Russia/Ukraine War Update - July 7th, 2022

*** MILITARY SITUATION ***

There were no claimed or assessed Russian territorial gains in Ukraine on July 6 for the first time in 133 days of war, supporting ISW’s assessment that Russian forces have largely initiated an operational pause. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed territorial gains every day from the start of the war but has not claimed any new territory or ground force movements since completing the encirclement of Lysychansk on July 3. However, Russian forces still conducted limited and unsuccessful ground assaults across all axes on July 6. Such attempts are consistent with a Russian operational pause, which does not imply or require the complete cessation of active hostilities. It means, in this case, that Russian forces will likely confine themselves to relatively small-scale offensive actions as they attempt to set conditions for more significant offensive operations and rebuild the combat power needed to attempt those more ambitious undertakings.

-The capture of the city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine by Russian forces has meant Moscow has made “genuine headway”, while its forces in the south have shown signs of “better cooperation”, western officials said. Western officials said the sustainability of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine was “challenging”, but described the impact on their munitions and morale as “remarkable”. But one official said it “remains highly uncertain whether Russia will secure the limits of Donetsk Oblast this year”. Russia has made “some significant command changes” in recent weeks, one official said, notably the recently appointed General Sergei Surovikin who has taken over command of the southern group of forces, which is overseeing the occupation of southern Ukraine and the advances on the Donbas from the south.

-Russia’s defence ministry has claimed its forces destroyed two advanced US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) rocket systems and ammunition depots in eastern Ukraine. It also said Russian forces destroyed two ammunition depots storing rockets for the HIMARS near the frontline in a village south of Kramatorsk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

-Ukraine’s governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said resistance was ongoing in villages around the city of Lysychansk, where 15,000 civilians remain. On Telegram, Haidai said: “Today’s videos from Lysychansk are painful to watch.” He accused Putin’s troops of engaging in a scorched earth policy, “burning down and destroying everything on their way”.

-The battle for Sloviansk is likely to be the next key contest in the struggle for Donbas as Russian forces approach within 16km of the Donetsk town, British intelligence said. Russian forces from the eastern and western groups of forces are likely now around 16km north of Sloviansk as central and southern groups of forces also pose a threat to the town, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.

-The first rotation of Ukrainian soldiers has arrived in the UK for training, according to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace. The training is part of an innovative programme that aims to train up to 10,000 new Ukrainian recruits alongside a £2.3bn military aid package.

*** ECONOMIC & POLITICAL ***

-Almost half of Germans believe Ukraine should cede territory in the country’s east to reach a peace deal with Russia, according to a fresh poll by broadcaster RTL. While 47% of Germans back the idea of Ukraine making territorial concessions to Russia, some 41% oppose it. The remaining 12% of respondents were unsure, according to the poll. A vast majority – some 69% – of Germans do not believe that Kiev will be able to defeat Russia on the battlefield and drive its troops out of the country. Only 26% adhere to the idea that enough weaponry supplied to Kiev by the collective West would allow it to score a military victory over Russia. Meanwhile, 56% of Germans believe that supplying heavy weaponry to Kiev was the right thing to do, while some 40% are opposed.

-Ukraine’s air defense forces have reason to thank the intelligence that the West is sharing with Kiev, a top official has hinted. Appearing on a livestream hosted by blogger Mark Feygin on Tuesday, Alexey Arestovich, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said that the Russian military had fired seven missiles at Dnepropetrovsk, with Ukrainian air defenses managing to intercept six of them. “Three [missiles] were flying toward Ochakov – all three were shot down,” the official added. When asked whether Western air defense systems were on the ground, Arestovich replied that “there were just various timely target designations and so on.” A number of US media outlets recently claimed that Washington is providing Kiev with intelligence data. Pentagon provides Kiev with surface-to-air missile systemsREAD MORE: Pentagon provides Kiev with surface-to-air missile systems. In May, The Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported that the information shared with the Ukrainian military encompassed real-time data about the location and movement of Russian forces, including satellite imagery. An anonymous Ukrainian official described the intelligence as very helpful at the time.

-Last week we admitted that we hadn't spent much time discussing the timesink idiocy of the Biden/G7 "Russian oil price cap" idea because well, it is idiotic as Rabobank's Michael Every explained. The ‘oil cap’ is simple in theory: the G7 will refuse to provide insurance to any vessel that carries Russian oil unless the cargo is sold with an  agreed price cap. Yet it won’t work and will just push oil prices higher. Russia will never agree. China and India will never agree either. Russia  and China may offer their own underwriting services, which would force the West into physically blocking cargoes and confronting China - as a  Russian-oil carrying ship is stopped in the US, says the Wall Street Journal. Plus, the G7 are already not taking Russian oil: they are taking Russian oil from India and China that is being on-sold.... and it appears that finally even the dumbest people on earth, i.e. career politicians and economists, have figured it out. Last Thursday, Reuters reported that according to EU officials, the biggest price cap proponents - the governments of Germany and other European Union countries - voiced "caution" in a closed-door meeting about price caps on Russian oil, a day after the Group of Seven economic powers agreed to urgently start work on the matter. Here is the truncated timeline for those who missed it: on Tuesday G7 leaders agreed to explore “the feasibility of introducing temporary import price caps” on Russian fossil fuel, including oil, and tasked ministers to evaluate the proposal urgently. But just one day later, Germany’s envoy to the EU told his counterparts in a restricted meeting that the world should be “realistic” about the proposal, which he said was added to the G7 statement after “intense pressure” from Washington, according to one official who attended the meeting. And then, the envoy also said an agreement on whether to apply caps was not expected to come anytime soon... or any time for that matter as it is impossible.

The way they would enforce this ridiculous idea (ridiculous for the reasons none other than JPMorgan explained), would be by banning insurance and transportation services needed to ship Russian crude and petroleum products unless the oil is purchased below an agreed price. Of course, all this would do is push India and China to offer their own insurance and transportation services, chipping away some more at US superpower status. What is remarkable is that the proposed range of $40-60 is far below where oil traded before the Ukraine war broke out in late February, effectively killing the idea before it is even rolled out...

-Ukraine’s military has announced plans to introduce a system of permits that would prohibit men eligible for conscription from leaving the region where they are registered. The move, based on legislation from 1992, was intended to enable the country’s armed forces to locate potential conscripts more easily, but it prompted an immediate backlash. Since Zelenskiy declared martial law at the start of Russia’s invasion, all Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are eligible for military service and are forbidden from leaving the country.

-A crowdfunded Turkish-made military drone is expected to be delivered “immediately” from Lithuania, the country’s defence minister Arvydas Anušauskas said. The “Vanagas” (which means “Hawk” in Lithuanian), along with ammunition, arrived in the Baltic country on Monday, Anušauskas said. “Very soon it will be delivered to Ukraine,” he tweeted.

-Russian forces have occupied around 22% of Ukraine’s arable land, according to NASA’s Harvest mission. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NASA has been focusing on the impact of the war on the global food system. Its findings have revealed that Ukrainian fields where 28% of winter and 18% of spring crops are sown are under Russian occupation.

-The latest point of confrontation between NATO and Russia is the Svalbard archipelago, located midway between Norway and the North Pole. Moscow claims Oslo is restricting trade with the island's hundreds of Russian residents. A top member of the Russian legislature is now calling for Moscow to leave its agreement with Oslo that resolved the territorial dispute over the far-northern archipelago. During a discussion about Norway restricting trade to the islands in the Russian Duma, the body’s speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin, requested the head of the chamber’s international affairs committee to look into "denouncing" the treaty. The agreement was signed in 2010. In June, a shipment of goods to a Russian-operated mining colony on Svalbard was turned back. Moscow claimed the move by Oslo deprived the miners of needed food and medicine. "Norwegian authorities are trying to leave Russian miners without food, which is inherently immoral. This violates human rights and the principles of humanism," said Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev. Konstantin went on to claim that Norway’s blocking of shipments violated international agreements. Oslo disputed the accusations saying it had not broken treaties and was legally enforcing sanctions. The shipment was "stopped on the basis of the sanctions that prohibit Russian road transport companies from transporting goods on Norwegian territory," Norway’s Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said.

-Nearly 9 million people have left Ukraine since Vladimir Putin invaded, the UN refugee agency has said, as the governor of Donetsk called on civilians still in the region to flee. With Russia stepping up its offensive in the east of the country, there are increasingly loud calls from the Ukrainian authorities for people to escape while they can from frontline areas.

-The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said the EU needs to make emergency plans to prepare for a complete cut-off of Russian gas. The commission is working on a “European emergency plan” with the first proposals to be presented by the middle of the month, she said. “If worst comes to worst, then we have to be prepared,” she said.

-Sri Lanka’s president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, said he asked his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin to help import fuel to his country as it faces its worst economic crisis in seven decades. Rajapaksa tweeted that he had a “productive” telephone call with Putin, while thanking him for “all the support extended by his [government] to overcome the challenges of the past

-Britain’s foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has announced that the UK’s ratification of Finland and Sweden’s membership of Nato will be fast-tracked through parliament in London.

-The US and other allies have called for Russian and Belarusian national governing bodies of sports to be suspended from international sports federations. The Russian embassy in the United States described the move as “Russophobic” and said “sports should stay out of politics.”

-Boris Johnson is still answering questions at the Commons liaison committee, where he was asked whether he met the former KGB agent, Alexander Lebedev, without officials when he was foreign secretary in April 2018. Johnson says he did meet Lebedev, because he used to own the Evening Standard, but he says he cannot remember when. When pressed, he says he thinks it is correct that he met Lebedev without officials when he was foreign secretary in Italy. Asked if he reported the meeting to his officals, he says he thinks he did.

-The European parliament has backed plans to label gas and nuclear energy as “green”, rejecting appeals from Ukraine and climate activists that the proposals are a gift to Vladimir Putin.