Residents of Kyiv region are being urged to prepare for prolonged power outages that may last for days.

On Nov. 17, Dmytro Sakharuk, executive officer of Ukraine’s biggest energy company DTEK, stated during a TV marathon that the power supply situation in the Kyiv region is “difficult.” Residents have been told to prepare for prolonged power outages that may last for days.

On Nov. 16, Governor of the Kyiv region Oleksiy Kuleba, said that the electricity supply situation in the region remains challenging and that emergency blackouts will continue.

Kuleba set out recommendations to help citizens prepare for an extended shutdown. These include preparing supplies of water for drinking and other use; keeping a supply of food suitable for long term storage; and having access to a radio, power bank, flashlight, matches, batteries, a first aid kit and (if possible) a generator.

On Nov. 17, the Russian invaders fired missiles at the territory of Ukraine in the latest massive air attack. Residents of several regions reported explosions, including in the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipro and Cherkasy. Following explosions in the Dnipro region, the power supply was partially cut off.

On Nov. 15, Russia fired more than 90 missiles at Ukraine, damaging 15 energy facilities. According to Ukraine’s Air Force, 73 missiles were shot down, including all 10 “Shahids.”

After the attack, half of Kyiv residents were left without electricity. Scheduled hourly power outages have been introduced throughout Ukraine.

The post Power Outages in Kyiv Region Could Last for Days appeared first on Kyiv Post.

Russia said Thursday, Nov. 17, that a Dutch court ruling over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014 was politically motivated, adding the court was under “unprecedented pressure”.

“The course and the results of the proceedings indicate that they were based on a political order to reinforce the version promoted by The Hague and its associates,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“We deeply regret that the District Court of The Hague has neglected the principles of impartial justice for the sake of the current political situation, thus inflicting a serious blow to the reputation of the entire judicial system of the Netherlands,” Moscow said.

The foreign ministry also said the court was under “unprecedented pressure” from Dutch politicians, prosecutors and media.

Moscow said the trial in the Netherlands could go down in history as “one of the most scandalous in the history of legal proceedings with its extensive list of oddities, inconsistencies and dubious arguments of the prosecution.”

Earlier Thursday a Dutch court convicted three men and acquitted one over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 above Ukraine in 2014.

Russians Igor Girkin and Sergei Dubinsky and Ukrainian Leonid Kharchenko were “found guilty” of murder and intentionally causing an aircraft to crash, while Russian Oleg Pulatov was not guilty, head judge Hendrik Steenhuis said.

The first three were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia.

Moscow has denied all involvement in the crash. It has refused to extradite any of the suspects, saying it is illegal under Russian law.

The post Russia Slams MH17 Court Ruling as Politically Motivated appeared first on Kyiv Post.

Russia hopes it can make a prisoner swap with the United States that would include convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death”, a deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying on Friday.

Amid the deadliest war in Europe since World War Two, Russia and the United States are exploring a prisoner swap that would see imprisoned Americans including basketball star Brittney Griner return to the United States in exchange for Bout.

“I want to hope that the prospect not only remains but is being strengthened, and that the moment will come when we will get a concrete agreement,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by Interfax.

“The Americans are showing some external activity, we are working professionally through a special channel designed for this,” Ryabkov said. “Viktor Bout is among those who are being discussed, and we certainly count on a positive result.”

For the two former Cold War foes, now grappling with the gravest confrontation since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the exchange would mark one of the more extraordinary prisoner swaps in their history.

The possible swap includes Griner, facing nine years behind bars in Russia after being convicted on drug charges, and Paul Whelan who is serving a 16-year sentence in Russia after being convicted of espionage charges that he denies.

Variously dubbed “the merchant of death” and “the sanctions buster” for his ability to get around arms embargoes, Bout was one of the world’s most wanted men prior to his 2008 arrest on multiple charges related to arms trafficking.

For almost two decades, Bout was one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, selling weaponry to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.

But in 2008, Bout was snared in an elaborate U.S. sting.

Bout was caught on camera agreeing to sell undercover U.S. agents posing as representatives of Colombia’s leftist FARC guerrillas 100 surface-to-air missiles, which they would use to kill U.S. troops. Shortly afterwards, he was arrested by Thai police.

Bout was tried on the charges related to FARC, which he denied, and in 2012 was convicted and sentenced by a court in Manhattan to 25 years in prison, the minimum sentence possible.

Ever since, the Russian state has been keen to get him back.

Griner has been transferred to a penal colony about 500 km (300 miles) southeast of Moscow, her lawyers said on Thursday, confirming a Reuters report.

At her trial, Griner – who played basketball for a Russian team in the U.S. off-season – said she had used cannabis for relief from sports injuries but had not meant to break the law. She told the court she made an honest mistake by packing the cartridges in her luggage.

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A threat actor tracked as WASP is behind an ongoing supply chain attack targeting Python developers with the WASP Stealer.

Checkmarx researchers uncovered an ongoing supply chain attack conducted by a threat actor they tracked as WASP that is targeting Python developers.

The attackers are using Python packages to distribute a polymorphic malware called W4SP Stealer.

The malicious code is able to steal the victim’s Discord accounts, passwords, crypto wallets, credit cards, and other sensitive data on the victim’s PC. Stolen data have been sent them back to the attacker through a hard-coded Discord webhook address.

The threat actor is offering the WASP stealer for $20 claiming it is undetectable and is heavily “protected by some awesome obfuscation.” The supply chain attacks seem to be financially motivated.

Checkmarx investigation started from recent reports from Phylum and Check Point, which spotted tens of PyPI packages delivering the W4SP stealer to developers’ systems.

The researchers pointed out that the attacks stand out for the use of steganography to hide the polymorphic malware hidden within an image file hosted on Imgur.

Once a malicious package is installed, the setup.py script is executed, and additional Python packages are deployed on the victim’s system, including judyb, which provides steganography utilities.

The setup.py script downloads a .png image from Imgur and saves it in the operating system’s temp directory. Then the scripts uses the “lsb.reveal” function of the judyb package to extract the hidden code from the image.

After the installed code is executed, it fetches another piece of code from the URL “hxxp://misogyny[.]wtf/inject/UsRjS959Rqm4sPG4”.

The overall process ends with the W4SP Stealer (aka WASP Stealer) infection.

The analysis of the malicious code allowed the expert to find an open invitation to join the attacker’s Discord server managed by a single user that goes with the name of “Alpha.#0001”.

The attacker is creating many fake users to appear legitimate while stealing the profile description from popular user accounts.

The researchers analyzed the Discord server “WASP” and discovered that hundreds of victims have been infected by this campaign.

The same actor, recently started using a new username on PyPI (“halt”) to upload typosquatting libraries that leveraged the StarJacking technique (stealing the stars from another project).

“The level of manipulation used by software supply chain attackers is increasing as attackers get increasingly more clever.” concludes the report. “This is the first time seen polymorphic malware used in software supply chain attacks, and It seems we will experience even more attacks like this.”

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, WASP Stealer)

The post Ongoing supply chain attack targets Python developers with WASP Stealer appeared first on Security Affairs.

Supply link

The post “Horrific” Scale of Torture in Kherson Seen after Russia Retreat: Official – Kyiv Post appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

American General Mark Milley, who is also Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has cautioned that Russia still had substantial combat capability inside Ukraine despite suffering recent defeats on the battleground. He noted that the chances of an outright military victory for Ukraine in the near-term were not high.

At a news conference in the Pentagon, Milley said: “The probability of a Ukrainian military victory – defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they claim as Crimea – the probability of that happening anytime soon is not high, militarily.”

At the same event, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin echoed Milley’s declaration that the US would aid Ukraine in self-defense for however much would be needed.

“Politically, there may be a political solution where, politically, the Russians withdraw. That’s possible,” he continued, saying Russia “right now is on its back.”

 Milley and Austin spoke to the media after a virtual meeting between a large number of defence ministers.

“Ukraine will continue to endure. Ukraine is not going to back down,” Milley said, adding that Ukraine was free, “and they want to remain free.”

 Military to military communication with the Kremlin during the nine-month war has been emphasized by the Pentagon. After the Kremlin accused Ukraine of preparing a “dirty bomb” attack, Austin and Milley both had conversations with their Russian counterparts in October.

 After the latest deadly cruise missile strike on Ukraine on Tuesday, Nov. 15, Milley

Russia was “imposing a terror campaign” on Ukraine through its attacks on communities and energy facilities.

 “The deliberate targeting of the civilian power grid, causing excessive collateral damage, and unnecessary suffering on the civilian population is a war crime,” Milley underlined.

Ukraine has recently taken back territories it lost to Russian forces, including parts of Kharkiv Region and notably the southern port city of Kherson last week.

The post Top U.S. General Downplays Near-term Ukraine Victory appeared first on Kyiv Post.

The scale of torture that has been discovered in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson taken back from Russian troops this month is “horrific”, a Ukrainian ombudsman said on Thursday. Nov. 17.

“I have not seen a scale like this before,” Dmytro Lubynets said. “The scale is just horrific.”

Since the Russian army retreated last week following eight months of occupation, chilling accounts have started to emerge of abuse, mistreatment and torture in Kherson.

Lubynets said the authorities had found “torture chambers” where he said dozens of people had been tortured.

He said Ukrainians were electrocuted and beaten with metal pipes.

“After that they were killed,” he said, adding that he had spoken to a man who had been kept in such a place for 45 days.

“During this time, he saw dozens of people being tortured,” Lubynets added.

He said Ukrainians expected to find more such places.

“Because this is the system. The system built by the Russian Federation,” he added.

AFP has spoken to a Kherson resident who says he spent weeks in detention where he has been beaten and electrocuted by Russian and pro-Russian forces.

The post “Horrific” Scale of Torture in Kherson Seen after Russia Retreat: Official appeared first on Kyiv Post.

• Following the withdrawal of its forces from west of the Dnipro River, Russian forces continue to prioritise refitting, reorganisation and the preparation of defences across most sectors in Ukraine.
• Units have constructed new trench systems near the border of Crimea, as well as near the Siversky-Donets River between Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.
• Some of these locations are up to 60km behind the current front line, suggesting that Russian planners are making preparations in case of further major Ukrainian breakthroughs.
• It is likely that Russia will attempt to eventually redeployed some of the forces recovered from Kherson to reinforce and expand its offensive operations near the town of Bakhmut in Donetsk Oblast.

The post British Defence Intelligence Update Ukraine – 18 November 2022 appeared first on Kyiv Post.

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces conducted another massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine on November 17
• Russian forces in eastern Kherson Oblast are likely partially vulnerable to a Ukrainian interdiction campaign such as the one Ukrainian forces successfully exploited to retake western Kherson Oblast.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree changing the composition of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) on November 17.
• Russian sources continued to claim that Ukrainian troops are conducting counteroffensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
• Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and southwest of Donetsk City.
• Ukrainian troops continued targeting Russian military assets and concentration areas on the east bank of Kherson Oblast and in the rear areas of Zaporizhia Oblast on November 17.
• Russian authorities continue to face discontented mobilized personnel and low morale on the front lines.
• Russian occupation officials continued to destroy Ukrainian culture in Russian-occupied territories.

Russian forces conducted another massive wave of missile strikes across Ukraine on November 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops launched five airstrikes and 25 cruise missile strikes at civilian infrastructure objects in Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts throughout the day.[1] Ukrainian Air Force Command noted that Ukrainian air defense forces destroyed four cruise missiles, five Shahed-136 drones, and two Kh-59 guided missiles.[2] Russian forces conducted the largest missile attack since the start of the war on November 15, and as ISW has previously assessed, such missile campaigns are consuming Russia’s already depleted store of precision munitions.[3]

Russian forces in eastern Kherson Oblast are likely partially vulnerable to a Ukrainian interdiction campaign such as the one Ukrainian forces successfully exploited to retake western Kherson Oblast. Several major ground lines of communication (GLOCs) run through eastern Kherson Oblast into other Russian-controlled areas in southern Ukraine: the southern T2202 Nova Kahkovka-Armiansk route, the southeastern P47 Kakovkha-Henichesk route, and the M14 highway that runs eastward into Melitopol, Berdyansk, and Mariupol. Geolocated satellite imagery indicates that Russian troops are establishing defensive positions along some of these critical GLOCs, and social media reporting indicates that Ukrainian strikes have already begun targeting Russian concentration areas and military assets on these routes.[4] The limited number of high-quality roads and railways in this area, particularly connecting Crimea to the mainland, creates potential bottlenecks that could be vulnerable to Ukrainian interdiction efforts that would gradually degrade the Russian ability to continue supplying its grouping in eastern Kherson Oblast and other areas of southern Ukraine. ISW previously reported the targeting of similar bottlenecks along key GLOCS–not just the bridges across the Dnipro River–during Ukraine’s Kherson counteroffensive in late August to mid-October culminated in the Russian withdrawal from the west bank of Kherson Oblast to positions further south of the Dnipro River. Ukrainian forces will likely find it harder to achieve such dramatic effects in eastern Kherson but may be able to disrupt Russian efforts to solidify and hold their new defensive lines.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree changing the composition of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) on November 17.[5] The decree notably expels four Russian human rights activists, including Ekaterina Vinokurova, who wrote a piece criticizing the rise of “patriotic” Telegram channels and nationalist milbloggers who have cornered the information space against opposition outlets who deviate from the predominant Kremlin line of the war in Ukraine.[6] Russian media previously reported that Vinokurova and other members of the HRC appealed to the Russian Investigative Committee to look into the widely circulated video of the execution of a former Wagner Group fighter who reportedly defected to Ukraine.[7] Putin’s new appointees to the HRC include a slate of Russian political and proxy members and notably Sasha Kots, a prominent milblogger and war correspondent who has been heavily involved in covering Russian operations in Ukraine.[8] Kots most recently called for Russia to maintain massive missile strikes against critical Ukrainian infrastructure on November 17.[9] This decree likely represents the Kremlin’s wider effort to stifle domestic civil opposition by continuing to platform prominent voices in the information space that propagate the Kremlin’s line on the war in Ukraine.

See the full report here. 

The post ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, November 17 appeared first on Kyiv Post.

Russia hopes it can make a prisoner swap with the United States that would include convicted Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death”, a deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying on Friday.

“The Americans are showing some external activity, we are working professionally through a special channel designed for this,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying on Friday by Interfax.

“It is undeniable that Viktor Bout is among those who are being discussed, and we certainly count on a positive result,” Ryabkov said.

Variously dubbed “the merchant of death” and “the sanctions buster” for his ability to get around arms embargoes, Bout was one of the world’s most wanted men prior to his 2008 arrest on multiple charges related to arms trafficking.

For almost two decades, Bout was one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, selling weaponry to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.

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