Igor Girkin, a former Russian militant commander and prominent critical voice in the Russian milblogger information space, returned to Telegram following a nearly two-month stint in Ukraine and used his return to offer a vitriolic first-hand account of the situation on the frontlines. Girkin posted on Telegram on December 6 to speak on his experiences in Ukraine for the first time since he announced he was leaving to join the Russian army to fight in Ukraine in October.[9] Girkin detailed his multiple and unsuccessful efforts to register and join various units and contentious interactions with Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) commanders and noted that he finally joined a DNR battalion illegally, which allowed him to deploy to the Svatove area in Luhansk Oblast.[10] Girkin concluded that based on his experience on the frontline, it is clear that Russian forces are suffering from a “crisis of strategic planning” due to the fact that troops are relying only on tactical inertia and not cohering around a wider strategic goal.[11] Girkin also noted that the Kremlin will be unsuccessful in igniting protests in Ukraine with its missile campaign against critical energy infrastructure, further noting that winter weather will not stop Ukrainian forces from advancing.[12] Several other prominent milbloggers amplified Girkin’s story and conclusions, emphasizing Girkin’s past leadership role in hostilities in Donbas in 2014.[13] This scathing critique of the Russian military leadership from one of the most vocal and well-known figureheads of the hyper-nationalist information space, who has now reportedly acquired first-hand experiences of the nuances of frontline life, is likely to exacerbate tension between Russian military leadership and milbloggers and may reignite fragmentation within the ultra-nationalist community itself.
www.understandingwar.org/...
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued offensive operations around Bakhmut on December 5 and 6, but have been unable to surround the city.[21] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are concentrating on improving their tactical positions around Bakhmut and conducted ground assaults in Bakhmut; north of Bakhmut, in Bilohorivka, Soledar, Berestove, Verkhnokamianske, Bakhmutske, and Andriivka; and south of Bakhmut in Opytne, Kurdyuimivka, Yakovlivka, and Klishchiivka on December 5 and 6.[22] Ukrainian Spokesperson for the Eastern Group of Ukrainian Armed Forces, Serhiy Cherevaty, stated on December 5 that the Bakhmut area is currently experiencing the most intense battles on the frontline but that Ukrainian forces are holding their defenses and inflicting maximum losses on Russian forces.[23]
Russian sources claimed that Russian troops made marginal gains around Bakhmut on December 5 and 6. Spokesperson for Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), Daniil Bezsonov, claimed that Wagner forces are advancing in the Bakhmut area, inflicting major losses on Ukrainian forces.[24] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Kurdyumivka (13km southeast of Bakhmut) on December 6, resulting in heavy Ukrainian losses.[25] Russian milbloggers claimed on December 5 and 6 that Wagner forces pushed through Ukrainian defenses around Opytne (4km south of Bakhmut) and southeast of Bakhmut and are trying to establish control in the settlement, but Wagner financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin refuted these claims on December 6.[26] Russian milbloggers claimed that the fighting around Soledar (13km northeast of Bakhmut), Bakhmut, and in Opytne, Klishchiivka, and Kurdyumivka (all three within 14km south of Bakhmut) remained fierce on December 6.[27] Former DNR Security Minister, Alexander Khodakovsky, noted that Russians do not have the advantage of shocking unsuspecting Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut as they had done during the siege of Mariupol in March.[28] Khodakovsky argued that Russian forces are making marginal advances around Bakhmut but noted that the layout of the frontline and Ukraine’s months-long resistance prevents Russian forces from large-scale successes in the Bakhmut direction.[29]
Russian forces continued to conduct offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on December 5 and 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Marinka (30km southwest of Avdiivka), Novomykhailivka (36km southwest of Avdiivka), and Krasnohorivka (about 28km southwest of Avdiivka) on December 5 and 6.[30] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks in Marinka on December 6 and multiple Russian sources shared video footage purporting to show Russian forces in captured Ukrainian positions in Marinka on December 5 and 6.[31] A Russian source shared video footage of the 100th Brigade of the DNR People’s Militia in the Nevelske direction, southwest of Avdiivka, on December 6.[32] Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast Head Pavlo Kyrylenko reported that Russian forces shelled Avdiivka on December 5, and Russian sources claimed that Russian forces, including artillerymen of the DNR 1st Army Corps, shelled Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka on December 6.[33] Kyrylenko also reported that Russian forces shelled Kurakhove and Hostre, west of Krasnohorivka, on December 5.[34] The Deputy Interior Minister of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), Vitaly Kiselev, claimed that Russian forces fired on Ukrainian positions in Pervomaiske (about 28km southwest of Avdiivka) and Krasnohorivka on December 5.[35] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued routine shelling along the line of contact in this area.[36]
Russian forces continued to conduct defensive operations in western Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts on December 5 and 6. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted an airstrike near Vuhledar on December 5.[37] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Volodymyrivka, southeast of Vuhledar, and Novodarivka, on the eastern border of Zaporizhia Oblast, on December 6.[38] Multiple Ukrainian and Russian sources echoed reports that Russian forces shelled Vuhledar on December 5.[39] Kiselev claimed that Russian forces struck Ukrainian concentrations in Zolota Nyva, west of Vuhledar, on December 5.[40] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued intense shelling along the line of contact in western Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts.[41]
www.understandingwar.org/...
Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)
Ukrainian forces have likely made recent gains in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast as part of ongoing counteroffensive operations. The Ukrainian General Staff indicated on December 5 that Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions near Tavylzankha, Bohdanivske, and Lyman Pershyi (all about 50km northwest of Svatove and 15km south of the international border), indicating that Ukrainian troops have likely made limited advances in this area.[14] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) also inadvertently indicated that Ukrainian troops have taken control of Kyslivka (25km northwest of Svatove) by claiming that Russian strikes targeted a Ukrainian command post in Kyslivka on December 5.[15] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian troops continued to attack Russian positions northwest of Svatove between December 5 and 6.[16]
Russian forces continued defending against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations and conducted limited attacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on December 5 and 6. Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai reported on December 5 that Russian troops are attempting to hold their positions along the entire Svatove-Kreminna line as they prepare defensive fallback positions in Starobilsk (50km east of the Svatove-Kreminna line).[17] Haidai also noted on December 6 that Russian forces in this area have had adequate time to prepare echeloned defensive lines and have heavily mined the surrounding territory to complicate Ukrainian advances.[18] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported fighting along the Svatove-Kreminna line near Raihorodka (11km southwest of Svatove), Ploshchanka (15km northwest of Kreminna), Chervonopopivka (5km north of Kreminna), Zhytlivka (3km north of Kreminna), and Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna) between December 4 and 6.[19] Russian milbloggers noted that elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army are operating near Svatove.[20]
www.understandingwar.org/...
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova denied rumors on December 5 that Russia is preparing to withdraw from or transfer control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) to another actor.[49] Zakharova also claimed explicitly that Russia is the only safe operator of the ZNPP.[50] Zakharova had responded to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi’s December 2 statement that there had been serious headway in negotiations about establishing a safety and security zone around the ZNPP.[51] However, as ISW has previously reported, Russian media, milbloggers, and low-level occupation officials have long perpetuated rumors of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that could threaten Russian positions at the ZNPP and broader western Zaporizhia Oblast in a way that sets information conditions (intentionally or otherwise) for a potential Russian withdrawal from the ZNPP.[52] Zakharova’s December 5 statements suggest that Russian forces currently do not plan to withdraw from the ZNPP but may do so if certain conditions—such as secure positions in western Zaporizhia Oblast and de facto IAEA recognition of Russian sovereignty over the plant – are not met. Zakharova’s statement also indicates that the Kremlin’s November 28 denials of the same rumors have failed to quell this narrative.[53]
www.understandingwar.org/...
Russian President Vladimir Putin drove a Mercedes across the Crimean bridge Monday, two months after it was severely damaged in a truck bombing Russian officials blamed on a Ukrainian terrorist attack.
Putin drove with Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, who oversaw the bridge reconstruction, and spoke with some of the 500 workers at the site. Repairs on the railroad portion of the bridge are expected to be completed in 6-7 months, authorities said.
Ukraine hinted at responsibility for the attack but never fully acknowledged involvement. Russian authorities blamed Ukraine's intelligence service and responded with several waves of missile and drone strikes that have battered Ukraine’s energy facilities and other key infrastructure.
The bridge links Russia’s mainland with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine officials have vowed to take back Crimea.
www.usatoday.com/...
(2014)
American neocons helped destabilize Ukraine and engineer the overthrow of its elected government, a “regime change” on Russia’s western border. But the coup – and the neo-Nazi militias at the forefront – also reveal divisions within the Obama administration, reports Robert Parry.
More than five years into his presidency, Barack Obama has failed to take full control over his foreign policy, allowing a bureaucracy shaped by long years of Republican control and spurred on by a neocon-dominated U.S. news media to frustrate many of his efforts to redirect America’s approach to the world in a more peaceful direction.
But Obama deserves a big dose of the blame for this predicament because he did little to neutralize the government holdovers and indeed played into their hands with his initial appointments to head the State and Defense departments, Hillary Clinton, a neocon-leaning Democrat, and Robert Gates, a Republican cold warrior, respectively.
[...]
As President, Obama has sought a more cooperative relationship with Russia’s Putin and, generally, a less belligerent approach toward adversarial countries. Obama has been supported by an inner circle at the White House with analytical assistance from some elements of the U.S. intelligence community.
But the neocon momentum at the State Department and from other parts of the U.S. government has continued in the direction set by George W. Bush’s neocon administration and by neocon-lite Democrats who surrounded Secretary of State Clinton during Obama’s first term.
The two competing currents of geopolitical thinking – a less combative one from the White House and a more aggressive one from the foreign policy bureaucracy – have often worked at cross-purposes. But Obama, with only a few exceptions, has been unwilling to confront the hardliners or even fully articulate his foreign policy vision publicly.
For instance, Obama succumbed to the insistence of Gates, Clinton and Gen. David Petraeus to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, though the President reportedly felt trapped into the decision which he soon regretted. In 2010, Obama backed away from a Brazilian-Turkish-brokered deal with Iran to curtail its nuclear program after Clinton denounced the arrangement and pushed for economic sanctions and confrontation as favored by the neocons and Israel.
Just last summer, Obama – only at the last second – reversed a course charted by the State Department favoring a military intervention in Syria over disputed U.S. claims that the Syrian government had launched a chemical weapons attack on civilians. Putin helped arrange a way out for Obama by getting the Syrian government to agree to surrender its chemical weapons. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Showdown for War or Peace.”]
truthout.org/...
Ever since Russia launched its brutal war in Ukraine the Kremlin has banked on American conservative political and media allies to weaken US support for Ukraine and deployed disinformation operations to falsify the horrors of the war for both US and Russian audiences, say disinformation experts.
Some of the Kremlin’s most blatant falsehoods about the war aimed at undercutting US aid for Ukraine have been promoted by major figures on the American right, from Holocaust denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes to ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Fox News star Tucker Carlson, whose audience of millions is deemed especially helpful to Russian objectives.
On a more political track, House Republican Freedom Caucus members such as Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Scott Perry – who in May voted with 54 other Republican members against a $40bn aid package for Ukraine, and have raised other concerns about the war – have proved useful, though perhaps unwitting, Kremlin allies at times.
[…]
John Sipher, who served in the CIA’s national clandestine services for 28 years with a stint leading its Russia operations, said that Putin is using a playbook that he honed during his long career with the KGB to influence policy and Russian opinion.
“I think Putin’s weakness is that he is not a strategic thinker but reverts to what he knows – using covert means to influence and undermine others,” Sipher said. “He cannot win on the battlefield so he uses threats and intimidations to influence and scare western leaders into backing down or pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table.”
Sipher noted that historically Putin “has weaponized energy, information, refugees, food and nuclear threats to get his way. I think his nuclear threats are just a means to sow unease and dissension among supporters of Ukraine, and suspect that the discussion of a ‘dirty bomb’ is meant to signal to his domestic audience that Ukraine is a real threat, and the population should support Putin’s tough measures.”
In the US the audiences receiving pro-Putin messages have been boosted by Rumble, the video sharing platform, which has featured RT content including an interview with two Americans captured in Ukraine who were badly beaten by Russians and later released, as the New York Times last month reported.
www.theguardian.com/...
"We expect further strengthening of anti-corruption institutions so they can effectively function and deliver results. First and foremost it should be amendments to legislation securing the indepence of the SAPO and its protection from political influence."
"Despite the war we hope to finish the first stage of judicial reform soon and get functional judicial governance bodies - High Council of Justice and High Qualification Commission of Judges".
"There is a full-scale invasion in Ukraine. Yet anti-corruption institutions have never stopped working. First days after invasion many detectives, AC prosecutors decided to enlist into army. Still some of them are fighting actually in the trenches, on the front line. "
"With conventional war happening and 50% of energy collapsing, but still there is an investigation and prosecution of corruption of senior officials.Most recent case happening this week when major criminal organization was detained by NABU and SAPO."
"The new Head of Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecution Office was appointed in summer, and its head showed how important the independent leadership in anti-corruption authorities. Many cases that were blocked for a while, are unblocked now which lead to successful results."
"Strategic corruption was used to destroy Ukraine from inside by russia but failed.russian uses strategic corruption in other countries across world.I’m very glad russia failed to destroy Ukraine from inside with strategic corruption.I hope that it will fail in other countries."
"In Ukraine we have existent effective anti-corruption institutions. EU, US should just ensure that these AC institutions are strengthened to control the recovery process, to use recovery money effectively."
• • •