Weekend Briefing

Here's what you need to know to start your week

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Morning Headlines

The Kyiv Independent: A Russian Tu-134 military transport aircraft was set on fire at a military airfield in Orenburg Oblast overnight on Oct. 13, Ukraine's military intelligence reported.

POLITICO: Hungary’s latest attempt to disrupt Ukraine aid isn’t about money — it would penalize the EU. It’s about making friends with Donald Trump.

BBC News: The small South Caucasus nation of Georgia has become a multi-billion dollar hub for the international used car market. The vehicles are mostly sourced from the US, and many appear to be ending up in Russia.

ISW: Russian forces have recently resumed tactical offensive attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia Oblast border area and have made tactical gains in localized assaults, but this activity so far does not appear to be a part of a larger operational offensive effort to support the wider Russian offensive operation in western Donetsk Oblast.

13.10.2024

The Kyiv Independent: A total of nearly 37,000 residents have been evacuated from Sumy Oblast, including over 6,400 children, as efforts are ongoing to evacuate more residents under expanded mandatory evacuation orders, the Sumy Oblast Military Administration said on Oct. 13.

France 24: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky accused North Korea on Sunday of sending troops to Russia's army and once again appealed for more support to prevent "a bigger war".

AP News: Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman urged international organizations Sunday to respond to a claim that several Ukrainian prisoners of war were executed in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv had launched an incursion in August.

The Kyiv Independent: Estonia is considering the possibility of purchasing defense supplies from Ukraine, Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said on Oct. 13, according to local media.

Ukrainska Pravda: Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski has announced that the country will soon open an air defence missile base and expressed hope that it will also shoot down Russian missiles flying towards Poland.

WaPo: With Europe unable to supply all the weapons and ammunition Ukraine needs, the E.U. is investing in the country’s rapidly expanding arms industry.

The Kyiv Independent: A meeting with Western defense partners yielded "concrete results" for Ukraine, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov reported on Oct. 13. Umerov visited counterparts from France, the U.K., Italy, and Germany as part of a delegation headed by President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Yahoo News: Lithuanians voted Sunday in elections likely to change the government but keep much else the same, including the NATO and EU member's strong support for Ukraine and moves to bolster defence policy.

Reuters: Russia and China blocked a proposed consensus statement for the East Asia Summit drafted by Southeast Asian countries, mainly over objections to language on the contested South China Sea, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday.

ISW: A Russian milblogger claimed that a Ukrainian F-16 downed a Russian Su-34 fighter aircraft in an unspecified area of the theater on October 12. ISW cannot verify the claim that a Ukrainian F-16 was involved in the reported loss of the Russian Su-34.

12.10.2024

Reuters: President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Russian forces had tried to oust Ukrainian troops from positions in Russia's Kursk border region, but that Kyiv's forces were holding their lines.

WaPo: Russian forces have become deadlier and more agile with the help of illicit Starlink terminals, allowing them to use satellite internet to enhance coordination during assaults, fly more drone sorties and batter Ukrainian troops with accurate artillery fire despite U.S. efforts to stop the flow of technology.

Reuters: Iran has sent two locally made satellites to Russia to be put into orbit by a Russian space vehicle, the semi-official news agency Tasnim reported on Saturday, in the latest space cooperation between the two U.S.-sanctioned countries.

The Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian troops in cooperation with the intelligence service struck a depot containing oil and petroleum products used by the Russian military near the town of Rovenky, Luhansk Oblast.

Reuters: Former Republican President Donald Trump has an edge over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris on who would better navigate the country through the Ukraine and Middle East wars, a Wall Street Journal opinion poll of seven battleground states showed.

The Insider: How the GRU and FSB recruited a private company from Yekaterinburg to do their work around the world. The Insider's investigation into one of many private entities furthering the Kremlin's agenda in Africa and beyond.

Reuters: Poland plans to temporarily suspend the right to asylum as part of a strategy to limit illegal migration amidst tensions with Belarus, which Warsaw accuses of channelling migrants across its border.

Bloomberg: India has surged to become the second-biggest supplier of restricted critical technologies to Russia, US and European officials said, highlighting the challenge in efforts to choke off exports fueling Putin’s war machine (archive).

Reuters: Meta Platforms said on Friday it had removed a network of group accounts targeting Russian-speakers in Moldova ahead of the country's Oct. 20 election, for violation of the company's policy on fake accounts.

ISW: The Russian military command likely aims to rapidly push Ukrainian forces out of Kursk Oblast in order to free up combat power for its priority offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast and to ease the theater-wide operational pressures that the Ukrainian incursion has generated.

11.10.2024

Reuters: A Russian court has ordered the seizure of funds in JPMorgan Chase bank accounts in Russia totalling $155.8 million, court filings showed, as state-owned Russian bank VTB seeks damages over funds blocked abroad.

Bloomberg: The US will support Serbia’s efforts to dial back its reliance on fossil-fuel imports from Russia and accelerate its transition to renewable energy resources, a senior State Department diplomat said during a visit to the Balkan nation (archive).

Reuters: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday announced a 1.4 billion euro military aid package for Ukraine by the end of 2024, telling President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that it was a signal to Russia that the West would not stop supporting Kyiv.

POLITICO: The pro-Russia hacker group NoName057 carried out cyberattacks on Friday against the Flemish parliament website and several Belgian media outlets, including Belga News and De Standaard.

Reuters: The European Union is expected to impose sanctions on Monday on people and organisations linked to Iranian transfers of ballistic missiles to Russia, two European diplomats and a high-ranking EU official said on Friday.

Bloomberg: Russia is proposing changes to cross-border payments conducted among BRICS countries aimed at circumventing the global financial system, as the heavily penalized country seeks to sanctions-proof its own economy (archive).

AFP: Russia on Friday sentenced a Siberian man to 18 years in prison for planning an arson attack on an army office. It also sentenced two men in a region near Moscow to 16 years for setting railways on fire allegedly on the orders of Ukraine.

Reuters: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked Pope Francis during a meeting at the Vatican on Friday for help in securing the release of Ukrainians held captive by Russia.

The Kyiv Independent: Ukraine controls roughly 40-50% of the town of Toretsk while the rest has been captured by Russia, the city's military administration head, Vasyl Chynchyk, said on Oct. 11.

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