WORLD BRIEFING: July 10, 2024
President Biden opened NATO’s 75th anniversary summit on Tuesday pledging support for Ukraine. “The war will end with Ukraine remaining a free and independent country,” he said. NATO allies are to provide “a historic donation” of five additional strategic air defense systems to Ukraine. Over time hundreds of additional interceptors will foow, Biden said. The equipment for the five additional air defense systems will be provided by U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Romania and Italy .
Biden will meet his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO summit in Washington later this week to show "unwavering support" for Kyiv, the White House has said. “On Thursday afternoon, President Biden will meet with President Zelensky of Ukraine to discuss our unwavering support for Ukraine as it continues to defend itself from Russian aggression," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing. NATO leaders are gathering in Washington for the summit, which is aimed at showing resolve against Russia and support for Ukraine - RTE
The type of Russian missile that struck a Kyiv children’s hospital uses western components, the Financial Times reported. It said the Kh-101 which destroyed the hospital relies on western-designed components. Quoting experts and Ukrainian officials, the FT said it demonstrated the Kremlin’s success at evading sanctions. Russia is making eight times more Kh-101s - its most advanced cruise missile - than before Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
North Korea, a world leader in digging military tunnels, will send thousands of engineering troops to Russian-occupied Ukraine this summer, reports South Korean TV channel Chosun. The destination would be Donetsk, a front line region with a 150-year history of coal mining. “Three to four engineering brigades” would work in exchange for a Russian payment of $115 million, reports the conservative South Korean TV channel, citing a South Korean official. The tunnels-for-dollars deal comes after President Putin’s June 15 visit to Pyongyang, his first since 2000. North Korean’s leader, Kim Jong-un, vowed “unconditional support” for Russia in the war with Ukraine as the two leaders signed a military mutual assistance pact. North Korea’s 1.2 million-man army is slightly larger than Russia’s 1.1 million-man army. Over the last year, North Korea has sent Russia dozens of ballistic missiles and as many as 5 million artillery shells, South Korea’s defense minister, Shin Wonsik, told Bloomberg last month. Military tunnels could change the dynamic of Ukraine’s front line, where drones now scan battlefields day and night. In recent months, 80 percent of all damage was done by drones, the French army’s chief of staff, General Pierre Schill, told reporters last month at a Paris arms show - via James Brooke
US military bases across Europe were placed on a heightened state of alert last week for the first time in a decade after the US received intelligence that Russian-backed actors were considering carrying out sabotage attacks against US military personnel and facilities, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN. The intelligence the US received suggested that Russia had included US bases and military personnel as options to attack via proxies, the sources said — similar to plots that have been carried out or disrupted across Europe in recent months. In April, two German-Russian nationals were arrested for allegedly plotting bomb and arson attacks on targets including US military facilities on behalf of Russia. The intelligence, which the US received within the last two weeks and has not been previously reported, was deemed alarming enough to implement additional safety protocols, the sources said. Several US military bases in Europe raised their alert level to Force Protection Condition “Charlie,” which “applies when an incident occurs or intelligence is received indicating some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely,” according to the US Army - CNN
A Russian court on Tuesday ordered the arrest of the self-exiled widow of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, accusing her of “participating in an extremist community.” The court order against Yulia B. Navalnaya, who left Russia in 2021, comes five months after her husband died under murky circumstances in a harsh Russian penal colony. He was imprisoned after being convicted of various trumped-up charges when he returned to Russia after a near-fatal attempt to poison him in August 2020. Ms. Navalnaya has repeatedly accused President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia of murdering her husband and has vowed to continue his opposition work. She has become an outspoken critic of Russia’s war in Ukraine, using episodes like a Russian missile hitting a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday to blame Mr. Putin and the Kremlin for the bloodshed. The statement from the Basmanny District Court’s press office announcing the arrest order did not spell out the reason for the charges, but it appeared to be linked to her role in helping to run the Navalny opposition organization. Although she avoided any overt political role while her husband was alive, Ms. Navalnaya has long led the advisory board of his Anti-Corruption Foundation - NYT
In the space of 24 hours, a piece of Russian disinformation about Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife buying a Bugatti car with American aid money traveled at warp speed across the internet. Though it originated from an unknown French website, it quickly became a trending topic on X and the top result on Google. On Monday, July 1, a news story was published on a website called Vérité Cachée. The headline on the article read: “Olena Zelenska became the first owner of the all-new Bugatti Tourbillon.” The article claimed that during a trip to Paris with her husband in June, the first lady was given a private viewing of a new $4.8 million supercar from Bugatti and immediately placed an order. It also included a video of a man that claimed to work at the dealership. But the video, like the website itself, was completely fake. Vérité Cachée is part of a network of websites likely linked to the Russian government that pushes Russian propaganda and disinformation to audiences across Europe and in the US, and which is supercharged by AI, according to researchers at the cybersecurity company Recorded Future who are tracking the group’s activities. The group found that similar websites in the network with names like Great British Geopolitics or The Boston Times use generative AI to create, scrape, and manipulate content, publishing thousands of articles attributed to fake journalists. Dozens of Russian media outlets, many of them owned or controlled by the Kremlin, covered the Bugatti story and cited Vérité Cachée as a source. Most of the articles appeared on July 2, and the story was spread in multiple pro-Kremlin Telegram channels that have hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. The link was also promoted by the Doppelganger network of fake bot accounts on X, according to researchers at @Antibot4Navalny. At that point, Bugatti had issued a statement debunking the story. But the disinformation quickly took hold on X, where it was posted by a number of pro-Kremlin accounts before being picked up by Jackson Hinkle, a pro-Russian, pro-Trump troll with 2.6 million followers. Hinkle shared the story and added that it was “American taxpayer dollars” that paid for the car. - Wired
A large majority of Canadians have been exposed to Russian false narratives about the war in Ukraine — and people who support the Conservative Party are more susceptible to believing Kremlin disinformation, according to a new report. A survey from DisinfoWatch, part of the MacDonald-Laurier Institute think tank, found that 71 per cent of Canadians polled have heard at least one Russian false narrative and that a substantial portion “believe them to be true or are unsure of their falsehood.” It also found “Conservative supporters, who report the highest exposure levels to Kremlin narratives, are also more likely to believe in them compared to their Liberal and NDP counterparts.” The high percentage of Canadians being exposed to the narratives means “Russian disinformation is, in fact, reaching into Canadian homes,” DisinfoWatch director and co-author of the report Marcus Kolga told Global News. He said the primary purpose “is to erode Canadian support and trust in the government of Ukraine, to slow down the aid we’re sending to Ukraine and to stop the supply of weapons, whether it’s Canada or any of our NATO allies.” - Global News
