Don's Weekly, 22 July 2024: Part 4

by Donald Hill

(…continued from Part 3…)

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Ukraine

Ukrainians serving prison terms can be paroled to fight in the army if they haven’t been convicted of rape, sexual assault, murdering two or more people, and they haven’t been convicted of a national security crime. Those that apply are interviewed, have their record reviewed and are given a medical exam. Of their prison population of 42,000, about 27,000 would be eligible for parole. Those that accept the terms are sent to a basic training program to learn the fundamentals of combat and then are sent to units to complete their training. Unlike Russian prisoners, Ukrainian parolees serve in regular units and can earn leadership positions. Some find the training difficult after inactivity in the prison. One prisoner said he’ll volunteer after his one year sentence is completed because there are no home visits as a parolee.

One report said that over 3,000 prisoners have been paroled to military units. Another report says that the military hoped to recruit 5,000 prisoners initially and possibly up to 15,000 under the best of circumstances. Of the 5,196 applicants so far, 368 have been rejected due to health reasons and 2,872 have been accepted into the armed forces.

Convicted prisoners train at the facility known as the “polygon” in the Dniepropetrovsk region in June.

A US/UK/Polish civilian team received an award from Ukraine for hacking Russian web sites. Past exploits included stealing data from defense firms, hacking cameras to monitor Russian troop movements, and notifying Ukraine that the Russians were using cameras to watch Ukrainian movements. As they developed a relationship with Ukraine’s military, the military would sometimes provide them with ideas and they would provide the military with options, but Ukraine never assisted them or paid them as that might cross some legal lines. The International Committee of the Red Cross issued rules for civilians hacking on behalf of a wartime effort.

A missile hit a playground in Mykolaiv. 24 were injured and four killed, including a 10 year old boy who liked folk dancing.

30 Ukrainians were arrested for stealing $3.73 million.

Ukraine is warming at a faster rate than Europe due to climate change and desert conditions are beginning to form in the Odesa and Kherson regions. Crop yields for sunflowers were much lower due to the heat and it is being abandoned in the south and some are growing it further north. The war has taken a toll on the environment, as well. Russia cut a lot of Ukrainian timber when it occupied the Kharkiv region, mines and unexploded ordinance will take a century or more to clear and a third of Ukrainian forests have been killed by shelling and some may never recover. When the Kakhovka dam was destroyed, the reservoir was emptied. The land to the south in Kherson and Crimea were irrigated from that reservoir through 12,000 km of canals and it has lost up to 85% of its vegetation, returning to its semi-desert state.

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Diplomacy

Throughout the two Russian invasions, Russia paid Ukraine to ship oil and gas through their pipelines. Ukraine will not renew a five year contract to ship gas when it expires in December. Ukraine did stop the shipment of Lukoil oil but oil from other Russian companies continued. This directly impacts Slovakia and Hungary. Cheap Russian oil has been a source of support for Orban’s regime and Hungary’s foreign minister is questioning why an aspiring EU member was endangering the energy security of two existing EU members.

The Baltic nations will sever their electrical grid from Russia and Belarus in 2025 and align it with Europe. Lithuania wants to do it earlier but Estonia says it will cost too much and all three nations must do it together.

Lithuania’s parliament for 103 for, 1 against and 4 abstaining, to withdraw from the Oslo agreement on cluster munitions. This removes agreed upon restrictions to procure, store and use cluster munitions. Modern cluster munitions have a failure rate of less than 3% compared to the 1% failure rate of standard HE ammo. Russian cluster munition failure rates are between 30-40%.

Denmark joined Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Lithuania in not attending any meetings organized by Hungary after Orban traveled to Russia and China on a peace mission in the capacity of the rotating EU president. Latvia and Slovenia are considering doing the same.

Three people in Spain were arrested for hacking on behalf of Russia.

Zelensky says working with Trump will be hard. Trump’s running mate, Vance, said he “doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other”, and Zelensky diplomatically said that maybe doesn’t understand what is happening in Ukraine so they will have to work with the US. He said that the only way to achieve a quick peace, as Trump said he will create, is for Ukraine to surrender land and they will never do that. Zelensky said he would step down as president after the war ends.

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(….to be concluded with another feature on ‘Equipment’, in the Part 5…)