Rassegna Stampa Internazionale 05/12/2023

Israele

(Reuters) Israel presses ground offensive in Southern Gaza, air strikes intensify

• Early on Monday, Israel ordered Palestinians to leave parts of Gaza's main southern city, Khan Younis. But residents said that areas which they had been told to go to were also coming under fire.
• Desperate Gazans in Khan Younis packed their belongings and headed towards Rafah. [...] But the head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza (UNRWA), Thomas White, said people in Rafah were themselves being forced to flee.
• The health ministry [of Gaza, n.d.r] said at least 15,899 Palestinians, 70% of them women or under 18s, have now been killed in Israeli bombardments of the Hamas-ruled enclave in eight weeks of warfare. 

(New York Times) Hostages freed from Gaza recount violence, hunger and fear

• The New York Times interviewed the family members of 10 freed hostages, who spoke on behalf of their relatives to relay sensitive information
• Hostages [...] have come home malnourished, ill, injured and bearing psychological wounds
• Some of the hostages were held in sweltering tunnels deep beneath Gaza, while others were squeezed into tight quarters with strangers or confined in isolation.

Ucraina

(Wall Street Journal) White House warns money for Ukraine will run out by Year’s End

• The U.S. will be unable to continue providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine if Congress doesn’t approve additional funding by the end of the year, the White House said on Monday
• Federal agencies have spent all or nearly all of the $111 billion in supplemental funding approved by Congress to support Ukraine
• Officials in the U.S. and Europe are increasingly worried [...] that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be able to outlast the political will of Western countries

(Politico) Hungary’s Orban rejects talks on Ukraine’s EU bid

• Orbán has adamantly opposed the opening of accession negotiations for Ukraine, after the European Commission gave the green light to start membership talks in November
• Budapest is embroiled in a long-standing dispute with Brussels, which is holding back €13 billion in EU funds over concerns that Budapest is in breach of European rule-of-law standards

Russia

(ISW)
Russia continues to reckon with the economic ramifications of labor shortages partially resulting from the war in Ukraine. Russian state media outlets reported on December 4 that Russian consulting company Yakov and Partners has recorded increased labor shortages in domestic production that will likely grow to a deficit of two to four million workers by 2030, 90 percent of whom are likely to be semi-skilled workers in critical industries. Yakov and Partners noted that this supply shortage will place upward pressure on workers’ wages that will outpace GDP growth and make Russian companies even less attractive to foreign investment. ISW previously assessed that Russia continues to face shortages in both skilled and unskilled labor, a problem that is further compounded by the Kremlin's inconsistent and often inflammatory messaging about Russians who fled Russia because of the war and against migrant workers within Russia. The Russian economy will likely continue to grapple with the Kremlin's competing desires to bolster Russia's force generation and industrial capacity while simultaneously disenfranchising key labor groups, which is likely to lead to continued concerns over Russian economic output and potential resulting social grievances.

Europa

Germania:

(Bloomberg) Scholz sees fast progress in talks to solve german budget crisis

• The three governing parties need a revised agreement that’s ready to be signed off at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday
• The ruling coalition was forced into a swift overhaul of its 2023 finance plan, while the blueprint for next year approved in cabinet in July was halted

Regno Unito:

(Guardian) Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

• It is still not known if the malware has been eradicated. It may mean some of Sellafield’s most sensitive activities, such as moving radioactive waste, monitoring for leaks of dangerous material and checking for fires, have been compromised
• The Guardian has discovered that the authorities do not know exactly when the IT systems were first compromised. But sources said breaches were first detected as far back as 2015
• Cyber problems have been known by senior figures at the nuclear site for at least a decade, according to a report dated from 2012, seen by the Guardian

Politica internazionale

Nord America

Stati Uniti:

(Associated Press) Former career US diplomat charged with secretly spying for cuban intelligence for decades

• Manuel Rocha engaged in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at least 1981, including by meeting with Cuban intelligence operatives and providing false information to U.S. government officials
• His two-decade career as a U.S. diplomat included top posts in Bolivia, Argentina and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in the mid-1990s
• [...] a vivid case study in what American officials say are long-standing efforts by Cuba and its notoriously sophisticated intelligence services to target government officials

(Wall Street Journal) Remains of crew from U.S. military aircraft found in japanese waters

• Two of the five have been recovered, and teams from the U.S. and Japan are working on retrieving the others, the Air Force said
• The crash of the tilt-rotor Osprey on Nov. 29 is one of the deadliest in the aircraft’s history
• Eyewitnesses said that before the latest crash, the aircraft flipped over and appeared to be on fire

Medio Oriente

Emirati Arabi Uniti:

(Bloomberg) COP28 president’s fossil fuel phase out talk draws condemnation

• “A phase down and a phase out of fossil fuel in my view is inevitable — it is essential — but we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it,” Al Jaber said in the posted recording. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5.”
• Al Jaber’s remarks deepened controversy around the COP28 leader — who is also the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. — and raised new questions over whether the conference will be able to unite behind a strong pledge targeting the elimination of fossil fuels