Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Missile production

Satellite images show major expansions at five complexes where Russia has made solid-fuel missile engines, indicating the Kremlin plans to significantly boost missile production as it pursues its war in Ukraine, according to a European researcher.

Fabian Hinz, a Berlin-based researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a global security think tank, identified the complexes using Russian media reports and declassified Cold War-era CIA documents that listed facilities where the Soviet Union produced solid-fuel missile engines.

The sites are in the Altai Republic in Siberia, Rostov in southern Russia, outside Moscow and St. Petersburg, and in Perm, in western Russia. Satellite photos taken by Maxar Technologies in July, September and October, reviewed by Reuters, show cleared vegetation and extensive new construction next to buildings that Hinz identified as solid-fuel research and production facilities at the five complexes.

Following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered increased funding to expand defence production. “Satellite imagery suggests that solid-propellant rocket motor-production capacity appears to be one focus of this effort,” Hinz wrote in his report, which was published in Military Balance Plus, an IISS blog.

In another troubling sign, on Monday, Helsinki-time, two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in the Baltic Sea, including one linking Finland and Germany, were severed, raising suspicions of sabotage by bad actors, countries and companies involved said.

Finland and Germany said in a joint statement that they were “deeply concerned about the severed undersea cable” and were investigating “an incident (that) immediately raises suspicions of intentional damage.”

Europe’s security is threatened by Russia’s war against Ukraine and “hybrid warfare by malicious actors,” the joint statement said, without naming the actors.

Earlier, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said on Monday that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s call with Putin on Friday was a “strategic mistake” that had weakened European unity in the face of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.

Scholz held a one-hour call with Putin last week, his first direct communication with Russia’s leader in almost two years. He defended the call as a way to make clear to Putin that German, European and other support for Ukraine would not wane.

But Tsahkna, whose Baltic nation is one of Ukraine’s most vocal supporters and one of Moscow’s fiercest critics, said the call had damaged Western efforts to isolate Putin.

“It was a strategic mistake,” he said. “We have had a principle agreed that we keep Putin in isolation.”