Vacation improvement

Good morning!

In Latvia, one of the best Russian writers-thoughts Andrei Levkin died , he was 68 years old, here are the first necrologies . The rest is like this:

• In Brussels, a meeting of Ukraine’s partners in “Ramstein format” was held: it was decided to increase to maximum and accelerate the supply of ammunition and air defense systems.
• Financial Times writes with reference to Western intelligence that Russia is pulling aviation to Ukrainian borders.
• In Crimea, workers are collected for “improvement” of trenches.
• “Project” complements the investigation of the Dossier Center: Putin has not only an armored train, but also a network of secret railways and stations.
• Prigozhin confirmed that he created a “troll factory”.
• All graduates of MGIMO are dismissed from the Poland Foreign Ministry.
• The European Union included Russia in the gray list of tax jurisdictions.

Military reports

The Russian army continues attempts at the offensive in the Donbass. British military intelligence believes that Russians were ordered to advance in most areas, but they do not have enough strength to break through. Here is a brief report on ascels at the front over the past week: Russian formations are pushing Ukrainian defense under Bakhmut and pressing in the Luhansk region - in the Kremennaya and Svatov region (the head of the Luhansk region, Sergei Gaidai, expects massive attacks in these directions in the coming days). In other directions, Russians have no success - this is a report from Svyatogorsk freed in September: local residents admit that the “second coming” of Russians will not survive.

The Washington Post writes that the United States warned Ukraine about the attack of a turning point in the war - in the sense that it is time to plan a counterattack, and not spend strength on bahmuth retention. Washington’s concern is explained by the fact that after the transfer of the majority in the House of Representatives to the Republicans of the Biden administration, it will be more difficult to achieve from the Congress of the approval of new packages of assistance to Ukraine ( more details - in the commentary of the Americanist Alexandra Filippenko). At a meeting of international partners of Ukraine, which took place on Tuesday in Brussels, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin urged allies to increase and speed up the supply of heavy equipment, air defense and ammunition to Ukraine, and it will be possible to discuss the supply of aircraft later. The German government signed contracts with the Rheinmetall concern for the production of ammunition for Ukraine, and the United States thinks whether to give Kiev Iranian weapons intercepted on the way to Yemen. Here is a report from the landfill in Poland, where the Ukrainian military masters Leopard 2 tanks. About what drones Ukraine now need, experts talk here .

The British Financial Times writes with reference to Western intelligence that Russia is pulling aviation to Ukrainian borders and can try to change the course of the war by defosing Ukrainian air defense and reaching dominance in the air. Lloyd Austin refused to comment on these messages, and the Prime Minister of Ukraine Denis Shmygal said that in the coming weeks, Russia may not be Ukrainian air defense, but a water supply system.

Against this background, Norwegian intelligence warns of a five -fold reduction in the number of Russian troops on the Kola Peninsula and, accordingly, an increase in the significance of nuclear weapons in the defense of Russia on this site: the ships of the Russian Navy allegedly began to go to sea with tactical nuclear weapons. This leads to a decrease in the threshold of nuclear escalation.

War crimes

• An independent report has been published in the United States on how the Russian authorities interrupt the relations between the abducted Ukrainian children and their relatives remaining in Ukraine, and also engage in the violent re -education of children taken to Russia. The authors of the report emphasize that this is a war crime.
• Here is the story with a happy ending - about the resident of Mariupol Evgenia Megov, who miraculously managed to reunite with three children taken to Russia and then go to Latvia with them. The son and two daughters of the boundary were in the same group of “evacuated” children as the boy Philip, who was subsequently adopted by the Russian authorized person, Maria Lvov-Belova.
• The New York Times claims that Russian troops aimed at the volunteer column in Bakhmut on February 2. Among the dead was an American.

War, view from Russia and annexed Crimea

In the so -called "DPR" they began to block the Google search engine and slow down the work of YouTube. Why is this done, it is not clear - either in order of the experiment before disconnecting YouTube throughout Russia, or to limit the flow of “video points” of military personnel from the front ( here are conversations with relatives of Kaliningraders who sent their video lines from the territory of the “DPR”).

The American television channel CNN talks about the Storm assault unit formed by the Russian Ministry of Defense from prisoners: according to the fighters, no one is operating and properly does not heal their wounded comrades, and other units of the Russian army deliberately open fire on the convicts.

The Russian Ministry of Defense proposed another explanation for the absence of a presidential decree on the completion of mobilization: in response to a request from the Pskov’s deputy, Arthur Gaiduk, the department writes that if we recognize the decree by the victims, mobilized and their families will lose “additional social guarantees and compensations”. Meanwhile, hidden mobilization continues: the residents of Baikonur - the city that Russia rents from Kazakhstan - offer 260 thousand rubles for participation in the war in Ukraine. In the annexed Crimea, workers are recruited for the “improvement” of trenches in the Dzhankoy district.

According to the “layouts” , the Russian Ministry of Defense fired three tyslit generals for the poor quality of the military uniform and attracted a new contractor with higher prices (and this contractor, associated with the children of high-ranking Russian officials, simply “squeezed” the already established production from the previous owner).

Yahoo News reports with reference to an uninquisitive report to the American border-trendy service on an air engineer from Kazan, who asked for asylum in the United States in December last year: according to the publication, from 2018 to 2021 he was engaged in the construction of the largest Russian military aircraft Tu-160. The court in South Korea allowed the Russians who escaped from mobilization and lived for several months at the Inchon airport.

In Kolomna near Moscow, a train repair plant caught fire on Wednesday night. Four residents of Penza and the Penza region became defendants in a criminal case of sabotage on the railway. The 19-year-old resident of the Gukovo of the Rostov region was sentenced to four years in the colony for trying to arson the military enlistment office.

The Perm Garnish Military Court appointed a colony of general regime to contractor Alexei Opaleva, who, after injury and treatment, did not return to the military unit, but went to rest in Krasnodar.

“Discrediting”, “fake -up” and “calls to extremism” today look like this:

• The court in Kerch sentenced the local social worker to the age of two, conditionally under the article on “calls for extremism” for comments on the posts of the dead Russian military and the calls “Otkry ** ven a rash”.
• A criminal case on the “discredit” of the army because of the shouts about the war at the bus stop; Published “Penitent Video”.
• Deputy of the State Council of the Komi Republic Viktor Vorobyov was fined one hundred thousand rubles under the article on the distribution of “fakes”, which pose a threat to public order. Vorobyov openly criticizes the war since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the State Council, he was deprived of the right of words, salaries and membership in the Presidium. The Ministry of Justice of Russia declared him a “foreign agent”.
• The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia put on the wanted list of the deputy of the City Council of Novosibirsk and the former head of the local headquarters of Navalny Sergey Boyko - in a criminal case, about “fakes” or “discrediting”, is not yet clear. Boyko left Russia before the war, after the defeat of Navalny’s headquarters and the beginning of the arrests of coordinators.
• Today, the court in Barnaul will be sentenced to journalist Maria Ponomarenko, who is accused of spreading “fakes” about the Russian army. The prosecutor asked for her nine years in prison - these are the details of the matter .

Other Russian-Belarusian

• In addition to the investigation of the Dossier Center about Putin’s armored train “Project”, he spoke about the network of secret railways and stations, which is used by the Russian president: he has at least three personal stations, except for Moscow, directly to the platform of which a smooth road for a motorcade is laid.
• In the Belgorod region, priests will attend parent meetings and open lessons in schools - the Minister of Education of the region and Metropolitan of Belgorod and Starooskolsky Johnsigned this. It is difficult to understand how this combines attempts to revive the All -Union Pioneer and the General Militization of Education, but an attempt .
• In Belarus, the administrator of the telegram channel "Lunin," gave nine years of the colony of enhanced regime (what its "crime" is, it is not clear because the court was closed, but they accused, among other things, of insulting Lukashenko and creating an "extremist formation").
• In Gomel, the administrator of the Internet community "for the Unified State Language of Belarus" was sentenced to three years in the colony in the case of "extremism".
• Lukashenko signed a law that will launch the process of re -registering political parties in Belarus. And then too many of them are registered there.

International Echo of War

• Prigozhin opened up and, in response to a request from the German edition, Der Spiegel admitted that at one time he really created a “troll factory” to protect Russia from the “boorish aggression of the West”.
• In the United States, the jury found Russian Vladislav Klyushin guilty of insider trade for tens of millions of dollars: according to the prosecution, Klishin and the accomplices hacked computer networks of companies in order to gain access to their reporting and on this basis to make decisions on the purchase or sale of their shares. Clush Clushi is the developer of the monitoring system of the media and social networks “Katyusha”, which was used by the Presidential Administration, the government and the Russian Ministry of Defense, he was also called the owner of the Nezigar telegram channel. On this basis, the Russian authorities consider the pursuit of Klyushin in the United States politically motivated.
• The Poland Foreign Ministry fired all the graduates of MGIMO as part of the process of “decommunization in a wide sense”.
• The European Union included Russia in the "gray list" of tax jurisdictions.
• About how Russia manages to circumvent sanctions and purchase components necessary for the production of weapons, read in an interview with an American expert in the field of export control Eric Woods.

Around the world

• Former President of Kyrgyzstan Almazbek Atambayev, sentenced to 11 years in the colony, was released : he was allowed to leave the country for treatment.
• A bill "on the transparency of financing of external influence", similar to the Russian law on "foreign agents", has been submitted to the Georgian parliament.
• Moldova closed her airspace for 3.5 hours in connection with the appearance of an incomprehensible object similar to meteoaerostat. The US authorities announced that unidentified objects that were shot down by the military for three consecutive days did not pose any threat.
• Three people died , five were injured as a result of shooting at the University of Michigan in the United States.
• India authorities conducted searches in the BBC offices. The corporation has recently released a film about the premiere of Narendra Modi.
• The number of victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria exceeded 40 thousand. On Tuesday, it was possible to save at least four people who spent more than 200 hours under the rubble. In Turkey, more than 100 arrest orders were issued in connection with illegal construction: the authorities blame the deaths of unscrupulous contractors.

Six links

• Talking about today. Conversations with the poet Polina Barskova and prose writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya about the war in Ukraine and attempts to meaningful life against the background of this war.
• Native and close. Historical PAMBER of Alexander Gogun about Soviet cannibalism. Or an excerpt from the Bolfin’s book “Autobiography of Bolshevism: between salvation and fall” (the UFO Publishing House), which is dedicated to the intra-party controversy around the kulaks.
• In addition to St. Valentine. The story of three magical love rites of different eras and peoples. Or a two -hundred -year history of loneliness in European art.

Sincerely yours,
Seven forty