Starry Aspirant

In a morning TV address to the nation, delayed from the night before, on September 21st Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, announced the onset of partial military mobilisation. It would affect, he stressed, only those who had previous military experience. New rules also appear to extend indefinitely the contracts of these new and currently serving troops. The measures were needed, Mr Putin said, to protect Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as, he claimed, Russia was now engaged in a war, not against Ukraine, but the collective West. The aim of the West, he said, was to destroy Russia, including through the use of unspecified “nuclear blackmail”. He again took the opportunity to draw attention to Russia’s own large nuclear arsenal, which he said he was ready to use. The previous day, a law greatly strengthening sanctions against Russian soldiers who desert or surrender was passed quickly through the Duma, the lower house the Russian parliament. This, in turn, followe...

On September 1st a team from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived to inspect the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in south-east Ukraine. Russia captured the facility in March, soon after its launch of its large-scale invasion. Since then, the Ukrainian authorities have accused Russia of using it as a military base, while both sides have accused one another of shelling the plant, raising the risks of a nuclear accident, and evoking comparisons with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986. While the design of the Zaporizhzhia plant is said to be much safer that of the ill-fated one at Chernobyl, it still needs constant power supplies to maintain the cooling systems for the remaining two working reactors, and it is the severance or interruption of some these power lines during in the conflict that has raised fears of a radiation leak. In late August, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Ukrainian president, warned that a nuclear catastrophe at the plant, threatening both U...

Since the end of July, a series of attacks, both large and small, have been reported on Russian military facilities across Crimea. The most spectacular were two large explosions at a Russian airbase near Saky on August 9th, followed a week later by the detonation ammunition depot at Dzankoy, further north. Before and after this, smaller-scale drone attacks have been reported on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. Ukraine has not explicitly admitted responsibility of these actions, and it is not clear how all of them were achieved—whether by Ukrainian special forces, local resistance groups or long-range missiles—and, at first, Russia tried to play down their military significance, attributing some to negligence. However, alongside a broader switch in Ukrainian tactics over the same period, permitted by the supply of more modern long-range rocket artillery systems by Ukraine’s Western backers, the events in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, underscore Ukraine...

Inside the Russian occupation The US authorities have information that Russia continues to prepare “mock referendums” in the areas of Ukraine that it holds, according to John Kirby, a national security official, speaking in late August. Soon after the launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, Russian forces quickly took control of large areas of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south-east. These were among the most notable successes of the early phase of Russia’s military campaign, which it has found harder to replicate elsewhere. Since then, there have been regular reports, including from the local administrations installed by Russian forces, that referendums on joining Russian—along the lines of the flawed plebiscite organised in Crimea ahead of its annexation in March 2014—are to be organised in newly taken areas, as well Luhansk and Donetsk regions, where Russia has been in de facto control since 2014-15. One plan envisions merging these areas into a sing...

In early August the US authorities signed off on large packages of military and fiscal aid to Ukraine, worth US$5.5bn in total. This is the latest funding drawn from the US$40bn sum agreed by the US Congress in May. The security assistance element, worth US$1bn, provides significant quantities of munitions and equipment, ahead of a planned Ukrainian counter-offensive in the strategically important south-eastern region of Kherson. This is the largest such drawdown of military aid under US presidential authority so far. In particular, the US will supply ammunition for the modern surface-to-air systems (NASAMS) and mobile long-range rocket systems (HIMARS), the deployment of which in recent weeks has produced some success for Ukrainian forces in destroying ammunition dumps, control-and-command posts, and rail links in Russian-occupied areas, so making it difficult for amassed Russian artillery to sustain a high intensity of fire. This takes to US$11.8bn the total of US military assistance...

Black Sea “grain corridor” agreement looks shaky after Russia bombs Odesa port Towards the end of July, a deal to resume Ukrainian grain exports through the Black Sea, following a five-month naval blockade by Russia, was brokered with Ukraine and Russia by Turkey, backed by the UN. According to the deal, Ukrainian vessels are to guide cargo ships of its grain through the protective mines laid around Ukrainian ports; Russia is to refrain from attacking ports and ships storing and carrying grain; and Turkey will check cargo ships to allay Russia’s concerns that they might be carrying weapons. To oversee the process, two co-ordination centres are to be established, attended by representatives of all four parties to the deal. Ukraine, like Russia, is a major grain supplier, with some countries in Africa and the Middle East highly reliant on imports of Ukrainian wheat in particular, according to the UN. Normally, up to four-fifths of Ukraine’s grain exports reach global markets through its ...

“Lugano declaration” sets out ambitious reconstruction plans, but lacks focus A high-profile “Ukraine Recovery Conference” was held over two days in early July, hosted by the Swiss authorities in the city of Lugano. Bringing together representatives from some of the big industrial economies, such as the US, the UK, France and Japan, with ministers and civil society leaders from Ukraine, the purpose was to set out and discuss detailed plans for Ukraine’s economic recovery, in alignment with its EU integration goals, which received a boost at the end of June with the award of EU candidate status. The reconstruction plan itself was put together by Ukraine’s National Recovery Council, a new body established by Volodymyr Zelenskyi, the Ukrainian president. It envisages a three-stage process, of immediate economic repair, short-term post-war reconstruction and long-term modernisation, focusing on five key areas of infrastructure, the economy, digitalisation, the environment and society. Amon...