Russian Digest

Cross-border aid to Syria blocked in ‘act of utter cruelty’ by Russia at UN vote

Use of veto threatens operations on route from Turkey that supports millions of people in north-west

Russia has been accused of “an act of utter cruelty” after it used its veto at the UN security council to block a nine-month renewal of cross-border aid designed to help 4 million people living in rebel-held north-west Syria.

The vote throws into doubt the continued existence of the key aid route into Syria from Turkey and represents another hammer blow to a population still reeling from the devastating earthquake that struck the region in February.

The aid operation has been delivering support including food, medicine and shelter since 2014, operating under UN authorization, and the permission for the border crossing at Bab al-Hawa expired on Monday.

The UN secretary general, António Guterres, had wanted a 12-month renewal, while Russia said it would accept only a six-month renewal. Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, warned that if Russia’s proposal for a six-month extension was not supported, “then we can just go ahead and close down the cross-border mechanism”.

The UK and 12 other council members voted to renew cross-border aid access for nine months, but Russia vetoed what was intended as a compromise between the position of Russia and the UN secretary general. Only Russia and China then voted in favour of Russia’s proposal for a six-month extension. Ten security council members abstained and the US, Britain and France voted against the Russian proposal.

Russia hits Sumy Oblast 225 times in one day

The Russian military shelled eight communities along the border of Sumy Oblast on July 11, causing 225 explosions, the Sumy Oblast Military Administration reported on Facebook.

Russian forces struck the communities of Bilopillia, Esman, Khotin, Krasnopillia, Velyka Pisarivka, Hlukhiv, Druzhbiv, and Shalyhyne.

In Krasnopillia, shelling killed one large-horned cattle and damaged civilian buildings. In Khotin, a power line was damaged as a result of the shelling.

Russian forces hit the region with mines, mortar shelling, grenade launchers, rocket launchers, and unguided aircraft missiles fired from helicopters.

The administration reported no civilian injuries or deaths.

The Russian military has bombarded Sumy Oblast daily since April 2022, when Ukrainian forces liberated some occupied areas of the region. The Oblast shares a border with Russia to the north and continues to be subject to constant shelling.

https://kyivindependent.com/russia-hits-sumy-oblast-222-times-in-one-day/

Russian commander killed while jogging may have been tracked on Strava app

A Russian submarine commander shot to death while jogging on Monday may have been targeted by an assailant tracking him on a popular running app, according to Russian media.

Stanislav Rzhitsky was killed earlier this week in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar by an “unknown person,” state news agency TASS reported, adding that “the motive for the crime is being investigated.”

Russia’s Investigative Committee said on Telegram a man has been detained in connection with Rzhitsky’s killing, adding the suspect had a pistol with a silencer in his possession “by means of which, presumably, the murder was committed.”

Russian media earlier reported that Rzhitsky’s killer may have used Strava, a widely available app used by runners and cyclists, to follow his movements.

Rzhitsky’s jogging and cycling routes appear on an account in his name on the Strava app. One of his regular jogging circuits that he took while working in Krasnodar include the park where he was killed early Monday.

One Russian media outlet, Tsargrad, said the assailant “planned the murder so carefully that the moment of the attack did not appear on any CCTV cameras.”

Wagner mercenaries will start training the Belarusian army

In Belarus, mercenaries of the Russian private military company "Wagner" will be involved in the training of the army, the Ministry of Defense of the Republic reports.

Classes and "exchange of experience" will begin after the PMC militants arrive in the country and "spread out on its training grounds." “Particular attention is planned to be paid to the techniques and methods of conducting hostilities,” the department noted.

They added that the combat coordination of the Belarusian and Russian military is also continuing at the training grounds. Now the next rotation of troops is being completed, a new shift will begin training in the near future.

From the message of the Ministry of Defense, it follows that the bulk of the mercenaries have not yet arrived in Belarus. According to the monitoring group "Belarusian Gayun", at the moment there are about 200 "Wagnerites" in the country. They are located at the Losvido training ground near Vitebsk, where some army units are trained in shooting.

Earlier, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko spoke about plans to use the “Wagnerites”, who should be deployed in the republic after the rebellion of their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, to transfer combat experience to local security officials.

“We are pragmatic about this. If their commanders come to us and help us... Experience. Look, they're on the front line, the assault squads. They will tell us what is important now, <…> about weapons: which worked well, which did not. And tactics, and weapons, and how to attack, how to defend. It's priceless. This is what we need to take from the Wagnerites,” Lukashenka said.

The “moving” of the mercenaries to Belarus was one of the terms of the agreement concluded between Prigozhin and the Kremlin, mediated by Lukashenka, during the June 24 mutiny. Minsk offered the "Wagnerites" to settle in the former military towns, including near Osipovichi, but they refused.

On July 6, Lukashenka said that Prigozhin's PMC mercenaries were still in their camps, where they were after the withdrawal from the front for recovery. The President noted that the issue of the relocation of the "Wagnerites" to Belarus is still up in the air since it "does not depend on him but on the decision of the Russian side and the fighters themselves."

On July 7, the Ministry of Defense of Belarus organized a press tour for foreign journalists to a tent camp near Osipovichi, Mogilev Region, where it was proposed to accommodate the Wagner PMC. At the same time, the assistant to the head of the department, Major General Leonid Kasinsky, said that none of the mercenaries had yet seen or visited the town.

As of the end of June, 303 tents were set up in the camp, according to satellite imagery. All of them appeared on the territory of the former military unit near the village of Tsel near Osipovichi after 24 June.

The structures are identical to the tents seen in the photo of the military training grounds where the Russian military is trained before being sent to the territory of Ukraine. For example, the same ones were installed at the Obuz-Lesnovsky training ground near Baranovichi. According to the manufacturer, each tent can accommodate up to 50 people. Thus, the new camp can take about 15 thousand "Wagnerites".

https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2023/07/11/naemniki-vagnera-nachnut-obuchat-belorusskuyu-armiyu-a48585

Poland announces arrest of Russian spy

The Internal Security Agency (ABW) of Poland has detained another member of the spy network who worked for Russian intelligence, said the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic, Mariusz Kaminski.

According to him, the suspect "conducted surveillance of military installations and seaports" and systematically received "remuneration from the Russians" for this.

The Polish prosecutor's office clarified that the detainee is a citizen of Ukraine who has lived in Poland since 2019. He will remain in custody pending trial. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

This is the 15th person detained as part of the investigation into the activities of the Russian intelligence network, which was exposed a few months ago. Its participants tried to monitor the supply of Western weapons to Ukraine, including by installing hidden cameras.

In March, 12 people were arrested in connection with espionage for Russia. The group included Ukrainians and Belarusians, there were no Russians among them. Recently, a Russian hockey player from the Polish First League "Zaglebie" Maxim Sergeev was detained in the same case. He has been in the republic since October 2021. According to the prosecutor's office, Sergeev conducted reconnaissance of critical infrastructure facilities in several voivodeships.

The former deputy head of the Polish Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW), Maciej Matysiak, noted that with the help of spies, Russia tried to obtain data on the number and types of equipment entering Ukraine from the West in order to assess how much the coalition of countries supporting Kyiv is fulfilling its promises and how significant this help. In addition, such information could be used by Moscow to take measures that would not allow the equipment to reach the addressee, including sabotage, sabotage, destruction, Matysiak warned.

In turn, Interior Minister Kaminsky said that the group was also ordered to carry out propaganda activities to destabilize relations between Poland and Ukraine and incite hostility towards NATO.

https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2023/07/10/polsha-obyavila-ozaderzhanii-rossiiskogo-shpiona-a48459

Russian general 'killed by British Storm Shadow missile'

A Russian general has been killed on the southern front by a British Storm Shadow missile, according to reports.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence has not commented on the alleged death of Lieutenant General Oleg Tsokov, but if it is confirmed he will be the ninth Russian general to die in the war - and the highest ranking.

Petro Andriushchenko, an adviser to the ousted mayor of Mariupol, said that the deputy commander of Russia’s southern military district was killed during an attack on occupied Berdiansk.

Russian bloggers said that Ukraine used British Storm Shadow missiles in the attack.

Ukrainians have been using Storm Shadow missiles to strike Berdiansk as they are the only missile in its arsenal with the range to hit the port town.

The last Russian general to be killed in Ukraine died when a missile hit his headquarters in Zaporizhizhia region one month ago.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/07/11/russia-ukraine-war-latest-news-nato-zelensky-putin/

Andrey Kondrashov became the new CEO of TASS. What is known about him?

Last week, on July 5, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin appointed a new head of Russia's oldest news agency, TASS, by decree. The post went to Andrey Kondrashov, a journalist and former host of Vesti on Rossiya-1. Kondrashov replaced Sergey Mikhailov, who had headed the news agency since 2012, as CEO.

Novaya Gazeta Europe tells the story of the new head of TASS.

Little is known about the biography and personal life of Andrei Kondrashov from open sources. The appointment of a journalist to the post of head of TASS caught him just a few days after his 50th birthday. Kondrashov was born on June 30, 1973 in Alma-Ata.

In Moscow, he graduated from the now closed non-state university of the International Independent Ecological and Political Science University (MNEPU) in the direction of journalism.

Kondrashov is married to a woman named Irina, about whom not much is known either. The only daughter of Kondrashov, 21-year-old Anna, is studying at VGIK. It follows from open data that, according to the results of the entrance exams in 2020, she took first place among all applicants and went to the budget.

https://novayagazeta.eu/

U.S. sanctions top Serbian security official for actions that support Russia’s ‘malign activities’

The Treasury Department on Tuesday imposed sanctions on a top Serbian security official for his “corrupt and destabilizing acts” that led to support and assistance in Russia’s “malign activities.”

The department said in a statement that Aleksandar Vulin, director of Serbia’s intelligence agency, “used his public positions to support Russia, facilitating Russia’s malign activities that degrade the security and stability of the Western Balkans and providing Russia a platform to further its influence in the region.”

Vulin became the Balkan state’s new spy chief in December, after serving as its interior and defense minister. As minister of the interior, Vulin visited Moscow in August after refusing to join the West in sanctioning Russia.

Ukrainian Grain Exported Through Tax-Avoiding ‘Shell Firms,’ Robbing Country of Wartime Revenue

Reporters looked into who imported millions of euros of Ukrainian “black grain” into the European Union. They found liquidated companies, proxies — and multinational agribusiness giants.

Ukraine is investigating hundreds of firms, many created since Russia’s full-scale invasion scrambled the grain market, for allegedly failing to properly document their trading in Ukrainian grain or to pay taxes on it.
Some of the EU companies that imported this grain from Ukraine raise serious questions themselves.
Several had been ordered shut down by Hungarian authorities but continued trading. Some of the men listed as their owners and directors were patients in psychiatric hospitals; one is an aspiring TikTok influencer.
The Romanian subsidiaries of major international agribusiness traders — COFCO International, Bunge, Viterra, and Ameropa Holding — also imported grain through Ukrainian companies under investigation.

Season 3 of Kremlin File launches in mid-July. Don’t forget to subscribe to catch up on old episodes and for the latest news!

Gym, spa, beauty equipment: Leaked documents reveal hidden details of Putin’s ‘ghost’ train

August 5, 2022, was a day like many others in Ukraine. First light revealed the devastation from a night of Russian bombing.

Russian attacks on a residential neighborhood of Mykolaiv that morning brought “significant destruction,” the governor of the region said at the time, injuring at least 10.

On that same day, in Moscow, bureaucrats in President Vladimir Putin’s office were preoccupied by an issue far removed from the brutal war in Ukraine.

“The Transportation Administration has received an appeal,” a Kremlin official wrote, “about the need to install gym equipment Hoist HD-3800 and Hoist HD-3200 instead of Abductor-Standard and Abductor-Technogym in the sports-health wagon No 021-78630.”

Recently leaked documents suggest that the “sports-health wagon” is used by none other than Putin himself.

Remarkably little is known about Putin’s private life. His public image is carefully manicured, as has been evident in the days since Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived mutiny. But a trove of paperwork and photographs obtained exclusively by the London-based Russian investigations group the Dossier Center, and shared with CNN, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and German public broadcaster NDR and WDR, reveals details the Kremlin shrouds from public view, and the extent to which Putin’s paranoia has created a cloistered existence.

The Dossier Center is backed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled former Russian oil tycoon turned Kremlin critic.

The fact that Putin uses a train is well known. The Kremlin itself has released images of meetings held on board, in an ornately decorated boardroom. The contents of the train’s other 20-odd cars, however, have been a closely guarded state secret.

The Dossier Center says the leaked documents came from an insider at Zircon Service, a Russian company tasked by Russian Railways, the state-owned rail operator, with outfitting the cars intended for the office of the Russian president.

Among the parts of the train detailed is car number 021-78630. A glossy brochure made by Zircon itself shows a luxurious gym and spa on wheels designed for Putin, the Dossier Center says.

Thank you for reading Russia's War on Democracy. This post is public so feel free to share it.