by tyler | Sep 5, 2023 | CNN, world
Cuba says it has uncovered a human trafficking network operating from Russia that is recruiting Cubans to fight for their longstanding ally in Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Cubans living in Russia and “even some in Cuba” had been trafficked and “incorporated into the military forces taking part in the war in Ukraine,” the Cuban foreign ministry said Monday in a statement.
The ministry gave few details about the alleged trafficking operations, but said that authorities were working to “neutralize and dismantle” the network.
There were no reports of any arrests of people allegedly involved in the trafficking operation. In September, reports surfaced on social media of Cubans who said they were serving in Russia’s armed forces but that they had been tricked into joining the war effort and mistreated when they refused to fight. CNN was not able to independently verify those allegations, and it is not clear how many Cubans may be fighting for Russia.
Cuba stressed in its statement that it “is not part of the war in Ukraine.” The Kremlin has not commented on the allegations.
The report comes amid efforts by Russia to boost its forces in Ukraine, which have suffered heavy losses on the battlefield, and with the future of the mercenary Wagner Group in doubt.
Moscow announced a plan earlier this year to increase the strength of the Russian armed forces by 30% to 1.5 million servicemen. In July, the Russian state Duma voted to extend the military draft age to include citizens from 18 to 30 years old, up from 27.
For much of the conflict, the official Russian army has been bolstered by mercenaries contracted to Wagner. But after the death of the group’s chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, who led his troops in an aborted mutiny against Moscow in June, it is unclear whether Russia will rely on Wagner forces to wage its war in Ukraine.
Cuba was a major ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and relations between Havana and Moscow have remained cozy since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba has been a staunch defender of Russia’s war on the country, blaming the US and NATO for the conflict. As Cuba grapples with its worse economic crisis in decades, Russia has supplied the communist-run island with badly needed food and shipments of crude oil. Since the war began the two nations have signed a flurry of agreements promising increased Russian foreign investment in Cuba.
In a rare interview in May, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel told Russian state-controlled network RT that Cuba condemned “the expansion of NATO towards Russia’s borders,” echoing one of the Kremlin’s justifications for its brutal war.
Diaz-Canel visited Moscow in November last year to attend the unveiling of a statue of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu also traveled to Cuba on separate trips this year and hailed the relations between the two countries.
There are historical precedents of Cubans fighting alongside and on behalf of Russia.
In several conflicts in Africa during the Cold War, “the deal was the Cubans would supply the soldiers, the Soviets would supply the weapons,” Sergei Radchenko, a historian and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told CNN.
Thousands of Cuban fighters intervened in support of communist forces in Angola in 1975, as well as in Ethiopia in 1977, alongside Soviet troops and using Soviet equipment.
“Having Cuban mercenaries – you might call them mercenaries, or at that time it was revolutionary fighters – is a longstanding precedent as far as Cuba and the Cuban-Russian relationship is concerned,” said Radchenko. In Cuba, those military interventions – often fighting South African-trained mercenaries – are celebrated as having played a crucial role in ending apartheid in South Africa.
However, Radchenko said, the statement issued by Cuba’s foreign ministry “sounds like something very different,” due to the suggestion of coercion.
Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House, said he was not surprised that Russia is seeking Cuban mercenaries to wage its war.
“This is the typical Russian modus operandi of getting mercenaries to do their fighting for them – particularly in desperate states,” Sabatini told CNN, adding that Cuba “is on the brink of a humanitarian disaster.”
What was surprising, he said, was the reaction of the Cuban government, which suggests that Russia “touched a nerve.”
“The Cuban government is fiercely loyal to its allies,” Sabatini said. “That they would call this out is an indication that they truly feel humiliated and exploited by what is an ally taking advantage of their citizens – at a time of desperate need.”
Russia has offered foreign fighters more than $2000 a month to fight in Ukraine, a fortune in Cuba where doctors do not earn that much in an entire year. Russia has also reportedly offered citizenship to foreigners willing to take up arms.
“It’s particularly insulting, too, because the way you are rewarding these mercenaries is giving them a chance to flee their country,” said Sabatini. “That hurts.”
In May, the Russian regional newspaper Ryazan Vedomosti reported that Cuban immigrants living in Russia had joined the Russian army.
“Several citizens of the Republic of Cuba went to serve in the Russian army. According to them, the Cubans want to help our country carry out tasks in the zone of a special military operation, and some of them would like to become citizens of Russia in the future,” said the article.
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
Criminals, volunteer fighters and arms traffickers in Ukraine stole some Western-provided weapons and equipment intended for Ukrainian troops last year before it was recovered, according to a Defense Department inspector general report obtained by CNN.
The plots to steal the weaponry and equipment were disrupted by Ukraine’s intelligence services and it was ultimately recovered, according to the report, titled “DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine.” CNN obtained the report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Military.com first reported the news.
But the inspector general report noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Defense Department’s ability to track and monitor all of the US equipment pouring into Ukraine, as required by law under the Arms Export Control Act, faced “challenges” because of the limited US presence in the country.
According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required [end-use monitoring] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.”
“The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.
The report is dated October 6, 2022. In late October, the US resumed on-site inspections of Ukrainian weapons depots as a way to better track where the equipment was going. The department has also provided the Ukrainians with tracking systems, including scanners and software, the Pentagon’s former under secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told lawmakers in February.
But the report underscores how difficult it was in the early days of the war for the US to track the billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment it was sending to Ukraine.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over what they view as a lack of accountability over the billions of dollars of aid going to Ukraine. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier this year that he supports Ukraine but doesn’t “support a blank check.” The same sentiment has been shared by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
CNN reported in April 2022 that the Biden administration was willing to take the risk of losing track of weapons supplied to Ukraine despite a lack of visibility, as they saw it as critical to Ukraine’s defeat of Russian forces.
“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source briefed on US intelligence told CNN at the time. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
US European Command tried to alleviate the issue last year by requesting and maintaining hand receipts from the Ukrainians, which the Ukrainians made a “good faith effort” to provide, the report says, citing EUCOM personnel. The personnel did not provide the IG with corroborating paperwork by the time the investigation concluded, however, the report notes.
The Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv also asked the Ukrainian government for expenditure, loss, and damage reports for US-provided equipment, the report says, and they “made efforts to prevent illicit proliferation of defense material provided by the United States.”
Still, criminal organizations managed to steal some weaponry and equipment provided by the US and its allies, the report says.
In late June 2022, an organized crime group overseen by an unnamed Russian official joined a volunteer battalion using forged documents and stole weapons, including a grenade launcher and machine gun, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the report says. Ukraine’s intelligence service disrupted the plot, according to the report.
That same month, Ukraine’s intelligence services also disrupted a plot by arms traffickers working to sell weapons and ammunition they stole from the frontlines in southern Ukraine, as well as a separate plot by Ukrainian criminals posing as aid workers who stole $17,000 worth of bulletproof vests, the report says.
And in August 2022, Ukraine’s intelligence services discovered a group of volunteer battalion members who stole 60 rifles and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition and stored them in a warehouse, “presumably for sale on the black market.”
The report does not specify whether the weapons and equipment were American, but the anecdotes are outlined in a highly redacted section that deals with Ukrainian tracking of US-provided weaponry.
The Pentagon inspector general wrote that some larger items like missiles and helicopters were easier to track through intelligence mechanisms. Smaller items, like night-vision devices, however, were harder to monitor.
The report ultimately does not make any recommendations, noting that the Defense Department “has made some efforts to mitigate the inability to conduct in-person” monitoring.
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
Tucked into a narrow tree line on Ukraine’s southern front, a young Ukrainian soldier wearing an American flag patch talks about how frightening it was the first time his team assaulted the densely mined Russian positions in the offensive launched a month ago.
“The first day was the most difficult,” says the 19-year-old who goes by his call sign, “Kach.” “We didn’t know what to expect, what could happen, how events would unfold.”
Nor did anyone really. After months of anticipation, Ukraine finally launched its “Spring Offensive” in early June. Everyone knew it would be tough going for the Ukrainians, having watched Russia dig in and build up formidable defenses over months. But even with no real expectation that the offensive would look like Ukraine’s lightening fast advance around Kharkiv last September, the hope among western officials was that Ukraine would be farther along and more successful than they are right now.
But the offensive has proven more challenging than many expected, even with an arsenal of new western weaponry and equipment fueling the assault.
Among the most-anticipated pieces of equipment was the American-made Bradley Fighting Vehicle, a critical addition to help infantry cross the dangerous and open terrain.
Speaking to CNN, Kach is sitting inside his own Bradley. Just a few months ago, Kach was going through an accelerated US training course in Germany, where he and other Ukrainian soldiers were taught a more American, complex and nimble way of fighting.
Kach’s brigade, the 47th Mechanized Brigade, is the only one to have received the coveted Bradleys, 200 of which have been committed by the US.
The armored fighting vehicles are so admired by Ukrainian soldiers that running around Kach’s team’s camp barking is “Bradley” – the brigade press officer’s 6-month-old rescue puppy.
The Velcro flag patch on Kach’s chest was a parting gift from his American trainer in Germany, who told him it would bring good luck. But it was the thick armor, powerful machine guns, rockets and night vision capabilities on the Bradley that gave Kach a boost of confidence when ordered to assault the Russians.
When the brigade did, the Russians were ready. Dense minefields had been laid, rows of winding trenches were dug. Russian artillery started to pick off the vehicles sent out to de-mine the area. On top of that, this southern direction of attack was perhaps the most predictable in the offensive: designed to try to punch through the Russian line, drive south and split the southern land bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas before finally reaching the Sea of Azov.
The 47th ran into trouble very quickly trying to pierce the Russian line in their newly acquired armor. Photos and videos showed charred armored vehicles, including Bradleys and a German Leopard tank. Oryx, a military analysis site based on open source information, reports that around three dozen Bradleys have been destroyed or damaged.
“It’s not that hard to clear a minefield but it is very hard to clear a minefield when in doing so under fire and from different types of fire,” says Rob Lee, a military analyst who is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute who just visited Ukraine.
“Since the beginning of that campaign, they adapted and it’s largely become a dismounted infantry fight,” Lee says. “It’s extremely arduous, extremely tough. The burden is very heavy on individual infantry men.”
There is no disagreement from rank-and-file troops, nor from their commanders, who admit the progress has been slower than they would like.
In a southern town about 10 kilometers from the jagged line of contact – often called the “zero line,” the brigade’s 25th Separate Assault Battalion has set up a command post in a basement bunker. It’s filled with enormous floor-to-ceiling maps denoting Ukrainian and Russian battlefield positions. A large computer monitor tracks the fighting through incoming reports and dozens of drone feeds.
One soldier updating the maps showed CNN a Russian map recently taken from a trench that had been cleared, detailing the Russian defenses in the area. Outside loud booms from Ukrainian artillery cannons sweep across the heavily damaged and now largely empty town.
The drone feeds show the empty fields littered with anti-tank and -personnel mines, pockmarked with craters from artillery. The tree lines on the other side hide Russian forces camped out in trenches.
“We need to break through the mine barriers so that equipment and infantry can pass,” says Tral, the commander of a demining – or “sapping” – platoon. Moments prior he had just returned to the command post from yet another treacherous mission on foot to destroy or de-fuse the mines blocking their way.
They work slowly, Tral says, “everything is done gradually. Where we have already [cleared] passages, our troops are already entering there. We do not allow [the Russians] to enter where we have already demined the territory.”
Tral shares a video from his phone showing a large explosion shooting dirt and shrapnel into the sky after a Russian mine was detonated. (Ukrainian soldiers often ask to go by just one name or their “call sign.”)
“It’s hard,” he says, “very hard.”
Another soldier in the basement, Stanislav, keeps his eyes fixed on the big monitor, pulling up different drone feeds from his sector. As he watches Ukrainian artillery shells landing near Russian positions, he will help coordinate between the artillery teams and other forces closer to where the shells land to direct the fire.
“In this war artillery is the most valuable asset,” Stanislav says flatly, eying the feed. “There are a lot of Russians. In here and overall. They have more guns, they have more shells and they have more people so we must counter that with our … professionalism.”
These days, that means the slow grind of the exposed troops fighting from trench to trench, assaulting tree line to tree line under heavy fire.
“There are [soldiers] in trenches,” Stanislav says. “We can’t liberate land with artillery. There are people that are working there.”
That work requires resilience and patience. The soldier with the Russian map points to a tree line, spreading his index and middle finger to represent the distance, roughly 300 meters, he says “this section took us one and a half months.”
Under a desk is Bradley, the press officer’s puppy. When it’s time to go, he strains his leash refusing to go back outside because of the artillery firing.
by tyler | Jun 29, 2023 | CNN, economy
Russian assets frozen in European accounts could generate billions of dollars a year for rebuilding Ukraine. But can that money be used without breaching international law or damaging the euro’s international standing?
European Union leaders are grappling with that question at a meeting in Brussels Thursday.
The World Bank estimates Ukraine will need at least $411 billion to repair the damage caused by the war. And the EU and its allies are determined to make Russia foot part of the bill.
One idea put forward in the EU is to draw off the interest on income generated by Russian assets while leaving the assets themselves untouched.
This approach would probably deliver about €3 billion ($3.3 billion) a year, according to Anders Ahnlid, the director general of the Swedish National Board of Trade and head of the EU working group looking into frozen Russian assets.
“It’s the best way of using these assets in accordance with EU and international law,” Ahnlid told CNN, noting that was also the view of lawyers at the European Commission, which has promised to propose a way to tap frozen Russian assets within weeks.
But some EU member states, and the European Central Bank (ECB), have concerns that it could shake confidence in the euro as the world’s second biggest reserve currency. The EU has been at pains to contrast the illegality of Russia’s invasion with its own strict adherence to the rule of law.
“We have to respect the principles of international law,” said a senior EU diplomat, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss closed-door meetings. “It’s a matter of reputation, of financial stability and trust.”
The ECB declined to comment.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February last year, EU and Group of Seven countries imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, freezing nearly half of its foreign reserves — some €300 billion ($327 billion) — among other measures.
Around two-thirds of that, or €200 billion ($218 billion), sits in the EU, mostly in accounts at Belgium-based Euroclear, one of the world’s largest financial clearing houses.
Euroclear plays a crucial role in global markets, settling cross-border trades and safekeeping more than $40 trillion in assets.
The group said in April that cash on its balance sheet had more than doubled over the year to March to stand at €140 billion ($153 billion), boosted by payments associated with frozen Russian assets, including bonds.
Ordinarily, these payments would have been made to Russian bank accounts, but they have been blocked as a result of sanctions and are now themselves generating vast amounts of interest.
Euroclear routinely invests such long-term cash balances and, in the first quarter, it recorded €734 million ($802 million) in interest earned on cash balances from sanctioned Russian assets.
The plan proposed by the EU working group would involve using a special levy to collect the windfall interest income made by Euroclear from frozen Russian assets, which would then be paid into the EU budget for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
Speaking on the sidelines of Thursday’s EU meeting, Latvia’s Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš said frozen Russian assets were “low-hanging fruit.”
“We need to find a legal basis to utilize, mobilize these assets to help… pay for the damage Russia is causing in Ukraine,” he said.
But one senior EU official warned of unintended consequences, such as causing other countries or investors to worry about the safety of their assets in Europe.
“Those who have money might think ….’what if one day, I’m on the list,’” the official, who also requested anonymity because the discussions are private, said Wednesday.
One way to reduce risks to the EU would be to coordinate action with the G7. “I think discussion at the G7 is quite key,” the official added.
Ahnlid echoed this, noting that many EU member states had stressed the importance of the bloc taking steps “in tandem with G7 partners.”
— James Frater contributed reporting.
by tyler | Jun 28, 2023 | CNN, europe
It was dinner time and the restaurant – a popular pizza joint in the center of Kramatorsk – was crammed with people. Just after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, a Russian missile ripped through, killing at least 11 people. For millions across the country, the strike was yet another reminder of the horrifying reality of life in Ukraine.
Authorities said three teenagers, including a 17-year-old girl and 14-year-old twin sisters Yulia and Anna Aksenchenko, were among those killed in the strike. At least 61 people, including a baby, were injured in the attack, State Emergency Services said, warning the toll could increase in the coming hours.
The strike – the deadliest attack against civilians in months – came just as Russia emerged from a major crisis sparked by a short-lived uprising led by the head of the Wagner mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin arrived in Belarus on Tuesday, after staging what was the biggest ever challenge to the authority of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Rescue workers are still searching the rubble, after having to temporarily pause the work late Tuesday night because of another air raid alarm.
The people of Kramatorsk are no strangers to Russian attacks. The eastern Ukrainian city lies about 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the front line, according to the Institute for the Study of War’s assessments of the current situation on the ground.
But despite the proximity to the fighting, Kramatorsk remains a busy city. The area around Ria Lounge, the restaurant that was struck, is a particularly popular spot with a busy post office, a jewelery store, a cafe and a pharmacy all within a stone’s throw from Ria. One of Kramatorsk’s biggest supermarkets is just down the road.
Being so near the fighting, the city is popular with soldiers seeking some respite from the fighting.
A Ukrainian soldier assisting rescue efforts told CNN that the victims he saw were “mostly young people, military and civilians; there are small children.”
The soldier, who asked to be identified only by his call sign Alex, said there had been a banquet for 45 people at one of the restaurants when the strike occurred, and that it hit “right in the center of the cafe.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack a “manifestation of terror.”
“Each such manifestation of terror proves over and over again to us and to the whole world that Russia deserves only one thing as a result of everything it has done – defeat and a tribunal, fair and legal trials against all Russian murderers and terrorists,” he said.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the Dontesk region military administration, said the strike used Iskanders – high-precision, short-range ballistic missiles.
EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed Zelensky’s words on Wednesday. “In another demonstration of the terror Russia is imposing on Ukrainian civilians, a Russian cruise missile hit a restaurant and shopping centre in Kramatorsk,” Borrell said in a post on Twitter.
Kramatorsk, has been the target of frequent shelling since the war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists broke out in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The city was briefly occupied by separatists in 2014, but has remained under Ukrainian control since then.
The Ukrainian Security Service alleged on Wednesday that the attack was premeditated, saying that it had detained a man who allegedly scouted the restaurant and sent a video to the Russian Armed Forces prior to the strike Tuesday.
The man was described by the Ukrainians as a “Russian intelligence agent” and an “adjuster.”
“To execute the enemy’s instructions, the GRU agent took a covert video recording of the establishment and vehicles parked nearby. Then the suspect forwarded the footage to Russian military intelligence,” the service said in a statement on Telegram.
“Having received this information, Russian invaders fired on the cafe with people inside,” it added.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Wednesday that the target of the missile strike in Kramatorsk was “a temporary command post” of a Ukrainian army unit.
Separately, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that Russia “does not strike at civilian infrastructure” and the strikes are carried out “only on objects that are connected with military infrastructure.”
The frequency and intensity of the attacks increased after Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in February 2022. One attack in particular sparked international outrage and led to accusations of Russia deliberately targeting civilians.
In April last year, Russian forces carried out a missile strike on Kramatorsk’s railway station which was being used to shelter civilians fleeing the fighting.
More than 50 people, including several children, died in that one attack, which was called “an apparent war crime” by Human Rights Watch and SITU Research.
According to their report, several hundred civilians were waiting at the station when “a ballistic missile equipped with a cluster munition warhead exploded and released dozens of bomblets, or submunitions.”
