Russian cyber operations continue as Ukraine prepares its spring offensive.
Ukraine at D+433: Keeping secrets.
Ukraine is holding its plans for a spring offensive close to the vest, reportedly not sharing them with allies, and enforcing a strict need-to-know policy within the Ukrainian government itself.
Russia claimed a drone strike against the Kremlin aimed at the assassination of President Putin, the Telegraph reports, but the announcement has been received with skepticism. There's no independent evidence that there was any drone strike against Moscow, and observers wonder why it took Russia more than a day to report the failed strike. Ukraine has denied making any such drone strike. Russian officials say the alleged attack was an act of terrorism, but that's not clear, either.
Russia shifts missile strikes from an infrastructure to a logistical program.
In Wednesday morning's situation report the UK's Ministry of Defence looks at a shift in targeting of Russia's long-range missile strikes. "On 28 April and 01 May 2023, Russia mounted air launched cruise missile (ALCM) strikes against Ukraine. These were the first such strikes for 50 days, with the last prior strikes occurring on 09 March 2023. The latest strikes were conducted by Russian Long Range Aviation strategic bombers, both Tu-95 and Tu-160 aircraft, likely using Kh-101 and Kh-555 ALCMs. Both strikes used smaller numbers of missiles than seen in previous attacks, which is likely due to Russian attempts to rebuild its ALCM stockpiles. The observed types of facilities damaged by the Russian strikes indicates a possible shift away from targeting Ukraine’s electrical power network. Both recent strikes were likely focused on Ukraine’s military, industrial and logistical infrastructure."
The shift hasn't moved the targets out of cities or served to place civilians out of harm's way, and Radio Free Europe | Radio Liberty reports that Russian strikes continue to hit populated areas well behind the line of contact.
Discord Papers update.
Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he didn't receive a briefing from the US on the leaks in the Discord Papers: he found out about them from new reports, the Washington Post writes. In fairness to the White House, the leaks do seem to have caught US authorities on the hop, and news outlets were among those who discovered the leaks at roughly the same time the officials did.
Cyberstrikes against civilian targets.
CERT-UA reports that Russia continues to attempt cyberattacks against civilian infrastructure. Ukrinform quotes Volodymyr Kondrashov, spokesman for the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection. "Where are the attacks coming from? CERT-UA, which is manually engaged in prevention, detection, and response to cyber attacks and cyber incidents, monitors the activities of more than 80 groups, most of which are hacker groups from the Russian Federation, whose 90% of the members are Russian military operatives. That is, we see that Russia uses the same tactics in cyberspace as it does on the conventional battlefield, that is, it tries to attack civilian infrastructure."