Ukraine

• Russia continued to target cities across Ukraine in the fourth day of a campaign that started as a reprisal for the Kerch bridge bombing, for which Russia blames Ukraine (probably correctly).
• Internal Russian government documents suggest the Kerch bridge will take nine months to fully repair. That suggests the damage was far more extensive than Russia wanted to admit when it boasted that traffic over the bridge had resumed. Hence the heavy reprisals against Ukrainian cities, perhaps.
• Ukraine’s allies continued to pledge new weapons donations and announced a plan to start training Ukrainian soldiers in the EU – but it’s divisive: some EU countries worry it would escalate the war.
• Concerned about the possibility of escalation, 15 EU defense ministers proposed a “European Sky Shield” that would standardize and coordinate air defenses across Europe in case Russia expands its bombardment beyond Ukraine.

Iraq

• Iraq’s Parliament launched another effort to end a long-running political stalemate by electing a new president (Abdul Latif Rashid, a Kurdish engineer and former minister), nominated a new PM (Mohammed Shia al Sudani, a Shia former minister of human rights and labor). Now Sudani has 30 days to propose his cabinet picks to Parliament.
• Rockets fell in the Green Zone – where the Parliament and most expats are based – just before the vote took place. There was no claim of responsibility, but the likeliest culprit is pro-Iran militias firing what one of my favorite readers called “to whom it may concern” rockets: they’re not necessarily aiming at one particular target or another; nor are they firing in protest against one particular candidate or another. Rather, their intent is to sow chaos and demonstrate that the Iraqi security apparatus can’t even control the seat of government.

Sahel

• Burkina Faso’s new junta – which overthrew the previous junta – is convening with political parties and civil society today to try to agree on a transition plan and interim leadership. If they can’t agree, coup leader Cap. Ibrahim Traoré will probably stay in charge. Traoré says he still intends to cede power to a civilian government by 2024.

Afghanistan

• It emerged in newly-released Jan. 6 committee testimony that Pres. Trump signed orders for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Somalia on Veterans’ Day 2020 – four days after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election. Those orders weren’t carried out.

Piracy

• The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) released its quarterly piracy report yesterday and counted just 90 global incidents of piracy in the first three quarters of 2022. That’s the lowest figure in 30 years. Incidents were particularly down in the Gulf of Guinea but slightly up in the Singapore Strait.
• One dark spot in the IMB’s otherwise upbeat report was that ships were boarded in 95% of 2022 incidents. As the IMB put it: “the risk to the crew, however petty or opportunistic the incident, remains real.”