Russia/Ukraine War Update - July 18th, 2022

*** MILITARY SITUATION ***

Best overall analysis of the situation as of today:

-Russian forces are preparing for a new offensive, the Kyiv Independent reports. According to Vadym Skibitsky, a representative of the intelligence directorate at Ukraine’s defence ministry, Russian activity signals that “undoubtedly, preparations for the next stage of offensive actions are under way”.

-The Ukraine armed forces are advancing “confidently” towards Kherson, according to a Ukrainian military spokesperson. Natalia Hemeniuk, the head of the press centre of Operation Command South, “speaking about what is happening directly in Kherson direction, we are advancing there. Maybe we are not moving as fast as those who present positive news would like, but believe me, these steps are very confident.”

Many military analysts are suggesting that the entire Kherson offensive narrative is a ruse to try to shore up moral. Who announces a major offensive weeks before it's supposed to begin so your enemy can prepare for it? I haven't seen any significant movement on the Kherson front in weeks, even on the west sources maps.

-In an indication that Russian forces were ending what they called an operational pause in their invasion of Ukraine, the defense minister of Russia, Sergei K. Shoigu, on Saturday ordered his forces to intensify attacks “in all operational sectors” of the war. As the Ukrainian government disclosed modest new ground attacks by Russian forces, the Russian defense ministry said in a statement that Mr. Shoigu had instructed that combat be intensified to stop Ukraine from shelling civilian areas in Russian-occupied territory. After deadly Russian missile strikes across Ukraine in recent days that killed civilians, the statement was a new signal from Moscow that its invasion may be entering a more aggressive phase. Mr. Shoigu’s statement appeared to be a response to Ukraine’s new ability to hit Russian targets in occupied areas due to more advanced, longer-range Western weapons, like the American HIMARS precision-guided rocket systems and the French Caesar artillery pieces. Ukraine claims to have hit at least 30 Russian ammunition and logistics sites with the new longer-range weapons in the last two weeks. Earlier this month, the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, suggested to lawmakers that Russia would escalate the war. “Everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything seriously yet,” Mr. Putin said.

-Russian missiles hit an industrial and infrastructure facility in Mykolaiv, a shipbuilding centre and city near the Black Sea in southern Ukraine. Oleksandr Senkevych, the city’s mayor, said there was no immediate information about casualties.

-Reuters has a quick snap that Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu has instructed the military to prioritise destroying Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery weapons, according to a defence ministry statement.

-Valentyn Reznichenko, the governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, has posted on Telegram to say that the city of Nikopol in his region was fired on overnight.

*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***

-British prime ministerial candidate Liz Truss said she was prepared to sit down with Vladimir Putin at the G20. In the latest TV debate on Sunday night, the Conservative leadership hopefuls were asked if they would sit next to the Russian president at a G20 summit. Truss said she would “call Putin out” and it was important for the free world to face down Russia.

-In the event of an attack on Crimea, Medvedev was quoted by TASS news agency as saying, "Judgment Day will come very fast and hard. It will be very difficult to hide." Medvedev did not elaborate but has previously warned the United States of the dangers of attempting to punish a nuclear power such as Russia over its actions in Ukraine, saying this could endanger humanity.

-Sunday marked the eighth anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Donetsk in 2014, which killed 298 people onboard. Russia denied involvement in the plane’s downing, despite the findings of an international investigation that found witnesses who saw an anti-aircraft missile launcher that had secretly crossed into Ukraine from Russia in the hours before it shot down the commercial flight. Iryna Venediktova, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, called for international action against Russia.

There is a theory that has been floating around the net for some time that it wasn't the Russians that shot down MH17, it was the Ukrainians. The theory is that they mistook the flight for a flight that Putin was on, and as it happens, he was traveling back to Russia from Europe that day, just not through Ukrainian airspace. Remember, this was only a couple months after the Russians annexed Crimea and war for the contested area's of the Donbas had just begun to heat up. Either way, if the Ukies did shoot it down it made for terrific propaganda in the west. Or maybe it was the Russian's after all. Maybe the GRU was tring the assassinate Putin. Whatever it was, I just doubt it was some sort of 'mistake'.

-Russia has moved a “significant number” of ships from Crimea to Russia, according to an Odesa military official. Serhii Bratchuk, a spokesman for Odesa’s military administration, reportedly citing Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said Russia has moved ships from Sevastopol in Crimea to Novorossiysk in Russia. Bratchuk also said Russian forces are continuing the illegal transportation of products from Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, the Kyiv Independent reports.

I hate to have to interject on these blurbs, but the Russians have been building a large deep water sea port in Novorossiysk, which is on the Eastern Black Sea coast in Russian territory. That would put the ships completely out of range of the Ukrainian Harpoon Missles, which explains why they have usung them to destroy oil and gas platforms instead of Russian shipping. It also makes the ships safe from Ukrainian sabotage operations, and perhaps, threats from NATO submarines quietly operating in the Black Sea.

-The head of Britain’s armed forces has dismissed as “wishful thinking” speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin is suffering from ill-health or could be assassinated. “I think some of the comments that he’s not well or that actually surely somebody’s going to assassinate him or take him out, I think they’re wishful thinking,” the chief of the defence staff said of Putin, in a BBC television interview broadcast on Sunday.

So all that talk of Putin being sick was just counter intelligence after all.

-The Chinese stock market suffered its biggest weekly loss in three months, with the benchmark CSI 300 index sinking more than 4%. Real estate and banking risks soured sentiment and surging Covid cases made matters worse. Last week, housing ministry officials met with financial regulators and major Chinese banks to discuss lending matters. The government also censored crowd-sourced documents tallying the number of mortgage boycotts across the country. Markets, however, expect much more. Swift policy responses coordinated from Beijing are urgently needed to prevent bigger market rout. Knee-jerk reactions from local authorities may be to tighten oversight of escrow accounts for new home sales, and for banking regulators to raise mortgage standards. After all, a key reason for the mortgage boycotts is that developers diverted homeowner payments for other purposes. Now that many developers are facing financing difficulties, construction on those unfinished homes stalled. Such moves make perfect sense in isolation. But they might cause more troubles nationwide if implemented together. More money in escrow means less for developers, which could “lead to a sustained slowdown in housing market activity and more developer defaults,” according to a JPMorgan client note written by Tingting Ge, Haibin Zhu and Grace Ng on Friday. Relaxation of escrow management, on the other hand, would create the risk of embezzlement that could hurt more homebuyers.

-The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has fired the country’s head of the security service and the prosecutor general, claiming more than 60 of their employees have been “working against” Ukraine in Russian-occupied territory. He added that 651 criminal proceedings had been registered relating to high treason and collaboration by employees of prosecutors’ offices, pretrial investigation bodies and other law enforcement agencies.

Lends credit to the stories about corrupt Ukrainian officials selling the Russians 1, even perhaps 2, of those HIMARS systems. Other western weapons systems certainly. If this is true then it indicates more than just corruption in the highest segments of the Ukrainian government, it indicates that some of Zelenski's closest advisors are seeing the situation at the front and are trying to shore up their personal resources in the event of the eventual fall of the Ukrainian government and possible need to escape from Kiev into the west.

-The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will travel to Baku on Monday to seek more natural gas from Azerbaijan, the EU’s executive said, as the EU seeks to reduce its reliance on Russian energy.

-The European Union is to discuss tightening sanctions against Russia on Monday, as Moscow is accused of using the captured Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to store weapons and launch missiles on the surrounding regions of southern Ukraine.

-House Republicans are seriously regretting giving Ukraine-born GOP Rep. Victoria Spartz a platform to speak on the war, after she started lobbing intense criticism at president Volodomyr Zelensky and his administration, drawing a rare rebuke last weekend from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, which said she was "trying to earn extra political capital on baseless speculation." According to Politico, Republicans within the GOP Conference have "widespread fear" that her outspoken posture will damage US-Ukraine relations, and that the MAGA wing of their party - which has seen growing opposition to US support of the Ukraine war - will point to Spartz's comments as justification. Spartz, who has traveled to Ukraine about six time since the war began, released a statement earlier this months calling on Zelensky to "stop playing politics and theater" and "start governing to better support his military and local government." She also accused President Joe Biden of "playing politics" and said that he needs to present a "clear strategy and align security assistance with our strategy." Lastly, she called on lawmakers to "establish proper oversight of critical infrastructure and delivery of weapons and aid," a concern shared among progressives over the possibility that the weapons could end up in the wrong hands.

More here.

-After the meeting with State Duma leaders on July 7, which officially was primarily about upcoming elections, Putin reiterated a now well known position:

"Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard a lot about the West wanting to fight us ”to the last Ukrainian.“ This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but that seems to be where it is going. But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet. At the same time, we are not rejecting peace talks, but those who are rejecting them should know that the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us."

-Iran is technically capable of producing a nuclear bomb but no political decision on such an option has been made, Kamal Kharrazi, a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has said. “In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60% and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium,” Kharrazi told Al Jazeera on Sunday.

-US President Joe Biden’s administration has green-lighted a new arms sale to Taiwan, including armored vehicle parts and technical assistance, potentially ratcheting up tensions with China over the breakaway republic. The US State Department approved the transaction, which is valued at up to $108 million, at Taiwan’s request, the Pentagon revealed on Friday. The blanket order will include parts for tanks and other combat vehicles, as well as technical and logistical support services provided by the US government and its contractors.

-Gas prices have been a major factor for the increase in CPI, but when prices dipped inflation remained stubbornly high. The reason was the constant increase in the cost of food and beverages. When gas prices surge many of us can try to cut back on driving to save some money but it is far more difficult to cut back on feeding one’s family regardless of price. The answer to inflation will have to come from somewhere else, instead of blaming Ukraine. Gas prices began to rise almost a year before Russia invaded the country as did the price of food and beverages. Both began to climb in after March of 2020 when the economy was flooded with federal spending. Fiscal policy is responsible for inflation more so than monetary policy. The Fed is fighting the Treasury’s battle and stands a good chance of messing it up. According to Friday data released by auto club AAA, the average price for a gallon of gasoline is currently $4.57, down nearly 50 cents from a month ago when prices stood a $5 per gallon.

-Chevron’s CEO asserted that the oil industry isn’t attempting to hold back supply, rejecting allegations made by the Biden administration in recent weeks amid record-high gas prices. “People are not holding back supply. People are not slow-walking anything - they’re producing as much in the refining system as possible,” CEO Mike Wirth told Fox Business on Thursday in reference to the oil industry. President Joe Biden and other White House officials have accused the oil industry of slow-walking production in a bid to keep prices high. The Biden administration sent a letter to Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and other top producers last month, suggesting the federal government could take executive action.

-Germany's national Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag interviewed Klaus Muller, head of the Federal Network Agency, the government regulator of electricity, gas, telecommunications, post, and railway markets, who warned NatGas inventories are "nearly 65% full" and "it's better than in the previous weeks," though not enough to "go through the winter without Russian gas."

-Political turmoil in Italy could soon see Rome unable to continue supporting Ukraine with weapons deliveries, the country’s foreign minister has warned. According to Luigi Di Maio, this would be the case should the incumbent government not survive a no-confidence vote next week. In a phone interview with US media outlet Politico on Friday, Di Maio said that those in Italy who want the collapse of Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government are playing into the hands of the Kremlin. “The Russians are right now celebrating having made another Western government fall,” the minister argued.  

-Ukrainian cargo plane carrying weapons crashes in Greece. All eight crew members were killed when a Ukrainian-operated cargo plane carrying military goods crashed in Greece en route from Serbia to Bangladesh, the Serbian defence minister said. Witnesses said they saw the privately operated Antonov plane on fire and heard explosions. Videos shared on social media showed the aircraft engulfed by a giant fireball as it hit the ground late on Saturday in Paleochori village near the Greek city of Kavala. “Sadly, according to the information we have received, the eight members of the crew died in the crash,” Serbian Defence Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic told a news conference on Sunday. The Antonov An-12 took off from Nis airport in southern Serbia at around 8:40pm (18:40 GMT) on Saturday, carrying “around 11 tonnes of military industry goods” namely mines from Valir, a private Serbian company, to the Bangladeshi defence ministry, Stefanovic said. Denys Bogdanovych, general director of Meridian, the Ukrainian airline operating the plane, also told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle that the crew were all Ukrainian.

-A Ukrainian cargo plane loaded with 11.5 tons of Serbian-made munitions crashed in Kavala in northern Greece en route to Bangladesh on Sunday, Serbian authorities have confirmed. The Antonov An-12 plane, operated by Ukrainian airline Meridian, had reported engine trouble and requested an emergency landing not long before witnesses say it exploded in a corn field outside the city at around midnight local time.

-Substantially fewer military families would recommend uniformed service to others, a new survey by Military Family Advisory Network (MFAN) finds. Just 63% of surveyed service members and family members would recommend service to someone considering it. That's a big drop from just two years earlier, when 75% said they'd encourage others to join. The results released on July 14 are from a far-ranging survey of more than 8,600 people conducted in late 2021. The finding is an ill omen for military recruiters who are already struggling to meet their goals. The U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) says a whopping 71% of youth do not qualify for military service because of obesity, drugs, physical and mental health problems, misconduct and aptitude. Meanwhile, USAREC likes to call the Army a "family business," noting that 79% of recruits have a relative who served. Substantially lower enthusiasm among those who've served is certain to throw a wet blanket on recruiting efforts. The survey also found 54% of military and veteran family respondents have experienced loneliness and 23% of enlisted families reported difficulty affording food. “When we're going through this report and seeing some of the findings and the reality that a lot of families are having a hard time making ends meet, it's not all that startling to see that there will be a decline [in service members, veterans and family members recommending service],” MFAN president Shannon Razsadin tells Defense One. “But what I was really surprised by was that it was as big of a decline as it is.”

Diversity training, transgender awareness, forced indoctrination into questionable cultural values and false historical narratives of the founding of the United State, equity vs. merit based promotions, and openly anti-white vs. colorblind leadership. They didn't even mention the mandatory experimental vax. It's not hard to imagine why moral is waning.

-The prospect of a new gas price jolt coinciding with midterm elections has the White House and many Democrats on edge. The price concerns are tied to the timeline for stricter sanctions on Russia that will further choke the global oil supply. J.P. Morgan has warned that in a worst-case scenario — in which Russia retaliates by shutting down its supply altogether — the price of oil could jump to $380 per barrel, more than triple what it is today. “If you were to ask me where could oil prices go, I would say pick a number,” said Michael Tran, managing director for global energy strategy at RBC Capital, who says that while the outlook is murky, several indicators point to a price rebound. “This is the tightest oil market we have seen in a generation or more.” The worrisome prognosis for consumers, coming as the nation is already struggling with historic levels of inflation, has the Biden administration grasping for interventions that could bring relief.

-A gunman killed three people when he opened fire in the food court of a shopping mall outside Indianapolis on Sunday before a bystander fatally shot the assailant, Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison said. Two other people were injured in the incident, which took place in the early evening at Greenwood Park Mall, the Indianapolis Star reported. "The real hero of the day is the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in that food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began," Ison told reporters. He described the armed bystander as a 22-year-old man.