Back Story Newsletter
Good morning,
The summer is quickly coming to a close and I apologize for writing less, but confess to feeling the need to take a break and regroup. I am away from London in Toronto this week but will soon be back to a normal routine of writing news.
Russia-Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said the world narrowly avoided a “radiation disaster” as the last regular line supplying electricity to Ukraine’s Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was restored hours after being cut by shelling.
The Ukrainian president said officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, must be given urgent access to the site. There are reports this morning the plant may still be off line. Power is needed to run cooling generators and Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is a ticking time bomb.
You may have heard Russian President Putin has ordered the expansion of his army by by 137,000 soldiers to 1.15 million. The fact is Putin’s army is neither feared or effective, and the losses the Russian’s have suffered in Ukraine are unprecedented.
While Russia doesn’t broadcast troop losses they have suffered an estimate 75-80 thousand casualties which is a figure that includes dead and injured. It’s more than in 10 years of the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.
As we speak the war appears to be deadlocked, and Putin who fought a long war in Chechnya at the beginning of his Presidency appears to be digging in for years in Ukraine.
The war is a senseless bloody venture to cement some Russian misled and immoral notion of an Empire. It’s not about NATO because Putin was promised Ukraine would not join NATO.
Putin seems detached from reality as he presses on despite a virtual stalemate in the fighting which has barely shifted any ground in August.
Russian forces have bombed and shelled civilian areas across an independent Ukraine displacing millions of people and killing and wounding innocents. Ukraine is more determined than ever to refuse any ceasefire that would see it cede territories in the east and talk is constant of a Ukrainian counter offensive.
A total of 998,085 Russian passport holders have entered the EU from the day of the invasion on Feb. 24 through Aug. 22, a Frontex spokesperson told Germany’s DPA news agency. Estimates are that up to 3 million Russians, have abandoned their businesses and homes and fled Russia knowing this conflict won’t end in a better life but only paves the road to a dark future. Russians have fled to Cypress, Dubai, Israel and elsewhere if they can afford to leave and start new lives.
Meanwhile, some 7.7 million Ukrainian citizens have entered to the EU and 4.7 million returned to their homeland since the Russian invasion.
Putin’s war has destroyed lives and even in distant European capitals sent ripple effects through economies short on energy and knee deep in inflation. Today in the UK the nation energy regulator Ofgem announced the war in Ukraine will increase energy bills to 3,549 pounds for the average household. That’s an increase of 80% and will test the publics tolerance in Europe for supporting Ukraine against Russia through the winter.
Russia meantime is burning off large amounts of natural gas it would have normally shipped to Germany. Rystad Energy says in a study a plant near Russia’s border with Finlnd is burning an estimated 10m dollars worth of gas every day.
Sanctions and a move away from Russian energy are having effects on the Russian economy and Putin’s war machine but are not crippling. Increasingly now discussions in the west centre of Putin’s political future, and how or if he can be removed from power.
As I warned months ago, Putin will not easily blink, and with little regard for his own people will press forward with a conflict that only brings misery to Ukraine and others.
Don’t trust people who quote ‘Russian sources’ on Putin’s intentions. There is a very tight and isolated inner circle inside the Kremlin making decisions on war objectives that have never been fully explained because they expand or shrink depending on success or set back on the battle field.
For the moment the target seems to be to annex the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, if Russian forces can hold those areas, and that’s a big if, as Ukraine gains more sophisticated weaponry and hopes to regain lost territory.
Have a good day everyone and share the newsletter.
Dana Lewis