and she promptly launched a frantic search for her missing partner.
A Brazilian of Austrian heritage, Campos Wittich ran a series of 3D printing companies in Rio that made, among other things, novelty resin sculptures for the Brazilian military and sausage dog key chains.
The Brazilian foreign ministry and Facebook communities in Malaysia mobilized to look for the missing man. But Campos Wittich had simply disappeared.
News about him eventually came from an unexpected source on the other side of the world in Athens, and it was as shocking as it was unexpected.
Campos Wittich was allegedly a fake identity, said Greek media, citing sources in the Greek intelligence service. According to these reports, he was not, as he had told his girlfriend, the child of an Austrian father and Brazilian mother, raised by his grandparents in Vienna.
He was allegedly a Russian “illegal”, a deep-cover spy working for an elite intelligence programme, who had been trained for years in Russia to be able to impersonate a foreigner. He was allegedly secretly married to another illegal, who posed as a Greek-Mexican photographer named Maria Tsalla and ran a knitting supplies shop in Athens. Both had, it was claimed, been dispatched on a decades-long mission to serve Vladimir Putin’s intelligence services.
At least six such suspected illegals have been unmasked in various locations over the past year, suggesting there could be one or more defectors passing information to the west. Alternatively, Russian intelligence may be asking more of its illegals, thus exposing them to additional risk, because so many of its “legal” spies based in Russian embassies have been expelled over the war in Ukraine.
Read More:
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich appeals against arrest, Russian state media says
Detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has filed an appeal against his arrest in Russia, the Russian state news agency TASS reported Monday.
The agency cited the press service of the Lefortovo Court of Moscow, which took the American journalist into custody last week.
Gershkovich is currently being held in a pre-trial detention center at the notorious Lefortovo prison until May 29. He faces up to 20 years in prison on espionage charges. The Wall Street Journal has vehemently denied the spying accusations against Gershkovich.
No date for hearing the appeal has been set.
Gershkovich’s arrest last week – the first detention of an American reporter in Russia on allegations of spying since the Cold War – highlighted the Kremlin’s clampdown on media freedoms and the operations of foreign news outlets since Moscow invaded Ukraine last year.
Read More:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/03/europe/evan-gershkovich-appeals-arrest-russia-intl/index.html
A web of trenches shows Russia fears losing Crimea
With Ukrainian leaders vowing to retake all of their territory occupied by Russia, Moscow has readied elaborate defenses, especially in Crimea, the peninsula it annexed illegally in 2014, which is now one of the most fortified in the war zone.
After weeks of digging, the area around the small town of Medvedivka, near a crossing to mainland Ukraine, is webbed with an elaborate trench system stretching several miles. The passages are cut into the earth at angles to give soldiers a broader range of fire. Nearby are other fortifications, including deep ditches designed to trap tanks and heavy vehicles.
Satellite images provided to The Washington Post by Maxar, a commercial space technology company, show that Russia has built dozens of similar defenses.
“The Russian military, apparently, understands that Crimea will have to be defended in the near future,” said Ian Matveev, a Russian military analyst.
Read More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2023/ukraine-russia-crimea-battle-trenches/