‘We Need to Make It Happen’ – Ukraine at War Update for Sept. 9

On a day when Russian air strikes killed at least seven more civilians across Ukraine, Moscow’s drones wandered into NATO territory, with one of them crashing in Latvia.

A “Russian military drone has crashed in the Eastern part of Latvia yesterday,” the country’s president, Edgars Rinkevics, announced on Twitter. “There is an ongoing investigation. We are in close contact with our allies. The number of such incidents is increasing along the Eastern flank of NATO and we must address them collectively.”

Latvia’s Defense Minister said that NATO allies have been briefed on the matter.

“This situation is a confirmation that we need to continue the work we have started to strengthen Latvia’s eastern border, including the development of air defense capabilities and electronic warfare capabilities to limit the activities of UAVs of different applications,” Defense Minister Andris Spruds said.

Meanwhile, another of Moscow’s attacks drones, which was targeting civilian infrastructure in Western Ukraine, drifted into the airspace of Romania, which is a member of both NATO and the European Union.

Bucharest scrambled F-16 jets late on Saturday nights to intercept any additional Shahed drones to enter its territory.

As the UAVs entered NATO airspace, Russian missiles and attack drones rained down on regions across Ukraine.

Two people on Sunday died in strikes on the northeastern city of Sumy, in an attack that injured four others including two children. Four others were killed in the Donetsk region, and another in attacks on Kharkiv in a bombardment that injured ten.

Other Topics of Interest

Don’t Say Purge: One More Russian General Arrested on Corruption Charges

The Kremlin seems to think that more than a few of its top officers are responsible for filching millions of rubles’ worth of cash and military resources from the Russian war effort.

"Terror is reliably stopped in only one way: by strikes on Russian military airfields, on their bases, on the logistics of Russian terror,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote afterward on Facebook. “We need to make it happen.”

Who is advising Trump and Harris on foreign-policy questions as first debate approaches?

The first US presidential debate of 2024 will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 10, in Philadelphia, setting the stage for what hopefully will represent a long-awaited opportunity for the world to get a clear picture of where Donald Trump and Kamala Harris stand on foreign policy issues such as Ukraine.

Vice President Harris has been staging mock debates in Pittsburgh (also in the electorally crucial state of Pennsylvania), with Hillary Clinton’s former campaign aide Phillipe Reines playing the role of Trump, NBC News reported. Just as he did in Clinton’s unsuccessful bid against Trump in 2016, Reines is reportedly wearing heels to mimic the former president’s (then) six-foot, three-inch stature.

Assisting with foreign-policy questions will be a top Pentagon official, Colin Kahl, who has been called the Department of Defense’s point man on Ukraine’s counteroffensive strategy.

Also advising on such issues are Harris’ campaign’s policy director, Grace Landrieu; former Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian Nelson, who oversaw the imposition of US sanctions against Russia; and Harris’ national security adviser, Phil Gordon.

In late July, Gordon and the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, had a telephone conversation in which, according to a release from Zelensky’s office, Yermak and Gordon discussed the further support for Ukraine, the results of the first Peace Summit “and the implementation of the Peace Formula points.”

Meanwhile, Trump insisted that he really doesn’t need help preparing. “There’s not a lot you can do,” he was quoted by NBC as saying. “Either you know the subject or not.”

However, the former president added that “we do talk,” referring to his entourage (he has no formally appointed foreign policy adviser), and reportedly speaks frequently with his former vice president’s national security adviser, Keith Kellogg, who now runs a think tank with the slogan, “America First.”

The retired Army general, who defended Trump’s strong-arming of Kyiv in 2019 in return for compromising information on his opponents’ family members, has helped draft a plan for Trump to end the war in Ukraine: It calls for Kyiv to negotiate or risk a cut-off in US aid, or the opposite reaction from Washington if Moscow turns down the talks.

Another frequent consultant to Trump on such matters, NBC noted, is former Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, whom Donald Trump, Jr. singled out as a leading candidate for Secretary of State should they win the election.

Grenell has been meeting with right-wing leaders in Europe, at Trump’s request, and has long pushed the notion that the US should withdraw some troops from Germany if Berlin does not dramatically increase its defense spending.

In July, Grenell proposed breaking up parts of Ukraine into autonomous zones.

Lev Parnas has a teary first meeting with Hunter Biden in new documentary

Speaking of Trump’s strong-arming of Ukraine in 2019, one of the envoys on that trip, Odesa-born businessman Lev Parnas, who has spent the past couple of years apologizing for his illegal actions, is featured in a new documentary reconciling with the target of their smear campaign, Hunter Biden.

The US House of Representatives successfully impeached Trump in December 2019 for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress involving his quid pro quo blackmail attempt to involve Ukraine in smearing the Biden family to aid in his re-election bid in 2020. Trump was swiftly acquitted in the  Senate by a party-line vote in January 2020. 

Trump was again successfully impeached in the US House in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection on Jan. 6, that year, but was again acquitted in the Senate trial in February 2021, with 57 guilty votes falling short of the 67 votes (two-thirds) required to convict.

“From Russia With Lev,” produced by MSNBC, rolls the camera as Lev and Hunter Biden meet for the first time, and the tears flow.

“Our actions in Ukraine, pushing all of this disinformation against Hunter Biden, has now caused real problems, real criminal problems that he is now facing,” Parnas says in the interview. “To watch Hunter Biden, an American citizen that has nothing to do with politics, a son – and I have sons – to watch the pain that caused in his life,” he says, fighting through emotion.

The camera crew shadows Parnas as he travels to Los Angeles to meet with the president’s embattled son in early July. The documentary premiered over the weekend.

For his part, Hunter Biden seemed genuinely moved by Parnas’ apologies and offered words of consolation.

“It really takes a big person to not only admit that they’re wrong but to do so in public and to do it on the stage you did…,” Biden said, referring to Parnas’ interrogation by the House of Representatives, “all while you’re getting the goddamn hell beat out of you.”

 “So, bottom of my heart, I promise you, you’re a hero to me. I was really, really, really proud. I was proud of you,” Hunter Biden added.

Specter of US sanctions on China leave Russian banks with almost no yuan, long after dollars and euros disappeared

US sanctions in mid-August directed at Chinese and Russian companies who have contributed to the aggression against Ukraine appear to have hit their mark recently, Reuters reported, as Moscow is running out of yuan.

As a result of Russia’s central bank deficit of Chinese currency, the ruble is now trading at its lowest levels ever against the yuan. Reuters explained that the “acute” yuan shortage means that Chinese banks “have grown wary of dealing with Russia” after Washington’s threats of sanctions. Payments for Russian goods to China have been significantly delayed.

Accordingly, the yuan has become the most traded currency on Moscow’s exchange, as dollars and euros are no longer an option for Russian traders, and banks have rolled out yuan-denominated products for their investors.

Economists are forecasting that daily yuan sales through Russia’s central bank will plunge by the end of September to the equivalent of $200 million. Reuters reported that the bank had been selling $7.3 billion worth of yuan per day during the past month.

Adding to the hard-currency shortage, Russia’s third-largest company, oil giant Rosneft, had recently “placed” [issued] a 15 billion yuan ($2.12 billion) bond.

“We cannot lend in yuan because we have nothing to cover our foreign currency positions with,” said German Gref, the CEO of Russian state-owned lender Sberbank.