Nikolai Patrushev and Vladimir Putin at a meeting of BRICS officials in Moscow, Russia in May 2015 (Sergey Karpukhin/AP)
Friday’s Coverage: Russia Restricts IAEA Inspectors at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant
Map: Institute for the Study of War
UPDATE 1048 GMT:
The Guardian profiles Volodymyr Saldo, the Russian proxy “Governor” of the occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine.
On the eve of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Saldo was facing a police investigation over his order of a contract killing.
But bolstered by Russia’s invaders, Saldo has not only remained in power but used “terror tactics to construct on Ukrainian soil an extension of the gangster state Putin has built at home, where cronies grow rich and dissent is punished”.
Serhiy Khlan, a former Kherson councillor who now lives in Kyiv, passed on information from those still in the occupied area:
It’s like Stalin’s regime.
If we are all sitting and telling stories and someone says, “Fuck Russia!”, someone will call and tell the Russians. It’s a system of traitors, of whispering, of denunciation.
UPDATE 1036 GMT:
Television journalist Yekaterina Duntsova has been barred from running in Russia’s Presidential election in March.
Her campaign was informed that the ban is because of “mistakes” in her application to register as a candidate on Tuesday.
Russian TV showed members the Central Electoral Commission at voting unanimously to block Duntsova.
A voters’ committee had supported her nomination, with 521 participants endorsing her at a conference center in Moscow.
Duntsova is calling for an end to the Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and for democratic reforms and the release of political prisoners.
UPDATE 0725 GMT:
Ukraine police have arrested a senior Defense Ministry official suspected of embezzling €36 million ($39.7 million) for the purchase of artillery shells.
Prosecutors said the unnamed official developed a system to buy the shells at inflated prices. They claimed searches carried out at the suspect’s home found documents confirming the scheme.
Investigators are already looking into issues over the supply of sub-standard bulletproof vests and the purchase of food supplies and uniforms at inflated prices.
Amid the allegations of corruption, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy removed Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov in early September.
UPDATE 0713 GMT:
Ukrainian Air Force commander Mykola Oleschuk says air defenses downed three Russian Su-34 strike aircraft over southern Ukraine.
Oleschuk said the Su-34s were firing Iran-made Shahed drones early Friday.
He did not give the precise location of the downings, but Russian military bloggers indicated they were over the Kherson region.
In his nightly address to the nation, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed the Su-34s were intercepted over Kherson.
I am grateful to our warriors for downing three Russian “Su” aircraft over our Kherson region today in Ukraine's south.
This is the result of our Air Forces, specifically the Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade of Odesa.
Thank you, warriors! Every Russian pilot must know that… pic.twitter.com/1O1KcTC6pw
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 22, 2023
UPDATE 0659 GMT:
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has crippled Russia’s plans to become a leading exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Russia hoped to increase its share of the global LNG market from 8% to 20% by 2030. The surge would offset the impact of sanctions on Russian pipeline exports of gas.
But Russia’s largest producer of LNG, the private company Novatek, has issued force majeure declarations to clients over the Arctic LNG 2 project. These remove Novatek’s liability over unforeseeable and unavoidable developments that interrupt the expected course of events.
Arctic LNG 2 project was scheduled to begin shipping in the first quarter of 2024 from the Arctic’s Gydan Peninsula to Europe and Asia. Its intended capacity is 19.8 million metric tons annually.
Novatek told clients that US sanctions on Russian LNG in November 2023 mean the timetable and amount of LNG can no longer be met.
Industry sources say Arctic LNG 2 will not be able to ship any commercial supplies before the second quarter of 2024 — and that is problematic because of a lack of ice-cutting tankers.
The South Korean company Hanwha Ocean has canceled three Russian orders of Arc7 tankers because of sanctions. That leaves Arctic LNG 2 with only three gas tankers capable of transporting deliveries through the ice.
Russian economist Andrey Klepach told a gas forum that the project is not likely to have necessary infrastructure until after 2030.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Nikolai Patrushev, Vladimir Putin’s right-hand man and the Secretary of Russia’s State Security Council, reportedly organized the assassination of Wagner Group mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in August 2023.
The claim is made by Western intelligence agencies, former US and Russian security and intelligence officials, and former Kremlin officials in interviews with the Wall Street Journal.
Their accounts confirm that Prigozhin’s private jet was downed, north of Moscow, by a small bomb placed under a wing on August 23. The agencies and officials assure that the Kremlin’s denial of involvement, with Vladimir Putin suggesting that a hand grenade had detonated onboard, is false.
Prigozhin was killed exactly two months after his fighters rebelled amid their chief’s demand for the resignations of Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu and the commander of the Ukraine invasion, Gen. Valery Geramisov.
In their 36-hour rebellion, the mercenaries seized the city of Rostov-on-Don, including the headquarters of the Southern Military Command overseeing the invasion, and advanced within 200 km (125 miles) of Moscow. Prigozhin then agreed with Putin, in a deal brokered by Belarus leader Alexander Prigozhin, to halt the operations.
Under the deal, Prigozhin and the mercenaries were supposedly to relocate in Belarus. However, Prigozhin continued to travel and put out videos challenging Russian military authority. He had just returned from Africa, where the Wagner Group was central to Russian control of minerals and resources, and was flying from Moscow to St. Petersburg when he was killed.
Wagner’s senior commander Dmitry Utkin, other commanders such as Evgeniy Makaryan, and Prigozhin’s bodyguard were among the victims on the downed jet.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Friday’s report by declaring it “pulp fiction”.
The Turn Against Prigozhin
Patrushev became director of the State security service FSB in 1999, the same year that Putin rose to power as Acting President after the sudden resignation of Boris Yeltsin.
In 2008, Putin named Patrushev as Secretary of the State Security Council. He had a central role in the Kremlin’s decisions to seize Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and to launch the invasion of February 24, 2022.
The Western and Russian sources say Patrushev began to warn Putin about Prigozhin‘s intentions in summer 2022. However, the Kremlin was increasingly relying on Wagner mercenaries as a Ukrainian counter-offensive seized parts of the occupied east and south.
A former Russian intelligence officer said Putin began to sour on Prigozhin in October 2022, after the mercenary leader scolded Putin in a phone call — nonitored by Patrushev and other Kremlin officials — about the Wagner Group’s shortage of supplies. Patrushev persuaded Putin to cut communications with Prigozhin by December.
Patrushev reportedly warned of Prigozhin’s hostile response to the attempts of the Russian military to integrate Wagner’s mercenaries. He would try to “unite the former and remaining active Wagner fighters under a far-fetched pretext”, arm them, and “send them to the territory of Russia in order to seize power in the regions bordering Ukraine with a possible advance inland”.
The Kremlin proceeded with plans to require all fighters to register with the Russian Defense Ministry by July 1, sparking Prigozhin’s rebellion on June 23-24.
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