Important Takeaways:
- The story of the transfer of Iranian missiles to Russia is not just about the missiles; it is about the larger symbol.
- “We are aware of the credible information provided by allies on the delivery of Iranian ballistic missiles to Russia,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said, according to reports. The reports claim Iran has sent short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. Russia has been fighting a war against Ukraine for more than two years. The Iranian ties with Russia are not new; the countries have worked together for decades on various issues, and Iran increasingly wants to partner with Russia on numerous issues.
- Iran’s Mehr News also reported on the claims. Iran’s foreign ministry has denied the claims.
- The CNN report noted that it is not clear when the missiles were delivered. “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told allies at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany on Friday that Ukraine urgently needed more air defense systems,” CNN noted.
- Reports that Turkey will attend an upcoming Arab League meeting and that Turkey and the Syrian regime could reconcile are also part of the story. Syria’s regime is a key ally of Moscow. Iran uses Syria to threaten Israel. Iran traffics weapons via Syria to Lebanon and also bases weapons in Syria.
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Important Takeaways:
- The United States and nine allied nations on Thursday formally accused the Russian government of masterminding cyberattacks in 2020 on Ukrainian critical infrastructure, among many other targets.
- The countries pinned the attacks, which largely used a type of malware known as “WhisperGate,” on GRU Unit 29155, a Russian military hacking group.
- Hacking efforts as part of this campaign began in 2020, and included attacks on Ukrainian groups in January 2022 ahead of Russia’s invasion, along with critical infrastructure organizations in government, transportation, financial, health and other sectors in NATO member states.
- According to the FBI, this hacking activity included more than 14,000 observed instances of scanning networks in more than 20 NATO member states and European nations, along with targeting of groups in Central American and Asian nations.
- The Justice Department accused the group of carrying out attacks, including the probing of an unnamed Maryland-based U.S. government agency between August 2021 and February 2022, and of hacking the transportation infrastructure of an unnamed Central European nation supportive of Ukraine in mid-2022.
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Important Takeaways:
- Andriy Yermak, the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, will meet with US officials “to try to concretely convince the White House to lift restrictions on long-range weapons strikes on Russian territory,” the lawmaker said.
- “They will provide a list of priority targets, without which it will be difficult to change the course of the war in Ukraine’s favor.”
- Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky once again called for allowing Ukraine to carry out strikes deeper inside Russia and “lifting the restrictions on long-range strikes for Ukraine now,” arguing it would end the war sooner “for Ukraine and the world as a whole.”
- “We consider strikes deep into Russian territory with American weapons no more provocative than strikes with American weapons on Russian territory near the border,” the Ukrainian lawmaker told CNN. “Both are Russian territory and it makes no difference how deep the targets are.”
- The Ukrainian seizure of Russian land in Kursk earlier this month injected a fresh wrinkle of uncertainty in what had become a grinding war of attrition with only small incremental gains apparently possible for either side.
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Important Takeaways:
- Three weeks ago, Ukraine’s military launched a stunning operation to take the war in Ukraine back onto the territory of the country that launched it. Three weeks later, the Ukrainians still occupy hundreds of miles of territory in Russia’s western Kursk region.
- The incursion had a number of goals: to force Russia to divert its forces from Ukraine to defend its own towns and cities; to seize territory that might later be used for bargaining leverage in peace negotiations; and to send a political message to the Russian people and their leaders that they are not safe from the consequences of the war launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin nearly two-and-a-half years ago.
- But there was also a less obvious objective: Leaders in Kyiv likely hoped to send a message to their friends in the United States and Europe that their approach to the war has been overly cautious — that fears about “escalation,” “red lines,” and Russian nuclear use — a threat that Putin himself has voiced repeatedly — have been overblown.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged this explicitly in a speech on August 19, saying, “We are now witnessing a significant ideological shift, namely, the whole naive, illusory concept of so-called ‘red lines’ refs somewhere near Sudzha” — a town near the border now under the control of Ukrainian forces.
- The Russian government has certainly done everything in its power to add nuclear uncertainty to Western leaders’ calculations. From the very first day of the invasion, Putin has made repeated references to his country’s nuclear arsenal — the largest in the world — and warned countries that get in Russia’s way of “consequences that you have never faced in your history.”
- Over the course of the war, Putin and other Russian officials have made repeated references to “red lines” that should not be crossed if Western governments don’t want to face a catastrophic response. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been particularly active in threatening foreign powers with “nuclear apocalypse” via his social media accounts.
- It’s not all rhetoric: The Russian government has taken steps such as moving some of its nuclear weapons to Belarus and conducting realistic drills for using tactical nuclear weapons — seemingly in an effort to remind Ukraine’s allies of Russia’s capabilities.
- Pavel Podvig, senior researcher on Russia’s nuclear arsenal at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva [thinks] Putin would be unlikely to consider any sort of nuclear use unless the very existence of the Russian state were threatened. “Even the loss of a region like Kursk technically would not qualify,”
- As the Council on Foreign Relations’s Fix put it, Western “red lines” on aid to Ukraine have clearly shifted. The problem is “we don’t know how the red lines are shifting in Putin’s mind.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Russia unleashed a massive drone and missile barrage throughout Ukraine on Monday, targeting energy infrastructure. At least three people were reported killed, and power cuts were reported across the country.
- The barrage began around midnight and continued beyond daybreak in what appeared to be Russia’s biggest attack against Ukraine in weeks.
- Russian forces fired drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic ballistic Kinzhal missiles at 15 Ukrainian regions – more than half the country, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Monday morning.
- Ukraine’s private energy company, DTEK, introduced emergency blackouts, saying in an online statement that “energy workers throughout the country work 24/7 to restore light in the homes of Ukrainians.”
- In the wake of the barrage and the power cuts, regional officials all across Ukraine were ordered to open “points of invincibility” – shelter-type places where people can charge their devices and get refreshments during energy blackouts, Prime Minister Shmyhal said. Such points were first opened in Ukraine in the fall of 2022, when Russia targeted the country’s energy infrastructure with weekly barrages.
- In Russia, in the meantime, officials reported a Ukrainian drone attack overnight and on Monday morning.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones that were shot down by air defenses in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
- The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region.
- Two Russian citizens who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the foiled drone attack simply showed how well defended Moscow now was, and that Ukraine was “playing with fire” by attacking Russia both in Kursk and in Moscow.
- Russia meanwhile is advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it controls about 18% of the territory, and battling to repel Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, the biggest foreign attack on Russian territory since World War Two.
- In Kursk, Russian war bloggers said intense battles were ongoing along the front in the region where Ukraine has carved out at least 450 square km (175 square miles) of Russian territory.
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Important Takeaways:
- Thousands of Russian troops face being cut off in what would be a major military embarrassment for Vladimir Putin’s generals.
- Russia’s army is struggling to contain a daring and ambitious Ukrainian attack that has seized so far around 483 square miles of territory, along with 92 settlements.
- Ukraine has sought to press home its attack and has shown no sign of curtailing its assault.
- Three bridges across the Seim River have been either destroyed or badly damaged, it has been claimed, with Ukraine now poised to take even more territory.
- Kyiv’s army is looking to push forward from its existing bridgehead around the Russian town of Sudzha, captured two weeks ago.
- Reports suggest that Ukrainian forces are just 1.6 miles away from the Seim River, where Russian soldiers are stuck in the Korenevsky district.
- If the Ukrainians succeed in reaching the Seim, then Russian troops south of the river will effectively be cut off from the rest of their army.
- Ukraine’s troops will also gain another sizeable chunk of Russian land, around 270 square miles.
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Important Takeaways:
- Vladimir Putin fumed Monday during a televised meeting that his troops need to secure the Russian border after a shock Ukraine incursion. Days later, 100 of them surrendered.
- The latest victory is part of a surprise incursion launched by Ukraine into Russian territory earlier this month.
- Officials confirmed to the Ukrainian newspaper and Bloomberg News that the men, 102 total, were captured at a large underground facility in Kursk Oblast, the Russian region where Ukraine launched its surprise incursion on August 6.
- They were said to be heavily stocked with ammunition and supplies, while the bunker was outfitted with a dining hall, armory, and bathhouse.
- On top of capturing hundreds of soldiers and seizing territory, Ukraine’s surprise incursion has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of civilians and represents the most significant attack on Russia since World War II.
- Analysts generally agree that Ukraine’s incursion is designed to pull Russian troops away from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, where the country has slowly lost ground in recent weeks, and to capture troops and territory that can act as bargaining chips in potential negotiations.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine’s shock incursion across the Russian border into Kursk Oblast may force important strategic decisions on Moscow as President Vladimir Putin’s troops are taken as prisoners of war and supply lines are threatened. The Ukrainian attack took Russian forces by surprise, according to one U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
- According to the Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine’s cross-border gambit has allowed Kyiv to seize the battlefield initiative, long held by Russian forces who were able to dictate the time and place of fighting and force Ukrainian troops to expend manpower and equipment on defensive operations.
- “It’s been a very real success,” former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, now a senior director at the Atlantic Council, told USA TODAY. “The latest data, not confirmed, says they’ve taken as much as 750 square kilometers and may have gone as far as 35 kilometers from the border.”
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged the operation in a post Saturday to X, formerly Twitter, describing a push to drive the war into “the aggressor’s territory.” Zelenskyy thanked international partners for implementing sanctions against Russia and the United States for new defense aid, including Stinger missiles, HIMARS mobile artillery ammunition and 155mm artillery shells.
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Important Takeaways:
- Washington continues to throw billions into the fire of the Ukraine conflict despite its ballooning debt, Russia’s ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov has said.
- The comments followed Monday’s announcement by the Pentagon that the US will send an additional $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine.
- “Washington continues to burn colossal money in the furnace of the Ukraine conflict, and it does so in the face of record levels of US government debt,” the diplomat told journalists.
- US national debt has reached a new milestone, surpassing the $35 trillion mark for the first time, the Treasury Department stated on Monday
- The Pentagon said on Monday that Washington has allocated a total of $56.1 billion to Kiev since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
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