U.S. could give Ukraine energy help as temperatures fall below freezing; rumors of imminent Russian mobilization in Kherson grow
Temperatures are plummeting in Ukraine as each day passes. The capital Kyiv can expect temperatures below freezing this week, with even colder weather in the countryside. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s energy infrastructure remains destroyed in places and severely damaged and compromised in many parts of the country.
It’s been reported that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken could announce on Tuesday new assistance to help restore Ukraine’s power transmission ability. Blinken arrived in Romania on Monday evening ahead of meetings with NATO allies and Group of Seven foreign ministers.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told some NATO diplomats visiting Kyiv that transformers are the biggest element of the country’s power infrastructure that needs to be restored.
Speculation is mounting that Russia could soon try to mobilize men in the occupied part of Kherson, in southern Ukraine.
The Center of National Resistance said Monday that “Russians are bringing riot police to carry out the mobilization of men in the southern temporarily occupied territories.” It said this could take place in December. Ukraine called on residents in the region to leave the region immediately so they don’t “become a resource for the enemy.”
Ukraine is ready to repel new Russian missile attack, air force says
Ukraine’s Air Force said it’s ready to repel a new missile attack by Russian forces, adding to a warning from the country’s president yesterday that civilians should prepare for a new wave of bombing.
“Ukrainians are ready to repel another air attack,” the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Yurii Ihnat, said on Telegram Tuesday.
“Ukrainians experienced the worst in February-March, when hundreds of rockets flew at our heads every day, Russian aircraft flew in many regions, and active air battles took place. Is it possible to scare us with something else?,” the statement said.
Ihnat said that Russia did not have “so many high-precision long-range missiles left” while the commander of Ukraine’s Air Force had “assured us that we are ready, our missiles are loaded, and we will fight back no matter how many missiles” Russia launched.
Ihnat did not give any details as to the evidence of a forthcoming Russian attack, or as to how many missiles it had left with analysts agreeing that it’s difficult to gauge what weapons Moscow has left in its arsenal.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Monday that Russia was preparing new missile attacks that could be even more destructive than those experienced by the country last week that left around 6 million people without power.
“We understand that the terrorists are planning new strikes. We know this for a fact,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. “And as long as they have missiles, they, unfortunately, will not calm down.”
Anxiety is rising in Moscow over the war and how it could end, analysts note
Political analysts from Russia say anxiety is rising in Moscow as the country’s forces face what’s likely to be months more fighting and military losses, and even starts to consider it may be defeated.
That would be catastrophic for Putin and the Kremlin, who have banked Russia’s global capital on winning the war against Ukraine, analysts said, noting that anxiety was rising in Moscow over how the war was progressing.
“Since September, I see a lot of changes [in Russia] and a lot of fears,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and founder and head of political analysis firm R.Politik, told CNBC.
“For the first time since the war started people are beginning to consider the worst case scenario, that Russia can lose, and they don’t see and don’t understand how Russia can get out from this conflict without being destroyed. People are very anxious, they believe that what is going on is a disaster,” she said Monday.
NATO will ramp up aid for Kyiv, says Putin uses winter as ‘weapon of war’
NATO allies will ramp up aid for Ukraine as Russian President Vladimir Putin is using winter as a weapon of war because his forces are failing on the battlefield, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday.
“I think we all have seen these pictures taken from satellites where you see Europe in light and then you see Ukraine dark…so there is a huge task to rebuild all of this,” Stoltenberg said.
“President Putin is trying to use winter as a weapon of war,” he told reporters as NATO foreign ministers gathered in Bucharest for a two-day meeting which he said would serve as a platform to mobilise more support for Ukraine.
NATO foreign ministers will focus on increasing military assistance for Ukraine such as air defence systems and ammunition, even as diplomats acknowledge supply and capacity issues, but also discuss non-lethal aid.
Part of this non-lethal aid – goods such as fuel, medical supplies, winter equipment and drone jammers – has been delivered through a NATO assistance package that allies can contribute to and which Stoltenberg aims to increase.
Stoltenberg’s comments were echoed by several ministers from the 30-member alliance, who were also be joined by Finland and Sweden, as they look to secure full membership pending Turkish and Hungarian ratifications.
Russia seems to have abandoned a major part of its ‘military doctrine,’ UK says
Over the last three months, Russian forces in Ukraine have likely largely stopped deploying as Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs), according to the latest military intelligence update from Britain’s Ministry of Defence.
It said that “the BTG concept has played a major part in Russian military doctrine for the last ten years, and saw battalions integrated with a full range of supporting sub-units, including armour, reconnaissance and (in a departure from usual Western practice) artillery.”
However, it noted that several intrinsic weaknesses of the BTG concept have been exposed in the high intensity, large-scale combat of the Ukraine war so far.
“BTGs’ relatively small allocation of combat infantry has often proved insufficient” and the “decentralised distribution of artillery has not allowed Russia to fully leverage its advantage in numbers of guns.”
In addition, few BTG commanders have been empowered to flexibly exploit opportunities in the way the BTG model was designed to promote, the ministry noted.
Russia could be about to mobilize men in occupied southern Ukraine
Speculation is mounting that Russia could try to mobilize men in the occupied part of Kherson, in southern Ukraine, in December.
The Center of National Resistance, a part of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces to support Ukrainian resistance efforts, said on its website that “Russians are bringing riot police to carry out the mobilization of men in the southern temporarily occupied territories.”
It said riot police units from Dagestan had arrived on the left bank of the Dnipro river of the Kherson region, together with employees of the military commissariats from the pro-Russian, so-called “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, to conduct the mobilization.
“The newly arrived occupiers do not hide that in December the personnel will be involved in the illegal conscription of residents of the region with Russian passports. However, it is not exclusive that all men will fall under the ‘mobilization’, and not only the holders of enemy passports.”
Russian forces withdrew from the western bank of the Dnipro river to the eastern (or “left”) bank earlier in November. They have built up defensive lines and fortifications on that side of the river. Russia has already attempted to “Russify” occupied areas by handing out Russian passports and promoting Russian language and culture while suppressing that of Ukraine.
The Center of National Resistance called on the residents in the “TOT,” or “temporarily occupied territory,” to leave the region “and not become a resource for the enemy.”
Blinken could announce help for Ukraine’s power transmission
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday will announce new assistance to help restore Ukraine’s power transmission ability in the face of Russian attacks targeting the country’s energy grid, a senior State Department official said.
Blinken arrived in Romania on Monday evening ahead of a meetings with NATO allies and foreign ministers from the Group of Seven advanced economies.
Ukraine’s foreign minister told some NATO diplomats visiting Kyiv earlier in the day that transformers were the biggest element of the country’s power infrastructure that needed to be restored.
Kherson region shelled 258 times in the past week, Zelenskyy says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia continues to pound the southern region of Kherson, a part of which Russian forces withdrew from several weeks ago.
“This day, as well as every single day, the occupants again shelled Kherson and the communities of the region. In just one week, the enemy shelled 30 settlements of our Kherson region 258 times,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Monday. Russian forces had also damaged a pumping station supplying water to Mykolaiv, he added.
“Ukraine will never be a place for destruction. Ukraine will never accept orders from these ‘comrades’ from Moscow. We will do everything to restore every object, every house, every enterprise destroyed by the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said.
Ody Team is a qualified social media expert at Coding The Line, London. He had graduated from the University of Cambridge