BLACKWATER USA | DAILY BRIEF - Blackwater Worldwide

Posted by BW Actual on Jan 31st 2025

Gaza

Yesterday's hostage / prisoner swap was chaotic: curious Palestinian civilians swarmed the scene, and Israel almost called off the trade. Eventually it went through, but Israel insisted that mediators must ensure future exchanges run more smoothly.
Meanwhile, a Hamas spokesman belatedly acknowledged the deaths of "a group of senior fighters and heroic commanders" that Israel has picked off in the past 15 months.
None of the seven names would have surprised Israel, which has already publicly confirmed each fighter's demise. However, it was the first time that Hamas officially acknowledged five of their deaths - including that of Muhammad Deif, Hamas's military leader and a central planner of the Oct. 7 attacks.
Deif probably died in an Israeli strike near Khan Younis on July 13 - which was at least Israel's ninth attempt to assassinate him. I'm unclear why Hamas is only officially acknowledging his death now, nearly seven months later.

North Korea

U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence assessed that Russia started pulling its North Korean units back from the front lines about two weeks ago.
Battlefield reports suggested the North Koreans suffered heavy casualties because of their unconventional battle tactics - like sending wave after wave of highly trained troops straight into enemy fire or across minefields.
U.S. officials said Russia may have pulled the North Koreans back only temporarily, and could redeploy them after additional training - or under a new strategy that avoids such heavy losses.

Ukraine

Kyiv's mayor (and former WBO, The Ring, and WBC heavyweight boxing champion), Vitali Klitschko, issued a video criticizing Pres. Zelensky for abusing his presidential powers to interfere in local governance matters in the capital.
Klitschko and Zelensky have long sparred - philosophically rather than physically, fortunately for Zelensky - over who has ultimate authority in Kyiv. This time, Klitschko is bristling at Zelensky's "political" appointment of a city military administrator who Klitschko says is trying to replace the elected City Council.
The spat is awkward for Zelensky, who is losing popularity as the war grinds on. Recent polls put his approval rating at just 50% - compared to 90% at the start of the war - and even lower than that when measured against hypothetical competitors in a post-ceasefire election.
Klitschko is one of the most frequently mentioned hypothetical competitors for the presidency, although he claims he won't run.

DRC

This week's Economist drew some harsh parallels between Rwanda's capture of Goma this week with Pres. Putin's 2014 annexation of Donbas:

"In 2014 Vladimir Putin grabbed much of Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine, and pretended he had not. As a figleaf he used supposedly local separatists, whom Russia armed, supplied and directed. These forces, he claimed, were protecting ethnic Russians from persecution. The Kremlin denied that the Russian army itself was on the ground assisting the rebels, though it was..."
"Rwanda’s dictator, Paul Kagame, has copied these tactics in eastern Congo. The M23 rebels are armed, supplied and directed by his regime. They claim to be protecting Congolese Tutsis from persecution, but the threat to them is exaggerated. M23 is in fact a proxy for Rwanda, allowing it to grab a big chunk of Congolese territory while pretending not to. Thousands of Rwandan troops have crossed into Congo to help. Rwanda denies something that observers on the ground can plainly see."

The Congolese army seems poised to engage the southbound M23 rebels near Kavumu, en route to Bukavu.

Oil

Pres. Trump told reporters he intends to follow through on his threat to slap 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, starting tomorrow, Feb. 1.
However, Trump added that he hadn't yet decided whether to exempt oil imports from the new tariffs.
If oil products aren't exempt, American households will bear the cost of the tariffs in the form of higher energy prices, since 67% of U.S. oil imports come from Mexico (7%) and Canada (60%). [The U.S. is now a net oil exporter, but it can't simply replace imports with domestic production because it produces mostly light crude but refines (and demands) mostly heavy crude.