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The Mural ‘St. Javelina’ depicting a Madonna holding a javelin anti-tank missile that has been crucial for the Ukrainian defense, has been painted on a building of the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv.
Lila Paulou and Lisa Berdet.
May 27, 2022
👋 Hafa adai!*
Welcome to Friday, where Russia warns about Ukraine attacks inside its territory, a video of deadly Brazilian police violence sparks outrage and a grandmother in New Zealand takes on Elon Musk and Tesla. We also feature a story from Buenos Aires daily Clarin about "Agrotokens," a way that farmers in Argentina are turning surplus grain into a kind of tangible cryptocurrency.
[*Chamorro, Mariana Islands]
💡 SPOTLIGHT
The "Corrosion" Strategy: How Ukraine Targets Russian Networks And Morale
Russia continues to shrink its ambitions in Donbas, as Ukraine doubles down on its strategy of guerilla attacks, interrupting supply and communication contacts and ultimately undermines the morale of the enemy, writes Clemens Wergin for Die Welt.
For years to come, military experts will be studying how Ukraine managed to push back a far stronger enemy and grind Russia’s major offensive in the east of the country to a halt.
Some military strategists are already trying to find a term to sum up the Ukrainians’ success. Australian military expert and retired army major general Mick Ryan credited Kyiv's stunning showing to "the adoption of a simple military strategy: corrosion. The Ukrainian approach has embraced the corrosion of the Russian physical, moral, and intellectual capacity to fight and win in Ukraine.”
Ryan argues that while the Ukrainians have used the firepower they possess to halt the Russian advance, while aggressively targeting their enemy’s greatest shortcoming. “They have attacked the weakest physical support systems of an army in the field – communications networks, logistic supply routes, rear areas, artillery and senior commanders in their command posts,” Ryan wrote.
According to reports, Ukraine’s corrosion strategy has focused on a previously neglected area: guerrilla attacks in Russian-occupied cities. Last week, the Ukrainian army reported that it had killed multiple Russian officers in an attack in Melitopol. The following day, it reported another successful attack in the city, this time on a Russian armored train apparently transporting soldiers from Crimea to the front.
The situation is also escalating in occupied Kherson, which the Russians plan to annex by holding a rigged so-called “referendum.” The city is plastered with posters calling for Russian soldiers to leave or be killed.
One such poster shows a Ukrainian guerrilla fighter slitting the throat of a Russian soldier from behind. Above the image are the words “Get ready! We know all your patrol routes! Kherson is Ukraine!” The intention is clear: to make sure the Russian occupiers don’t feel safe anywhere and to further erode the already shaky morale among Russian troops.
Over the last few days, the situation at the front has not changed significantly. The Russians are concentrating their attacks on the Donbas region, but have only managed to take a few villages there, and it seems they have paid for the ground gained with heavy losses. The offensive on the Izium axis is still stalled, while around Kharkiv the Ukrainians have pushed the Russians back towards the Russian-Ukrainian border. Their artillery may soon be within range of the railway line between the Russian city of Belgorod and the occupied Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, an important supply line for the Russians.
For the last few days, the Ukrainian military in the south of the country has been reporting that the Russians are digging in and reinforcing their positions at certain points along the front. All of which suggests that they intend to halt their offensive there and focus instead on holding the territory they have already gained.
At the same time, more and more heavy weaponry sent from Western countries is arriving at Ukrainian positions in the east of the country. According to the Pentagon, 79 of the 90 M777 howitzers sent from the US have now arrived at the front, and the Soviet-style Type T-72M1 and T-72M1R tanks sent from Poland have apparently also arrived, making the Ukrainians more evenly matched with the Russians in terms of artillery.
“The current situation favors a stalemate in the short term and is increasingly favoring Ukraine in the medium to long term,” according to Polish military analyst Konrad Muzyka from Rochan Consulting. “The influx of Western weapons and Ukrainian personnel will allow Kyiv to start pushing Russian forces back across a much wider stretch of the front.”
Many military experts believe that, with the number of troops it currently has available, Russia will not be able to turn the tide in Ukraine. That is why Moscow has begun a secret mobilization effort, as reported by the BBC and other media outlets over the last few days.
It seems that reservists have been summoned to recruitment offices, where officials are trying to convince them to sign short-term contracts to fight in Ukraine. At least ten such offices have been attacked in the last few days, some with petrol bombs – possibly the work of Russian saboteurs who fear they may be conscripted.
The Kremlin’s decision to reportedly suspend many military leaders has caused even greater uncertainty among troops. According to the British Ministry of Defence, Lieutenant General Serhiy Kisel, commander of the elite 1st Guards Tank Army, has been suspended for his failure to capture Kharkiv. Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, has reportedly also been fired because of the sinking of the flagship Moskva.
The British believe the blame culture within the Russian military and ministries means that high-up Russian military leaders spend more time covering their own backs than concentrating on the war itself.
“This will likely place more strain on Russia’s centralized model of command and control, as officers increasingly seek to defer key decisions to their superiors,” according to the British. And that will make it even harder for Russia to gain back the upper hand in this war.
- Clemens Wergin / Die Welt
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Moscow accuses Ukraine of attacking inside Russia, warns of “unacceptable escalation”: The head of the Border Service of Russia’s intelligence services accused Ukrainian militants of trying to enter the country disguised as refugees. Meanwhile, the U.S. announced it would provide rocket launchers with the potential to strikes deep inside Russia, further raising the risk of what Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called "a serious step towards unacceptable escalation."
• Outrage against Brazil police after video of Black man asphyxiated during arrest: A video of the brutal arrest of a Black man suffering from schizophrenia, recorded by passers-by, is causing public outrage in Brazil. It shows police officers forcing the unarmed man to breathe the gas emanating from the trunk of their car, which led to his death later that day.
• Growing questions about police response in Texas school shooting: Criticism is swelling in Texas as locals accuse police officers of not intervening quickly enough in the Uvalde school shooting, where 19 children and 2 adults died.
• China and Russia veto UN sanctions on North Korea: For the first time since 2006, Russia and China have vetoed a US-drafted resolution to strengthen sanctions against North Korea at the United Nations Security Council. The U.S. ambassador to the UN has called the move by Moscow and Beijing “dangerous.”
• Update on Senegal fire: Senegal health minister Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr has been fired by President Macky Sall on Thursday following the death of 11 newborn babies in a hospital fire, reportedly due to an electrical short circuit.
• Kevin Spacey charged with sexual assault in UK: Britain’s Crown Prosecutor Service has announced that U.S actor Kevin Spacey is facing multiple charges of sexual assault, following complaints of three men between 2005 and 2013.
• Ray Liotta died at 67: U.S. actor and producer Ray Liotta, renowned for leading roles in ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘Field of Dreams,' died in his sleep at 67 in Dominican Republic, where he was shooting the movie ‘Dangerous Waters.’
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
Today’s front page of the daily newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo shows a screenshot of the video recording two police officers trapping an unarmed Black man into a “gas chamber” police car, which made him suffocate, in the state of Sergipe, northern Brazil.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
$24,000
Rosemary Penwarden, a 63-year-old grandmother living in New Zealand, converted a 29-year-old Honda car into a homemade electric car — named Frida — for $24,000. The solar-powered vehicle has been going up and down the streets for three years now, and was built in eight months by Penwarden and one of her friends.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Digital farming: "Agrotokens" turn surplus grain into online cash
Digital currencies may be volatile, but one company has found a way to allow Argentine farmers to purchase goods and services online using surplus grain, the Buenos Aires-based daily Clarín reports.
🇦🇷 Amid a boom in the price of farming products, Agrotoken, an Argentine firm, has devised a way for local farmers to turn surplus grain into digital credits that can be used to purchase goods with a debit card. In partnership with Visa, the firm has created a card accepted by 80 million shops and businesses associated with its tokenized grains program. This will effectively turn the grain, typically kept in storage, into digital cash to be spent on goods or even as loan or credit guarantees.
🌾 The "tokenized grains" are in effect a stable cryptocurrency, which, unlike other notoriously volatile digital currencies, is backed by a tangible asset. Each token is specifically equivalent to one ton of grain, which a producer has sold and sent into storage. Every ton is validated through a Proof of Grain Reserve certificate (PoGR), a system that is safe, transparent, decentralized and auditable at all times.
💳 Eduardo Novillo Astrada, who founded Agrotoken with Ariel Scaliter, says they are creating an app with Visa “where the producer can keep a record of all their transactions to make accounting and decision-taking easier. And every time they use it, they'll have cashback in crypto form." Gabriela Renaudo, the managing-director of Visa in Argentina, says the farming sector is "fundamental for the Argentine economy, and we need digital solutions to make a business more agile, efficient and competitive, allowing it to break into tomorrow's commerce."
➡️ Read the full article on Worldcrunch.com
📣 VERBATIM
“More could have been done.”
— Javier Cazares, whose 10-year-old daughter Jacklyn was killed during the mass shooting at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, was one of many questioning why police didn’t storm the premises sooner. At a press conference Thursday afternoon, authorities confirmed that the shooter had been locked inside a classroom for an hour before a swat team arrived and killed him. The 19 children and two teachers were all killed inside that classroom.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
The Mural ‘St. Javelina’ depicting a Madonna holding a javelin anti-tank missile that has been crucial for the Ukrainian defense, has been painted on a building of the Solomianskyi district of Kyiv.— Photo: Pavlo_bagmut/Ukrinform/ZUMA
✍️ Newsletter by Lila Paulou and Lisa Berdet
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