"At any age it does us no harm to look over our past shortcomings and plan to improve our characters and actions in the coming year." 

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success."

- Swami Vivekananda

'Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

• Next stop Kyiv - the battle on the capital's outskirts
• Defiant troops tell Russians: 'Go home while you're still alive'

• Russia-Ukraine war
• Russia
• Ukraine

• The Russian General Staff is attempting to adjust the war’s narrative so make it appear that Russia is achieving its aims and choosing to restrict operations when in fact it is not achieving its objectives and is being forced to abandon large-scale offensive operations because of its own failures and losses as well as continuing skillful Ukrainian resistance.
• Ukrainian forces claimed to kill the commander of Russia’s 49th Combined Arms Army, operating around Kherson.
• Ukrainian counterattacks northwest of Kyiv made further minor progress in the past 24 hours.
• Ukrainian forces additionally conducted a successful counterattack east of Kyiv in the past 24 hours, pushing Russian forces east from Brovary.
• Russian attempts to encircle Chernihiv remain unsuccessful.
• The military situation in northeastern Ukraine did not change in the past 24 hours.
• Russian forces continue to take Mariupol street-by-street and have entered the city center.
• Russian forces did not conduct any offensive operations around Kherson in the past 24 hours.

• Main effort—Kyiv (comprised of three subordinate supporting efforts);
• Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv;
• Supporting effort 1a—Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts;
• Supporting effort 2—Mariupol; and
• Supporting effort 3—Kherson and advances northward and westward.

• Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol or force the city to capitulate within the coming weeks and have entered the city center;
• Russia will expand its air, missile, and artillery bombardments of Ukrainian cities;
• Ukrainian officials suggest that Ukrainian forces may launch a larger counterattack in western Kyiv Oblast in the coming days;
• The continued involvement of the Black Sea Fleet in the Battle of Mariupol reduces the likelihood of an amphibious landing near Odesa, Russian naval shelling of Odesa in recent days notwithstanding.

• Russia's defence ministry also updated its losses in Ukraine to 1,351 soldiers, adding 3,825 had been wounded
• Russia's figure is far lower than Western estimates that say tens of thousands have been killed in the war
• Moscow today attempted to put a positive spin on its disastrous invasion,saying it had achieved its targets 
• In another embarrassing blow, it was revealed today that a Russian brigade commander had died after being run down with a tank by his own troops 

• Kyiv remains firm that Russia must return Crimea and Donbas to Ukraine, despite Kremlin claims that Zelensky is willing to discuss recognizing Russian control over these temporarily occupied territories.
• The Kremlin increased its rhetoric accusing the West of posing an existential threat to Russia and refusing to rule out the use of nuclear weapons in the event of threats to Russia to deter the West from further supporting Ukraine.
• Western leaders continued to sound alarms about potential Russian chemical or biological attacks in Ukraine.
• The Kremlin continues to undercount Russian deaths in Ukraine, which have likely passed 10,000 dead since February 24.
• Western sanctions are successfully disrupting Russia’s military industry and energy exports.
• Russian forces are likely forcibly relocating Ukrainian citizens to Russia to establish control over occupied areas and gain political leverage.
• The EU and NATO announced both short- and long-term plans to increase military defense spending, troop deployments to Eastern Europe, and military assistance for Ukraine.

• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO members agreed to double their Defense Investment Pledge to support deployments of four battlegroups to Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria during a NATO summit on March 24. NATO battlegroups consist of approximately 1,000 soldiers.[40] The new deployment will double the number of battlegroups on NATO’s eastern flank.[41]
• The European Council (EC) passed the Strategic Compass legislation on March 22 to increase defense spending and enhance military and technological capabilities by 2030. The legislation will improve deployment capacity and agility as well as advance the EU’s counterintelligence and cybersecurity programs.[42]
• The EU doubled its military assistance for Ukraine from 500 million euros (about $550 million), last budgeted in February 2020, to 1 billion euros (about $1.01 billion) on March 23.[43]
• Finland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom announced further defensive military aid shipments to Ukraine, including thousands of anti-tank missiles, on March 23 and 24.[44]
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for unlimited military aid “without restrictions” to help Ukraine protect itself from Russia during an address to NATO members on March 24.[45]

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on March 22 that Turkey is holding frequent discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to reach a ceasefire agreement.[46] Turkish Foreign Minister Melvut Cavusolgu also encouraged fellow NATO members to focus on bringing about a ceasefire agreement instead of only applying sanctions at the March 24 NATO summit.[47]
• Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett offered to mediate peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Kyiv, Ukraine, in an official statement on March 22.[48]
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet discussed Ukraine on March 23, their sixth call since February 24.[49]

• The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that no G-20 member has the right to expel another, amid reports Western countries are considering removing Russia from the economic bloc on March 23.[50]
• Senior aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Andriy Yermak called on March 22 for China to play a more active role in pushing Russia to end the war.[51]
• NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg accused China of politically supporting Russia and said on March 23 that NATO is “concerned” China could begin supplying material support soon.[52] However, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on March 22 that the United States still had no evidence that China was sending military equipment to Russia.[53]

• Russian tactical pedantry and dogmatic operational styles aren’t adapting at all to the new combat reality.

• There are still supposedly effective combat and Russian special forces units that have failed miserably against Ukraine’s SOF for weeks on end.
• The sheer number of successful operations of the SOF indicate no effective application of any countermeasures at any level.
• Russian tactical pedantry and dogmatic operational styles aren’t adapting at all to the new combat reality.
• No area of Russian operations has been safe from attack by SOF.

• Economy of force: SOF is a comparatively small force, less than 1% of Ukrainian military forces, achieving extremely high value results.
• Integrations of SOF with ground operations: Flexible operations are meshing well with Ukrainian countermoves.
• Expert current intelligence on the ground: Special forces are mobile intelligence by definition. This is obviously working out well for the Ukrainians. They have local and other combat intelligence in almost real time from reliable sources.
• Constant security threat: The Russians have an expensive choice which is almost impossible to make in this environment – Commit a lot of forces to much higher lateral security, or simply hope their local forces can outfight SOF. They’re running out of ground forces, and they haven’t yet outfought them.
• Mobile forces are hard targets: You can have as much firepower as you like; mobile forces can dodge it. Hypersonic missiles, TOS and similar systems can hit static targets, but not much else. Mobility can nullify firepower and do it well.

In conclusion, MacCloskey’s Alert the Fifth Force finds most of its value in being the personal thoughts of an extremely unique practitioner of the past. Modern-day information operations, psychological operations, and special operations forces (SOF) officers would do well to parse through this book and others like it for relevant lessons from the past to serve as inspiration for the future. Although this book will not be revolutionary nor will it substitute an academic history of the war, it provides useful insight from a military perspective. As the role of SOF in strategic competition is revisited, understanding their applications through the lens of a significant member of history has value in and of itself.

• Published

Ukraine and its friends appear to be winning the intelligence war, or at least Russia appears to be losing it badly. There’s still time for Russia to repair its information economy, but the dreadful losses that Russian forces in the field are suffering indicate that Russia needs to clean up its game fast.