Venezuela pressure, Gaza vaccination plans and Ukraine strikes lead 29 August update

Off Leash update 29 Aug

Venezuela •One of Venezuela's top election officials, Juan Carlos Delpino, directly discredited Pres. Maduro's account of the vote for the first time this week. •Delpino - who is one of two opposition-aligned members of the five-person National Electoral Council (CNE) responsible for organizing elections and certifying their results - told the NYT that his council "had not received any evidence" that Maduro won a majority of the vote, and lamented that the CNE had "failed the country." He spoke from hiding, fearing for his safety. •His fear is reasonable: Maduro's security forces continue to arrest Venezuelans who dare support the opposition. Perkins Rocha - opposition leader Marina Corina Machado's lawyer and close confidante - was among those arrested this week. •With Diosdado Cabello now appointed Minister for the Interior, Justice, and Peace; we can expect the crackdown to worsen: Cabello has previously said that Machado and opposition president-elect Edmundo Gonzalez should be "behind bars." Israel •Hamas said the 10 Palestinians Israel killed in its West Bank operations Tuesday and Wednesday were among its members. •There's a polio outbreak in Gaza, and the UN hopes to innoculate 640,000 Palestinian children with vaccines to stop the spread of the virus - starting this weekend. •Israel reportedly authorized temporary and localized humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza to facilitate vaccinations, but evacuations, displacement, and ongoing fighting will certainly complicate the process. Yemen •Iran says its Houthi proxies in Yemen have agreed to a truce to let rescuers assess the Sounion oil tanker its missiles damaged and set alight. However, the Houthis say they only agreed to allow a tugboat to come tow the ailing - and possibly leaking - Sounion away. Either way, we'll soon learn how big of an environmental risk the damaged tanker is. Ukraine •Ukraine used F-16s to shoot down incoming Russian cruise missiles on Monday, marking the first aerial kills by the new (to Ukraine) jets. •Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have pledged a total of 85 F-16s for Ukraine; because only a few of them have arrived so far, Ukraine is only using the few it has against targets like these cruise missiles that can't shoot back. •Separately, Ukrainian drones targeted the Zenit oil depot deep inside Russia's Kirov region, causing two fires. It's the first time Ukraine has struck Kirov, which is 700 miles (1,125 km) inside Russia. Russia •In response to new U.S. sanctions against Russia, Russia permanently banned 92 U.S. citizens - including journalists, lawyers, professors, and business executives - from entering the country. •Among those banned were 14 WSJ employees, including WSJ editor in chief Emma Tucker. Given the 16 months their colleague Evan Gershkovich spent in Russian jail before he was finally released in a swap last month, I doubt anyone from the WSJ was eager to visit Russia anytime soon anyway. Other News •French authorities charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with a slew of crimes related to illegal activity others committed on his platform. He was released on bail of €5 million ($5.5 million) and barred from leaving the country. Free speech advocates and tech companies are preturbed that the creator of an online forum can be held liable for crimes others use it to commit.