From Strategic Stability

Report # 105. Kiev destroys huge areas of grain field crops in Donbass

July 19, 2022

1. Humanitarian situation

On one hand, Russia, and other members of the Russian Federation as well as DPR, LPR, pay specific attention to improvement of the humanitarian situation in DPR and LPR, and many areas in Ukraine. Unfortunately, on the other, Kiev disregards humanitarian issue in many respects.

Russian MoD continues to record numerous facts of criminal actions by Kiev regime against civilians, as well as the use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes by Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU):

a) in Kharkov, AFU units are stationed on the territory of school No 8 (Saltovskoye Highway) artillery and MLRS positions have been deployed, without intentionally evacuating local residents from nearby houses;

b) in Pavlograd, Dnepropetrovsk Region, a nationalist stronghold has been deployed in school No 6 (Heroes of Ukraine Street), with ammunition depots in the basement;

c) in Dobropol’e, Donetsk People’s Republic, soldiers of Ukrainian armed formations have equipped strongholds and ammunition depots on the lower and upper floors of apartment buildings (Solnechnyi Quarter Street); they have placed MLRS and armoured vehicles in yards; residents are not allowed to leave their flats; people are actually used by nationalists as human shield.

Furthermore, despite the threat of a food crisis and disregarding the well-being of their own people, the Kiev authorities are carrying out further provocations at agricultural facilities to accuse the Russian military of allegedly indiscriminate strikes against civilian targets and threatening Ukraine’s food security:

a) in Kalinovka, Bakhmut district of Donetsk People’s Republic, neo-Nazis have deployed artillery and MLRS at a grain storage facility, from which they systematically shell positions of the Russian Armed Forces, provoking them to return fire;

b) in Zaporozhye, Nikolaev, Kharkov and Kherson regions, AFU servicemen together with fighters from nationalist battalions are purposefully torching fields with crops using helicopters and artillery. According to official data collected in Donbass, Kiev artificially creating the issue of ‘Ukrainian grain blocked for export’, set fire on huge areas of grain vegetation in the areas belonging to Donbass. 200,000 tonnes of grain belonging to Donbass have been deliberately burned by AFU. Ukrainian hypocrisy and barbarism.

These and other similar provocations by the Ukrainian authorities are taking place against a backdrop of ongoing hysteria by so called civilised West and their false accusations against the Russian Federation of artificially creating a food crisis in the world. Russian MoD warned in advance that fabricated material about alleged “Russian atrocities” is soon to be spread widely through the Western and Ukrainian media.

Such actions by Kiev once again demonstrate an inhuman attitude towards the fate of the Ukrainian citizens and show a complete disregard for all norms of morality and international humanitarian law.

Despite Russian repeated statements, these and other such facts, which flagrantly violate international humanitarian law, continue to go unheeded by the international community and international organisations.

Russia once again called on the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other international organizations to stop turning a blind eye to the blatant crimes committed by Kiev authorities against their own people, to influence official Kiev and to take effective measures to prevent AFU from using civilian and medical infrastructure for military purposes.

2. Navigation in the Black Sea is still blocked by Kiev

Still 70 foreign vessels from 16 countries remain blocked by Kiev in six Ukrainian sea ports, namely in Kherson, Nikolaev, Chernomorsk, Ochakov, Odessa and Yuzhniy in northern part of the Black Sea.

These figures have not changed since May 25^th, 2022 (see Report # 69).

The threat of shelling and high mine danger posed by official Kiev prevents vessels from entering the high seas unhindered.

As a result of the measures taken by the Russian Navy, the mine threat in the waters of the port of Mariupol has been eliminated and measures are being taken to restore the port infrastructure.

From Strategic Stability

Report # 104. Medvedev: Ukraine may confront with the Doomsday

July 18, 2022

1. Ex-President Medvedev reminded Ukraine of the Doomsday

Some top-ranking Ukrainian politicians are trying to threaten the Russian Federation, meaning an attack on the Crimea, including the Crimean Bridge, but if something like this happens, then judgment day will come for them all, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with veterans in Volgograd.

“Individual exalted, bloody clowns who pop up there from time to time with some statements are also trying to threaten us, meaning the attack on Crimea and so on. In this regard, I want to say that it is quite obvious that they understand the consequences of such statements. And the consequences are obvious that if something like this happens, for all of them there, the Day of Judgment [Doomsday] will come at once. Very fast and heavy. It will be very difficult to take cover,” Medvedev stressed.

“In some ways they envy us, our capabilities, in some ways, they probably fear us, but the most important thing for them is that conceptual task that does not change from year to year and passes from one government to another,” Medvedev concluded.

2. Lavrov: Germany and France ‘killed’ Minsk agreements

Berlin and Paris torpedoed the 2015 ceasefire deal for Donbass by shielding Kiev’s non-compliance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said in an article published in Izvestia newspaper [the full text is posted at the MFA website: «Staged incidents as the Western approach to doing politics»; July 18, 2022// https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1822333/%5D.

Russia, Germany and France brokered the 2015 Minsk agreements between Ukraine and Donbass, which were designed to put an end to hostilities. But according to Lavrov, Berlin and Paris failed to ensure Kiev’s compliance.

The Russian Foreign Minister noted that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko admitted the Minsk agreements meant nothing for Kiev, and Ukraine used them only to buy time. Lavrov said: “If anyone doubted that the Minsk Package was anything but yet another fake, Petr Poroshenko dispelled this myth by saying on June 17, 2022: “The Minsk Agreements did not mean anything to us, and we had no intention to carry them out… our goal was to remove the threat we faced… and win time in order to restore economic growth and rebuild the armed forces. We achieved this goal. Mission accomplished for the Minsk Agreements.” 

From Strategic Stability

Report # 103. New facts on the U.S. military biolabs in Ukraine
July 17, 2022

1. The Pentagon refused to answer at least five specific questions

On July 16, 2022 the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation announced new facts related to the military-biological activity of the USA and its allies in various regions of the world, including Ukraine.
Russia has previously spoken about the experiments held by the employees of a laboratory in Merefa on the patients of a psychiatric clinic in Kharkov since 2019 to 2021. It has been noted that one of the organisers of this illegal activity was a US citizen Linda Oporto Al-Haroun.
The documents received during the special military operation have revealed that this kind of investigations has been carried out in Ukraine at least since 2011 and Al-Haroun repeatedly visited the branch of the Merefa laboratory built with funds of the Pentagon in Sorokovka, Kharkov region.
Despite the fact that this installation is provided with underground storage facilities and powerful ventilation systems, it is officially considered a company that produces food additives. At the same time, the site of the company bears clear signs of fictitiousness, while the equipment of the branch has been transported to the western regions of Ukraine under control of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU).
It confirms Russia’s concerns about the numerous violations of the international humanitarian law in Ukraine that are also defined by the Nuremberg Code and the Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association. They include: the voluntary consent of an individual to participate in an experiment; informing about the investigation to be carried out; prevention of excessive physical and mental suffering during an experiment, as well as tortures, inhumane or degrading treatment.
According to the available information, highly active neuropeptides were tested on socially vulnerable citizens of Ukraine that caused irreversible damage to the central nervous system. This is a clear violation of the international treaties related to human rights.
Russia has already mentioned the role of the Scientific-Technological Centre of Ukraine (STCU) in the military-biological programme of the USA in Ukraine.
The Russian MoD focused on the P-268 project. The National University named after Taras Shevchenko in Kiev and the Colorado State University were involved in its implementation.
Note STCU Executive Director Andrew Hood’s appeal to the U.S. Department of State to organise researches within the project. He states that ‘…more than 30% of the participants are former scientists experienced in developing weapons of mass destruction…’.
The objective of the project is to study viruses capable of infecting Aedes mosquitoes. According to the terms of reference, the viral preparation was produced by the institute in Kiev and delivered to the USA for aerobiological studies.
The interest of the American clients in mosquitoes of this species that are vectors of transmissible infections such as dengue fever, Zika and yellow fever is not accidental.
During the last major outbreak of yellow fever in Africa (in 2013), there were 170 thousand cases of the severe form of this disease, including 60 thousand that resulted in death.
Everyone remembers the smallpox virus contamination of blankets for Native Americans, the deliberate infection with the syphilis pathogen by Guatemalan citizens is less discussed while this fact has been admitted by the U.S. President Barack Obama. The use of pesticides during the Vietnam War is even less remembered, but the history of deliberate outbreaks in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s is completely suppressed. At the same time, the use of Aedes mosquitoes as biological weapons, exactly the same ones operated by the U.S. military department, is recorded in the class action suit of Cuban citizens against the U.S. government and was submitted to the member States of the Biological Weapons Convention.
The class action notes that the 1981 dengue epidemic in Cuba that contaminated 345 thousand people and resulted in the death of 158 persons was the result of the spread of the second dengue virus serotype that had not previously been recorded in the Caribbean and had clear signs of a deliberate nature. Thus, the time of the attack (late January) was chosen in consideration of biological features of the life cycle of mosquito vectors and was optimal for the subsequent development of the epidemic process. In addition, the only place on the island where no cases have been reported was the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo due to pre-vaccination of soldiers against the dengue virus type 2.
An artificial outbreak of another viral disease, African swine fever (ASF), occurred in Cuba in 1971. During the epizootic, 500 thousand animals were eliminated and the country suffered a significant economic damage. Although no cases of ASF have been previously reported in the American continent nor in the Western Hemisphere in general, it was Cuba where the disease has appeared.
Former FBI official William Turner introduced some clarity to this issue by telling the Newsday that the CIA delivered a container of ASF agent from Fort Gulick in Panama and transferred it off the coast of Cuba to a fishing vessel. He precisely indicated the farm where this pathogen was introduced.
Since 1980 to 1982, the Cuban leadership reported numerous unusual outbreaks of viral infections of economically important crops (sugar cane and tobacco) that appeared in different regions of the country and were not related to each other.
Yet these facts are only part of the U.S. military-biological dossier, while their investigation is ignored by the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
Despite the assurances of the United States that the biological research in Ukraine is carried out exclusively in the field of civilian healthcare, there are documents that confirm the direct cooperation between the military departments of these countries.
Russia has drawn attention to the Notice of Inclusion of Laboratories of the Central Sanitary and Epidemiological Department of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in the Biological Threat Reduction Program. It notes that ‘…the program enables cooperation between the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence and the U.S. Department of Defence, as well as creates legal principles for its further expansion…’.
Since 2015 that was the beginning of large-scale financing of Ukrainian projects by the Pentagon, numerous cases of infectious diseases have been recorded among servicemen and residents of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics.
According to the report of the Ministry of Healthcare of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), ‘…in 2016, the tularaemia morbidity increased 9.5 times in comparison with 2007. There have been also noted distinctive features in the structure of morbidity, including an increase in the number of servicemen among the contaminated people…’.
Here is a list of tularemia cases in the DPR.
For security reasons, we do not reveal their personal data, this information has been sent to the Investigative Committee of Russia.
The Russian MoD reminded that NATO guidance documents (Guidelines for the Assessment of Radiation, Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Casualties) consider tularaemia as one of the prioritised biological agents. This is the agent that was used in the military exercises of the alliance at the training grounds in Sweden, with official confirmation in 2012.

From the Gray Zone

By Max Blumenthal
July 13, 2022

Independent Donetsk-based journalist Alina Lipp of Germany details her prosecution by the German state for violating new speech codes through her reporting in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

As the only German reporter on the ground in Donetsk, Lipp has exposed Ukrainian forces shelling civilians, attacking a maternity ward, mining harbors, and bombing a granary filled with corn for export. She faces three years in prison if she returns to her home country.

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/07/13/video-germany-criminalizes-journalist-for-exposing-ukrainian-war-crimes/

From Strategic Stability

Report # 102. Russia will intensify its activity in Ukraine

1. Russian Defence Minister inspected Russian troops

Russian Defence Minister, Army General Sergei Shoigu visited Russian troops’ main Command and Control Center where he was informed by the Commander of Southern group of troops Army General Sergei Surovikin, the Commander of Central group of troops Colonel General Aleksandr Lapin and other commanders about the current situation, the action of the enemy and the progress of combat missions implemented by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

The chief of Russian MoD gave necessary instructions for intensifying the activity of Russian troops at all fronts in order to prevent massive missile and artillery attacks launched by the Kiev regime at civilian infrastructure facilities, population of Donbass and other regions.

2. Sneaky AFU can fight with civilians and peaceful cities only

AFU continue to display themselves as a barbaric “army” not recognizing internationally accepted rules of military operations. Kiev still uses regular AFU against civil population and is waging a large-scale war against peaceful cities. Three civilians were killed and 16 wounded on July 15, and 7civilians killed and 19 injured on July 16 in the DPR when AFU renamed in in Russian media as “Barbaric Forces of Ukraine” once again used heavy weapons against populated areas, including the US-made HIMARS MLRS.

As of 16 July, totally 256 civilians were killed and 1,205 civilians, including 93 children, were wounded to varying degrees of wounds in the territory within the pre-SMO borders, according to official Joint Coordination Center data from the DPR. In the territory liberated during the SMO, 1,494 civilians, including 83 children, were wounded.

Damage was caused to 5545 residential buildings, 1233 civil infrastructure facilities, 241 educational institutions, 453 social facilities, 32 critical infrastructure facilities, 434 electricity, water and gas supply facilities, 672 vehicles.

Kievskyi, Petrovskyi, Kirovskyi and Kuybyshevskyi districts of Donetsk, Yasynuvata and Horlivka are under daily shelling by the AFU.

Over the 150 days of escalation, the JCCC has recorded 5,983 instances of firing, including 5,654 involving the use of heavy weapons. In total, the enemy fired 4,986 munitions of various calibres, including 31 Tochka-U missiles, 14 BM-30 Smerch MLRS missiles, 151 BM-27 Uragan MLRS missiles and 8,759 BM-21 Grad MLRS missiles.

3. Talks in Istanbul to unblock Ukrainian ports

On July 13, quadripartite consultations on the issue of unblocking Ukrainian ports intentionally blocked by Kiev for the export of agricultural products were held by UN representatives, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine in Istanbul.

AFU = Armed Forces of Ukraine

From Strategic Stability

Report # 100. The USA de facto kills civilians in Ukraine

July 12, 2022

1. Novaya Kakhovka has been heavily shelled by AFU who used U.S. HIMARS

Novaya Kakhovka located in Kherson Region has been heavily shelled by Ukrainian war criminals in the evening July 11^th. A local official said that during this terrorist attack five people were killed and at least 90 injured. Some people are said to have been buried under the rubbles.

A kindergarten, hospital, church and a market place were also damaged. a fertilizer storage depot detonated due to the shelling.

The city is controlled by Russian forces. 

Local officials claimed that Ukrainian troops used US-delivered HIMARS multiple rocket launchers to attack Novaya Kakhovka. Local officials labelled such barbaric act as an act of terrorism.

AFU also shelled settlements located not far away from Zaporozhiye Nuclear Power Plant.

My comment: any direct or unintentional attack at this active NPP can cause severe tragedy not only to Ukraine and Russia, but may also affect many European nations.

2. Humanitarian situation

The Russian Federation’s Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response continues to record the Kiev regime’s criminal actions against civilians.

It has been reliably established that Ukrainian nationalists are preparing yet another cynical provocation with civilian deaths in Slavyansk in Donetsk People’s Republic to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of carrying out indiscriminate strikes against civilian targets. For this purpose, residents of nearby residential quarters are being held in the building of the Vocational Agrarian Lyceum (Nauka Street) under the pretext of allegedly ensuring security. At the same time, the building is mined and the militants plan to blow it up when Russian troops launch artillery strikes on military targets in the city.

Russia warned that the provocation about “Russian atrocities” is to be widely disseminated by the Kiev regime in the Ukrainian and Western media.

In addition, Ukrainian Armed Forces, as usual, continue to use educational institutions and social facilities for military purposes:

a) in Kharkov, AFU units and Polish mercenaries are based in the premises of the National Technical University (Poltavskyi Shlyah Street), artillery and MLRS are deployed, and there has been no deliberate evacuation of residents from nearby houses;

b) in Nikolaev, AFU units and territorial defence are deployed in kindergarten No. 126 (Mira Avenue) and school No. 11 (Kitoboyev Street);

c) in Pevnichnoye in Donetsk People’s Republic, a stronghold with barracks has been equipped in kindergarten No. 10 (Novaya Street) to house fighters of Ukrainian armed formations and foreign mercenaries; the approaches to the building are mined, but the local population is deliberately not informed of this;

From Strategic Stability

Report # 97. Kiev continues to terrorize civilians in Donbass

July 9,2022

1. AFU continue to terrorize the civilian population in Donbass with the help of NATO

Armed Forces of Ukraine or AFU are inflicting massive artillery strikes on residential areas and civilian infrastructure in the DPR, which are not military facilities.

During the July 9th, according to information from the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) of the DPR, the enemy fired more than 160 shells by using Uragan and Grad MLRS, 155mm (NATO-made), 152mm and 122mm barrel artillery, as well as 120mm mortars.

The shelling took place in fourteen settlements of the DPR. Eight civilians were wounded as a result of the shelling. Thirteen residential buildings and three civilian infrastructure facilities were damaged.

During last three days AFU fired more than 750 shells against the DPR killing 11 people, including three small children on the kid’s playground, and wounding 37.

It is a state-sponsored terrorism, encouraged by the USA and other NATO countries.

2. Ukraine cut off gas supply to Zaporozhye Region

“Kyiv regime” cut off gas supply to the Zaporozhye region. This was announced in his Telegram channel by the head of the local military-civilian administration Yevgeny Balitsky. He stressed that experts examined the pipe and concluded that there was no damage.

“We understand for sure, we were turned off. The Kiev regime does not need the Zaporozhye Region, neither in people, nor in the region. These are their methods, which they used in the Crimea. Methods of genocide – turning off people’s water, gas, electricity,” Balitsky said in his address.

A comment: this is a traditional method practiced by ultra-nationalist Kiev regime. Constant shelling of water and gas pipelines in Donbass by AFU is a strategy pursued by Zelensky. For the last eight years Ukrainian presidents blocked water supply to the Crimea via special canal.

He added that the authorities of the Zaporozhye Region appealed to the Russian government with a request to supply electrical appliances and help in the current emergency.

3. Humanitarian and other issues

On July 9 the Joint Coordination Headquarters (JCHQ) of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response issued a statement of the developments in this domain.