1

22nd July 2022

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 149 of the invasion ---------------------------------------------2
Erdoğan asks Russia and Iran to back Turkey’s incursion into Syria ------------------------------------- 4
NATO would have eventually started Ukraine war: Khamenei to Putin ----------------------------------6
2

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know

on day 149 of the invasion
Russia and Ukraine expected to sign deal on Friday to resume
Black Sea grain exports; Google banned in occupied Donetsk for
allegedly promoting ‘terrorism and violence against all Russians’.
Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN secretary general, António
Guterres, will sign a deal later today to resume Ukraine’s Black Sea
grain exports, the Turkish president’s office has said. On Thursday night,
the office of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said a general
agreement was reached on a UN-led plan during talks in Istanbul last week and
that it would now be put in writing by the parties. The details of the agreement
were not immediately known. It is due to be signed later today at the Dolmabahce
Palace offices at 14.30 GMT, Erdoğan’s office said.

The US said it would hold Russia accountable for implementing the

deal. A state department spokesperson, Ned Price, accused Russia of
weaponising food, saying: “What will really matter is the implementation of this
agreement. We will, of course, continue to work with our partners to hold Russia
accountable for its implementation.”

Google is to be banned in the occupied Donetsk region of Ukraine for

allegedly promoting “terrorism and violence against all Russians”.
Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR)
said “We have decided to block Google on the territory of the DPR. This is what
they do in any society with criminals: they are isolated from other people. If
Google stops pursuing its criminal policy and returns to the mainstream of law,
morality and common sense, there will be no obstacles for its work.”

The Russian ministry of defence has claimed, without providing any

evidence, that it killed “up to 300 nationalists” in a strike on a school
building in Kramatorsk yesterday. The ministry also said that in the period
from 5-20 July it had destroyed four launchers and one transport-loading vehicle
of the US-supplied Himars missile system. It also claims to have shot down 12
Ukrainian drones.

Ukraine has the potential to inflict major losses on Russia and make
gains on the battlefield, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has
claimed. Speaking in a late-night video address after meeting with senior
military commanders, he said the group discussed the supply of modern weapons,
adding the intensity of attacks on the Russians had to be stepped up.
3

The UK’s Ministry of Defence has said it believes that Russia is experiencing a
“critical shortage” of ground-attack missiles, even as it advances
on Kramatorsk and Siversk.

The Russian government has expanded its list of “unfriendly states” which now
includes 48 countries. The list now
includes Greece, Denmark, Slovenia, Croatia and Slovakia.

Germany’s economics minister announced a new wave of emergency

measures to cut the country’s consumption of gas after flows from
Russia through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline resumed at reduced levels following a
scheduled shutdown.

An EU proposal that member countries cut gas use by 15% to prepare

for possible supply cuts from Russia is facing resistance from
governments, throwing into doubt whether they will approve the emergency
plan.

Britain will send scores of artillery guns and more than 1,600 anti-
tank weapons to Ukraine, the UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, said on
Thursday. He said Britain would also provide counter-battery radar systems,
hundreds of drones and more than 50,000 rounds of ammunition.

Ukraine has called for an international tribunal to bring Vladimir

Putin to justice more quickly. Trying Russia separately for the act of
aggression, with international participation, would speed up its quest to hold the
Russian president and his inner circle accountable, officials said. “We hope to
have the indictment within three months,” Andriy Smyrnov, Ukraine’s deputy
head of the presidential administration, said.

The Belarus president, Alexander Lukashenko, said the war must be

stopped in order to avoid the “abyss of nuclear war” and insisted
Ukraine accept Russia’s demands. “There’s no need to go further. Further lies the
abyss of nuclear war,” he told AFP. Lukashenko also accused the west of seeking a
conflict with Russia and of provoking the war. “If Russia had not got ahead of you,
members of Nato, you would have organised and struck a blow against it,” he said.

Russian proxies in the Russian-occupied territory of Donbas have

been confiscating documents from forcibly mobilised troops, according
to Ukrainian military chiefs. Russian proxies have reportedly been stripping
personal documents from residents in attempts to force them to fight against
Ukraine and making it impossible for forcibly mobilised troops to desert or
identify those who have been killed, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces
said.
4

The UK National Crime Agency has called for more funding to tackle
Russian kleptocracy. The NCA said the UK had been slower to seize
sanctioned Russian oligarchs’ assets than the US because it could not rely on the
same “substantial level of investment” that Washington had poured into tackling
international corruption and sanctions-busting.

What could be a priceless Fabergé egg has been found onboard a

Russian oligarch’s superyacht seized by US authorities. US deputy
attorney general Lisa Monaco told the Aspen security forum on Wednesday it was
one of the more “interesting” finds her team had made.

Erdoğan asks Russia and Iran to back

Turkey’s incursion into Syria
Turkish president cites Kurdish forces in north-west Syria as
justification for extending zone of control

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has used trilateral talks with his Iranian
and Russian counterparts in Tehran to make the case for a further Turkish incursion
into north-western Syria.

Erdoğan cited Kurdish forces in Tel Rifaat and Manbij, two towns in north-west Syria
where Russian and Iranian forces are present, as justification for Turkey extending its
zone of control in the country. “What we expect from Iran and Russia is to support
Turkey in its fight against terrorist organisations,” he told a press conference following
the meeting.

The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Erdoğan against a further
invasion during talks at his office, stating that “a military incursion of Syria will benefit
terrorists”.

The visit to Tehran provided Erdoğan with an opportunity to reaffirm ties to both
Tehran and Moscow, along with plentiful opportunities to court Moscow’s cooperation
on key issues.

Putin and Erdoğan greeted each other warmly at the start of their bilateral talks, despite
a brief moment where the Turkish leader kept his counterpart waiting. The talks
provided an opportunity for Erdoğan to secure Moscow’s backing for a tentative
agreement to evacuate grain across the Black Sea with a control centre in Istanbul, with
UN-backed talks expected to continue in Istanbul this week.
5

“With your mediation, we have moved forward. True, not all issues have yet been
resolved, but the fact that there is movement is already good,” Putin told Erdoğan. The
Turkish president later referred to his counterpart as “my dear friend Putin” during a
roundtable discussion on Syria.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February, Turkish authorities have insisted on
balancing the country’s Nato membership with its longstanding relationship with
Moscow.

Turkey has hosted peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, and sold Ukraine armed
drones for use against Russian forces. Haluk Bayraktar, who heads the company
manufacturing the TB2 drones used in Ukraine, told CNN shortly before Erdoğan
arrived in Tehran that his company would never sell drones to Russia, as “we support
Ukraine, its sovereignty and its resistance”.

But Turkey has declined to join sanctions against Russia, stepped up its purchases of
Russian oil since the invasion, and continues to push ahead with construction of a
nuclear power plant by the Russian state company Rosatom, under threat due to
western sanctions on Sberbank, a major backer of the project.

“Russia can’t afford not to engage with Turkey. They want a relationship with Turkey as
a Nato ally – that wouldn’t change even if Putin and Erdoğan step aside tomorrow,” said
Hanna Notte, an analyst at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.
“But the fact they deal so efficiently and closely on issues, that you can put down to the
Putin-Erdoğan rapport,” she added, saying the leaders share elements of anti-western
sentiment that has fuelled a longstanding personal relationship.

“They share a view of the world as multipolar, where countries outside of the west
should have a say on how things are run.”

Yet Erdoğan’s approach to foreign policy rests on showing that Turkey acts
independently, putting its interests first. This aids his appeal to a domestic audience
ahead of an election expected in the coming year, where Erdoğan faces increasing
opposition.

Despite previously lifting objections to Finland and Sweden joining Nato and securing
the lifting of some weapons sales in the process, Erdoğan this week repeated threats to
“freeze” their accession if Turkish demands aren’t met. At a Nato summit in Madrid in
late June, Erdoğan’s tactics secured him a meeting with the US president, Joe Biden,
who stated his support for sales of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, despite ongoing
opposition from Congress.

Last week, the Turkish president leaned on Putin during a phone call in which he
pressed for Russian agreement on the UN security council’s cross-border aid
mechanism providing vital aid to more than 2 million Syrians in rebel-held areas in the
north-west, blunting Russian threats to veto the aid renewal altogether.
6

“There’s all this leverage building up because of Ukraine and all these crises at once; it
would be surprising if Erdoğan doesn’t try to squeeze something out of this moment, as
this is what he does,” said Aron Lund, of the Washington-based thinktank the Century
Foundation.

“Under Erdoğan, especially in the latter half of his rule, Turkey is always stirring up
crises and then getting something in return for stopping them. That’s been the modus
operandi all along,” said Lund.

“It damages Turkey’s standing in a lot of countries. We witnessed a severe lack of

appreciation for this in Congress and in the EU parliament, for example. But Erdoğan
doesn’t care, or doesn’t seem to. He can show off the results to aid public opinion and he
benefits domestically – plus Turkey benefits in real foreign policy terms, they do get
results,” he said.

These articles appeared in The Guardian

NATO would have eventually started

Ukraine war: Khamenei to Putin
Meeting of Iranian and Russian leaders in Tehran came shortly ahead of trilateral
summit with Turkey’s President Erdogan.

Tehran, Iran – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has told Russia’s
President Vladimir Putin that had he not started the war in Ukraine, NATO, the
“dangerous creature”, would have done it eventually.

“War is a violent and difficult issue and the Islamic Republic is in no way happy that
civilians get caught up in it, but concerning Ukraine, had you not taken the initiative, the
other side would have taken the initiative and caused the war,” Khamenei was quoted as
saying by his website after he met with Putin in Tehran on Tuesday.

He said the West is opposed to a strong and independent Russia, adding: “NATO would
know no bounds if the way was open to it, and if it was not stopped in Ukraine, it would
start the same war using Crimea as an excuse.”

Putin was quoted as calling the loss of civilian life in the war a “big tragedy”, but
blaming the West for causing a Russian “reaction”.

“Some Western countries had said we’re against Ukraine’s membership in NATO but we
agreed to it under pressure from the US, which shows their lack of independence,” the
Russian leader was quoted as saying.
7

The two leaders also reportedly discussed bilateral relations and gradually removing the
US dollar from bilateral trade, in addition to Syria, Israel, and South Caucasus.

Putin also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Tehran on Tuesday. The
meetings came shortly ahead of a trilateral summit on Syria with Turkey’s President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had sat down with Khamenei and Raisi hours earlier.

The office of the supreme leader published an image of Khamenei shaking hands with
the Russian president, a rare occurrence since the COVID-19 pandemic. Khamenei had
only shaken hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s other major ally in the
region, who had made a surprise visit to Tehran in May.

A clip of Putin’s meeting with Raisi showed them praising improvements in bilateral
relations and cooperation across the region.

“In terms of international security, we will increase our cooperation,” Putin said, adding
that the two countries play a major role in ensuring Syria’s security.

The Iranian president told him cooperation between Iran and Russia has created
stability and security in the region.

“Countries that made claims about fighting terrorism in West Asia didn’t take any
meaningful steps in this regard, but it was the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia that
showed their honestly and serious will through serious cooperation on fighting
terrorism,” Raisi said.

This is Putin’s fifth trip to Tehran and his second foreign visit since he launched the war
in Ukraine in February. Putin first visited the Iranian capital in 2007, and subsequently
in 2015, 2017, and 2018.

His visit comes days after US President Joe Biden finished a tour of the region that saw
him visit Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Saudi Arabia, where he also met with
regional Arab leaders.

$40bn energy agreement

The meetings come after Putin’s delegation, which had arrived late on Monday, earlier
on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) worth $40bn with Iran on
developing oil and gas fields.

According to the Iranian oil ministry’s official news outlet, the MoU was signed between
Russian energy giant Gazprom and the National Iranian Oil Company and covers the
development of the Kish and North Pars gas fields, as well as six oil fields.

The non-binding agreement comes as the current total volume of Russian investments
in Iranian energy fields stands at $4bn, Iranian officials said.
8

Iran has the second-largest reserves of natural gas in the world after Russia but has
lagged in expanding its infrastructure due to sanctions that have prevented foreign
investments.

This article appeared in Al Jazeera