Sudan

• Global leaders are calling on Sudan's army chief, Gen. al-Burhan, to agree to a three-day ceasefire in honor of Eid, which starts at sundown tonight (at least for most Sunnis), and to allow evacuations. His rival, Hemeti, has already agreed to it.
• Al-Burhan, meanwhile, tried to appease mediators by reiterating his commitment to returning the country to a civilian government, but analysts are skeptical: he's had 18 months since the coup to make plans for the transition and he let last week's deadline pass with no apparent progress.
• The U.S. had told its ~19,000 citizens in Sudan to shelter in place, but it's now moving to evacuate its embassy and considering plans to help non-embassy U.S. citizens flee. It shifted more troops to Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti to help with likely evacuations.
• The evacuations are going to be challenging: Sudan's airspace is closed and fighting at the international airport at Khartoum has rendered it unsafe for use. It's a long drive to Egypt, Ethiopia, or Eritrea.

• The Financial Times cited leaked U.S. intel reports asserting that Wagner Group tried to buy weapons from China in "early 2023." According to the U.S. reports - and as of Jan. 2023 - China had neither sent weapons nor responded to Wagner's request.
• The same reports also said Wagner succeeded in purchasing six SPG-9 grenade launchers from Syria; however, the "Turkish contacts" they were working through refused to export the howitzers and anti-drone technology Wagner also sought to procure.
• This was before Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin started complaining loudly and publicly that Russia's generals were denying him munitions; I'm guessing that if he was going to China and Syria asking for weapons in January it was because he was already struggling to get supplies from the Russian military.
• A Russian Sukhoi-34 jet accidentally bombed a Russian city around 25 miles (40 km) from the border with Ukraine, injuring three.

• The U.S. repatriated a Guantánamo detainee - a suspected low-level Al Qaeda fighter who was never charged - to Algeria.
• Now there are just 30 prisoners left at Guantánamo, including 16 who are eligible to be repatriated but haven't been yet due to complications (e.g., 11 Yemenis, a Libyan, and a Somali can't legally be returned to their countries because of insecurity in those countries).