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2 direct mentions across 2 briefings, with 1 linked development.
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Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu against a French troop deployment; Russia was ready for peace talks. Russian battlefield escalation was inconsistent with that stated readiness.
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Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu against a French troop deployment; Russia was ready for peace talks. Russian battlefield escalation was inconsistent with that stated readiness.
Open source reportGeography
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Sergey Shoigu dossier
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Russia and France
Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu against a French troop deployment; Russia was ready for peace talks. Russian battlefield escalation was inconsistent with that stated readiness.
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Chronology
Off Leash update 24 April Iran and Israel •Israeli officials told the NYT they contemplated a broader strike on Iran in return for Iran's (mostly harmlessly intercepted) attempted strikes inside Israel, but settled for a limited strike on Isfahan because of diplomatic pressure from allies to avoid further escalation. •Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei seemed happy to let Israel have the last word with the Isfahan strike: at a meeting of senior officials, Khamenei brushed off the damage it did: "Debates by the other party about how many missiles were fired, how many of them hit the target and how many didn’t, these are of secondary importance." •Meanwhile, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, launched drone attacks into northern Israel yesterday as Jewish families began the Passover holiday. All drones were intercepted. •Hezbollah's attempted Passover attack was probably a reprisal for an Israeli strike in southern Lebanon that killed Hussein Ali Azkul - who Israel called "a significant terrorist operative" - on Monday. Ukraine •Pres. Biden promised Pres. Zelensky that the U.S. weapons funded in the Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan support bill the Senate approved late last night will arrive "quickly." Ukraine will be eager to get them: its military is already suffering setbacks due to delays in U.S. funding. China •The Senate's foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan also included a provision obligating ByteDance - the Chinese company that owns TikTok - to sell the app to a non-Chinese owner or shut it down in the U.S. •ByteDance's shareholders - which include the Chinese government - seem averse to divesting the app, so it will likely face a ban. Russia •Russian investigators detained former deputy defense minister Timur Ivanov on suspicion of taking bribes "on a particularly large scale" in connection with construction projects he managed in Mariupol, Ukraine. •Russia doesn't usually censure senior officials for corruption [perhaps because bribery is so endemic among senior ranks that no hands are clean enough to throw the first stone] and Ivanov is a close ally of powerful defense minister Sergey Shoigu, who should have been able to shield him from scrutiny. •The fact that Shoigu didn't step in led some to speculate that Ivanov's real offense was something much more grave than graft - like treason (though the Kremlin denied it). Venezuela •Venezuela's oil minister, Pedro Tellechea, told Reuters that his ministry is exploring cryptocurrencies as a way to receive payments for oil sales once U.S. sanctions sink back in. •One cryptocurrency that Venezuela won't be accepting is the Petro (PTR): Pres. Maduro's Patria Platform gave up on that idea earlier this year after a corruption scandal. North Korea •North Korea launched more short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Monday, and analysts are guessing it could try to launch a satellite into orbit tomorrow on the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People's Army. Other News •After two years of heated debate, the UK's parliament finally passed a bill that allows asylum-seekers to be deported to Rwanda. Human rights activists are united with some fiscal conservatives against the program, which would cost an estimated £1.8 million ($2.2 million) per deportee for the first 300 people expelled. Flights would start in July, but will probably be delayed or blocked by legal challenges. •Voters in Ecuador approved a referendum that gives Pres. Noboa even more authority to fight drug gangs. Noboa has already taken a hard stance against the gangs - he deployed the military against them in January - and voters apparently support it: nine of its 11 proposals look likely to pass once all votes are counted.
Open source reportOff Leash 4 April Ukraine Videos of the aftermath of Ukraine's drone strike deep inside Russia's Tatarstan showed that the weapon was possibly delivered by a converted $90,000 Aeroprakt A-22 single-propeller sport plane (or perhaps two of them) modified for the task. Analysts noted that the high-bank-for-buck converted drone is extremely scalable, so we could see Ukraine use more of them in the near future. Russia Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu held an unusual call with his French counterpart, Sébastien Lecornu, yesterday. Shoigu reportedly warned Lecornu against deploying French troops to Ukraine [even though France is nowhere close to sending troops, and the idea was just a remote future possibility Pres. Macron raised last month without EU backing]. Shoigu also told Lecornu that Russia is ready to take part in peace talks, but its ongoing escalations on the battlefield suggest otherwise. Gaza Global media reported widespread condemnation of the Israeli strike that killed seven food aid workers from celebrity chef José Andrés's World Central Kitchen NGO. Andrés himself angrily accused Israel of targeting a marked humanitarian convoy "systematically, car by car." Pres. Biden said he was "outraged and heartbroken" by the strike, and U.S. SecDef Austin also criticized it with a warning that it raised concerns about Israel's ability to differentiate civilians and humanitarian personnel from militant targets if and when it embarks on a looming ground offensive in Rafah. Israel's military chief of staff offered as much of an apology as we'll probably ever hear from an Israeli official at his rank over the strike: "It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night during the war in a very complex condition. It shouldn’t have happened." China TSMC's semiconductor factories appear to have withstood the earthquake that hit Taiwan on Wednesday with no major damage, and are already nearly back to normal production rates. Since TSMC makes around 90% of the world's advanced chips, its resilience in an earthquake was good news for chipmaking, which has been operating near peak capacity since rebounding from COVID-induced supply chain problems. Venezuela Pres. Maduro accused the U.S. of building "secret military bases" in the large, oil-rich chunk of Guyana that Veneuzela disputes and calls Essequibo. Maduro may be using such provocative escalation to stir up fear and justify his plans to "defend" the disputed region as Venezuela's own. Other News The speaker of South Africa's parliament tendered her resignation amidst an investigation into allegations that she took bribes in exchange for awarding defense contracts while she was defense minister. Despite her resignation and the criminal charges that followed it, she denies wrongdoing.
Open source report