Khodorkovsky [former Russian oligarch brought down by Putin]:
Three large groups have formed in Russian society: 15% westernizers, 15% war beneficiaries who think Putin is not aggressive enough, and 70% who want the war to stop but on their terms, meaning Russia has not lost. 1/
Khodorkovsky: For Putin, Russian society is the foundation of his power over the security structures.
If society stops supporting him, his only support will be the secret services, and he will become dependent on them. He does not want this. 2/
Khodorkovsky: The Kremlin has two towers: secret services, mainly the FSB as secret police, and civilian bureaucrats who want to preserve Putin’s power with fewer repressions. They fight for resources. There are no good people among them. 3/
Ukraine is proposing a roadmap to stabilize relations with Poland after a dispute over historical memory.
Proposal has three tracks: foreign ministry consultations, meetings between WWII historians, and religious leaders joining bilateral dialogue — United24. 1/
The proposal was presented by FM Andrii Sybiha to Poland’s Radosław Sikorski in Warsaw.
Kyiv’s message — the dispute should be handled through institutions, not public escalation, and Moscow should not benefit from tension between allies. 2/
The historical track includes renewed historian congresses and continued exhumation procedures.
Ukraine says progress has already been made over the past 18 months and that exhumations should continue through official channels. 3/
Five towns hold the Donbas. Ukraine has turned them into anti-drone net tunnels and kill zones Russia has battered for years.
This fortress belt is the 10% of the Donbas Russia demands in any peace deal. Losing it opens the lowlands to Dnipro, Kharkiv and Kyiv — The Guardian.1/
Lyman sits at the northern edge of the belt. Moscow's forces push daily to retake the city Ukraine drove them out of in the 2022 counteroffensive.
Spent fibre-optic cable from years of drone fighting now hangs so thickly over the buildings that fresh drones tangle in it. 2/
Oleksandr Pavlovych, a vegetable seller, fled Lyman after shrapnel hit his 78-year-old mother in the stomach. She died slowly over a day, and he buried her in the garden.
He then rode a bicycle 30 km to Sloviansk, surviving an FPV drone that exploded on an anti-drone net. 3/
Firepoint co-founder Shtilierman: Ukraine does not need 300 km ballistic missiles. Moscow is not 300 km from our border.
Russia is a monocentric state, with power concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. That is why Ukraine is developing longer-range ballistic capabilities. 1/
Shtilierman: We produce Flamingo missiles as much as we are ordered to produce.
The capacity is there. The bottleneck is bureaucracy around engine exports in Europe and the U.S.
2/
Shtilierman: There are five Flamingo launches in open sources.
We never publish anything before the official General Staff report. Many missions happen and are never publicly reported.
Russian intelligence started tracking Boris Johnson while he was an Oxford student in the 1980s.
The Kremlin called him "likeable but not trustworthy," said he had "no principles" and "could be easily manipulated," The Telegraph. 1/
Russian officers ruled out recruiting Johnson.
Their conclusion: "A manic self-promoter such as Johnson can't really be taken seriously as a candidate for any deep and lasting intelligence connection." 2/
Dominic Cummings, the architect of the Vote Leave campaign and Boris Johnson's future chief adviser, moved to Russia in 1994.
Russian intelligence suspected he was already working with MI6 but opened a file on him anyway and tried to recruit him. 3/