Hello, dear readers!
On Monday evening, the press – with reference to the Ministry of Health of Armenia – reported that 125 people died as a result of an explosion at a fuel warehouse in Nagorno-Karabakh. Soon the department adjusted the figures: 68 people were confirmed dead as a result of the explosion, 290 were injured, 168 of them are in hospitals in Armenia. By Tuesday evening, 19 thousand residents of Nagorno-Karabakh had arrived in Armenia. Refugees are coming to Goris, here is a story about the situation in this city. The Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh is estimated at 120 thousand people; it is expected that most of them will want to resettle in Armenia.
In Armenia, the court arrested the former mayor of Yerevan Albert Bazeyan in the case of preparing an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – he and seven other members of the military-patriotic organization “Crusaders” were detained on September 23. Protests demanding Pashinyan’s resignation continue: on Tuesday morning, police detained 32 people who tried to block the streets in the center of Yerevan.
Military reports
During the attack on the Odessa region on Tuesday night, Russia fired 38 Shaheds, and only 26 of them were shot down. The target of the attack was the port infrastructure in the Izmail region: warehouses, 30 trucks and the Orlovka ferry checkpoint on the border with Romania were damaged (Bucharest condemned the attack). Two people were injured. It was also reported that an infrastructure facility was hit in the Cherkasy region and explosions were reported in Krivoy Rog. In the afternoon, during the next shelling of Kherson, six people were wounded.
On Tuesday morning, seven settlements in the Kursk region were left without electricity after a drone attack on a substation. The Ukrainian press, citing sources, claims that the attack was organized by the Security Service of Ukraine. If Russia does not stop shelling Ukrainian energy facilities, such attacks will become regular. On Monday evening, a fire was reported in Shchelkovo near Moscow. There were no official Russian comments; the Ukrainian press noted that the Chkalovsky military airfield was located in this area.
The Russian Ministry of Defense distributed a video of a meeting of the department’s board with the participation of the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Viktor Sokolov. The day before, Ukrainian Special Operations Forces said he was killed in an attack on fleet headquarters in Sevastopol on September 22. Now they are “clarifying” the information. “Ukrainian Pravda”, citing sources, reported on the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ attack on the Russian military command post in the Kherson region, as a result of which eight officers were killed and seven more were wounded. The strike was allegedly carried out by a HIMARS missile on September 18.
The occupation authorities of the Zaporozhye region reported the offensive of the Ukrainian army in the Rabotino-Verbove area with the participation of a large amount of military equipment. The Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to advance near Bakhmut, here is a report from the recently liberated Kleshcheevka.
Russian life
Near-war. In 2024, Russia is going to spend a record 11 trillion rubles on military needs – economist Igor Lipsits explains where this money will come from. In the meantime, Siberian regions are actively spending money on funeral wreaths: “Siberia. Realii” has counted applications for their purchase for a total amount of 10 million rubles. In Primorye, a court sentenced Baptist Vyacheslav Reznichenko to 2.5 years in a penal colony for refusing to fight in Ukraine. Read about the difficulties with introducing a digital military register here. Around Kadyrov. Putin’s press secretary refused to comment on Kadyrov’s publication of a video in which his 15-year-old son beats Nikita Zhuravel, who was arrested for burning the Koran in Volgograd and later transferred to a pre-trial detention center in Chechnya. But other officials commented willingly, never tired of emphasizing the gravity of the crime committed by the beaten man. What 15-year-old Adam Kadyrov is known for is described here, but here is the answer to the question of what the father and son would face for beating if laws worked in Russia. The editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe, Kirill Martynov, demanded that the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Investigative Committee bring Kadyrov Sr. under articles of failure to fulfill parental responsibilities and involving a minor in the commission of a crime. Read the guesswork about why Kadyrov published this video in the first place here. In St. Petersburg, a picketer with a poster “I/We are Nikita Zhuravel” was detained; a protocol was drawn up against him for violating Covid restrictions. Censorship. According to The Moscow Times, WhatsApp, under threat of blocking, refused to launch the channel creation function in Russia. The head of Yakutia, Aisen Nikolaev, defended the films “Aita” and “Candidate” (Roskomnadzor found “destructive information” and “LGBT propaganda” in them). A court in Ivanovo fined the architect Sergei Volkov two million rubles under a criminal article on “rehabilitation of Nazism on the Internet” for an opinion published in a telegram channel that during the war, Stalin abandoned Leningrad to its fate by not ensuring the city’s supplies. Sociologist Boris Kagarlitsky, who is in a pre-trial detention center, was fined 40 thousand rubles due to the absence of the “foreign agent” label in his publications. Political prisoners. The Court of Appeal upheld the sentences of Alexei Navalny and the technical director of the YouTube channel “Navalny LIVE” Daniel Kholodny in the criminal case for “creating an extremist community”: 19 and 8 years, respectively. Former journalist Ivan Safronov, sentenced to 22 years for treason, was found in the Krasnoyarsk tuberculosis hospital, known for torturing prisoners (no one understood what he was doing there). A new criminal case was opened against anti-war activist Alexei Rozhkov, who is sitting in a pre-trial detention center, for “justifying terrorism” (Rozhkov was one of the first in Russia to set fire to a military registration and enlistment office, after which he left for Kyrgyzstan, from where he was expelled – apparently at the request of the Russian FSB). Jail. In the Primorsky correctional colony, about 50 women serving sentences were forcibly shaved; those who tried to resist were beaten (the head of the colony denies all this). Here is a great interview with the founder of Sitting Rus’, Olga Romanova, about the Russian prison.
Around the world
Poland. The Polish National Prosecutor’s Office has established that the rocket that fell in Przewoduw in November 2022 and killed two people was launched from Ukraine while repelling a Russian missile attack on energy facilities in the Lviv region. Read about the campaign of harassment launched by the Polish authorities against director Agnieszka Holland, who shot the film “Green Border” about the migration crisis provoked by Belarus here. Spies. The trial of five Bulgarian citizens accused of spying for Russia has begun in the UK. From court documents it follows that their actions were coordinated by Wirecard director Jan Marsalek. The accused spied on people being persecuted by Russian authorities and planned their kidnappings and murders. Speaker of the Canadian Parliament Anthony Rota resigned because he invited a veteran of the SS Galicia division to a meeting with Zelensky. Former US President Donald Trump and his family were found guilty by a New York court on Tuesday of fraud in a civil case: Trump illegally increased the value of his assets in order to take advantage of bank benefits when obtaining loans and insurance. Russia is trying to re-enter the UN Human Rights Council by offering poor countries food and weapons in exchange for their votes.
Six links
First World War. Analysis of the lessons of the mobilization of 1914. Or an excerpt from Leonty Lannik’s book “Unbearable Hegemony. The German Empire on the Fronts of the Civil War in Russia” (Eurasia Publishing House), dedicated to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. Biographies. The story of Magda Nachman-Acharya (1889–1951) – Russian, German, Swiss, Jewish and Indian artist. Or a fragment from the biography of the Lithuanian artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis (1875–1911), written by Yuri Sheniavsky, a researcher of his life and work (Young Guard Publishing House). Terrain marking. An excerpt from Thomas Berg’s book “Theater of the World. History of Cartography” (Ad Marginem publishing house), dedicated to Gerardus Mercator, who figured out how to display a spherical Earth on a plane. Or an excerpt from Roman Mars’ book “The City in Details: How a Modern Metropolis Really Works” (Bombora Publishing House) – about how the design of street signs and international symbols was created.
Sincerely yours,
Seven forty