WAR IN UKRAINE: March 4, 2023
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS: Day 374
France is considering the possibility of transferring its Mirage fighter jets to Ukraine, stated the head of the Ministry of Defense, Sebastian Lecornu, VMFTV reports. According to him, Ukrainian pilots can be trained in Poland. Currently, the fate of 12 Mirage fighters, which were written off and put into storage in the summer of 2022, is still being discussed.
Russian and Ukrainian forces are fighting in the streets of Bakhmut - but Russia does not control the eastern city, its deputy mayor has said. Oleksandr Marchenko also told the BBC the remaining 4,000 civilians are living in shelters without access to gas, electricity or water. Mr Marchenko said "not a single building" had remained untouched and that the city is "almost destroyed” - BBC
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited wounded soldiers at a military hospital in Lviv. One, shaking the president’s hand from bed, apologised that he could not stand up. “That’s OK,” Zelenskiy said. “The time will come and you will rise.” Referring to invading Russian forces, Zelensky also said: "They take no account of their losses in trying to take the city by assault. The task of our forces in Bakhmut is to inflict as many losses on the enemy as possible. Every metre of Ukrainian land costs hundreds of lives to the enemy…There are many more Russians here than we have ammunition to destroy them.”"
On Friday, President Zelensky stressed that artillery and shells were needed to "stop Russia". US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the country's latest package included high-precision Himars artillery rockets and howitzers "which Ukraine is using so effectively".
The commercial satellite industry is under investigation for selling images to Russian military entities and the Wagner Group which would be used for targeting “critical infrastructure sites in Ukraine,” according to a foreign-owned newspaper in Kyiv. A disclosure from the US Congress revealed that an estimated ten companies from the US, South Korea, EU, Israel and China could be complicit, an accusation generally confirmed with a Ukrainian intelligence officer who affirmed that Russia was buying foreign satellite imagery. Scare global industry oversight means little knowledge is publicly available about these sales, but a Ukrainian official told the paper that Russia may be using “front companies” to trick companies into selling the images. Such purchases continue to raise complex issues within the industry which already grapples with the challenges of its imagery’s dual use for civilian and military purposes - Thea Dunlevie
Required reading…
Ukraine finds stepping up mobilisation is not so easy
Military recruiters are accused of rough tactics as they try to boost the head count
Ukraine has visibly stepped up mobilisation activities in the first two months of this year. There have been reports of draft notices issued (and sometimes violently enforced) at military funerals in Lviv, checkpoints in Kharkiv, shopping centres in Kyiv and on street corners in Odessa. Popular ski resorts lie deserted despite the first proper snows of the winter: footage of military officials snooping around on the slopes was enough to keep the crowds away. In every town and city across the country social-media channels share information about where recruitment officers may be lurking.
Read the full The Economist article here
