Posted by BW Actual on Feb 22nd 2024
BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF
Russia
- Spanish intelligence corroborated early suspicions that Moscow orchestrated last week's assassination in Alicante of a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine and then moved to Spain. It would be Russia's first known targeted killing on Spanish soil, but not its first in Western Europe.
- U.S. officials announced a plan to invest over $20 billion in domestically produced cargo cranes to replace Chinese cranes in American ports. At present, nearly 80% of ship-to-shore cranes in U.S. ports are Chinese-made, and China hawks fear they could be vulnerable to manipulation by Beijing.
- U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher - a China hawk who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party - is visiting Taiwan this week, which will surely irk China - though The Economist doesn't think it will provoke a Chinese military response.
- Rival militias battled each other in Tripoli over the weekend, killing 10, but the Tripoli government's Interior Minister says they've now agreed to leave "soon" and cede the city's security to the official police. The militias have periodically stepped in to assert control over roadblocks and arsenals in Tripoli, and they probably will again.
- The U.S. carried out four "self-defense strikes" to destroy seven mobile anti-ship missiles and one missile launcher that Houthi rebels were preparing to fire at ships in the Red Sea.