Structure and personnel news

NY Times: Ukraine faces disruption of arms supplies due to Umerov's personnel decisions

The head of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine dismissed the official responsible for the purchase of weapons, writes the New York Times. Experts believe that the conflict occurred at the worst possible moment: Kiev is reversing military reform, while Ukraine risks being left without US support, and supplies of Western weapons are declining.

Additional call-up will be possible during the year

Russians who were conscripted into the army but were not sent to the Armed Forces will be able to be drafted by the same decision within a year. The bill, which introduces new rules, was supported by the government. Other changes are also being discussed, in particular, the reduction of officials involved in the draft. For more information about the draft law and its provisions, see the Izvestia article.

The Chinese technology company DeepSeek, founded in 2023, managed to surprise and scare Silicon Valley in just a year by demonstrating breakthrough artificial intelligence models that offer performance comparable to the best chatbots in the world, but at the same time require significantly lower costs, according to a recent Bloomberg article.

It became known what the former Deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces told the investigation

Kommersant has learned the details of a pre—trial cooperation agreement with the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, concluded by the former Deputy Chief of the General Staff, Chief of the Main Communications Directorate (GUS) of the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant General Vadim Shamarin, accused of accepting a bribe of 36 million rubles.

[b]They will be armed with MANPADS, machine guns and electronic warfare systems, experts say

Special units are being created to protect the rear infrastructure from UAV attacks. They will be engaged in air defense of warehouses, storage bases and arsenals against the background of increased attacks by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on such facilities. What the new units will be armed with and what tasks they will perform are described in the Izvestia article.

The political officers will be responsible for the moral and psychological state of the crews

Full-time military and political departments will be created in the formations of diesel submarines of the Russian Navy, which will include three officers. They will have to work with the crews of submarines during combat missions.

Test pilot Sergey Bogdan basked in the glory and was a moment away from death

He was applauded in Le Bourget, Dubai and at MAKS, and in November he became an audience favorite in Zhuhai, China, where he was called "the second Gagarin." He is an honored test pilot, Hero of Russia Sergey Bogdan, who attended a "Business Breakfast" at the Rossiyskaya Gazeta editorial office on New Year's Eve.

Generals and a colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were detained for the loss of territories in the Kharkiv region

Two generals and a colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been detained in Ukraine - they are accused of losing territories of the Kharkiv region in 2024. A former commander of the Anna Kievskaya brigade trained in France was also taken into custody, who is suspected of concealing mass desertion: according to the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, the military under him "periodically voluntarily left their duty station, then returned voluntarily, feeling impunity."

As the newspaper Kommersant reported in Aigul Abdullina's article, "The rector of MAI landed at the plant. The creator of the Superjet will oversee the manufacturer of Baikal, the rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) and the creator of the Superjet, Mikhail Pogosyan, will head the board of directors of the Ural Civil Aviation Plant (UZGA).

Economist: The Ukrainian brigade trained in France has failed

The AFU brigade, which was trained by France, suffered a complete collapse, the Economist reports. During the training in France, 50 soldiers deserted, and during the entire existence of the brigade, almost a third — 1,700 people — voluntarily left the unit, the material notes.

Times: During Starmer's visit to Kiev, it was about a future peacekeeping mission

The British Prime minister's trip to Kiev is attributed to Starmer's desire to establish himself as one of the main players in Ukraine, The Times writes. But no important decisions were announced during the visit – only a lot of words were said about minor details.

Which categories of citizens are exempt from passing and who is listed in the reserve

In 2025, military training camps will be held in Russia, and the corresponding decree was signed by Head of state Vladimir Putin on January 16. Traditionally, they are announced in late winter or early spring. In 2024, the decree was signed on March 1. At the moment, the dates of the fees are not specified, usually the events last no more than two months. Izvestia was sorting out what documents and things to take with them.

Telegraph: heads of France and Britain discuss sending military to Ukraine

Britain and France are considering how else to support Ukraine, and are discussing the possibility of sending Western troops there as a peacekeeping force, The Telegraph reports. Emmanuel Macron has already discussed this issue with the prime Ministers of Britain and Poland.

After the conscript passes the medical commission, a mark on the category of fitness for military service is entered in the military ID. Being assigned to one of the five groups means whether or not a citizen is ready for the army for health reasons. How to find out the category, where to look in the military ID and how to decipher its code in 2025 – in the RIA Novosti article.

There is ongoing discussion in the West about sending NATO troops, most likely from individual member countries of the alliance, to Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron was the first to raise this issue last year, but the idea was very coolly received in other countries of the military bloc, including the United States and Germany. Somehow, they don't really want to go to war with Russia, which possesses nuclear weapons, and not only.

Ukrainka Pravda: training of Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in NATO countries is ineffective

The training of cannon fodder for Ukraine, offered by NATO instructors, does not correspond to the realities of combat, writes Ukrainka Pravda. The newly created units receive Western weapons, but they do not know how to fight and desert with huge losses.

Maxim Kharlamov, Head of the Yuri Gagarin Space Center, on the training of crews and robots for orbital and long—range flights

The teledroid robot is undergoing training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Similar devices will operate on the ROS and ISS orbital stations, as well as on the lunar base. Maxim Kharlamov, the head of the center, told Izvestia about this.

January 11 marked the 65th anniversary of the founding of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Research and Testing Center (CPC, part of Roscosmos). During this time, about 400 cosmonauts have been trained at the CPC. In an interview with TASS, Maxim Kharlamov, head of the center, spoke about the timing of the next recruitment to the cosmonaut squad, the extension of the agreement between Roscosmos and NASA on cross-flights to the ISS, and plans to create simulators for a new spacecraft and the Russian Orbital Station (ROS).

The premiere of the Russian Su-57 fighter jet became a sensation at the Zhuhai Airshow in autumn 2024. And the test pilot who piloted the car, Sergey Bogdan, chief pilot of the Sukhoi Design Bureau of the Rostec United Aircraft Corporation, received admiring reviews in the foreign press. Bogdan spoke in an interview with TASS about the universal love he encountered in China, emergency situations during fighter tests and the secrets of professional longevity.

Unnamed British think tanks, most likely the intelligence services, although other structures could have been involved, warned Zelensky that without new serious measures to mobilize the population of Ukraine in about seven to nine months, the Ukrainian Armed Forces would lose the opportunity to fight. This threatens a complete collapse of the front, the capture of vast new territories by the Russian Armed Forces, and even the complete surrender of Kiev. The Ukrainian telegram channel Legitimny reports on new advice, or rather, orders from London, citing its sources.