1/ If Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had succeeded in 2022, Ukraine's industries would have been seized and taken over by Russian oligarchs. A leaked document shows that oligarch Konstantin Malofeev intended to create a 'DMZ Concern' from Ukraine's largest plants. ⬇️
2/ Malofeev is a billionaire who is a close supporter of Vladimir Putin and an aggressive promotor of religious conservatism. He's an overt monarchist who reportedly sees Putin as a new Tsar, and has links with far-right parties and individuals in Europe and the US.
3/ The EU, US and Canada have sanctioned Malofeev for trying to destabilise Ukraine and finance separatism. He's closely linked to pro-Russian separatists and was the former employer of Igor Girkin. He's been accused of funding radical nationalist movements across Europe.
4/ The DMZ Concern document, a presentation possibly dated 30 May 2022, was published recently by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel. It sets out a business plan for the "expansion of production assets based on the results of the Special Military Operation".
5/ The first slide shows what appears to be the intended territorial division of a defeated Ukraine, with the whole of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts – up to the Moldovan and Romanian borders – under Russian control.
6/ This would have stripped Ukraine of its entire coastline, all its ports and much of its heavy industry, hydroelectric and mineral resources. It would have become an economically devastated and landlocked rump state, likely under the control of a pro-Russian puppet government.
7/ Slide 2 describes the 'DMZ concern' as a vastly expanded version of the existing Donetsk Metallurgical Plant (DMZ) company, which operates mines and other industrial enterprises in the 'Donetsk People's Republic'. It states a goal of achieving:
8/ "consolidation of existing financial, economic, technical and market opportunities of enterprises of key industries in the liberated territories of the DPR, LPR and Kherson, Zaporizhzhia regions, which form the [economic] basis of the south-east region of the former Ukraine."
9/ After listing DMZ's existing holdings on slide 4 (#3 is missing), slide 5 of the plan lists "enterprises located in the liberated territories [that] are possible [candidates] for integration" with DMZ. They include some of Europe's largest mining and mineral processing plants.
10/ These include the Marganets Mining and Processing plant and the Nikopol Ferroalloy plant (both in Dnipropetrovsk oblast), the Zaporizhstal steel plant in Zaporizhzhia oblast and others. Slide 7 discusses a number of additional Ukrainian factories being considered for seizure.
11/ Slides 5.1 and 5.2 indicate that this was not just a theoretical exercise – the plan was already well advanced. Legal work had been done and management agreements had been signed as part of a three-stage plan to be carried out through 2022–2027.
12/ Interestingly, slide 5.3 lists among various business and growth goals for the 2023–2027 period an objective of achieving "Entry into the markets of friendly and sub-allied countries of Eurasian Economic Union, Middle East (Iran, Syria), South-East Asia, Turkey and Africa."
13/ The plan sets out a goal of aligning the DMZ Concern with a "strategic partner" (presumably Russian) and inclusion of its enterprises in "the state programmes of the Russian Federation." It also raises the possible takeover of Odesa port to serve DMZ.
14/ The end result, anticipated on slide 8, is the "reactivation of cooperation and activities of enterprises in the key sectors of the liberated territories of the DPR, LPR and south-eastern Ukraine…
15/ …in the form of a cumulative increase in annual financial indicators from RUR 70 billion [$990 million] (data for 2021) to RUR 220 billion [$3.1 billion] by 2024." This would achieve the "creation of a major enterprise in the interests of the Russian Federation."
16/ The slide indirectly acknowledges the impact of the DNR's large-scale mobilisation of fighting-age men, most of whom are now likely dead, by describing a goal of the "preservation of 8,616 jobs (excluding those mobilized)". It anticipates having over 16,000 workers by 2024.
17/ The plan doesn't specify where the extra workers would come from, but it's likely that – as has happened in Crimea – large numbers of people would be relocated from Russia to repopulate Ukraine's south-east, replacing the Ukrainians who have fled or been deported from there.
18/ Needless to say, the Ukrainian owners of the seized enterprises would not have received a kopek in compensation. With their collective value of billions of dollars, Malofeev was planning arguably the biggest heist in history – though it's now hopefully been thwarted. /end
1/ The Russian government is blocking Telegram to destroy the Russian people's social connections, says former high-level government advisor German Klimenko. The frank admission has caused outrage among Russian commentators. ⬇️
2/ In an interview with 'Parliamentary Gazette', Klimenko says: "The primary function of any messenger is to create social connections. Therefore, to stop people from using a messenger, these connections must be destroyed."
3/ "In 2018, when Telegram first clashed with [communications regular] Roskomnadzor, the latter managed to knock out about 10 percent of social connections: let's say, I have a thousand contacts in the messenger, 100 stopped working, and 900 remained.
1/ Russia's block on Telegram, crackdown on VPNs and mobile Internet shutdowns are threatening to destroy the 'People's Military-Industrial Complex' – a vast ecosystem of volunteer and start-up efforts that manufactures and supplies the army with drones and other equipment. ⬇️
2/ The 'People's VPK', as it's known in Russia, has grown from garage workshops to well-organised industrial chains linking enthuasists, serving and ex-military personnel, and start-up companies to produce a wide variety of essential equipment for the Russian army.
3/ They supply many things that the Russian MOD and the slow and expensive state-directed military industrial complex does not: drones, signal repeaters, masts, armour plates, charging stations, sighting devices, electronic warfare equipment, and so on.
1/ The blocking of Telegram by the Russian government is a disaster for huge numbers of Russian businesses and citizens, who have now lost a key means of advertising and income. The Russian government's preferred app, MAX, lacks the features that made Telegram so essential. ⬇️
2/ Russian commentators are warning that two recent developments – Telegram's blocking by the state and the decision by two regulatory bodies that all advertising on it is retrospectively illegal – threaten to cause devastating economic harm.
3/ Telegram, which was developed by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, is almost universally used by Russians. It has become an essential business tool, with virtually every company in Russia advertising on it and many running their own channels for customers.
1/ The Russian army is recruiting incontinent, brain-damaged men who are incapable of fighting and are literally having to be carried around. A Russian warblogger protests the waste of resources that this represents. ⬇️
2/ Anastasia Kashevarova, a journalist and warblogger who has campaigned for the rights of Russian troops, highlights the ongoing problem of so-called "black recruiters" who recruit sick people into the army to meet arbitrary quotas and steal their recruitment bonuses.
3/ This is a widespread issue on which she has written before. Thousands of medically unfit men, many with infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis, have been recruited. Some have been discharged, but many have ended up on the front lines.
1/ Iran intends to leverage its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz to force the US and Gulf Arab states to accept an agreement in which Iran has set "appropriate political and security conditions", in which its security is guaranteed and US bases in the region are closed. ⬇️
2/ Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Parliament of Iran, has told the London-based Arabic newspaper The New Arab (Al-Araby al-Jadeed) that Iran will keep fighting and "will not return to the conditions that prevailed before the war."
3/ He says that a ceasefire agreement will not be acceptable without guarantees "that war will not resume, not if it gives the enemy an opportunity to fix its problems, such as the destruction of its radars or the shortage of interceptor missiles,…
1/ Russia's entire strategy towards the 'Global South' is on the edge of collapse, admits the Russian writer and politician Yevgeny 'Zakhar' Prilepin. He complains that Russia's ambitious projects abroad have turned out to be little more than a bluff. ⬇️
2/ Prilepin, who represents a national-conservative perspective, writes:
"There's some extremely sad news coming out of Cuba: immersed in darkness, this country has begun negotiations with the United States.
We may be losing Cuba too."
3/ "We have to admit that the pivot to the Global South, which was the talk of all the Russian television channels just a year and a half ago, has failed.