Russian invasion of Ukraine: Day 548

Summary for Friday, 25th August 2023 - DAY 548

Good morning

• Russia’s air defence forces destroyed 42 Ukraine-launched drones over the Crimean peninsula and one missile over the Kaluga region early on Friday, the Russian defence ministry said. The ministry said nine drones were destroyed by air defence forces while 33 were suppressed by electronic warfare and crashed over Crimea without reaching their targets. Russia annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.
  
  
• The US will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.
  
  
• Vladimir Putin has called Yevgeny Prigozhin a “talented businessman” with “a difficult fate”. In a meeting at the Kremlin, the Russian president addressed the crash of the Wagner chief’s business jet for the first time, offering condolences to the families of the 10 people onboard. He said that Prigozhin had returned to Russia from Africa on Wednesday and had met “some officials”, without specifying whom. “He was a man with a difficult fate. He made some serious mistakes in his life,” Putin said.
  
  
• An explosion onboard probably brought down the plane presumed to be carrying the Wagner leader, a preliminary US intelligence assessment concluded. US and western officials said it determined that Prigozhin was “very likely” targeted and that the explosion falls in line with Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics”. Several of Prigozhin’s lieutenants were also presumed dead. Pentagon spokesperson Brig Gen Pat Ryder said he had no indication the plane was brought down by a surface-to-air missile. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Kyiv had nothing to do with the explosion. The presumed death follows a pattern of “unclarified” fatalities in Russia, Germany’s foreign minister said on Thursday.
  
  
• Moscow’s Vnukovo and Domodedovo airports suspended flights early on Friday, Russia’s Tass news agency reported. Residents of the Russian regions of Tula and Kaluga earlier posted on social media about explosions they heard in the night, Russian online media outlet Baza reported. Flights were also briefly disrupted on Tuesday and Wednesday during Ukrainian drone attacks.
  
  
• Ukrainian forces marked the country’s independence day with a naval raid into occupied Crimea, and Zelenskiy praised Ukrainians for the defiance and courage that has won them global support in the fight with Russia. The national holiday celebrates Ukraine’s independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, but this year it also marks 18 months since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion plunged the country into a war for survival.
  
  
• Zelenskiy said early on Friday he spoke with the US president, Joe Biden. Zelenskiy said he thanked Biden for his Ukraine Independence Day greetings and support in the conflict with Russia. “Together, we prove that freedom and independence are worth fighting for,” he said in a statement.
  
  
• Russia will return to the Black Sea grain deal only if the west fulfils its “obligations to Moscow”, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
  
  
• Russia has extended the detention of the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich by three months. He was the first journalist arrested by Russian authorities on allegations of spying since the cold war.
  

42 Ukrainian drones launched over Crimea, says Russia

US to train F-16 pilots in October

The United States will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.
The training would begin after the pilots receive English-language training next month, a Pentagon spokesperson, Brig Gen Pat Ryder, said on Thursday. The flight training would take place at the Morris air national guard base in Tucson, Arizona, he added.
Several pilots and dozens of aircraft maintenance crew would take the training, Ryder added.
Last Sunday, Denmark and the Netherlands pledged to donate F-16s to Ukraine, fulfilling a longstanding wish by Ukraine that it says will help strengthen air defences and aid its counteroffensive against Russia’s 2022 invasion. Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, on Thursday said his country would also give Ukraine F-16s.

Lars von Trier defends ‘Russian lives matter also’ comment

Film-maker criticises Danish PM for donating F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine and posing with Volodymyr Zelenskiy

Danish film-maker and provocateur Lars von Trier has defended himself from backlash after writing a social media post that criticised Denmark’s donation of F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.

“Russian lives matter also!” he wrote on Instagram on Tuesday after the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s visit to Denmark, where he and the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, inspected the F-16s to be delivered to his country.
Von Trier addressed his post to “Mr Zelensky and Mr Putin, and not least Mrs Frederiksen (who yesterday, like someone head over heels in love, posed in the cockpit of one of the scariest killing machines of our time, grinning from ear to ear)”.
Von Trier disabled comments on the post but it attracted the attention of Russian and Ukrainian media. Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, shared the director’s post, writing on Twitter: “War is not a movie where actors play life and death. Behind every living Russian terrorist, there is a dead Ukrainian. The choice between the executioner and the victim becomes a tragedy when the artist chooses the side of the executioner”

US imposes sanctions on 13 people and entities over forced deportation and transfer of Ukrainian children

Ukraine shoots down four Russian missiles and a drone, says defence ministry

OPINION: Ruble, Rubble, Death Spiral

Now Russia’s biggest vulnerability is financial.

On August 8, Putin raised eyebrows and rattled the ruble, by transferring artillery and attack helicopters from Wagner Group mercenaries to Rosgvardia, a national guard that reports to him only and is bigger than the Russian military. Then on August 23, the Wagner Group was decapitated when a jet, “apparently” carrying its founder Evgeny Prigozhin and his top leaders, was shot down over Russian airspace. The mercenaries angrily responded that he “died as a result of the actions of traitors to Russia” — which foreshadows internal trouble ahead. But Prigozhin’s death, if real, consolidates Putin’s control, and took place the day before Ukraine’s Independence Day, an unspoken commitment to Russia’s unsuccessful and unaffordable war. Now Russia’s biggest vulnerability is financial. On August 17, Russia’s central bank panicked and raised interest rates to avert a currency meltdown. Now Ukraine targets Russia’s maritime routes for oil exports, Putin’s only source of income. An asymmetrical naval war is underway, aimed at sinking ships and the ruble, and Ukrainians have an advantage.

#1 attack merchant ships; #2 pushed to defend Crimea; #3 Sevastapol unsafe; #4 Drawing Russian navy to Sea of Azov; #5 potential amphibious landing. Naval News

In recent days, Ukrainian sea drones damaged three military ships and drove away six civilian ships. Its aerial drones routinely swarm four Russian regions destroying aircraft, grounding many more, and forcing Moscow airports to divert flights. The target is to disrupt Russia’s “cash flow” by impeding oil exports to China and India that prop up Russia’s economy and war effort. Peppering Russians with these devices is also a form of psychological warfare and has unnerved the public.

Putin’s 18-month-old “special military operation” has destroyed Russia’s business model. Europe gets its energy elsewhere for the most part, and the country depends on exporting oil to China and India, that total $425 million daily. But the oil price cap of $60-a-barrel has made fossil fuels unprofitable. With added shipping and insurance costs, Russia earns only $49.56 a barrel, less than half the $100 a barrel it needs for its government to break even. Last year, overall export income dropped by 30 percent and more than 75 percent of Russian exports are fossil fuels, chemicals, and products made with fossil fuels. Most of these have been produced by Western oil giants such as BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell and all three have withdrawn from Russia.

Moscow is running out of cash. Government deficits are unsustainable, and borrowing to cover shortfalls is expensive due to high interest rates. Russian banks are disconnected from the international system, Moscow’s $350 billion or more in foreign exchange assets in central banks around the world have been frozen, and Putin harvests the country’s rainy-day Sovereign Fund, currently down to $147 billion which will be eaten up in months at current spending rates. The national debt is $500 billion and soaring. In essence, Russia is losing the financial war against the West.



Another sinking Russia ship this summer

Ukraine escalated its naval war to block Russian exports after Moscow withdrew recently from the UN-brokered grain deal, then began attacking Ukrainian ports, grain facilities, ships, and Ukraine’s shipping corridor. As Kyiv explained: "Everything the Russians are moving back and forth on the Black Sea are our valid military targets. This story started with Russia blocking the grain corridor, threatening to attack our vessels, destroying our ports. Our maritime infrastructure is under constant attack."

These days, every time a Ukrainian drone hits a ship, bridge, airport, refinery, port, or storage facility, the ruble falls and requires Putin to borrow more money or print it. What’s significant is that, despite having virtually no navy, Ukraine has altered the balance of power in the Black Sea, according to some experts. Last year, it audaciously sank Russia’s Black Sea flagship anchored in Crimea’s Sevastapol naval base. Since then, its sea drones have damaged the $1 billion Kerch Bridge twice, impairing the only link from Crimea to mainland Russia, and are attacking Novorossiysk harbour (once a safe port on the eastern edge of the Black Sea) where Russia’s Sevastopol fleet has relocated.

“This poses a great dilemma for the Russians,” wrote Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategy at St Andrews University. “Do they now deploy more of their surface assets to protect tankers and the like while they transit the Black Sea – which will make those warships inviting targets? Do they try to attack the Ukrainian coast – which has already shown itself to be deadly to Russian forces?”

Putin’s private army, Rosgvardia, now armed for any rebellion

As Russia’s ship of state lists, Putin shores up his personal armed protection and murders rivals. Since the invasion, Russian official estimates (likely understated) are that $253 billion has fled in 18 months, equivalent to the GDP of Kazakhstan or of New Zealand. Russia’s largest private bank, Alfa Bank, estimates that 1.5 percent of the country’s workforce, mostly highly skilled, has left the country. Imposing currency controls will trigger a full-blown crisis. “The weakening of the ruble is the result of the international screws tightening around the Russian economy, but also the cost of keeping the economy going,” said Erik Meyersson, chief emerging-market strategist at SEB AB in Stockholm in a WSJ interview. “Nobody wants to hold rubles.”

Russia considers mobilising another 450,000 people – Ukraine's Defence Intelligence Chief

Russia has not suspended mobilisation and is considering the possibility of conscripting an additional 450,000 people, Kyrylo Budanov, Chief of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, has said.

Potential replacements for the Wagner group

Russian Volunteer Corps invites Wagner mercenaries to avenge ‘founding father’ Prigozhin by fighting on Ukraine’s side and then marching on Moscow

It appears that your founding father and commanders were cynically executed yesterday. And you know very well who stands behind this. You’re now faced with a serious choice: either to walk into the Defense Ministry stables as chained dogs in the service of your commanders’ executioners, or to avenge them. And to avenge them, you must switch sides and serve Ukraine.

Here is a summary of today's developments:

• Russian investigators have confirmed the death of the pilot of the plane which crashed with the loss of all on board including the mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
  
  
• German prosecutors say they are investigating the attempted murder of Berlin-based Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko after she was one of three Russian-exile journalists who experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning.
  
  
• Poland’s domestic security agency is investigating whether an outbreak of legionnaires’ disease that has killed seven people in the south of the country could be the result of intentional tampering with the water system, authorities said on Friday.
  
  
• The Kremlin said on Friday that western suggestions that the Wagner group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”, and it declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
  
  
• The UK’s defence ministry has said there is not yet definitive proof the Wagner group mercenary boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was onboard a plane that crashed with no survivors earlier this week but it is “highly likely” he is dead, Reuters reports.
  
  
• The US state department on Thursday imposed sanctions on 13 people and entities it said were reportedly connected to the forced deportation and transfer of Ukraine’s children, as Washington ramps up pressure on Moscow over its invasion.
  
  
• The United States will begin flight training for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets in October, the Pentagon has announced.
  

Belarus leader- I urged Prigozhin to "watch out"

Wagner Group cemetery in Russia levelled to the ground

Graves at a cemetery for Wagner Group mercenaries in the village of Nikolayevka, Samara Oblast, have had their crosses removed and been bulldozed to the ground.

• On the evening of 23 August, a small plane crashed in Russia’s Tver Oblast. The Russian Federal Air Transport Agency said Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group, was listed as having been on board.
  
  
• The Federal Air Transport Agency’s complete list of passengers on the plane that crashed in Tver Oblast on the evening of 23 August included Yevgeny Prigozhin.
  
  
• Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin was taking revenge for the humiliation caused by the Wagner Group mutiny and ordered the assassination of their leadership.
  

Ukrainians stuck on border with Georgia after evacuating from occupied territories: Ukraine's Foreign Ministry looks into situation

Six Ukrainian citizens, former prisoners who were forcibly deported to Russia, are stuck in the neutral territory between the borders of Russia and Georgia.

Closing Summary

• The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said on Friday that he warned the Wagner group chiefs Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin to watch out for possible threats to their lives, and he insisted that Wagner fighters would remain in Belarus.
  
  
• A second plane linked to Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin by some Russian media has no connection to the mercenary group and never has had, the CEO of the aircraft operator company told Reuters.
  
  
• Russian investigators said Friday they had recovered flight recorders and 10 bodies from the scene of a plane crash thought to have killed Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin two days ago.
  
  
• Heineken has completed its lengthy exit from Russia with the sale of its operations there for a symbolic €1, after Moscow clamped down on asset sales in retaliation for western sanctions.
  
  
• The Kremlin said on Friday that western suggestions that the Wagner group boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, had been killed on its orders were an “absolute lie”, and it declined to definitively confirm his death, citing the need to wait for test results.
  
  
• The UK’s defence ministry has said there is not yet definitive proof the Wagner group mercenary boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was onboard a plane that crashed with no survivors earlier this week but it is “highly likely” he is dead, Reuters reports.