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/ Muscovites are being locked into an ever-growing 'digital gulag', complain Russian warbloggers, as a still-mysterious mobile Internet shutdown in central Moscow enters its second week. The shutdown is reported to be causing huge commercial losses and inconvenience. ⬇️
2/ Starting March 5th, Internet access in central Moscow was shut down, apparently on the orders of the Russian government. It has even extended to shutting down Wi-Fi on the Moscow Metro and the parliamentary Wi-Fi network in the State Duma.
3/ 'Blue Beard' says the city is being plunged back into the primeval darkness of 2007:
"The only app that works in the city centre in the evening, regardless of mobile internet conditions, is Yandex Music.
Meanwhile, Sberbank and T-Bank's banking apps have crashed."
1/ In recent weeks, an entire genre has sprung up on Telegram of Russian bloggers suddenly realising that they live in a repressive dictatorship. They complain bitterly that they were "fools", they are being "enslaved", and forced to endure a "cultural counter-revolution". ⬇️
2/ The forthcoming ban on Telegram – likely to be announced on 1 April – appears to have woken up many Russian bloggers to the way the Russian government is systematically attacking free speech. 'Under the ice' predicts catastrophe:
3/ "In general, the desire to confine all citizens of the country to a sterile information bubble, eliminating the use of inappropriate social networks, books, music, and films, will have the most devastating consequences for the state itself.
1/ Russia simply isn't capable of doing in Ukraine what the US and Israeli air forces are doing in Iran, a prominent Russian warblogger admits. He blames the Russian air force's "organisational backwardness, underdeveloped intelligence, and lack of specialised aviation." ⬇️
2/ Ukraine's aviation situation is starkly different to that of Iran's, despite facing a theoretically more powerful opponent. The Ukrainian Air Force is not only still flying in substantial numbers but has expanded its capabilities with the addition of Western aircraft.
3/ 'Military Informant' discusses why the Russian Aerospace Forces are still unable to achieve air superiority over Ukraine after over four years of full-scale war:
1/ News that the Iranian regime is proving more resilient than expected highlights its unusual governing structure as a 'polydictatorship'. In many ways, it was designed from the ground up to resist regime change. ⬇️
2/ The regime comprises a multi-layered set of elected and unelected institutions that shares power across religious bodies bodies, the armed forces (particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), and economic entities. Each provides a separate and distinct power centre.
3/ They each have their own institutional bases, resources, coercive capacity, and claims to legitimacy — none of which fully controls the others, but which collectively make the regime more resilient to internal and external shocks.
1/ The shutdown of Starlink is reported to be causing a sharp rise in casualties among Russian signalmen and linemen, who are being systematically targeted by Ukrainian drones as they attempt to install alternative communications systems. ⬇️
2/ Pro-Kremlin journalist Andrey Medvedev reports that "in those units where Starlink was operational and then shut down, there was an increase in the number of killed and wounded signalmen and linemen. Why do you think this is?"
3/ "The guys are trying to extend fibre optics to their positions everywhere, while the Ukrainians are herding our signalmen and hitting them with drones. Here's an officer's comment. Not everyone will understand, but...
1/ Ukrainian drone attacks deep in the Russian rear have prompted alarm among Russian warbloggers. They warn that the 'kill zone' behind the front line has expanded far into the rear of the Russian-occupied Donbas region. ⬇️