Quotes of the Day:
"To improve is to change, so to be perfect is to have changed often."
- Winston Churchill
"The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty."
- Robert Anton Wilson
"Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?"
- Robert Anton Wilson
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 13 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. $800 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
3. New Zealand bolsters support for Ukraine
4. Elite US-UK forces in Ukraine since beginning of conflict with Russia, says French daily
5. At the United Nations, America Suddenly Backs a Measure To Dilute Its Own Veto Power
6. Russia says major Black Sea fleet ship damaged in blast after Ukraine claimed it hit flagship
7. This Is the War’s Decisive Moment
8. The U.S. has expanded intelligence sharing with Ukraine about Russian troops in the Donbas region.
9. U.S. SOCOM Has History with Ukraine's Special Forces
10. 71st Ordnance Group: Adapting, Evolving, Improving
11. The Right Way to Arm Ukraine
12. Can a tweet be evidence? How social media is being used to hunt down war crimes in Ukraine
13. Images of Zelenskyy show the physical toll that trauma and stress can have on the body
14.The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training
15. Russian Cruiser Damaged? Flag Ship of Black Sea Fleet
16. ‘Caught Between a Hammer and an Anvil’ - Israel’s in a difficult position when it comes to the war in Ukraine
17. China’s Embrace of the Taliban Complicates US Afghanistan Strategy
18. FDD | Iran Likely to Gain More Than $70 Billion From the Removal of Oil Sanctions
19. Vladimir Putin loses 40TH high-ranking officer in latest blow to Russian forces
20. US mulls using forces stationed in Eastern Europe to train Ukrainian troops
21. Russia has yet to slow a Western arms express into Ukraine
22. What Comes Next in Ukraine: Three Scenarios
23. The U.S. is considering sending a high-level official to Kyiv.
24. What images of Russian trucks say about its military's struggles in Ukraine
25. The Mercenaries Behind the Bucha Massacre
26. TikTok created an alternate universe just for Russia
27. Biden’s blunt comments on Ukraine can veer from U.S. policy
28. WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
29. Elon Musk launches hostile takeover bid of Twitter
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 13 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 13 (PUTIN'S WAR)
Mason Clark, Kateryna Stepanenko, and Karolina Hird
April 13, 4:30pm ET
Russian claims of a mass Ukrainian surrender in Mariupol are likely false, but Russian forces forced Ukrainian troops to abandon the Ilyich metal plant in northern Mariupol on April 13, further constricting the two remaining pockets of Ukrainian defenders. Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol in the coming week. Russian forces continued to conduct small-scale limited offensive operations on both the Izyum and Severodonetsk axes and has not yet begun a broader offensive campaign.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to take ground in Mariupol, but Russian claims of a mass Ukrainian surrender are likely false.
- Russian forces continued unsuccessful local attacks in eastern Ukraine amid continuing preparations for a likely wider offensive.
- Russian forces continued to regroup in Kharkiv Oblast for offensive operations and conducted only minor attacks south of Izyum.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate main effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces captured the Ilyich metal plant in northern Mariupol on April 13, though some elements of defending Ukrainian forces escaped to link up with Ukrainian forces in Azovstal despite Russian claims of a mass surrender. The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that 1026 servicemen of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade surrendered at the Ilyich metal plant (in northern Mariupol) on April 13 and Russian troops released a video of around 30 Ukrainian troops they claim were captured during an attempt to breakout from Ilyich to the north.[1] Several independent Ukrainian outlets and government officials contrarily reported that the 36th Marine Brigade broke out of llyich to link up with Ukrainian forces at the Azovstal plant.[2] The commanders of the 36th Brigade and the Azov Regiment (the primary Ukrainian defenders in Azovstal) additionally released a joint video on April 13.[3]
Russian forces additionally conducted several assaults on Ukrainian defenders in the southwestern port and eastern Azovstal steel plant in the last 24 hours.[4] Russian forces heavily shelled Ukrainian defenders in the Port of Mariupol on April 12-13.[5] Mariupol’s City Council stated on April 13 that Russian forces continue to “purposefully create a humanitarian catastrophe” through intentional attacks on civilian infrastructure.[6]
Subordinate main effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued unsuccessful local attacks in eastern Ukraine throughout the past 24 hours amid continuing preparations for a likely wider offensive. Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks in Sverodonetsk, Rubizhne, and Popasna but made no substantial progress on April 13.[7] US intelligence sources stated that Russia has approximately 55 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) fighting in “southern Ukraine,” though this number likely includes both Donbas and the southern Kherson axis.[8]
Russian forces continue to deploy damaged and ad-hoc units to Donbas.[9] The Kremlin introduced a ”yellow level of threat” in Russian regions bordering Ukrainian from April 13-26, likely to organize the redeployment of personnel and equipment to eastern Ukraine by imposing restrictions on civilian movement.[10] The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russia has formed five understrength Motorized Rifle regiments (the 103rd, 109th, 113th, 125th, and 127th) from forcibly mobilized personnel in Donetsk and Luhansk.[11] The Ukrainian General Staff stated these regiments are composed of up to five ”battalions” of 300 personnel each, and that only 5-10 percent of recruits have any combat experience.
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast, and fix Ukrainian forces around Kharkiv in place)
Russian forces continued to regroup in Kharkiv Oblast for offensive operations and conducted only minor attacks south of Izyum on April 13.[12] US intelligence sources stated Russian efforts to reinforce Izyum are moving slowly.[13] Ukrainian Deputy Commander-in-Chief Yevhen Moisyuk visited the frontlines at an unspecified location in Kharkiv Oblast on April 13 to inspect Ukrainian defensive positions and stated Russian forces continue to threaten Kharkiv city, though ISW assesses a renewed attempt to take the city is unlikely.[14] Kharkiv Oblast civil authorities claimed Ukrainian forces made minor counterattacks at Rohan and Derhachi (southeast and northwest of Kharkiv city, respectively) but ISW cannot confirm this claim.[15]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern axis: (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces conducted minor attacks in Kherson Oblast without success on April 13.[16] US intelligence sources stated on April 13 Russian forces have likely established two resupply bases in Crimea and southern Ukraine to resupply operations in Mariupol and Kherson.[17]
Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
Belarusian social media users filmed several convoys of Russian equipment moving toward Russia in Belarus in the past several days.[18]
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive operations in the Donbas region, feeding reinforcements into the fight as they become available rather than gathering reinforcements and replacements for a more coordinated and coherent offensive.
- Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol will not be able to hold out indefinitely, but it remains unclear how quickly Russia will be able to secure the city.
2. $800 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
I wonder how long it will take to get this fielded to operational units? Will it be in time to support operations against the renewed Russian offensive in the east? We must consider the laws of physics that cannot be broken: time and distance.
$800 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine
Immediate Release
April 13, 2022
Attributed to Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby:
This afternoon, April 13, the Department of Defense (DoD) announces the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance valued at up to an additional $800 million tailored to meet urgent Ukrainian needs for today’s fight as Russian forces shift the focus of their ruthless aggression to eastern Ukraine. This authorization is the seventh drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine since August 2021.
Capabilities in this package include:
- 18 155mm Howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds;
- Ten AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars;
- Two AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radars;
- 300 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
- 500 Javelin missiles and thousands of other anti-armor systems;
- 200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
- 100 Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
- 11 Mi-17 helicopters;
- Unmanned Coastal Defense Vessels;
- Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear protective equipment;
- Medical equipment;
- 30,000 sets of body armor and helmets;
- Over 2,000 optics and laser rangefinders;
- C-4 explosives and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing; and
- M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions configured to be consistent with the Ottawa Convention.
The United States has now committed more than $3.2 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration, including approximately $2.6 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked invasion on February 24.
The United States also continues to work with its Allies and partners to identify and provide Ukraine with additional capabilities.
The United States will continue to utilize all available tools to support Ukraine’s Armed Forces in the face of Russian aggression.
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3. New Zealand bolsters support for Ukraine
New Zealand stepping up. Every little bit helps.
New Zealand bolsters support for Ukraine
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand is stepping up its assistance to Ukraine by sending a C-130 aircraft to Europe to transport equipment and supplies, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said April 11.
“Over the next two months, our C-130 will join a chain of military aircraft from partner nations, traveling throughout Europe carrying much-needed equipment and supplies to key distribution centers,” Ardern said. “This contribution is not one the government has taken lightly.”
Russian invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, an act Ardern and her defense minster have condemned.
“New Zealand may be a long way from Europe, but we know that such a blatant attack on a country’s sovereignty is a threat to all of us. That’s why we are doing our bit to support Ukraine,” Defence Minister Peeni Henare said April 12.
New Zealand’s support has included sanctions, the supply of helmets, vests and radio equipment, and now the deployment of a Royal New Zealand Air Force C-130H Hercules aircraft.
Parliament unanimously passed historic sanctions legislation in response to Russia’s invasion on March 9. The sanctions initially froze assets and implemented travel bans that prohibited Russian and Belarusian government and military aircraft and ships from entering New Zealand’s territory. Belarus has supported Russia in its war against Ukraine.
From April 25, measures will also include a 35% tariff imposed on Russian products, such as vodka and fertilizer.
New Zealand is also contributing an extra $9 million in support of Ukraine, including $5 million for weapons and ammunition bought by the United Kingdom.
About $2.8 million will go to commercial satellite access, giving near-real-time information to Ukrainian officials so they can respond to Russian battlefield movements. And $342,000 is to go toward efforts in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court to support the case against Russia.
This takes New Zealand’s Ukraine contributions to a total of $20 million.
Defense analyst Gordon Crane noted that New Zealand signed a partnership agreement with NATO in 2012, and that the alliance regards the country as one of its “global partners.”
“I suspect people unfamiliar with New Zealand don’t appreciate the country’s close ties with the U.K. and Europe. The queen of Great Britain is also New Zealand’s queen, and until recently our armed forces relied upon British equipment, from Leander-class frigates, Andover and Strikemaster aircraft to Scorpion light tanks,” Crane told Defense News.
“New Zealand sent troops to support NATO in Kosovo and, more recently, in Afghanistan. Our support for Ukraine is no different. More than 70% of New Zealanders are from Europe; most are from the U.K.”
Nick Lee-Frampton is the New Zealand correspondent for Defense News. In 1983, he emigrated to the country and began writing about aviation and defense for local publications. When not reading or writing, he walks for hours, rides a mountain bike and makes model aircraft.
4. Elite US-UK forces in Ukraine since beginning of conflict with Russia, says French daily
Hmmm....I hope we do, but...
Elite US-UK forces in Ukraine since beginning of conflict with Russia, says French daily
Quoting a French intelligence source, a reporter from leading French daily Le Figaro has revealed that the highly-trained special forces from the UK and the US have been stationed in Ukraine since Russia launched its 'special military operation' in the region on February 24.
As the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev on Saturday and pledged to stand by the people of the country, Georges Malbrunot, a senior reporter for Le Figaro, highlighted the presence of elite military units in the eastern European nation.
"Boris Johnson's visit to Kyiv confirms London's place as Ukraine's first ally. "Elite SAS special forces units have been present in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, as have the American Deltas," confides a French intelligence source," tweeted Malbrunot.
"The Russians don't ignore it, they know what the secret war is," he added in another tweet quoting his unnamed source as the newspaper included their reporter's input in their updates on the ongoing conflict.
Renowned for their skills in covert surveillance, close-combat fighting and hostage rescue, the men from UK's Special Air Service (SAS) have served during the Gulf War, Iraq, Sierra Leone and also in Afghanistan.
The US Army's first Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (SFOD-D), also known as Delta Force, is country's top counter-terrorism unit which also conducts global special operations.
In February, British tabloid Mirror had reported that more than 100 members of Britain's elite special forces have been sent to Ukraine amid fears of a Russian invasion.
"Crack troops from the SAS, the SBS, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and the Special Forces Support group are understood to be working in the country as military advisers. They are believed to be helping train Ukrainian special forces in counter-insurgency tactics, sniping and sabotage," an exclusive Mirror report said.
It also mentioned that the British special forces have been able to deploy such a large number to the region as they are no longer operating in Afghanistan.
During his surprise visit to Kiev over the weekend, Johsnon had reiterated that the UK "will do everything in its power" to support Ukraine's "brave fight against Russia's brutal and unprovoked invasion" and ensure its long-term security and prosperity.
He had also announced new military assistance of 120 armoured vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems in addition to the £100 million worth of high-grade military equipment announced earlier in the week, including more Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles, another 800 anti-tank missiles, and high-tech loitering munitions for precision strikes.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who also visited Ukraine last week, has already said that the EU member states are delivering military equipment on an "unprecedented scale".
5. At the United Nations, America Suddenly Backs a Measure To Dilute Its Own Veto Power
Excerpts:
Until now, a member state needed to call a special session at the Assembly once a Council member cast a veto. The veto power is vested by the treaty known as the United Nations Charter in five countries, the Soviet Union, the Republic of China, Britain, France, and America.
The new resolution would mandate convening the Assembly each time a veto is wielded. “This innovative measure would automatically convene a meeting of the General Assembly after a veto has been cast in the Security Council,” says the American envoy here, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield’s zeal is following several Russian vetoes of Western proposals at the Council, after which she successfully convened the Assembly. An overwhelming majority there twice condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. A third Assembly session voted, by a two-third majority, to suspend Russia’s membership in another UN body, the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
Despite those recent victories, diplomats warn that America would be wise to study the history of the mechanism that allows moving to the General Assembly after a Security Council veto. Mostly dormant in the post-Cold War era, it was solely used to condemn American vetoes cast on biased resolutions against Israel.
At the United Nations, America Suddenly Backs a Measure To Dilute Its Own Veto Power
Despite recent victories, diplomats warn that America would be wise to study the history of the mechanism that allows moving to the General Assembly after a Security Council veto.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the American envoy to the United Nations, April 5, 2022. AP/John Minchillo
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
12:32:14 pm
America is embracing a new measure at the United Nations that is likely to dilute its own veto power in the Security Council, and, if pursued, would be used mostly against America.
Initiated by a group of midsize UN members led by tiny Lichtenstein, the new measure would institutionalize an existing mechanism created in the Cold War era.
That mechanism, known as Uniting for Peace, allows the 193 members of the General Assembly to address issues normally assigned to the Security Council’s 15 members, but only after one of its five permanent members vetoes a resolution.
Until now, a member state needed to call a special session at the Assembly once a Council member cast a veto. The veto power is vested by the treaty known as the United Nations Charter in five countries, the Soviet Union, the Republic of China, Britain, France, and America.
The new resolution would mandate convening the Assembly each time a veto is wielded. “This innovative measure would automatically convene a meeting of the General Assembly after a veto has been cast in the Security Council,” says the American envoy here, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield’s zeal is following several Russian vetoes of Western proposals at the Council, after which she successfully convened the Assembly. An overwhelming majority there twice condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. A third Assembly session voted, by a two-third majority, to suspend Russia’s membership in another UN body, the Geneva-based Human Rights Council.
Despite those recent victories, diplomats warn that America would be wise to study the history of the mechanism that allows moving to the General Assembly after a Security Council veto. Mostly dormant in the post-Cold War era, it was solely used to condemn American vetoes cast on biased resolutions against Israel.
According to the UN Charter’s Article 24, the Security Council has the “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security” around the globe. The General Assembly, according to Article 11, “may make recommendations with regard to such principles to the Members or to the Security Council.”
The Assembly, where no member has the veto power, can only “recommend.” In contrast, the 15-member Security Council has the power to mandate action, including global sanctions and even war. In 1950, the council condemned Communist North Korea’s invasion of the free South and authorized an American-led military force to battle the invader.
The veto power at the Council, however, has made such resolutions a rarity. The Korean War resolution was made possible only because at the time the Soviet Union was boycotting the UN — it opposed the free Republic of China’s Council seat, which today is occupied by Communist China.
Except for that short period of diplomatic pouting, the Cold War era was marked by frequent Security Council vetoes. To ease tensions, the General Assembly in 1950 passed resolution 377. According to that act, known as Uniting for Peace, once a veto is cast at the Security Council the Assembly “shall consider the matter immediately with the view to making recommendations to Members.”
The Uniting for Peace mechanism was frequently used by both sides of the Cold War. The West blocked Soviet condemnation of the 1956 Suez war, and the Reds vetoed condemnation of that year's Soviet invasion of Hungary. The Assembly was then convened, and did so often for years afterward.
In 1981 America, France, and Britain vetoed a Council resolution on South Africa’s invasion of Namibia. That was the last time Uniting for Peace was activated. After that it was mostly forgotten — until an enterprising Palestinian observer at Turtle Bay, Yasser Arafat’s nephew Nasser al Kidwa, rediscovered it in 1997.
That year America vetoed a proposed Council resolution demanding Israel refrain from building a new neighborhood in Jerusalem, Har Homa. Mr. al Kidwa dusted off the old Council-to-Assembly maneuver and, with the aid of Arab allies, convened an emergency session at the Assembly.
With its automatic pro-Palestinian majority, the Assembly then sent the matter to the International Court of Justice, complete with instructions on how the court’s verdict should be worded. The court in The Hague obeyed, declaring Har Homa illegal. The neighborhood has since been built and the kangaroo court’s verdict was largely forgotten.
Yet, the special session that Mr. al Kidwa convened in 1997 never died, as the resolution it produced ended with a vow to “remain seized of the matter.” The Palestinians fell in love with the mechanism, proposing ever more unacceptable Security Council resolutions.
Once America cast its veto, the Assembly was recalled for yet another non-binding round of condemnation of Israel and its sole defender in Turtle Bay, America.
All in all, the Palestinians used this maneuver 15 times, complete with heated anti-Israel and anti-American speeches at the Assembly. As Uniting for Peace became solely a Palestinian domain, even sympathetic diplomats rolled their eyes each time another special session was recalled.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Rather than heeding Kyiv’s plea for revoking Russia’s unratified inheritance of the USSR’s UN seat, America embraced the old, ineffectual Cold War-era mechanism. Now, after scoring three largely symbolic victories at the Assembly, America is enthusiastically co-sponsoring a resolution that would make that mechanism automatic.
Diluting the top world players’ ability to nix resolutions that harm their interests has long been the goal of many UN players. Today’s attempt at poking Russia in the eye, however, will, as in the past, haunt America for years to come.
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6. Russia says major Black Sea fleet ship damaged in blast after Ukraine claimed it hit flagship
See the timely article below (Why Russia’s Navy in Ukraine War is Doomed (or Irrelevant)) we published on the Small Wars Journal today.
Russia says major Black Sea fleet ship damaged in blast after Ukraine claimed it hit flagship
Axios · by Rebecca Falconer · April 13, 2022
Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed Wednesday that its Moskva missile cruiser was badly damaged in a fire — hours after Ukrainian forces claimed they'd struck the vessel in the Black Sea.
Why it matters: The Moskva is the most essential ship in the Russian Black Sea fleet, per Reuters.
Driving the news: Odessa Gov. Maksym Marchenko claimed in a Telegram post hours earlier that Ukrainian missiles "guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage to the Russian ship."
What they're saying: Russia's Defense Ministry said in a brief statement that "ammunition detonated as a result of a fire on the Moskva missile cruiser."
Flashback: The Moskva was the warship that reportedly told Ukrainian border guards to surrender Snake Island, off Ukraine's coast in the Black Sea.
-
Audio emerged of the sailors telling Russian forces to "go f--k yourself" in response, which the Ukrainian Interior Ministry said was authentic.
-
It was initially feared the 10 sailors had been killed, but they were later freed as part of a prisoner swap with Russia.
Axios · by Rebecca Falconer · April 13, 2022
Wed, 04/13/2022 - 4:41pm
Why Russia’s Navy in Ukraine War is Doomed (or Irrelevant)
By Brian E. Frydenborg
Ukraine is about to get (or maybe now just started receiving) Western anti-ship missiles and may even have its own advanced anti-ship missiles almost ready for deployment. A small number of such missiles could wipe out all of Russia’s big surface warships near Ukraine in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov or push Russian ships out of range and too far away to be able to meaningfully support Russia’s war effort. This missile technology in the hands of Ukraine’s competent and adaptive fighters will be a game-changer much like Javelin and other anti-tank missiles have been for Ukraine against Russian armor thus far in Putin’s failing war.
An RGM-84 surface-to-surface Harpoon missile launches from a cruiser of the U.S. Navy. (U.S. Department of Defense)
The second major phase of this horrific campaign of the Russian military in Ukraine is underway. During the first, Russia has not impressed: the bear has been unmasked (it’s more like a rabid, angry cub with birth defects) and Russia has embarrassed itself with historical military malpractice. And in this second phase, a certain type of weapon can essentially neutralize the Russian Navy and keep the momentum shifting dramatically in Ukraine’s favor.
Rapidly Changing Dynamics
Russia’s insane, hubristic, careless “plan”—to commit forces to multiple fronts, dividing and weakening its forces over these many fronts, none of which individually succeeded in their main goals—is failing and suffered its greatest setbacks when its entire Kyiv front and two other fronts in north-central Ukraine collapsed entirely, all Russian forces in the area having been destroyed, decimated, pushed back, or routed in disorder. As they have been thrown out of Ukraine, many Russian units are committing war crimes along their paths of retreat if they were not committing them there and elsewhere already, which has generated a huge amount of warranted attention, as has the coming campaign in the east of the country.
But attention is lacking in an area where, with not much additional assistance from the West or perhaps even with aid already just now promised, Ukraine can easily achieve a resounding victory that would combine massive substantive defeats for the Russians with tremendous symbolism and loss of prestige for Russia in addition to greatly affecting the way ground combat plays out in the south and east.
I am talking about the near-annihilation of the Russian Navy presence in the Black Sea, including the entirety or almost the entirety of the substantive portion of the Black Sea Fleet.
Russia’s Big Ships Near Ukraine: Easy Targets…
Unlike armies, with thousands of soldiers, hundreds of units, and thousands of subunits, navies are mostly tied to a very finite number of vessels, almost always dozens or hundreds of vessels per navy at most.
Meaning: take out the ships, and the navy pretty much does not exist.
As far as sizable surface ships in the Black Sea, by mid-March there were only twenty-one, according to a “senior defense official”: just twelve naval-combat-focused ships along with nine amphibious assault ships, accompanied by numerous far smaller patrol and support boats and, of course, submarines that are harder to track.
But that total was before the daring Ukrainian strike on the morning of March 24, which mysteriously destroyed a large Russian amphibious ship, the now sunk Alligator class Saratov, docked in the eastern Ukrainian Russian-occupied port of Berdyansk. Two other large amphibious ships, the Caesar Kunikov and Novocherkassk, were damaged and fled the port.
So, scratch one, Russia is down now to just twenty major surface vessels.
That is not a large number.
…With the Right Weapons (and They Are Coming)
Ukraine has been developing its own anti-ship cruise missile, the Neptune, since 2013. It began testing in 2018 and has since tested successfully repeatedly. The system has a range of 174-180 miles (280-300 km) and operates as a sea-skimmer, flying low and close to the water to make it almost undetectable until just before it hits its target. It was scheduled to be deployed this month with a full division of six launchers, seventy-two cruise missiles (more than three for each remaining major Russian surface vessel), and accompanying radar systems. But Russia’s seems to have derailed this timetable, and it is unclear when it will be able to safely deploy its system and have it and its crews be operational. Details are few and far between as Ukraine obviously would want to keep Russia guessing.
This must have been part of the discussion over the past month between Ukraine and NATO nations, and taking into account the issues with the Neptunes, NATO has been working to arm Ukraine with anti-ship missiles for weeks. Reports from early April indicated United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been keen to arm Ukraine with anti-ship missiles, that these would most likely be truck-mounted versions of its U.S.-supplied Harpoon missiles, its version having a range of 80 miles (128 km) and also capable of hitting land targets (Ukraine has actually been asking for these for some time).
UK PM Boris Johnson with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, April 9 (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)
Russian Naval forces are hardly concentrating along the Turkish coast of the southern Black Sea: they are mostly, perhaps virtually all, off the coast of Ukraine to varying degrees in the northern half of the Black Sea or Sea of Azov, trying to offer support and, presumably, debating whether or not to launch amphibious assaults, particularly on Ukraine’s main port in its West, Odesa (the fact that they have not yet shows how confident they are in such an assault’s chances of success; Putin may not care much about throwing his soldiers’ lives away recklessly, but his larger naval vessels are expensive and take time to construct).
As the above map shows and implies, Ukraine would have excellent coverage with many of these systems. For most of these systems, many, perhaps even all, of Russia’s twenty remaining large warships in the region—including Russia’s most powerful naval ship, the Slava class cruiser Moskva—are well within striking range from Ukrainian-controlled territory. Even if Ukraine will receive only Harpoons, though they have much smaller range than the Neptunes, they should effectively prevent any Russian naval assaults if the Russians are smart (but they are so often not). After such Harpoons would arrive, they would still secure Ukrainian coastline and push Russian naval operating areas far from Ukrainian-controlled coastal territory (unless Russia is stupid and keeps its ships within range, inviting their destruction) all while, presumably, the Neptune rollout, training, and deployment finishes, possibly in just a few weeks if the invasion has not derailed Ukraine’s timetable.
At this crucial moment, when Russia is desperate to turn the tide in the face of its massive failures, the soon-to-arrive unspecified anti-ship missiles have effectively killed any realistic Russian hope of a successful naval assault on Odesa or elsewhere on the Crimea-to-Moldova corridor (Russia has illegally stationed some military forces in another breakaway region, Transnistria in Moldova). These missiles will either prevent any assault from happening or virtually doom any would-be assault. This new round of aid with these anti-ship missiles has, thus, basically closed the gap between the Russians collapsing on three fronts and the Neptunes’ presumed deployment.
If (and hopefully when) Neptunes can be eventually deployed, a large portion of the entire Black Sea, including most of Russian-occupied Crimea—where many of Russia’s naval vessels are based and resupplied—as well as the Sea of Azov, would be vulnerable. And if Ukraine is able to push Russian forces in the south back closer to Crimea, even missiles with shorter range could threaten Russia’s ability to dock its ships and the entirety of Crimea more of the Black Sea could be vulnerable.
Soon, Russia’s navy will almost certainly have to turn tail and run to the southern Black Sea, unable to offer meaningful support in the ground war, or even move to port back in Russia proper (as in, the non-illegally occupied/annexed parts of Ukraine) to avoid near-total destruction. If there will be any problems or delays deploying the Neptunes, NATO should ensure longer-range anti-ship missiles, including some of the Norwegian NSMs, are provided to Ukraine so they can either destroy Russia’s navy or render it irrelevant, putting more Russian ships under range or pushing them even further back than would be the case with just, say, Harpoon missiles.
We should not expect details of these upcoming transfers to be broadcast in detail publicly before they happen, as, ideally, NATO would get Ukraine these missiles quietly, so Russian naval vessels will still be well within range and not expecting their use. With a few coordinated deployments, and with open-source intelligence (OSINT), U.S. & other NATO satellite and other intelligence aiding the Ukrainians, most, perhaps all of Russia’s twenty remaining large surface vessels could be targeted and heavily damaged or destroyed.
I am not an expert on these missiles, whether one, two, or three missiles would be enough to knock out a larger ship, but that is only twenty, forty, or sixty or so missiles to neutralize all major surface vessels of the Russian Navy. The first volley could be fired in a few minutes and hit its targets in not much longer than that, and it is also extremely unlikely these missiles, given their sea-skimming technology and Russian capabilities, can be countered, and even double-insurance to effectively damage and destroy all of the Russian Navy’s heavy-hitter surface-vessels operating near Ukraine, is, again, just sixty missiles. Furthermore, only just arming Ukraine with the shortest-range missiles would make any naval assault suicidal for Russia, any competent use ensuring many or all of the amphibious landing ships would be sunk before reaching land and severe damage or destruction for any other major ships that would venture close to support if Russia would not be smart enough to withdraw its vulnerable ships far away from Ukraine, or, as stated, would ensure such assaults do not take place if Russia is behaving less stupidly than it has been for this entire war.
A True Game-Changer: “Bye-Bye Russian Navy!“
These anti-ship missiles will either annihilate the Russian Navy in the Black Sea or push it far away to near-irrelevance (other than its ability to affect commercial shipping). This will absolutely humiliate Putin and the Russians, crush Russian morale, severely hamper the entirety of the logistical situation for the Russians as well as overall Russian efforts in southern Ukraine and on its coast, allow far more supplies to reach Ukraine’s people and military far more easily, perhaps destroy any hope of building a land bridge for Russia to Crimea (let alone one to Moldova), and also severely hamper Russia’s efforts to secure the Donbas. It could even help precipitate the collapse of the entire Russian war effort and perhaps even mutiny and revolt in the Russian military.
Ukraine might very well be able to succeed without destroying the Russian Navy in the Black Sea or pushing it so far away it can only exert marginal influence on the war, but it would sure be a lot easier, happen a lot faster, and save a lot of Ukrainian lives to remove the Russian Navy from the picture. The easiest way to do this is the deployment of anti-ship missiles for the reasons outlined above. And the cost for the West and Ukraine would only be relatively inexpensive and cost-effective anti-ship missile systems, along with the logistics to get them safely to Ukrainians and ensure Ukrainians. But the cost for Russia? The bulk of their navy or their ability to use it to significantly support the war.
With the introduction of a serious supply of anti-ship missiles on the side of Ukraine, the Russian Navy is doomed to near-irrelevance at best (for Russia) or a watery grave at the bottom of the Black Sea or Sea of Azov, whether it or Putin knows this or not.
About the Author(s)
Brian Frydenborg has spent two decades studying, writing about, or working in the fields of conflict analysis, counterterrorism, international affairs, public policy, politics, history, and humanitarian aid and international development. His work has been featured in Newsweek, Jerusalem Post, Modern War Institute at West Point, London School of Economics and Political Science Middle East Centre, Jordan Times, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), and Real Clear Defense/History, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @bfry1981 and on his website, Real Context News.
7. This Is the War’s Decisive Moment
We should have advisors on the ground in Ukraine. But I think Dr. Cohen's argument based on comparing Russian advisors in Vietnam to the possibility of US advisors deploying in Ukraine. The US restrained itself. Will Putin restrain himself? I doubt he will escalate because of US advisors but he will exploit their presence for propaganda purposes for sure.
Excerpts:
If the Soviet Union could deploy thousands of advisers to North Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam War without triggering a nuclear conflict, the U.S. can deploy advisers to western Ukraine, or at least to Poland, to train Ukrainian soldiers. Instead, we ship Ukrainian troops to Biloxi, Mississippi, to learn how to operate the Switchblade drone, where their congratulations come from the secretary of defense on a Zoom call from his Pentagon desk. It would be better if he were draping his arm about their shoulders in some muddy field a lot closer to their homeland.
The war may get worse. If the Russians use chemical weapons, the United States should rethink its unwillingness to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The Obama administration, many of whose veterans serve in this White House, failed wretchedly when it declared a red line over the use of chemical weapons in Syria and then walked away from it. Ukrainians and Syrians alike have paid cruelly for that pusillanimity. But that does not make it wise or moral to fail to act here in the name of cowardly consistency. The use of chemical weapons opens up the path to the massacre of civilians on a scale that is indeed genocidal. If it happens, the free world must stop it.
Upon what the United States and its allies do in the next few weeks hangs more than the American people realize. The evidence suggests that Russia’s armies can, if met by a well-equipped Ukrainian force, be thoroughly wrecked and defeated. While Russia itself will likely remain a paranoid and isolated dictatorship after this war, it can be defanged, even as its own folly reduces it to the ranks of a third-rate power. But war is war, and the future is always uncertain. All that is clear right now is that a failure to adequately support Ukraine will have terrible consequences, and not just for that heroic and suffering nation.
This Is the War’s Decisive Moment
The United States and its allies can tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.
By Eliot A. Cohen
The relatively brief but bloody war in Ukraine is entering its fourth phase. In the first, Russia tried to depose Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and sweep the country into its embrace in a three-day campaign; in the second, it attempted to conquer Ukraine—or at least its eastern half, including the capital, Kyiv—with armored assaults; in the third, defeated in the north, Russia withdrew its battered forces, massing instead in the southeastern and southern areas for the conquest of those parts of Ukraine. Now the fourth, and possibly decisive, phase is about to begin.
For those of us born after World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Upon its outcome rests the future of European stability and prosperity. If Ukraine succeeds in preserving its freedom and territorial integrity, a diminished Russia will be contained; if it fails, the chances of war between NATO and Russia go up, as does the prospect of Russian intervention in other areas on its western and southern peripheries. A Russian win would encourage a China coolly observing and assessing Western mettle and military capacity; a Russian defeat would induce a salutary caution in Beijing. Russia’s sheer brutality and utterly unwarranted aggression, compounded by lies at once sinister and ludicrous, have endangered what remains of the global order and the norms of interstate conduct. If such behavior leads to humiliation on the battlefield and economic chaos at home, those norms may be rebuilt to some degree; if Vladimir Putin’s government gets away with it, restoring them will take a generation or longer.
There will be time enough for recriminations. Germany long claimed that it was extending the hand of reconciliation to Russia when in fact it chose to pursue a policy based on greed and naivete. It was not alone in delusion and hypocrisy. For more than a decade, American leadership proved inept, complete with red lines that melted and indifference to the rending of nations in Europe and the leveling of cities and gassing of civilians in Syria. Smug asides about leading from behind seem particularly reprehensible now, as we see what a world without American leadership looks like.
In the years to come, culpable politicians will attempt to excuse these follies and historians will acidly dissect them. What matters now is that we judge the present moment correctly. And here, again, the West faces potential failure. Those who talk of a stalemate on the battlefield, perhaps lasting years, are likely making as big of an error as when they dismissed the possibility of effective Ukrainian resistance two months ago. Decisive action is urgently required to tip the balance between a costly success and a calamity.
In most intense conflicts of this kind, armies engage in a kind of competitive collapse, victory going to the side that can hold out longer. The Ukrainians have kept their own losses and exhaustion well-guarded secrets, as they should, but outgunned as they are, and seeing their civilians slaughtered and tortured, they have to feel the strain. As fighting shifts to open areas where guerrilla tactics and handheld anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles will no longer be as effective, they face daunting, if not impossible, odds. They are as motivated as soldiers can be, and creative tacticians too. But they are not supermen, and they desperately need all that the arsenals of the West can provide them.
The Russian military—revealed as inept at tactics, unimaginative in operational design, obtuse in strategy, and incompetent at basic logistics and maintenance—can do only two things well: vomit out massive amounts of firepower and brutalize civilians. It has been bloodied very badly indeed. If, as seems plausible, it has taken losses (killed, wounded, missing, and imprisoned) of a quarter or more of the forces it committed to this war, it may teeter on the verge of collapse. We can see the indicators in reports from the battlefield: equipment abandoned, officers killed by their own men, desperate attempts to dragoon young men into military service, and blocking units to shoot deserters. The Russian military has not established, let alone maintained, control of the air. Russia threw three-quarters of its ground-combat forces into Ukraine, where they were driven from one theater and severely handled in the others, and now has no real reserves on which to draw.
Why, then, the impending escalation of the war in the east and the south? What explains the desperate throw of the dice by the Russian high command? One may assume that neither Putin, nor his senior advisers, nor even senior subordinate commanders have an accurate picture of the situation on the ground. They know that they have been humiliated, but they do not have a feel of the battlefield. As stewards of a military that cannot adequately care for its wounded and that abandons its dead, they don’t care about the human price they are paying. In a system built on lies and corruption, they receive or pass on falsely optimistic information. Having sought to upend the notion of truth in the West, they now fall victim to their own pervasive untruths.
And so Putin will order offensives that, if confronted by a well-resourced Ukrainian foe, can effectively destroy his own army. The challenge for the West is to ensure that this is its fate.
The Europeans have been, unsurprisingly, far from uniform in their reactions: Within Germany, the foreign minister from the Green Party is staunch; the chancellor is erratic; some members of his own party are timid. Britain is splendidly assertive. Poland and the Baltic states are positively heroic, while Hungary, Austria, and a few others are ambivalent or worse.
The United States is doing many of the right things. It has provided a lot of portable missiles, as well as drones and nonlethal gear. It has facilitated the transfer of heavier equipment, such as Slovak S-300 surface-to-air missiles, which it backfilled with Patriot systems. President Joe Biden and some of his key aides have said the right things about Ukraine’s right to freely exist within its rightful borders. But in other respects, America has failed.
In Washington, the metronome of war ticks too slowly. The administration has not taken advantage of the near-unanimous support for Ukraine in Congress—a marvel of bipartisanship in this contentious period of American politics—to press for much larger sums (in the tens of billions of dollars) for the Ukrainian military. It has moved slowly to procure for Ukraine the heavier kinds of weapons that it knows are needed. Its attention wanders to a domestic agenda that was in trouble before the war, and that pales in significance now. It does not seem to have senior leaders inclined to bulldoze bureaucratic obstacles and cut red tape. It feels like business as usual in the Pentagon. Some Russian banks have been sanctioned, but not others. And multinational corporations have not yet been confronted with a simple ultimatum: You can do business in the United States or in Russia, but not in both.
The United States has failed to take many of the symbolic actions that matter in wartime. If British Prime Minister Boris Johnson can visit Kyiv (as did Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and heads of government and senior officials from other nations), so can Secretary of State Antony Blinken or Vice President Kamala Harris. If other countries can reopen embassies in Ukraine, so can the United States, which never should have closed its own. Instead of treating Zelensky’s pleas to Congress as a singular event, the U.S. should find ways, on a daily basis, to celebrate his courage and that of his people, and to continually remind the American people what is at stake here. Part of wartime leadership is theater, and the administration should embrace it. The moment requires a bit of Shakespeare’s Henry V, but what has been on display has been too much of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
The United States has been unwilling to take some steps because of its own self-deterring beliefs about Russian behavior. It should accept that the Ukrainians are now the world’s experts in fighting Russians—not us. They have proved by their skill and success that they can handle much more than we give them credit for. So rather than questioning whether they need fixed-wing aircraft or can use Western military hardware, the U.S. should err on the side of generosity. And if American expertise is needed, it can be provided without the U.S. entering the war directly. Before Pearl Harbor, the American Volunteer Group, known as the Flying Tigers, was sent to China to fly P-40 fighters against the Japanese air force there. The group did so with the support of the U.S. government. Something similar can be done in Ukraine, if only there is the will to do it.
If the Soviet Union could deploy thousands of advisers to North Vietnam in the middle of the Vietnam War without triggering a nuclear conflict, the U.S. can deploy advisers to western Ukraine, or at least to Poland, to train Ukrainian soldiers. Instead, we ship Ukrainian troops to Biloxi, Mississippi, to learn how to operate the Switchblade drone, where their congratulations come from the secretary of defense on a Zoom call from his Pentagon desk. It would be better if he were draping his arm about their shoulders in some muddy field a lot closer to their homeland.
The war may get worse. If the Russians use chemical weapons, the United States should rethink its unwillingness to introduce a no-fly zone over Ukraine. The Obama administration, many of whose veterans serve in this White House, failed wretchedly when it declared a red line over the use of chemical weapons in Syria and then walked away from it. Ukrainians and Syrians alike have paid cruelly for that pusillanimity. But that does not make it wise or moral to fail to act here in the name of cowardly consistency. The use of chemical weapons opens up the path to the massacre of civilians on a scale that is indeed genocidal. If it happens, the free world must stop it.
Upon what the United States and its allies do in the next few weeks hangs more than the American people realize. The evidence suggests that Russia’s armies can, if met by a well-equipped Ukrainian force, be thoroughly wrecked and defeated. While Russia itself will likely remain a paranoid and isolated dictatorship after this war, it can be defanged, even as its own folly reduces it to the ranks of a third-rate power. But war is war, and the future is always uncertain. All that is clear right now is that a failure to adequately support Ukraine will have terrible consequences, and not just for that heroic and suffering nation.
8. The U.S. has expanded intelligence sharing with Ukraine about Russian troops in the Donbas region.
Absolutely necessary. Good. But having US advisors on the ground would facilitate this.
The U.S. has expanded intelligence sharing with Ukraine about Russian troops in the Donbas region.
April 13, 2022, 3:39 p.m. ET
Russian soldiers patrolling the captured town of Volnovakha, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, on Monday.
The United States has increased the flow of intelligence to Ukraine about Russian forces in the Donbas and Crimea, as Kyiv’s military forces prepare to defend against a renewed offensive by Moscow in the country’s east, American officials said Wednesday.
The information could allow the Ukrainians to conduct more effective counterattacks against Russian forces in the Donbas or Crimea, or better predict the movement of Russian troops from those areas against Ukrainian forces.
After several weeks of failing to take Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, Russian forces retreated from around the city and have been regrouping in Ukraine’s east, including the Donbas region. Western officials say they expect the Kremlin to mount a major offensive there.
As the conflict in Ukraine has evolved, intelligence agencies have adjusted their approach to ensure officials have flexibility “to share detailed timely intelligence with the Ukrainians,” a U.S. intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the handling of classified material.
The United States has adjusted its flow of intelligence since the war began, and administration officials have said they have been giving Ukraine the most relevant information at any given moment. Still, the Biden administration has been reluctant to help the Ukrainians target Russian forces in Russia, and Republican lawmakers said that concern has extended to Russian forces in Crimea and the Donbas.
U.S. officials have defended the intelligence sharing with Ukraine. On Tuesday, Kathleen H. Hicks, the deputy secretary of defense, said that “the intelligence support that we have provided has been vital.” And she said the information given to Ukraine had been “high end.”
Other officials said that as the Russian military shifted its strategy away from their attack on Kyiv to reinforcing operations in the Donbas, U.S. intelligence agencies began to look at whether their guidance on what information could be shared needed to be expanded, and changed that guidance earlier in April.
Republicans have been critical of the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, saying they have failed to provide enough information to Ukraine about Russian forces stationed in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine that those forces and Russian-backed separatist groups have occupied since 2014 and 2015.
In a letter released on Monday, Senate Republicans said they were concerned that not enough was being done to share critical intelligence with Ukrainians. The letter, from Senator Marco Rubio and others, specifically made reference to providing intelligence with the Ukrainians to help them “retake every inch of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, which includes Crimea and the Donbas.”
Russia seized the Black Sea territory of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, and armed Russian-backed separatists began claiming parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Developments
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Last week, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, questioned Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, about whether the United States was providing enough intelligence to the Ukrainians to help them retake territory in the Donbas occupied in 2015, before the current invasion.
“Part of what you’ve heard from both parties in this committee is that as much as we have done, we’re still engaged in too many half measures,” Mr. Cotton said. “There’s still too much hesitancy and tentativeness in our posture toward this war.”
Mr. Austin said that the government was updating its intelligence-sharing guidance to make sure intelligence on the Russian-occupied Donbas areas could be provided. “The current guidance was not clear in that regard, so we’ll make sure it’s clear,” Mr. Austin said.
9. U.S. SOCOM Has History with Ukraine's Special Forces
Relationships, relationships, relationships. Note also the discussion (or lack thereof due to classification) on Taiwan.
Excerpts:
Clarke reminded the legislators, “We currently have over five thousand SOF deployed to over 80 countries. Our National Guard SOF [in 2021] supported wide-ranging operations globally in over 30 countries.” For a decade or more, he said, SOCOM has dealt with what he described as “Russia’s destabilizing activities” by working with allied SOF throughout Europe.
In Ukraine in 2014, Clarke said, the country had only a small Special Forces unit without its own headquarters. In the ensuing years, “That force grew to three brigade equivalents commanded by colonels and a training regiment.” He added that “Over the last 18 months, they added a resistance company made up of what we would [call] a home guard, which was embedded in each one of those [brigades].”
SOCOM training of Ukrainian forces in the U.S. has continued. Last Sunday, a Ukrainian group concluded a course on advanced tactical training on the type of U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats that were delivered to Ukraine last November. While in the U.S., the group also had several weeks of training on the Switchblade armed, unmanned aerial vehicle, hundreds of which are in the new package of arms being delivered to the Kyiv government.
Clarke highlighted so-called Military Information Support Operations (MISO) assistance that was provided to Ukraine’s SOF which was designed, he said, “to illuminate and counter Russian disinformation.”
“SOCOM has invested heavily to expose and counter adversary propaganda and
disinformation to better compete in the cognitive domain,” Clarke said. “Competitors, like China and Russia, continue to act assertively in the information ‘gray zone’ to manipulate populations worldwide.”
U.S. SOCOM Has History with Ukraine's Special Forces
Fine Print
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. [...] Read more
OPINION — Last week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees held five hearings associated with the fiscal 2023 defense budget. What jumped out at me were discussions surrounding how the U.S. prepared Ukraine for Russia’s invasion and what lessons could be applied to Taiwan to deter and/or defend against a possible Chinese invasion.
General Richard D. Clarke, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), in testimony before the House panel on April 1 and the Senate committee on April 5, provided new details on the pre-invasion preparations.
He said SOCOM teams had been training Ukraine Special Forces for eight years, beginning in the Obama administration after Putin’s forces seized Crimea and territory in the Donbas area in eastern Ukraine. He emphasized that it was a “multinational training effort,” with Special Operation Forces (SOF) from NATO and other European countries joining the U.S. effort.
Clarke reminded the legislators, “We currently have over five thousand SOF deployed to over 80 countries. Our National Guard SOF [in 2021] supported wide-ranging operations globally in over 30 countries.” For a decade or more, he said, SOCOM has dealt with what he described as “Russia’s destabilizing activities” by working with allied SOF throughout Europe.
In Ukraine in 2014, Clarke said, the country had only a small Special Forces unit without its own headquarters. In the ensuing years, “That force grew to three brigade equivalents commanded by colonels and a training regiment.” He added that “Over the last 18 months, they added a resistance company made up of what we would [call] a home guard, which was embedded in each one of those [brigades].”
SOCOM training of Ukrainian forces in the U.S. has continued. Last Sunday, a Ukrainian group concluded a course on advanced tactical training on the type of U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats that were delivered to Ukraine last November. While in the U.S., the group also had several weeks of training on the Switchblade armed, unmanned aerial vehicle, hundreds of which are in the new package of arms being delivered to the Kyiv government.
Clarke highlighted so-called Military Information Support Operations (MISO) assistance that was provided to Ukraine’s SOF which was designed, he said, “to illuminate and counter Russian disinformation.”
“SOCOM has invested heavily to expose and counter adversary propaganda and
disinformation to better compete in the cognitive domain,” Clarke said. “Competitors, like China and Russia, continue to act assertively in the information ‘gray zone’ to manipulate populations worldwide.”
SOCOM’s MISO activities have more than doubled over the past three years, and in fiscal 2021, some 40 percent of activities were reportedly devoted to countering strategic competitors in what Clarke called “the evolving information landscape” where they “actively engage foreign audiences to illuminate and counter hostile propaganda and disinformation online.”
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At one point, Clarke called it “military information support offshore information warfare,” saying, “We had a dedicated team that was in Ukraine for eight years providing — everything from billboards to print to using Internet-based capabilities along with civil affairs teams that were working with them.”
“We see today the resistance the Ukraine forces have held, and the training they were given, I think, has directly contributed to the success on the battlefield,” Clarke said.
When it came to what SOCOM was doing in Taiwan, Clarke was more restrained, saying “I would prefer to talk about Taiwan in a closed setting.”
He did go on to say that “Broadly, building both resistance and resilience in the [Taiwan] force…resistance to give the punch but resilience being the ability to take the punch and make sure you can get back up through medical training, through logistics, and through communications – is critical. And I think we have got to work on both of those with other nations, writ large.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) reminded Clarke that last year he told the Senate committee, “The United States should consider options to strengthen Taiwan’s irregular warfare capability including their ability to fight in-depth using resistance networks or other capabilities, after China contingency planning.”
Clarke said that was still his view, adding, “I think we are doing more work in that regard.”
Another witness, Christopher Maier, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, said, “We are doing all we can,” based on the Taiwan Relations Act, which says, “the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
Maier went on to say that “We are looking at a whole resistance approach, so, in some cases, that means doing more exercises, more ability to touch aspects of Taiwanese infrastructure and determine – as General Clarke said – its ability to take a punch and give a punch.”
Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan has a long history of Special Forces. With U.S. assistance, it stood up its first unit, the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, in 1949, shortly after the Nationalist government came to Taiwan from mainland China.
Although it was an Army unit, the Taiwanese 101st is known as “Sea Dragon Frogmen” whose original role was amphibious reconnaissance and stealth missions on the mainland coast, though now they focus on a defensive role.
Taiwan also has special operations forces such as the ROC Marine Corps Amphibious Reconnaissance and Patrol Brigade, which has underwater demolition and reconnaissance teams; a highly mobile Airborne Special Service Company (ASSC), which has a counterterrorist mission; the 862nd Special Warfare Brigade, often compared to U.S. Army Rangers; and an elite unit within the ROC Military Police, the “Nighthawks” Special Service Company, who in Taipei would provide initial resistance to a Chinese airborne assault.
Over the years, these Taiwan Special Forces units have carried out exercises with comparable U.S. and other allied units. For example, the 101st Sea Dragon Frogmen carried out an annual exercise called Balance Tamper with the U.S. 1st Special Forces Group in 2020 and 2021, according to a short video released by the American unit.
In October 2021, then-Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen publicly acknowledged that the U.S. military had maintained a small training presence in Taiwan of some 30-plus personnel. Last December, Voice of America reported that an Operational Detachment Alpha team from the U.S. Army Special Forces had been dispatched to Taiwan for the Balance Temper exercise.
Also testifying last week before both Armed Services committees to discuss what his agencies had done in Ukraine was Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency (NSA).
At the start of the last Tuesday’s hearing, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), congratulated Nakasone as well as President Biden “for the unprecedented and skillful release of intelligence over the last several months that exposed Russia’s aggressive intentions and deceitful activities.”
In turn, Nakasone told the Senate panel, “Russia’s military and intelligence forces are employing a range of cyber capabilities, to include espionage, influence, and attack units to support its invasion and to defend Russian actions with a worldwide propaganda campaign.”
Looking backward, Nakasone said in coordination with the Ukrainians in late 2021, “We spent well over two months working with our partners there to harden their networks.” He added, “We deployed a hunt team who sat side-by-side with our partners to gain critical insights that have increased homeland defense for both the United States and Ukraine.”
As a result, Nakasone said, “Deploying a team to the Ukraine [enabled that team] to see what our adversaries are doing and being able to capture their malware and their tradecraft and share that broadly with the private sector.”
Although Nakasone did not directly talk about Taiwan, he did say that China is a major cyber threat and that he has, “created a China Outcomes Group under joint Cyber Command and NSA leadership to ensure proper focus, resourcing, planning, and operations to meet this challenge.”
One more item worth noting is a statement Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley made last Thursday to the Senate Panel. He said in his prepared statement about the Chinese, “They intend to be a military peer of the U.S. by 2035, and they intend to develop the military capabilities to seize Taiwan by 2027.”
The latter part of Milley’s sentence was picked up by Saturday’s Taipei Times, andthat is what I want to focus on, because it sounds so definite. What’s the source?
The Pentagon’s 2021 report, “Military and Security Developments Involving the
People’s Republic of China,” said, “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced a new milestone for PLA [People’s Liberation Army] modernization in 2027, broadly understood as the modernization of the PLA’s capabilities to be networked into a system of systems for ‘intelligentized’ warfare. If realized, the PLA’s 2027 modernization goals could provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency [emphasis added].”
The CCP picked 2027 as a milestone for modernization, but there was no mention of Taiwan. The Pentagon document’s author only mentions “more credible options in a Taiwan contingency,” and not the “ability to seize Taiwan.”
The Chinese threat is real enough without changing language to build it up beyond what it is.
I’d rather close with another Milley quote from his prepared statement, “History is not deterministic; war with the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is not inevitable. The PRC is clearly a strategic competitor, and it continues to improve its technology and modernization of its armed forces. It is imperative that we keep our relationship with the PRC a competition and not allow it to become a conflict.”
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Fine Print
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010.
10. 71st Ordnance Group: Adapting, Evolving, Improving
I had never seen the full name of this organization: The 71st Ordnance Group Special Operations Forces (SOF) Support Training (SST)
71st Ordnance Group: Adapting, Evolving, Improving
Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians (89D) within 71st Ordnance Group train extensively during Special Operations Forces Support Training (SST) to increase mission readiness as well as survivability in hostile urban environments for future deployments at Yakima, Washington, 30 March, 2022. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Apolonia Gaspar) (Photo Credit: Staff Sgt. Apolonia Gaspar) VIEW ORIGINAL
The 71st Ordnance Group Special Operations Forces (SOF) Support Training (SST) brought a selected group of experienced and knowledgeable explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team leaders throughout 71st EOD to address how EOD supports SOF in unconventional ways from pre-mission planning to post-mission products during the two week course at Yakima training center, Washington, 21-31 March 2022.
“Every SST course is going to change as the mission changes,” said Sgt. 1st Class Corey Sage, an EOD tech with 761st Ordnance Company, working as an observer, controller/ trainer (OC/T).
“So when it was initially started we were training guys in Afghanistan to support special operations in Afghanistan and that is vastly different from supporting operations in South America, Africa, or the Pacific.”
The 71st SST must continually be forward-thinking, innovative, and aggressive, both in understanding how warfare is evolving and in adapting training to meet those challenges.
“It's a baseline training for an EOD company to get exposure to the mindset, the tactical approach, and the thought process and problem solving that they'll see on a SOF mission as opposed to a conventional mission,” said Staff Sgt. Kooper Fordyce, an EOD tech with 62nd Ordnance Company, working as an observer, controller/ trainer (OC/T). “It’s always been conventional missions in the past and taking conventional tactics into a SOF mission will result in failure.”
Thus, to be effective, EOD techs must train under conditions that are as realistic as possible and come as close as possible to placing the individual, the team, and the unit in the environment and situations they will face in combat with SOF. Training realism is one of the key measures of training effectiveness and the SST provides the teams to be individually put through a culminating exercise, referred to as a “full-mission profile” designed to simulate a raid in an urban environment.
“I deployed four years ago and we got a minimal amount of training prior but it was not SOF baseline training,” said Fordyce. “It's great that I get to share my experience and to give people a better idea of what they might actually see downrange.”
Experienced leaders and training is how we fulfill our missions; it is the way we develop the competent Soldiers, leaders, and for 71st EOD– competent EOD technicians that support one of the Army's priority: readiness.
11. The Right Way to Arm Ukraine
Quite a critique. A British perspective.
Heed this.
Excerpts:
The moral imperative is self-evident: Ukraine must be given all the help it needs to expel Russian forces from its territory—and the sooner, the better. But even if Western leaders set aside worries about nuclear escalation and energy supplies to Europe, arming Ukraine effectively requires more thought and planning than it has been given.
...
Enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia is practical and feasible. The massacres uncovered last week in Bucha, Ukraine, are just a foretaste of what awaits Ukrainians if the world doesn’t act.
The Right Way to Arm Ukraine
An expert's point of view on a current event.
There has been too much cheerleading and too little attention to detail when it comes to giving Kyiv the weapons it needs.
By Garvan Walshe, a former national and international security policy advisor to the British Conservative Party and the founder and CEO of Article7.
Bulgarian Air Force MiG-29 lands in front of Military police officers at Graf Ignatievo airbase near Plovdiv on Feb. 21. NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV/AFP via Getty Images
Every day Russian forces stay in control of Ukrainian territory is another day innocent civilians are murdered.
Bodies of men lie face down in the mud, hands tied behind their backs. Women and girls have been raped. Local political leaders have been tortured and killed. Corpses not left on the street have been thrown into mass graves. In Irpin and Trostyanets, Bucha and Chernihiv, the Russian army has unleashed hell on the inhabitants. It is doing the same on a much larger scale in Mariupol, where the Russians have apparently deployed mobile crematoriums, which (in the innocent days of late February) the world thought were deployed to avoid having to send dead Russian soldiers back to their mothers. Now they are apparently being used to destroy evidence of war crimes.
There can now be no illusions about Russian plans for Ukraine. They are repeating what they did in Chechnya and Syria: systematically destroying the civilian population. It is treatment unseen in Ukraine since the genocidal Soviet famine known as the Holodomor or the Nazi invasion of 1941.
Ukraine must be given all the help it needs to expel Russian forces from its territory—and the sooner, the better.
Current intelligence suggests the Russians are planning a new, concentrated advance from the Donbas region. Civilians have been encouraged to evacuate Kharkiv and other major eastern Ukrainian cities. If the Russians succeed, they could perpetrate crimes against humanity that would make genocidal former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crimes in Bosnia and Kosovo fade into insignificance.
The moral imperative is self-evident: Ukraine must be given all the help it needs to expel Russian forces from its territory—and the sooner, the better. But even if Western leaders set aside worries about nuclear escalation and energy supplies to Europe, arming Ukraine effectively requires more thought and planning than it has been given.
Ukraine’s most immediate need is more anti-tank weapons (such as Javelin surface-to-air missiles, next-generation light anti-tank weapons, and panzerfausts) and drones (including the Switchblade kamikaze drones from the United States and the highly effective Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 models).
These destroy Russian armored vehicles, leaving its artillery, where Russia keeps most of its firepower, vulnerable to capture. Ukraine could also benefit from anti-ship missiles (the United Kingdom has announced it is supplying some Harpoon anti-ship missiles) and far more longer-range anti-aircraft capabilities to protect its cities and civilian infrastructure from Russian airstrikes.
In the long term, over a period of several years, Ukraine, whatever decision it chooses to make about formal NATO membership, should be integrated into the NATO military supply chain and build up a NATO-style force. Ukraine has imposed heavy casualties on Russia using old weapons. The latest modern tanks, aircraft, missile systems, and drones will give Ukraine the qualitative edge needed to make future Russian aggression unthinkable. This will be the strategic defeat Russian President Vladimir Putin deserves, given that he wanted the war to prevent Ukraine from ever being able to defend itself by integrating into the Western alliance.
Former Warsaw Pact countries have around 750 battle tanks, mostly in Poland, in their inventories. These can be used by Ukraine with minimal adaptation.
NATO’s more technologically advanced militaries keep their firepower in the air, allowing them to attack the enemy at greater distances and at less risk to their soldiers and equipment. In this war, Ukraine has shown itself able to operate with the “mission command”—major authority delegated to local commanders—necessary to bring modern weapons’ firepower to bear in modern combat, where things move too fast to allow top commanders to micromanage effectively.
Mission command enables high-end forces that pack far more power per soldier than Russia’s and are more suited for a population, like Ukraine’s, where there are fewer people of fighting age. However, such high-end equipment requires time to train on and needs to be supported by logistics and maintenance services considerably different from the ones Ukraine currently has.
The most difficult problem is what to do in the medium term, when Ukraine will need to fight to drive the Russians back. Such offensive operations require heavy firepower—meaning tanks, planes, and artillery. Ukraine mostly uses ex-Soviet equipment, which is these days mainly manufactured in Russia, so it’s obviously not possible to just buy more; it must be obtained from other ex-Eastern Bloc states like Slovakia and Poland. NATO equipment can only be used once operators have been trained to use them and maintenance crews learn how to fix them up. Personnel being retrained on new equipment can’t be used to operate what Ukraine already has, and right now, it needs everyone it can muster.
There is, however, at least a partial solution, especially on the ground. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Military Balance, former Warsaw Pact countries have around 750 battle tanks, mostly in Poland, in their inventories. These can be used by Ukraine with minimal adaptation, almost doubling Ukraine’s prewar tank force. Considerable quantities of artillery can also be supplied.
Read More
European Parliament gives Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a standing ovation
Europeans should learn from the success of enlarging the bloc.
People protest in front of the Brandenburg gate against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in Berlin, Germany.
Berlin will send anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to help Kyiv fight off Russia.
The air situation is more difficult. Former Warsaw Pact countries retain relatively few Soviet-era aircraft (though the United States was wrong to block Polish MiG-29 fighter jets from being sent to Ukraine), and military aviation has advanced hugely since the 1990s. Although the Ukrainian defense minister insists his pilots could learn to fly F-16s in a few weeks, it would probably take longer to fly them well. Supplying fuel, missiles, and ammunition to Ukraine is also a significant challenge.
However, sending tanks and planes to Ukraine (the Czech government has already announced it has sent tanks, and Poland has begun some transfers this week) leaves holes in these NATO members’ defenses. Those holes need to be plugged in the medium term with modern equipment and in the short term with permanent West European or North American forces and equipment.
It’s clear then that a phased strategy is needed to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to beat Russia.
First, NATO countries should supply all available Warsaw Pact-style equipment that Ukraine can use: This should include tanks, planes, missiles, and ammunition. Eastern European NATO members that supply this equipment must immediately be reinforced with high-end NATO troops and equipment from Western Europe and North America. This is particularly crucial for Poland, which, because of its size, is where most of this equipment would come from.
Second, Ukraine needs Lend-Lease-style programs so it can buy all the equipment—including artillery, drones, targeting systems, and loitering munitions—it needs on the market and be able to pay it back over the long term after it regains its territorial integrity and integrates further into Europe. Lithuania has announced it will train Ukraine in the use of Western weapons while the European Union is running its accession process on turbo speed for Ukraine, which has also shown during the war that it has built impressive civil as well as military capacities. (Electric power, internet, and rail services are still operating, for example.)
Third, militaries in Central and Eastern Europe as well as Ukraine and Moldova need to be upgraded. The amount of money required will be orders of magnitude greater than the $1 billion or so already being supplied by the United States and the European Peace Facility. This military assistance needs to be part of a coherent long-term program and should be financed by a European financial instrument similar to the post-COVID-19 recovery and resilience fund as well as restricted to countries committed to supporting Ukraine; Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary, for example, should not benefit from the fund.
Fourth, there must be a long-lasting commitment to upgrading Ukraine’s military to NATO standards and equipment. Even if Ukraine does not formally become a NATO member, it should—like Sweden and Finland—now develop interoperable forces that are strong enough to deter Russia on their own.
Enabling Ukraine to defeat Russia is practical and feasible. The massacres uncovered last week in Bucha, Ukraine, are just a foretaste of what awaits Ukrainians if the world doesn’t act.
Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy advisor to the British Conservative Party and the founder and CEO of Article7.
12. Can a tweet be evidence? How social media is being used to hunt down war crimes in Ukraine
An interview.
Can a tweet be evidence? How social media is being used to hunt down war crimes in Ukraine
An expert on human rights investigations explains how to speed the search for justice using Twitter and TikTok.
Jason Paladino
Investigative Reporter
April 11, 2022
Grisly images of massacred Ukrainians have appeared on social media and in news accounts recently, prompting many to accuse the Russians of war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide.
Even before the images emerged, the International Criminal Court, the independent body that investigates and prosecutes genocides, war crimes and crimes against humanity, announced that it had opened an investigation on March 2, after referrals from 41 state parties.
U.S. officials have pledged to help the effort. “We have to continue to provide Ukraine with the weapons they need to continue the fight and we have to get all the details so this can be an actual — have a war crime trial,” President Joe Biden told reporters last week. On Wednesday, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill directing the government to “collect, analyze and preserve evidence” related to war crimes in Ukraine.
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But even with international support, the process of investigating and prosecuting war crimes is notoriously slow. Cases can drag on for years. That can be frustratingly dissonant at a moment when millions around the world are virtual witnesses to atrocities in real time.
Russia has disputed the accusations and has made counter-accusations that Ukraine staged the bodies for the cameras. A growing body of evidence appears to disprove suggestions of Ukrainian involvement in these atrocities, although there are indications of possible incidents of war crimes by Ukrainian forces.
Could war crimes investigations go more quickly in an era of ubiquitous social media? To find out, Grid spoke with Alexa Koenig of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, an expert on investigating war crimes. Koenig is trying to speed up the process of probing and prosecuting war crimes using technology. Her program, the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley, trains students and professionals alike on investigating atrocities online.
Together with the United Nations, Koenig and her colleagues developed the “Berkeley Protocol,” a roadmap for formalizing the collection and standardization of online evidence to be used in war crimes investigations and other international justice and human rights efforts. She spoke with Grid from The Hague, where she and her colleagues are launching a training for war crimes investigators.
Grid: Why do war crimes prosecutions typically take so long?
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Alexa Koenig: The evidentiary standards for international criminal cases are more rigorous than what, say, the media may require in order to publish a story.
Ideally, to meet the standard of proof, a war crimes investigator will try to secure physical, testimonial and documentary evidence, including digital evidence, for each element of every alleged crime — and the charges may include dozens of crimes, creating a scale to the investigation that can be daunting and time-consuming.
For example, for murder as a crime against humanity, a prosecutor will have to establish that there was a murder. Then, to establish that the murder was a crime against humanity, they must show that the killing was perpetrated as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population and that the perpetrator knew or intended that the killing be part of that widespread or systematic attack.
To establish a willful killing as a war crime, a prosecutor must establish that same killing of one or more people, and also establish that the person or people killed were protected by the Geneva Conventions, that the perpetrator knew about the victims’ protected status, that the killing happened in the context of and was tied to an international armed conflict, and that the perpetrator was aware of that conflict.
That’s a lot of evidence to collect. The political and security obstacles, and the logistical obstacles to getting on the ground and collecting physical evidence or meeting with potential witnesses can be significant. And by the time you get on the ground, critical information may have been taken or destroyed.
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G: How are people trying to speed that process up?
AK: War crimes investigators are often ridiculously under-resourced, which means person power may be limited, and they are hampered by bureaucratic processes that can be critical for security and other reasons, but significantly slow the potential for adopting new technologies.
Using new technologies, digital investigators can accelerate the pace of their work. Artificial intelligence-based technologies like object recognition are helping investigators identify photos and videos that may contain critical information, including potential evidence, from among the thousands or even millions of images they have collected. Automatically identifying particular types of weapons or vehicles that may have been in a particular region, over a specific time period, can bring the need for manual review down to a more human scale.
G: We are seeing hundreds of hours of videos and millions of pictures of this conflict emerge on social media, from Twitter to TikTok. How can investigators use this as evidence to build cases on alleged war crimes in Ukraine?
AK: Social media evidence can be helpful in a few ways. First, it can be useful for planning before a formal investigation commences, helping investigators see where there may be relevant evidence if they are able to get boots on the ground. Online videos, photographs, documents and other digital material can contain valuable clues that point to physical evidence and potential witnesses and helps them know where to go looking to document alleged crimes.
Second, social media may help investigators know what crimes may have been prevalent in the conflict and when and where those crimes may have taken place, so that you can begin to build a timeline and map of the conflict, situating incidents in time and space. Investigators may, for example, map certain types of practices — like bombings of hospitals — by pinning those locations to satellite images to help generate working hypotheses about what happened.
That information can be especially helpful for establishing patterns among the morass of data and may help generate the critical insights needed to suggest that the destruction of a number of hospitals, for example, constituted a crime against humanity because the destruction was systematic or widespread, or that it was a potential war crime, by suggesting the number of civilians killed was disproportionate to any military necessity.
Videos and photographs that show people with their hands bound would be classic evidence to suggest that they were killed in violation of the laws of war which protect POWs and others.
Finally, social media content can be used to corroborate or disprove other kinds of information that is collected, as well as relationships between people and their networks.
G: Are there downside or blind spots for investigators using social media for war crimes investigations?
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AK: Social media-based investigations can lead to a very biased understanding of what is or has taken place, but we need to expand how you might think of a “bias.” There are three categories of bias that investigators need to be wary of and check: access bias, technical biases and cognitive biases.
Who has access to smartphones, the internet and social media sites? That is who is sharing their experiences or observations online. Differences in access, whether based on gender or geography, age or class, the urban-rural divide, or otherwise, can radically distort what gets posted and what investigators are able to find online.
Internet blackouts can also generate holes in the available data, and blackouts can be common during wartime.
Internet platforms can introduce bias with algorithms that prioritize posts that keep people glued to sites, which is not always the highest quality or most helpful information. A user’s previous search history, search location and other details are variables that affect what results the user gets when they conduct an online search, which is why investigators try to start from as neutral an operating environment as possible. (For example, investigators may use a VPN to change their alleged location to counter some of those biases and use different online systems and profiles for their professional and private lives, so that their private searches don’t influence the results of their professional work.)
Of course, we all bring human or cognitive biases to our work. A common example is confirmation bias where the investigator tends to look for, find and prioritize information that confirms their favored theory of their case. It can come up in less obvious ways, too. For instance, some crimes are just more “visible” and easy to detect, such as the destruction of buildings versus sexual and gender-based violence. It’s often easier to find the former, which can lead investigators to overlook the sometimes more hidden or coded signs of the latter.
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G: How do investigators sort through the many claims made around photo and video evidence online? For instance, the Russian Ministry of Defense has pointed to photos of corpses in the streets of Bucha and claimed those bodies were dumped there by Ukraine. How would an investigator building a case determine responsibility?
AK: A first step may be to assess the reliability and authenticity of the video or photograph. We developed a protocol [the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations] in partnership with the United Nations Human Rights Office that outlines how to appropriately verify digital content.
The first step is to conduct a technical analysis, for example, by inspecting any metadata still attached to an image file. Every time a digital device captures a photo or video, it embeds information with the image that can be helpful to an investigation, such as the day and time it was shot, the possible geo-coordinates of where it was taken and details about the capturing device. That information is not always reliable, so it’s not determinative on its own, but it can act as a starting place.
Many social media companies strip metadata from images and video uploaded to their platforms, but a few platforms keep the data intact.
The second step is conducting what’s called “source analysis.” Who is the source of the image and how reliable are they for what they’ve told you? Many of us were taught as kids to trust information from major media and government affiliates, but unfortunately they may deliberately or inadvertently communicate wrong information, so reputation alone isn’t all that reliable. Is there evidence that the source was actually at the scene of a crime? Do they have biases or potential motives for sharing that may call their credibility into question? Is it possible they’re not even human at all but a bot used to share propaganda or other misleading or inaccurate information?
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A third step is content analysis. If you are told a photo depicts a possible crime that occurred in Bucha in Ukraine — what within the “four corners” of the image suggests it was, in fact, taken of Bucha? Is the clothing worn by people in the images consistent with clothing typically worn in that place at that time of year? Is the weather you see consistent with what you can find on sites that catalog weather or with what would be typical in that part of the world during that season? Is the built or natural environment (terrain or vegetation or architectural style) consistent with what can be found in that region? Can you find other images of that town, maybe even that exact location, to help corroborate or disprove what you’ve been told?
One of the most essential steps for verifying visual imagery is to run what’s called a reverse image search. Investigators will search to see if a particular image has appeared online before or whether it has been recycled from another place or time. That recycling is incredibly common, especially in conflict — sometimes to mislead, but other times just to illustrate the “gist” of what someone is trying to communicate.
As for responsibility, this is where triangulation of witness testimony, physical evidence and documentary evidence becomes especially helpful. Who controlled the area at the time the bodies appeared? How were the people killed? What kind of weapon was used? Is the type or means of killing consistent with the signature or practices of a particular military unit or civilian team?
An investigator will want to generate multiple working hypotheses and test those hypotheses against all the available relevant evidence. For example, what evidence exists to suggest that the perpetrators were Russian? What evidence exists of possible staging? What do we know about whether the image was of a real event but miscontextualized, which we call a “shallow fake,” or generated whole cloth through a machine learning process, which is a deepfake? All of that will get tested.
G: We are now seeing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others allege genocide on top of allegations of war crimes. What does this mean for investigators at the International Criminal Court?
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AK: There are four international crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. In the context of Russia-Ukraine, the ICC only has jurisdiction to investigate the first three, although several people are calling for a special court to be established that could be used to investigate and prosecute the crime of aggression.
The baseline difference is that with genocide, you have to show that the perpetrator had the intent to destroy, in whole or part, a particular group because of their nationality, ethnicity, religion or race.
Proving that intent is key, and often really hard to do. Killings that happen without that intent to destroy that group would not qualify as genocide, even if the killings are extensive. In that sense, legal and lay use of the term “genocide” really differ.
War crimes are violations of the laws of war. Intentional, mass killings of civilians would be a war crime. When talking about mass killings of civilians, it’s often easier to prove that what happened was a war crime or a crime against humanity than genocide, given the difficulty of proving that specific intent.
G: Both the U.S. and Russia are “signatories that have withdrawn” from the Rome Statute that governs the ICC jurisdiction. How does the withdrawal by both countries impact the ICC’s efforts to bring to justice those who committed atrocities in Ukraine?
AK: A country becomes a “state party,” essentially a member of the ICC, only after they have both signed and ratified the Rome Statute. Some countries, like the U.S., have signed but then never ratified the Rome Statute, meaning they were never legally bound. So this is less about withdrawal then about never completing the process of becoming a party to the court. The U.S. then “unsigned” the Rome Statute under [President] George W. Bush, which was largely a symbolic attempt to undermine the court in the aftermath of 9/11.
G: Ukraine is a signatory but has not ratified the statute. What does this mean for potential war crimes committed by Ukrainian troops? Are they at greater legal risk than Russians?
AK: Ukraine is not a party to the court but has twice accepted the court’s jurisdiction, the first time for investigation of potential international crimes that occurred from Nov. 21, 2013, through Feb. 22, 2014, and the second time from Feb. 20, 2014, on, as permitted under article 12(3), of the Rome Statute — which says that a country that is not a party to the court may voluntarily accept the court’s jurisdiction. And then in March 2022, 41 state parties referred the situation in Ukraine to the ICC. Today, the court is looking into alleged crimes committed in Ukraine since the Nov. 21, 2013.
As for who is vulnerable to prosecution: The Office of the Prosecutor is mandated to investigate all sides of a conflict without favor or bias toward any set of actors, thus both Russian and Ukrainian troops could be vulnerable to prosecution for international crimes that took place in Ukraine during the period under investigation. These include any acts that might constitute genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
You can follow Alexa Koenig on Twitter @KAlexaKoenig, and the Human Rights Center’s work here. Thanks to Alicia Benjamin for copy editing this article.
13.Images of Zelenskyy show the physical toll that trauma and stress can have on the body
I think anyone in President Zelensky's shoes would be suffering a similar fate though I think Zelensky is looking pretty damned good all things considered.
Images of Zelenskyy show the physical toll that trauma and stress can have on the body
NPR · by Jaclyn Diaz · April 13, 2022
Left: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 22. Right: Zelenskyy on April 4. Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images; Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP via Getty Images
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toured the devastation in Bucha this month — where bodies of civilians lay in the street and buildings were destroyed — his haunted face seemed to show the toll of Russia's war in Ukraine.
The 44-year-old's normally shaved face was bearded and lined, his forehead scrunched in distress and his eyes with heavy bags underneath.
They are the hallmark physical signs that can appear on anyone who is going through intense trauma and stress — particularly in wartime, according to Glenn Patrick Doyle, a psychologist who specializes in trauma.
Trauma and stress wreak havoc on the human body after prolonged exposure, Doyle told NPR. Over time, sleep, attention, memory, mood, physical appearance and so much else are impacted.
The people of Ukraine, particularly Zelenskyy, are likely experiencing these symptoms as they struggle against the Russian invasion and constant air raid sirens and as many flee their homes, he says.
"The thing to understand about trauma and the body is that stress responses kind of hijack every otherwise 'normal' function of our body," he says. "The bodily processes that keep us focused and regulated on a normal day get kind of suspended for the duration of the stressor and replaced with processes designed to help us just get through the stressful experience."
As head of his country, Zelenskyy is in a particularly unique position and one that can leave long-term health impacts.
The impact war has on presidents
Doyle says presidents and other leaders of nations, like Zelenskyy, are often in an even lonelier and stressful place that can manifest itself in a physical transformation while they are in office.
President Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Much has been written about the way U.S. presidents seem to age while in office. Often, images from the time they entered office and those from their final days at the White House are compared. The presidents often display more lines, much more gray hair or heavier bags under the eyes than they did on their first days in the White House.
Being the leader of any country is a high-pressure gig. But add the toll of conflict into the job and the stress is compounded, experts told NPR.
Doyle says, "Presidents are in a uniquely lonely position."
Few people around them understand the pressures they're under, and there are few people they can confide in to take some of the pressure off, he says.
"They don't get to lay down their leadership roles or responsibilities, especially in crisis times," he told NPR via email. "Imagine what would happen to even the best constructed, best maintained race car if it was NEVER allowed to slow down or refuel--that car WILL cease functioning well, the longer it's red-lined."
President Abraham Lincoln is a perfect example of this, says Jonathan W. White, a professor of American studies and the author of A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the Lincoln White House.
"I think the presidency aged Abraham Lincoln more than anyone else who has ever held the office. Lincoln's four years in the White House took a toll on him that is painfully visible in photographs," he told NPR. "In 1860, he appeared young and powerful. By 1865, he looked almost like a different person — haggard and worn down."
During his presidency, the U.S. was torn in two by the Civil War.
President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the year of his assassination. Alexander Gardner/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
"Lincoln faced almost unfathomable pressure during his presidency," White says. "Not only was he responsible for waging a war to save the Union — a war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives — but he also was involved in the minutiae of running the federal government."
Toward the end of his first term in late 1864, White says, Lincoln reportedly got more short-tempered and lashed out.
White told NPR via email: "One of his private secretaries, William O. Stoddard, said that the never-ending work of the presidency placed a 'perpetual strain upon his nervous system' and 'began to tell seriously upon his health and spirits . . . . Even his temper suffered, and a petulance entirely foreign to his natural disposition was beginning to show itself as a symptom of an overtasked brain.' "
The science behind trauma
When we experience physical or emotional stress, the human body produces cortisol, the primary stress hormone. It contributes to the physical changes of the body under long-term stress, Dr. Nicole Colgrove, a specialist in otolaryngology at Virginia Hospital Center, told NPR.
Cortisol accelerates the loss of elasticity in skin, leading to a sagging or sunken appearance, she says. It also contributes to hair turning gray or white under intense stress.
"There are many other systemic effects of cortisol, such as increased blood sugar, elevated blood pressure and heart rate, altered metabolism and decreased immunity," she says.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office in Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 9. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
A person undergoes more changes outside of just the physical, the longer they are exposed to stress and trauma, Colgrove and Doyle say.
"Over time, it's as if our actual personality or values systems get replaced by trauma responses, which can make living a life and having relationships almost impossible," Doyle says.
That transformation happens similarly regardless of age, according to Colgrove.
"Many trauma survivors come through their experiences with negative beliefs about their worth or their efficacy," he says. They often believe the world is dangerous, unpredictable and not worth living in.
Long-term psychological disorders can also develop from this time.
But there is hope with the right care.
"Psychologically, as people begin to heal, I've seen people regain their sense of humor and ability to connect and trust others, both of which are signs that healing is actually starting to happen," Doyle says. "But it can be a long road. A long, long road."
NPR · by Jaclyn Diaz · April 13, 2022
14. The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training
A long term investment in building partner capabilities and capacity.
Two things that will always be superior to Russian and other authoritarian nations' militaries: superior training and an NCO corps.
Photos at the link below.
The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years of NATO Training
Soldiers, plus military brass and overseers in parliament, have been transformed from a rigid Soviet-style force into a modern army that thinks on the move
Apr. 13, 2022 11:01 am ET
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When Ukrainian National Guard Lt. Andriy Kulish ambushes Russian forces, he thanks the Canadian army.
The Canadians trained Lt. Kulish’s Rapid Response Brigade last summer in urban warfare, field tactics and battlefield medicine. The exercise in western Ukraine was one of the many in recent years with troops from Canada, the U.K., Romania and the California National Guard.
This was just one piece of a little-publicized effort by countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that transformed Ukraine’s military up and down the ranks, from foot soldiers to the defense ministry to overseers in parliament. It is one big reason why Ukraine’s nimble fighting force has surprised the world by fending off a much larger and better-equipped invading army, say Ukrainians and their Western advisers.
In confounding Russian invaders today, Lt. Kulish says his comrades-in-arms “are definitely using procedures they learned during the training with NATO.”
The Western assistance, while never secret, wasn’t trumpeted to avoid riling Russia. It also remained low-key because it was a valuable source of intelligence for the U.S. and its allies. Ukraine has been fighting a shooting war with Russian-backed separatists in parts of its east for years, meaning Kyiv fields some of Europe’s most battle-hardened soldiers. Their front-line experience made them sponges for NATO training—and offered NATO commanders a window into what it would be like to fight Russia, say Western officers involved in the programs.
A Canadian instructor observed Ukrainian servicemen during a military exercise at the Yavoriv training center in 2016.
PHOTO: MARKIIAN LYSEIKO/EPA
By the time Russia invaded on Feb. 24, training of Ukrainian forces had become so extensive that, although at least eight NATO countries participated, much of the hands-on training was being done by Ukrainian instructors. To NATO commanders, that was a sign Ukraine had internalized their teachings.
“The lesson learned is that support and help over many years had a significant impact,” says NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.
NATO’s work in Ukraine was also more successful than comparable Western efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Advisers credit this to Ukraine’s relatively cohesive society and a recognized central government supported by bureaucracies that, while often inefficient and plagued with corruption, still embodied a unified state. Perhaps most significant, Ukraine had a clear foreign enemy to fight following Russia’s 2014 seizure of the Crimean Peninsula and military support for a rebellion in the country’s east.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in launching his invasion of Ukraine, cited the country’s possible membership in NATO as a reason for attacking. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has since proposed renouncing that ambition. Whatever the outcome, say Ukrainians and Western advisers, Kyiv’s forces have learned to wage war along NATO’s rules, and are showing it with battlefield successes.
Ukraine’s skirmishing units are the spearhead of a completely rebuilt military establishment. NATO advisers brought with them concepts novel to Ukraine’s Soviet-style force including civilian control of the military, professional inspectors, external auditors and logistics specialists.
Abandoning the emphasis on numbers of soldiers and weapons, NATO advisers instilled the concept of capacity building, where commanders set goals and ensure they have troops and weapons needed to achieve them.
Ukrainian servicemen on a destroyed Russian tank outside Kyiv on March 31.
PHOTO: VADIM GHIRDA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ukrainian servicemen near Kyiv on March 30.
PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK
To advance the approach, NATO introduced the idea of noncommissioned officers: experienced soldiers promoted to ranks of authority who serve as vital links between top brass and ground troops. NATO countries also helped Ukrainian military leaders adopt an approach called mission command, where higher-ups set combat goals and devolve decision-making as far down the chain of command as possible, even to individual soldiers.
In the Soviet approach, still widely used by Russia, senior officers give orders that foot soldiers have little room to discuss or adapt.
“That made a big, big difference,” says former defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk. “NCO reform and mission command raise the effectiveness of your forces by many times.”
Lt. Kulish says the training is doubly effective because Ukrainians know Soviet military thinking.
“The Russians are using their typical tactics, which haven’t much changed since Stalin’s times,” he says. First comes artillery salvos. “Then they throw loads of meat to take our positions,” he says, referring to Russian soldiers. The Ukrainians, in contrast, are unpredictable and agile. “We bring chaos to their ranks,” he says.
The work to develop those skills began inauspiciously in 2008. Russia had invaded Georgia, prompting NATO to extend to it and Ukraine vague invitations for membership. The alliance drafted a 70-page action plan spelling out “Ukraine’s strategic course of Euro-Atlantic integration,” essentially a road map for Kyiv to meet NATO’s democratic standards, including a more professional, civilian-controlled military. Those efforts gained little traction due to weak support in the West and resistance within Ukraine’s still-Soviet-style military.
Russia’s routing of Ukrainian forces in 2014 jolted Kyiv. Then-President Petro Poroshenko ordered a military transformation, energizing the NATO effort. Western officers focused their attention on a 150-square-mile military training facility in the city of Yavoriv, 10 miles east of Ukraine’s border with Poland, which itself had transformed into a postcommunist leader within the alliance.
Ukrainian servicemen carried a coffin on March 15 for a man who died in the bombing of Yavoriv.
PHOTO: ALEXEY FURMAN/GETTY IMAGES
Mourners at the funeral for servicemen killed in the bombing of Yavoriv.
PHOTO: BERNAT ARMANGUE/AP
The first priority in 2014 was helping Ukrainian troops fight Russian proxies in the east. NATO launched courses in battlefield medicine, civil emergency planning and countering Russian hybrid warfare, from drones to phone-hacking. Western officers began drilling Ukrainian National Guard troops in modern combat tactics, prompting Ukrainian army officials to request similar training, recalls a senior U.S. defense official.
In Kyiv, government officials worked with NATO advisers to prepare deeper changes. Advisers from the U.S., U.K. and other NATO countries explained that to make Ukraine’s military more effective, its entire management had to change.
Advisers found problems at all levels, such as parallel military and civilian medical systems that required an act of parliament to be permitted to cooperate, recalls retired Col. Liam Collins, a former U.S. Army Special Forces officer.
U.S. officials repeated defense department mantras, like “It’s not the plan, it’s the planning.”
When Soviet-trained officers and bureaucrats resisted changes, advisers tried to work around them, says Kristopher Reeves, a Canadian army colonel who led his country’s branch of the training from 2017 to 2018.
“We focused on leaders who could use our energy and multiply it,” says Col. Reeves.
By the time he left, training sessions at Yavoriv had grown from companies of 150 soldiers to battle groups entailing more than 400 troops. Ukrainians began replacing Western soldiers in leading combat simulations.
“The second-best thing to being in combat is teaching it,” says Col. Reeves, of how militaries learn.
Annual exercises orchestrated at Yavoriv by the U.S. Army, dubbed Rapid Trident, let Ukrainian troops practice with forces from up to a dozen countries. Lt. Kulish, whose unit is now defending the city of Rubizhne, says skills including explosives handling and field tactics acquired at the exercises since 2016 helped his rapid reaction brigade fight in Donbas over recent years.
Ukrainian soldiers during training exercises in 2017 at Yavoriv.
PHOTO: PALAMAR/EPA-EFE/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Soldiers rotating out of combat in Donbas could also apply their experience in exercises and often shared lessons with their mentors. Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Timothy McGuire, who helped establish the Yavoriv center, in 2018 invited Ukrainian officers to observe big NATO exercises in Germany, where they watched a unit prepare a defensive position.
“I wouldn’t do it like that,” a Ukrainian general commented to Gen. McGuire, noting the troops weren’t properly camouflaged, well dispersed or sufficiently dug-in.
“It was great to see their awareness,” says Gen. McGuire. The conversation shifted to what the Ukrainians would do differently and later fed into an after-action review of the exercise.
Ukrainian troops using Western weapons to fight in the Donbas would also report back on their performance and how soldiers were integrating the arms into combat.
“It was definitely a two-way street,” says Col. Collins. “Without a doubt, we were learning from them at the same time they were learning from us.”
Ukrainian soldiers on a military vehicle in Severodonetsk on April 7.
PHOTO: FADEL SENNA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Away from battlegrounds, the advisers spent years pressing for the bureaucratic building blocks of a professional military, such as audit reports, professional development programs and personnel review processes—“slightly boring stuff,” says Col. Reeves. Over time, he says, selection of commanders became more meritocratic.
“Combat experience became more important than who has the biggest budget,” says Col. Reeves. “It’s not all unicorns and rainbows, but we could see how their promotion systems were being redesigned for the right reasons.”
The changes and civilian control brought layers of review that exposed corruption and waste, often sparking anger from officers and bureaucrats.
“It was kind of stressful because you were constantly creating problems,” recalls Mr. Zagorodnyuk, the former defense minister. Political will from Mr. Poroshenko and then President Zelensky kept efforts advancing.
Totalitarian states don’t have institutions empowered to challenge what the military says, Mr. Zagorodnyuk notes: “In Russia, nobody challenged the military.”
As threats from Russia increased last year, the pace of military training accelerated. British army Maj. Bill Ross, who was in charge of British land-based training in Ukraine from October until this February, raced to get Ukrainian troops comfortable using NLAW antitank missiles the U.K. was shipping over. A British infantry battalion that initially planned to instruct squads of 40 Ukrainians suddenly had groups of 80, with soldiers coming from across the country.
A Ukrainian serviceman trained with the NLAW antitank missile system at the Yavoriv military base in January.
PHOTO: MARKIIAN LYSEIKO/SHUTTERSTOCK
Ukrainian forces trained with the NLAW system in January.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“We literally delivered those every three or four days, another course, another course, another course,” says Maj. Ross. The hope, he says, was that even if only a few hundred soldiers got trained directly, they could cascade the training to other troops. In weekly coordination meetings in Kyiv, helmed by a U.S. colonel, the Ukrainians and Western allies focused their training.
Internal opposition continued throughout. When Maj. Ross arrived at the Zhytomyr Military Institute southwest of Kyiv in October, initially he was denied access because of “an individual in their organization who did not want interference from Western troops,” he says. Eventually he reached a person who cleared his entry.
Maj. Ross’s team answered to Ukraine’s Joint Force Command, which had mapped out a defensive plan to thwart a Russian invasion. When he last saw the Ukrainian military’s slides outlining strategies in February, red arrows pointed into the country from all sides except the West. But the Ukrainians had a defensive plan.
“It was their plan,” says Maj. Ross. “We assisted.”
Max Colchester and Oksana Grytsenko contributed to this article.
15. Russian Cruiser Damaged? Flag Ship of Black Sea Fleet
Russian Cruiser Damaged? Flag Ship of Black Sea Fleet
The flagship of the Black Sea fleet, the Slava class RTS Moskva (121) was badly damaged early on Thursday (Apr 14, Ukraine time). The Ukrainian military announced that two of its Neptune missiles hit the ship. Two hours later the Russians announced that ammunition on board the ship had exploded causing an evacuation of the ship. The ship has capsized to the port side and the crew of 510 has been evacuated. Initial reports indicated that the ship had sunk.
Editor’s Note: Many initial reports by news agencies and social media reported the Moskva had sunk. Now, it appears that all the facts are not quite in. SOF News was a bit guilty in jumping the gun in stating it was sunk in earlier versions of this article.
The Ukrainians said that the Neptune missiles were launched from the Black Sea shore between Odesa and Nikolaev. It has been reported that a Turkish-built TB2 drone was flown in the vicinity to distract the ships attention from the incoming missiles. The majority of the crew were reported to have been rescued; however, a number of the crew died or are missing. The Ukrainians claim the ship has sunk; the Russians say it is badly damaged and being towed to port.
Photo: RK-360MC Neptune Cruise Missile. Photo by Ukraine’s Naval Command, March 15, 2021.
The Neptune cruise missiles are a very recent addition to Ukraine’s inventory of weapons. The RK-360MC Neptune was put into use in the Ukraine navy’s artillery brigade on March 15, 2021, as part of the newly-created coastal defense missile battalion. The missile design is based on the Soviet-Russian Kh-35 cruise missile (AS-20 Kayak). It has a range of 300 kilometers, has a 330 lb warhead, and is a low-altitude missile.
Shelling and missile attacks from the Black Sea fleet has been striking targets along the Ukrainian shore as well as further inland. The Russian blockade of Ukrainian shipping continues. An amphibious landing force on several ships is still positioned in the Black Sea off the coast of Odessa with the capability to land a substantial element of Russian naval infantry. Any attempt to land forces on the Black Sea coast of Ukraine are now problematic – as the amphibious naval force is now more vulnerable to air attack.
The Russians continue to pose a threat to both Mykolayiv and Odessa. Located on the west bank of the Dnieper River close to the coast of the Black Sea, Mykolayiv is a strategic objective for the Russians that is on the road to Odessa located further west along the coast of the Black Sea.
Image: Ukraine Postage Stamp: “Snake Island”. The Ukraine postal service recently had an artist competition for new stamps. This stamp by artist Boris Groh was a winner. Snake Island was the location of a small Ukrainian Coast Guard station in the Black Sea that was told to surrender by the Russian navy. The Moskva (121) is depicted in the image.
The Moskva was the ship that was involved in the famous Snake Island incident. In the initial days of the invasion the Moskva radioed to the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island to surrender. The response from the Ukrainian coast guard was “Russian warship, go f*** yourself”. The Ukrainian defenders were ultimately captured and then released about one month later during a prisoner of war exchange.
A replacement ship would usually come from the fleet the Russians maintain in the Mediterranean Sea. However, the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits have been closed to warship traffic by Turkey in accordance with the Montreux Convention. Russia could force the issue and try to move one or more of its warships through the straits.
The Moskva is a 12,500-ton ship that is over 600 feet long. It carries numerous anti-ship missiles and air-defense missiles. The ship was commissioned into the Soviet navy in 1982. A prime function of the ship would be to protect amphibious ships landing naval infantry. It has 16 fixed launchers for P-1000 anti-ship missiles, vertical tubes for 64 S-300 air-defense missiles, and rail launchers for 40 Osa missiles for aerial self-defense. In addition, it carries guns, torpedoes, and has a landing pad for a helicopter.
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Photo: Moskva cruiser, Russian flagship of the Black Sea.
References:
Russian Cruiser Moskva – Wikipedia
16. ‘Caught Between a Hammer and an Anvil’ - Israel’s in a difficult position when it comes to the war in Ukraine
Conclusion:
Despite it all, Israel has declared its allegiance to the United States in the rising conflict with revisionist powers. “There is no question that this our moral identity,” one Israeli official told me. Washington’s expectation is that Israel and other allies will project power regionally and fight for American interests. But it is difficult for Israel to do that so long as Russia remains in Syria. It is even harder with Iran on the nuclear precipice. Israel can thank the Obama and Biden administrations for both circumstances.
‘Caught Between a Hammer and an Anvil’
Israel’s in a difficult position when it comes to the war in Ukraine
In between dodging assassination attempts, inspiring his people to fight back against invading Russian forces, and conversing with world leaders, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky took time out to address the Knesset on March 20. Zelensky, a Jew, likened the plight of his people to the Holocaust. He chided the Israelis for not doing enough to help his country. “One can ask for a long time why we can’t accept weapons from you or why Israel didn’t impose sanctions against Russia, why you are not putting pressure on Russian business,” Zelensky said.
Some of Israel’s staunchest supporters in America also questioned Israel’s policy as Russia devastated Ukraine. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) proclaimed he was “very disappointed” that Israel was not arming Ukraine. He later reversed his position, but others have not. Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) went so far as to say that the United States should effectively end its alliance with the Jewish state “unless Israel supplies arms to Ukraine in the fight against the Russian invasion.”
Prominent Israeli figures piled on as well. Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai stated that the Russian attacks on Ukraine “clearly demonstrate an ongoing atrocity. In the face of such injustice, we cannot simply choose not to listen. There are moments when one cannot stay quiet, and today, now, is exactly one of these moments.” Former prime minister Ehud Olmert slammed the government for failing to oppose Russia meaningfully.
It is true that Israel balked at sanctions targeting oligarchs and select elements of Russia’s financial sector. It also declined to send weapons to Ukraine. But it’s not as if Israel has done nothing. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett volunteered to mediate between Vladimir Putin and Zelensky—and he was the first world leader to sit with Putin face-to-face, in an effort to convince the Russian strongman to end his war of aggression. Israel also voted on March 2 at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Jewish state actually co-sponsored the resolution, firmly placing the country among other democracies and liberal societies, where it belongs. And this was no easy decision.
The Israeli Air Force (IAF) needs Russian cooperation to operate in the skies over Syria, which Putin’s Russia patrols with advanced anti-aircraft systems. For nearly a decade, Israel has operated in Syria to prevent Iran from installing Shiite militias and military hardware within firing range of Israel’s borders. More urgently, Israel has hunted the lethal weapons systems that the Islamic Republic of Iran is smuggling to Hezbollah, its most powerful terrorist proxy in Lebanon. Their goal is to lay waste to Israel in a forthcoming clash. Israel must therefore constantly interdict these weapons. In a cruel twist of fate, Putin holds the key to those sorties.
Israel’s critics have conveniently forgotten that America placed the Jewish state in a terrible security conundrum nearly a decade ago. President Barack Obama’s red-line debacle of 2013—the failure to remove Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad from power after he used chemical weapons against his own people—enabled Putin to control the Syrian skies. Washington has yet to offer Israel a way out. If anything, America’s attempted pivot out of the Middle East has complicated Israel’s situation. And a possible new iteration of the Iran nuclear deal would only make things worse.
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On September 30, 2015, Russia sent its first squadron of fighter jets to Syria to support the embattled Assad regime. The country was writhing in a civil war that had erupted during the 2011 Arab Spring. The war attracted Sunni extremists worldwide. Assad attempted to repel them with Shiite militias supplied by Iran. But he was still losing. With the regime nearing collapse, Obama warned Assad not to cross America’s “red line” of using chemical weapons.
Then Assad crossed it. In 2013, the Syrian strongman dropped sarin gas on East Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus, killing more than 1,400. Obama sought international support to attack Syria, but he found little. With wars still raging in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of America’s partners feared another intervention. The same could be said for American elites, as neo-isolationism crept steadily into the foreign-policy debates on both left and right. The compromise that emerged was a mechanism to remove chemical weapons from Syria, and it was celebrated by the Obama administration and other governments worldwide. But in 2017, Assad gassed his own people again, prompting an air strike by the Trump administration.
By that point, however, the war’s tide had turned. The Russian fighter jets that first arrived in 2015 served to stabilize Assad’s rule. Putin also dispatched forces to Syria in the largest combat mission undertaken since Russia’s ignominious departure from Afghanistan in 1989. The mission, launched in the name of counterterrorism and Middle Eastern stability, enabled Putin to demonstrate Russia’s resurgence as a world power, challenging the notion that the country was “a gas station with an army.”
To the chagrin of surrounding neighbors, Putin’s forces began to work closely with Iranian forces, such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as Hezbollah and other Shiite militias. More worrying to Israel, in particular, was the Russian deployment of the formidable S-400 air-defense system.
While Putin’s military battled Sunni insurgents, the Israelis geared up for a different battle. In response to mounting threats, then–prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the “War Between Wars” (WBW).
After watching for years as the Islamic Republic of Iran armed and trained terrorist proxies to launch an assault on the Jewish state, the Israelis determined that intervention was urgently needed. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Syria, where the regime was smuggling weapons to Hezbollah under the fog of war. But these were not just any weapons. They were precision-guided munitions (or PGMs). This advanced missile project could put nearly every strategic Israeli asset under a direct threat, including the nuclear facility in Dimona, a chemical plant in Haifa, and countless military bases. PGMs are fatally precise and could possibly evade Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome missile-defense system.
The WBW has escalated in recent years. In 2019, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot announced that Israel had bombed “thousands” of military targets in Syria. In 2020, his successor, Aviv Kochavi, claimed that the IAF had hammered another 500 Iranian military assets in Syria that year. The WBW continued apace in 2021.
Israeli leaders, in prosecuting the WBW, have had no choice but to call on the Kremlin. During these meetings, they don’t ask for Russian permission to operate in Syria. Rather, they inform their counterparts what is coming. It’s a professional and frank exchange, according to Israelis who have been in the room. But it’s not without tension. Israeli pilots who fly missions into Syria are candid about the S-400 threat. Risk has been mitigated through a process known as deconfliction, but it could unravel if a diplomatic spat were to erupt.
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During a recent visit to Israel, which coincided with the war’s first week, I saw only widespread excoriation of Putin’s invasion. Anti-war sentiment was particularly high among the estimated 900,000 Israeli Russians emigrés who harbor fresh memories of the suffering they endured under Soviet rule. Still, there was a wariness of Russian retribution.
Israel took some heat for failing to send Iron Dome batteries to Ukraine. This was a red herring. Israel doesn’t have any to spare, with the many threats it faces on its borders. Nor would there be enough time to train Ukrainian forces to use them. Interestingly, the United States has one Iron Dome battery, currently deployed in Guam, where it will see no action. Should the United States seek to send its battery to Ukraine (with an adjusted end-user agreement), it would come at little cost to America’s military posture in Asia.
For Israel, joining the March 2 UN resolution to condemn Russia was an easy call. It was a nonbinding General Assembly resolution that was not likely to invoke Putin’s ire—and it joined some three-quarters of the world in condemnation of Russia. But for some Israeli diplomats, the vote was unfinished business. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Israel was absent for the UN vote condemning it, owing to a general strike of Israeli Foreign Ministry employees. The March 2 vote helped Israel set the record straight. “We belong on that list of countries,” one Israeli politician told me. “Israel is a democracy. Israel should be standing with the West.”
And yet, Israel was still ambivalent about joining Western sanctions regimes targeting Russia’s oil, oligarchs, and financial lifelines. Some of this stems from surprising lacunae in Israeli law. The Israelis have the legal authority to sanction terrorist groups and governments with whom they are at war. But they lack the ability to impose financial penalties on nonbelligerent states without a UN resolution.
Legalities notwithstanding, a healthy fear of Russian retribution undeniably explains Israel’s ambivalence. On March 5, Putin declared that sanctions against his country were tantamount to an act of war. From that point on, the Israelis were “walking between the raindrops,” a Hebrew expression akin to “walking a tightrope.” Bennett’s national-security team convened a task force on the American and Western sanctions, first to learn what they entailed, but then how Israel might enforce them. The goal, as one official told me, was to safeguard Israeli interests while also ensuring that “Israel does not become a platform for illicit Russian financial activities.”
The Israelis with whom I spoke would not issue direct guidance on their process. If anything, their approach resembled structures established in recent years to monitor Chinese investment. In response to American pressure to prohibit Beijing from acquiring Israel’s top tech, the Israelis quietly and selectively blocked access to the most problematic actors. This no-drama approach was certainly preferable to a direct confrontation with a rising military and economic power. Israel appears to be doing the same with Russia.
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But even informal processes may be painful to enforce. As it happens, several Russian oligarchs have established outsize roles in Israel over the years. There may be more than 30 tycoons with Israeli citizenship or residency. Among them is Roman Abramovich, who until recently owned the Chelsea soccer club, and who has donated millions of dollars to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust-memorial museum. Another, Leonid Nevzlin, owns 25 percent of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, and his daughter is married to Yuli Edelstein, a prominent Likud politician. The tycoon Len Blavatnik owns Israel’s Channel 13. Others are campaign financiers and even business partners of Israeli politicians.
Untangling all of this will take time. Until then, Israel is trying to be proactive. Bennett took the initiative and began mediating, with America’s blessing. He flew to Moscow on March 5 to meet Putin—and he did so on the Jewish Sabbath, surprising many of his own countrymen, given that Bennett is an Orthodox Jew. Bennett cited the biblical exception of pikuakh nefesh, or preservation of life—which is what makes it possible for observant doctors to do work on Shabbat if necessary—as justification.
In addition, Israel sent its largest-ever humanitarian airlift to Ukraine. Three airplanes carried 100 tons of food, medicine, and other items. Israel established a field hospital near the Polish border. And it continues to arrange for Ukrainian and even Russian Jews to emigrate during a global refugee crisis. Israel’s deep sense of responsibility for these endangered Jews also accounts for some of its political caution.
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Still, by mid-March, frustration was building in Israel. U.S. officials would not acknowledge Israel’s Russia conundrum. “Between a hammer and an anvil” was the Hebrew term I heard repeatedly. It soon became even more of a Gordian knot.
For one thing, a looming nuclear deal between Iran and the United States had a distinctly Russian flavor. Russian negotiator Mikhail Ulyanov was the primary mediator between Iran’s negotiators and Rob Malley, President Biden’s envoy to the nuclear negotiations in Vienna. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin demanded a sanctions “white channel” to enable Russia and Iran to engage in commerce. The Biden White House refused, and negotiators returned home for con-
sultations. Days later, however, the White House agreed to allow Russia to engage in lucrative and sensitive nuclear work with Iran, including uranium swaps, work at the Fordow nuclear facility, and the provision of nuclear fuel to Iran’s reactors. While the white channel was technically jettisoned, it remained unlikely that the United States would sanction any Iranian company for commerce with Russia, for fear of jeopardizing its diplomatic agreement.
In other words, the Biden White House was pressuring Israel to isolate Russia just as Biden signaled a willingness to gift Putin a lucrative means to evade that pressure—while simultaneously enriching Israel’s existential enemy with roughly $131 billion in sanctions relief. As a result, Putin might be set to gain even more leverage over the Israelis. Israel could ill afford to provoke the Russians, the players closest to Iran and with the best access to Iranian nuclear facilities. Russia could one day be the only international actor standing between the Islamic Republic and a nuclear bomb.
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Despite it all, Israel has declared its allegiance to the United States in the rising conflict with revisionist powers. “There is no question that this our moral identity,” one Israeli official told me. Washington’s expectation is that Israel and other allies will project power regionally and fight for American interests. But it is difficult for Israel to do that so long as Russia remains in Syria. It is even harder with Iran on the nuclear precipice. Israel can thank the Obama and Biden administrations for both circumstances.
Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the United States Department of the Treasury, is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is the author of Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press, 2021). Follow him on Twitter @JSchanzer.
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17. China’s Embrace of the Taliban Complicates US Afghanistan Strategy
China’s Embrace of the Taliban Complicates US Afghanistan Strategy
China’s willingness to partner with the Taliban undermines American efforts to influence the extremist group’s behavior through pressure campaigns and sanctions.
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“China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said in September 2021, shortly after the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan. Late last month, China reciprocated this enthusiasm by hosting members of the Taliban in addition to the foreign ministers from Afghanistan’s neighbors to discuss the Taliban-led country’s economic development and security. Beijing’s courtship of the Taliban only adds to instability in the region, challenging the U.S. and its allies to find new ways to deal with the combined threat.
A week prior to the foreign ministers’ meeting, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, stopped by Kabul for discussions with acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi. Conversations reportedly focused on improving Afghanistan’s mining sector as well as Afghanistan’s role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Wang is the most senior Chinese official to visit since the Taliban seized control of the country. His arrival in Kabul came one day after the Taliban faced robust international criticism for reversing its earlier pledge to allow secondary schooling for girls.
China’s burgeoning relationship with the Taliban should come as no surprise, as improving ties has been a public goal of Beijing even prior to the U.S. withdrawal. In August 2021, after the fall of Kabul, China issued a statement saying it “respects the right of the Afghan people to independently determine their own destiny” and will develop “friendly and cooperative relations with Afghanistan.” Although China hasn’t yet formally recognized the Taliban, China’s rhetoric and continuing engagement suggest official recognition may not be far off.
Beijing is pursuing two main objectives through its outreach to the Taliban. The first is assurance from the Taliban that they will mitigate threats posed by extremist groups that operate close to China’s borders. In particular, Beijing wants the Taliban to stop the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which supports Uyghur separatism, from expanding and potentially carrying out attack targeting Chinese interests in the region.
Second, Beijing wants to protect the investments it has already made in Afghanistan and plans to make through programs like the BRI. Proposals by Chinese companies to extract and develop Afghanistan’s copper and oil deposits have been on hold for more than a decade due to political instability. With the United States gone, China hopes the Taliban can stabilize the country enough to resume these projects.
China’s willingness to partner with the Taliban undermines American efforts to influence the extremist group’s behavior through pressure campaigns and sanctions. Beijing has directly lobbied on Kabul’s behalf, demanding that Washington return Afghanistan’s frozen assets, a step that would only weaken U.S. leverage. At the aforementioned foreign ministers meeting, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s statement called for more aid for Afghanistan and made no mention of the Taliban’s human rights record.
Although Washington cannot stop China from working with the group, the United States and likeminded partners can take steps to mitigate China’s growing influence in Afghanistan.
Specifically, Washington should seek New Delhi’s guidance in leading multilateral diplomacy, and developing political alternatives for Afghanistan. Although Afghanistan’s institutions are weak and threatened by the Taliban, Washington should follow New Delhi’s lead and support civil society organizations, businesses, and media alternatives to the Taliban both within Afghanistan and in the diasporic community.
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To be sure, India has historically been reluctant to serve as the balancing power to China that Washington seeks in South Asia. Yet the Biden administration should understand India’s national interest in preventing regional dominance by Pakistan and China. A hostile Afghanistan supported by Pakistan and China would diminish India’s positive regional influence and further place New Delhi at the mercy of its rivals. China’s outreach to the Taliban also reaffirms the necessity for future conversations about mitigating Chinese influence in the broader Indo-Pacific as part of continuing dialogue among Australia, India, Japan, and America, also known as the Quad.
The Biden administration should also consider listing the Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In 2002, then-President George W. Bush listed the Taliban as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity (SDGT) to limit its access to the U.S. financial system, but the Taliban never appeared on the State Department’s FTO list. An FTO would be a stronger designation as it institutes a visa ban, requires U.S. banks to block the assets of the organization, and establishes criminal prohibitions on any U.S. person who provides the FTO with material support. Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, Republicans in Congress introduced a bill arguing that the Taliban fit the criteria of an FTO and therefore warrant inclusion on the FTO list.
Yet the Biden administration has so far refused to add the Taliban to the list, likely fearing that such a step would undermine talks between Washington and Kabul. Given the Taliban’s continued rejection of international calls for reform, however, the White House should reconsider the value of talks.
Recent meetings between representatives from Beijing and Kabul threaten to subvert American interests for peace and stability in Asia. China’s actions undermine U.S. leverage and further legitimize the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan.
Zane Zovak
Zane Zovak is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he focuses on the diplomatic and military actions of the People’s Republic of China. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
18. FDD | Iran Likely to Gain More Than $70 Billion From the Removal of Oil Sanctions
FDD | Iran Likely to Gain More Than $70 Billion From the Removal of Oil Sanctions
fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · April 13, 2022
Mohsen Khojastemehr, the CEO of the National Iranian Oil Company, said earlier this month that Iran’s oil production has returned to its pre-sanctions levels. While this claim may constitute an exaggeration, Iran’s stated progress reflects the Biden administration’s failure to enforce existing sanctions on the country over the past year — and the increasing likelihood that Iran will earn tens of billions of dollars more from oil exports under a new nuclear deal.
In May 2018, the Trump administration left the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In December 2018, Washington re-imposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s oil exports, although it granted temporary waivers to several countries, permitting six additional months of limited purchases. The sanctions then banned all Iranian oil exports as of May 2019.
According to a tanker tracker database compiled by United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), in June 2018 Tehran exported almost 2.6 million barrels of oil per day before President Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions. This fell to roughly 800,000 barrels per day by December 2018 and 385,000 barrels per day in May 2019.
The Islamic Republic, Khojastemehr noted, is now producing 3.8 million barrels per day (mbpd). That number contrasts with OPEC’s estimate of 2.54 mbpd in February. Iran’s oil minister, Javad Owji, claimed in early March that the country could reach its peak production capacity in two months.
To be sure, logistical and legal issues may be hindering a rapid increase in exports, thus casting doubt on the accuracy of the two officials’ claims. Regardless, Iran’s current export and reserve data show that Tehran has the capacity to grow its exports to 2 mbpd in a rather short time. Over the last three months, Tehran has exported 1.2 mbpd, according to UANI. Thus, it would need to sell an additional 800,000 barrels per day to reach its capacity.
In that regard, Bloomberg estimates that Iran has 85 million barrels of stored oil it can unload if there is a deal with the United States that lifts sanctions. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, after the implementation of the JCPOA in January 2016, Iran was able to export almost 2 mbpd that same year, up from 1.3 mbpd in 2015. These data points make a compelling case that in a 12-month period after a potential deal with Washington, Tehran can move quickly to export 2 mbpd of oil.
High oil prices will help Iran gain significant revenue. Barclays forecast the Brent crude price for 2022 at $100 per barrel. The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts the West Texas Intermediate price for crude at $116 for the second quarter, while Goldman Sachs forecast $115 per barrel for 2022. It is therefore safe to project that Tehran will earn $100 per barrel in the first 12 months after Washington lifts sanctions.
Combining this price with a forecast of 2 mbpd of exports yields the conclusion that Tehran will gain $73 billion in revenue after the implementation of a prospective deal with Washington. These gains would supplement other key U.S. concessions in nuclear talks, including making accessible up to $130.5 billion of Iran’s gross foreign assets, reducing Iran’s import costs by $12 billion per year, enabling Tehran to access its revenue immediately, and permitting the regime to move the proceeds across international financial networks.
Saeed Ghasseminejad is a senior advisor on Iran and financial economics at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Saeed, the Iran Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Saeed on Twitter @SGhasseminejad. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD and @FDD_Iran and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, non-partisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
fdd.org · by Saeed Ghasseminejad Senior Iran and Financial Economics Advisor · April 13, 2022
19. Vladimir Putin loses 40TH high-ranking officer in latest blow to Russian forces
A lot of promotion potential in the Russian army with these "vacancies."
Vladimir Putin loses 40TH high-ranking officer in latest blow to Russian forces
Mirror · by Will Stewart · April 14, 2022
Russia has reportedly lost its 40th high-ranking officer amidst its ongoing bloody invasion of Ukraine.
Across the invasion, Russia has suffered heavy casualties with over 12,000 troops dead and at least five top generals also believed to have been killed.
But now, as the war reaches its 50th day, Vladimir Putin ’s forces have repeatedly lost its 40th high-ranking officer.
This comes as a Russian Black Sea flagship has been sunk after being struck in a missile attack, according to a Ukrainian official.
Unconfirmed reports say 300 Russian sailors who were aboard have died.
Lieutenant Colonel Denis Mezhuev, commander of the 1st Guards Motor Rifle Sevastopol Red Banner regiment, died in battle according to reports in both Russia and Ukraine.
Details about his death were not given and it becomes the latest in a long line to not be confirmed by the Russian government.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin (
Image:
SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
Patriotic Russian poet Andrey Kovalev called for Mezhuev to be awarded Russia’s top honour posthumously.
He posted: "For his deed he is worthy of the title of Hero of Russia.”
Another account of his death on VK social media, a Russian social media site, said: “His son can be proud of his dad.”
Ukraine now claims that Russia has lost a total of seven generals and 33 colonels so far in this war.
The huge scale of the deaths suffered by Russia continues to defy Kremlin claims that their “special military operation” is going to plan.
Since the war began on February 24, the total number of Russian deaths are believed to be in the region of 20,000 but Moscow stopped releasing the official death count early on.
Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky, Russia's first general to die during its invasion of Ukraine (
Image:
Sergei Malgavko/TASS)
Mezhuev is the latest in a line of high-ranking officials to die.
The first was Major General Andrei Sukhovetsky who died only four days into the invasion, on February 28.
He was only four positions below the head of the entire armed forces and was reportedly killed by a sniper.
"It is with great pain that we have received the tragic news about the death of our friend Major General Andrei Sukhovitsky during a special operation in Ukraine," a statement from a Kremlin insider said.
"We send our hearts out to his family. My deepest condolences."
Since his death, a number of other top ranking generals have died.
One of the most recent high-ranking deaths was Lieutenant General Andrey Mordvichev, one of Putin's most trusted leaders.
Some of the dead Russian commanders were said to have come to the frontline, something they would normally do if there were issues over decision-making, or their seniority was needed to push their troops forward.
Mordvichev was one of Putin’s most senior commanders and his death marked the fifth Moscow general reportedly killed so far.
“As a result of fire on the enemy by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the commander of the 8th All-Military Army of the Southern Military District of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Lieutenant General Andrey Mordvishev was killed,” said a statement from the army general staff in Kyiv
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Mirror · by Will Stewart · April 14, 2022
20. US mulls using forces stationed in Eastern Europe to train Ukrainian troops
US mulls using forces stationed in Eastern Europe to train Ukrainian troops
The Pentagon is considering ways it can train more Ukrainian forces to use Switchblade drones and other weapons given to the country, including using American troops based on NATO’s eastern flank, a senior U.S. defense official said Wednesday.
Defense officials are looking at “a range of options” for training Ukrainian troops on systems provided to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, the official told reporters.
“We are looking at options for additional Switchblade training and where and when that might occur and how we would do that,” they said. “Certainly, one option that would be available to us would be to utilize troops that are closer to Ukraine, obviously troops that are on NATO’s eastern flank, and that that still remains an open option to us.”
The Pentagon has deployed thousands of American troops to bolster the easternmost areas of NATO since Russia’s war on Ukraine, now on its 49th day.
The official said those soldiers — including those based in Poland and Romania — could remotely train a small number of Ukrainian troops who would then be sent back into Ukraine and train their colleagues.
They added that no decisions had yet been made.
The Ukrainian troops, who were already in the United States, returned to their country earlier this month.
The Biden administration later on Wednesday announced a new $800 million weapons package for Ukraine to include several “artillery systems, artillery rounds, and armored personnel carriers” not given to the country until now.
The Pentagon anticipates that some of the items will require additional training for Ukrainian forces, but is still working through how many U.S. troops would need to be involved in it, where such training would be located and how long it would take, according to press secretary John Kirby.
“We’re still working our way through that but we believe that we can put together appropriate training for some of these systems very, very quickly,” Kirby told reporters.
Updated at 4 p.m.
21. Russia has yet to slow a Western arms express into Ukraine
When will Putin try to interdict resupply to Ukraine? Where would he strike? Inside Ukraine only or across the borders? What will we do then?
Russia has yet to slow a Western arms express into Ukraine
AP · by ROBERT BURNS · April 13, 2022
The U.S. numbers alone are mounting: more than 12,000 weapons designed to defeat armored vehicles, some 1,400 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft and more than 50 million rounds of ammunition, among many other things. Dozens of other nations are adding to the totals.
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The Biden administration is preparing yet another, more diverse, package of military support possibly totaling $750 million to be announced in the coming days, a senior U.S. defense official said Tuesday. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet publicly announced. The additional aid is a sign that the administration intends to continue expanding its support for Ukraine’s war effort.
These armaments have helped an under-gunned Ukrainian military defy predictions that it would be quickly overrun by Russia. They explain in part why Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army gave up, at least for now, its attempt to capture Kyiv, the capital, and has narrowed its focus to battling for eastern and southern Ukraine.
U.S. officials and analysts offer numerous explanations for why the Russians have had so little success interdicting Western arms moving overland from neighboring countries, including Poland. Among the likely reasons: Russia’s failure to win full control of Ukraine’s skies has limited its use of air power. Also, the Russians have struggled to deliver weapons and supplies to their own troops in Ukraine.
Some say Moscow’s problem begins at home.
“The short answer to the question is that they are an epically incompetent army badly led from the very top,” said James Stavridis, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who was the top NATO commander in Europe from 2009 to 2013.
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The Russians also face practical obstacles. Robert G. Bell, a longtime NATO official and now a professor at the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech University, said the shipments lend themselves to being hidden or disguised in ways that can make them elusive to the Russians — “short of having a network of espionage on the scene” to pinpoint the convoys’ movements.
“It’s not as easy to stop this assistance flow as it might seem,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. “Things like ammunition and shoulder-fired missiles can be transported in trucks that look just like any other commercial truck. And the trucks carrying the munitions the Russians want to interdict are just a small part of a much larger flow of goods and commerce moving around in Poland and Ukraine and across the border.
“So the Russians have to find the needle in this very big haystack to destroy the weapons and ammo they’re after and not waste scarce munitions on trucks full of printer paper or baby diapers or who knows what.”
Even with this Western assistance it’s uncertain whether Ukraine will ultimately prevail against a bigger Russian force. The Biden administration has drawn the line at committing U.S. troops to the fight. It has opted instead to orchestrate international condemnation and economic sanctions, provide intelligence information, bolster NATO’s eastern flank to deter a wider war with Russia and donate weapons.
In mid-March, a Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said arms shipments would be targeted.
“We warned the United States that pumping weapons into Ukraine from a number of countries as it has orchestrated isn’t just a dangerous move but an action that turns the respective convoys into legitimate targets,” he said in televised remarks.
But thus far the Russians appear not to have put a high priority on arms interdiction, perhaps because their air force is leery of flying into Ukraine’s air defenses to search out and attack supply convoys on the move. They have struck fixed sites like arms depots and fuel storage locations, but to limited effect.
On Monday, the Russians said they destroyed four S-300 surface-to-air missile launchers that had been given to Ukraine by an unspecified European country. Slovakia, a NATO member that shares a border with Ukraine, donated just such a system last week but denied it had been destroyed. On Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said long-range missiles were used to hit two Ukrainian ammo depots.
As the fighting intensifies in the Donbas and perhaps along the coastal corridor to the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula, Putin may feel compelled to strike harder at the arms pipeline, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called vital to his nation’s survival.
In the meantime, a staggering volume and range of war materiel is arriving almost daily.
“The scope and speed of our support to meeting Ukraine’s defense needs are unprecedented in modern times,” said John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. He said the approximately $2.5 billion in weapons and other material that has been offered to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration is equivalent to more than half of Ukraine’s normal defense budget.
One example: The Pentagon says it has provided more than 5,000 Javelin missiles, which are among the world’s most effective weapons against tanks and other armored vehicles — and can even take down a low-flying helicopter. The missile, shaped like a clunky dumb bell and weighing 50 pounds (23 kilograms), is fired by an individual soldier; from its launch tube it flies up at a steep angle and descends directly onto its target in what its known as a curveball shot — hitting the top of a tank where its armor is weakest.
The specific routes used to move the U.S. and other Western materials into Ukraine are secret for security reasons, but the basic process is not. Just this week, two U.S. military cargo planes arrived in Eastern Europe with items ranging from machine guns and small arms ammunition to body armor and grenades, the Pentagon said.
A similar load is due later this week to complete delivery of $800 million in assistance approved by President Joe Biden just one month ago. The weapons and equipment are offloaded, moved onto trucks and driven into Ukraine by Ukrainian soldiers for delivery.
Kirby said the material sometimes reaches troops in the field within 48 hours of entering Ukraine.
AP · by ROBERT BURNS · April 13, 2022
22. What Comes Next in Ukraine: Three Scenarios
An important article fromFrank Hoffman.
Excerpts:
Scenario 1: Ukraine on the Offensive
Scenario 2: A Renewed Russian Offensive
Scenario 3: A War of Attrition
...
All told, we should expect Putin to consolidate his hold on the Donbas region and most of his gains. It is likely that Putin will claim the crescent of terrain now held, from Kharkiv to Kershon, as his spoils regardless of whether he elects to retake the offensive or not. How much of that he intends to keep permanently and how much would become chips at the bargaining table will depend on the negotiations and the results of the battlefield. Yet, after their operational success, coupled with the depravity of Bucha, it will be politically difficult for the Ukrainian people to accept the loss of territory and diminished political independence that Putin will demand. A cessation of hostilities in some form, de facto or agreed, is arguably the best of many bad options including a wider war.
Putin will claim a victory after any deal, despite the manifestly clear evidence that he has lost the war in a strategic sense. For a leader seeking to reassert a global leadership role and a prestigious or respected position in the world, he has badly blundered. He cannot obtain his original objectives and certainly not at a cost that a reasonable leader would consider proportionate. His political position is much weaker today than it was before the invasion, and he has cost his nation grievously in terms of its losses and diminished future economic prospects.
However, he will remain in the Kremlin, even if as an international pariah. Peace negotiations may at some point produce some form of ceasefire or armistice to stop the ongoing and massive human costs. Any agreement or pause will be abused by Putin, who needs time to recover and retrain his depleted legions. Negotiation will also be odious and present difficult decisions for Ukraine. Yet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should not be forced into a poisoned peace, a phony deal that merely extends the conflict and the numerous costs it poses both for Ukraine and the West. Whichever of the scenarios takes shape in the weeks to come, Kyiv should not lose at the table what its forces have gained on the battlefield.
What Comes Next in Ukraine: Three Scenarios - Modern War Institute
With their defeat in the Battle of Kyiv, Russian forces have started to concentrate in the east and south of Ukraine to build upon their greater advances there. Too many commentators have overlooked the battles in the south where Moscow’s troops were more successful in taking territory. The defense of Kyiv got all the media attention, as did Bucha, despite the wanton destruction of Mariupol. While it lost its battles in the north, the Russians have taken a swath of territory in the south and east that is roughly three times larger than the prewar area in the Donbas that the separatists held. Ukraine’s tenacious defenders have performed exceptionally well so far in the war, but continued success, especially in the south and east, cannot be assumed given the nature of the terrain there and current force levels. The next phase could generate larger and more decisive battles, depending upon the interaction of the contending strategies.
Success in war is often a clash of institutional adaptations, according to scholars including Williamson Murray and Theo Farrell. The Ukrainian way of war will have to evolve from the initial successes of the war’s opening six weeks. Having observed poor Russian performance up close, Ukrainian forces must avoid the same tactical mistakes their adversaries have made. On the other side, Russia is already demonstrating some adaptation, including designating a general officer, one with significant experience in Syria, as campaign commander. Russian military leaders certainly will not underestimate the motivation or lethality of the resistance. Attritional warfare, however, may still favor the Russians and their heavy artillery and ballistic missiles. Ultimately, I foresee three alternative scenarios that could emerge in the next few weeks.
Scenario 1: Ukraine on the Offensive
In the first scenario, Ukrainian forces go on the offensive in an effort to counter any attempts to surround their brigades holding the line in the Donbas. As part of this campaign, the Ukrainians would attempt to clear Kharkiv and Kershon. As Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov noted, this requires more—and different—weapons than those Ukraine has received from international supporters so far. “To win such a war, we need different help than what we have been receiving before,” he said. “We want to liberate the enemy-occupied territories as soon as possible. To do this, we need other weapons.” Yet Ukraine does not have troops familiar with some of these, especially those that are not legacy Soviet systems. The new weapons that would be most effective are not as easy to operate or maintain as most of the handheld munitions the West provided earlier.
What would the outcome be if Ukraine goes on the offensive? This type of fighting could generate massive levels of casualties for the Ukrainians and it is likely that they would ultimately fail while expending much of their manpower and munitions stocks.
Scenario 2: A Renewed Russian Offensive
In the second alternative, Russian forces go on the offense. If the Russians could mount assaults from both the north and south and seize the key city of Dnipro, it could isolate significant Ukrainian combat power in one fell swoop. But this assumes a degree of skill at combined arms maneuver that Russian units have largely failed to demonstrate since invading. While some feel that the rolling plains in the east play to Russian advantages in large mechanized operations, the success that the Ukrainians had against armor, from the air and on the ground, could be replicated in the Donbas—although the engagement ranges will be greater. Moreover, if Dnipro becomes key terrain, it will become significant that Russia’s approach to urban warfare ignores the basic rules and overlooks the effectiveness of decentralized operations when fighting in cities.
In this scenario, the Russians may also try to expand their position and close off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea entirely. Odesa is less likely to be taken than other coastal cities, however, given its size. The loss of its port and access to the Black Sea would be a severe reverse for Ukraine’s long-term economic prospects. The Ukrainian defense will have to weight its effort against that thrust.
The Russians would probably fail again in this scenario. They may have improved some elements of their readiness posture, but I doubt that they learned enough from their poor performance so far, and many of their deficiencies (logistics and small-unit leadership) cannot be corrected in the near term. This approach could doom the Russian military if they continue their failures in operational art, pursuing too many objectives with too few troops to cover the tasks assigned. Russia is likely to lose under this scenario, almost as badly as it has so far in the north.
Scenario 3: A War of Attrition
Another option would be for both sides to avoid taking to the offensive with massed assaults, instead preserving the current contact lines and conducting a war of attrition. Because of its material advantages, Russia might have the upper hand here but will still suffer from poor theater command, degraded operational leadership, and manpower constraints. In this scenario, we would expect to see Ukraine make a strong effort to impose costs via unconventional warfare, leveraging the training and concepts developed by American practitioners.
The most likely result is a stalemate, and the West is the biggest loser if that scenario plays out as it continues to cover the costs for Ukraine’s military operations, absorb the flow of refugees and meet their humanitarian needs, and see the economic impacts (including a possible recession in Europe) of its efforts to maintain pressure on the Russian government and elites. The more protracted this war becomes, as Sir Lawrence Freedman wisely counsels, the greater the possibility that Russian President Vladimir Putin escalates in an insidious manner or that some miscalculation results in NATO becoming a direct belligerent. However, given Putin’s history, another frozen conflict could be the long-term result.
What it Means for the War’s Termination
All told, we should expect Putin to consolidate his hold on the Donbas region and most of his gains. It is likely that Putin will claim the crescent of terrain now held, from Kharkiv to Kershon, as his spoils regardless of whether he elects to retake the offensive or not. How much of that he intends to keep permanently and how much would become chips at the bargaining table will depend on the negotiations and the results of the battlefield. Yet, after their operational success, coupled with the depravity of Bucha, it will be politically difficult for the Ukrainian people to accept the loss of territory and diminished political independence that Putin will demand. A cessation of hostilities in some form, de facto or agreed, is arguably the best of many bad options including a wider war.
Putin will claim a victory after any deal, despite the manifestly clear evidence that he has lost the war in a strategic sense. For a leader seeking to reassert a global leadership role and a prestigious or respected position in the world, he has badly blundered. He cannot obtain his original objectives and certainly not at a cost that a reasonable leader would consider proportionate. His political position is much weaker today than it was before the invasion, and he has cost his nation grievously in terms of its losses and diminished future economic prospects.
However, he will remain in the Kremlin, even if as an international pariah. Peace negotiations may at some point produce some form of ceasefire or armistice to stop the ongoing and massive human costs. Any agreement or pause will be abused by Putin, who needs time to recover and retrain his depleted legions. Negotiation will also be odious and present difficult decisions for Ukraine. Yet, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should not be forced into a poisoned peace, a phony deal that merely extends the conflict and the numerous costs it poses both for Ukraine and the West. Whichever of the scenarios takes shape in the weeks to come, Kyiv should not lose at the table what its forces have gained on the battlefield.
Dr. Frank Hoffman is a retired Marine infantry officer with over forty years in the Department of Defense as an analyst and strategist. A distinguished military graduate of the University of Pennsylvania in 1978, he earned his PhD in war studies from King’s College London.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
23. The U.S. is considering sending a high-level official to Kyiv.
Good. We cannot get one there fast enough. We should be rotating senior officials from DOS, DOD, and DNI/CIA. And we should have our Ambassador permanently there as well. The embassy should be reopened.
The U.S. is considering sending a high-level official to Kyiv.
April 13, 2022, 8:32 p.m. ET
President Biden met with President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw last month, but it is unlikely he would go to Ukraine.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
The United States is considering whether to send a high-level official to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, in the days ahead as a sign of support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both made high-profile visits over the past month to countries neighboring Ukraine as the war raged. And other top American officials have made similar visits, some coming close to the border. But no American official has publicly visited Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion in late February.
It is highly unlikely that Mr. Biden or Ms. Harris would go to Kyiv, according to the person familiar with the deliberations. The security requirements for the president or vice president in a war zone are enormous and would require a huge number of American personnel and equipment to make the trip.
But it is possible that another official — perhaps a cabinet secretary or senior member of the military — could make the trip safely with a smaller security entourage.
Top officials — including some world leaders — from other nations have made official visits to the Ukrainian capital since the war began. Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Britain, made a surprise visit to Kyiv on Saturday. The presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia visited Kyiv on Wednesday.
A possible visit by a senior U.S. official, which was earlier reported by Politico, would be intended as another show of solidarity with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. But it would also be a high-risk mission, putting Americans in harm’s way and potentially risking a direct confrontation with Russian forces that Mr. Biden has repeatedly vowed to avoid.
No decision has been made, and the administration is unlikely to announce a visit in advance, given concerns about security. Previous visits by senior American officials to other war zones, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, were typically not announced until after the official had arrived in the country — and sometimes not even until after the official had left.
24. What images of Russian trucks say about its military's struggles in Ukraine
The most "unsexy," mundane, and boring statement about military operations.
But arguably more important than any of these is something on which they all rely: the humble truck. Armies need trucks to transport their soldiers to the front lines, to supply those tanks with shells and to deliver those missiles. In short, any army that neglects its trucks does so at its peril.
Yet it is important and almost profound. Russia will be saying, "For want of a truck...."
Every logistican will have this article posted in his or her office and in the tactical and joint operations centers to remind the other staff how important their work (and their truck) is. This article will be added to every syllabus in PME institutions in tier logistics courses.
What images of Russian trucks say about its military's struggles in Ukraine
Updated 0406 GMT (1206 HKT) April 14, 2022
CNN · by Brad Lendon, CNN
(CNN)Think about modern warfare and it's likely images of soldiers, tanks and missiles will spring to mind. But arguably more important than any of these is something on which they all rely: the humble truck. Armies need trucks to transport their soldiers to the front lines, to supply those tanks with shells and to deliver those missiles. In short, any army that neglects its trucks does so at its peril.
Yet that appears to be exactly the problem Russia's military is facing during its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to experts analyzing battlefield images as its forces withdraw from areas near Kyiv to focus on the Donbas.
Photographs of damaged Russian trucks, they say, show tell-tale signs of Moscow's logistical struggles and suggest its efforts are being undermined by its reliance on conscripts, widespread corruption and use of civilian vehicles -- not to mention the huge distances involved in resupplying its forces, or Ukraine's own highly-motivated, tactically-adept resistance.
"Everything that an army needs to do its thing comes from a truck," says Trent Telenko, a former quality control auditor for the United States' Defense Contract Management Agency, who is among those parsing the images for clues as to how the war is going.
"The weapon isn't the tank, it's the shell the tank fires. That shell travels by a truck," Telenko points out. Food, fuel, medical supplies and even the soldiers themselves -- the presence of all of these rest on logistical supply lines heavily reliant on trucks, he says. And he has reason to believe there's a problem with those supply lines.
A Russian military truck with the letter 'Z', a symbol of its invasion of Ukraine, in the town of Armyansk, Crimea, on February 24.
Canary in the coal mine
Telenko describes one recent photo of tire damage on a multimillion-dollar mobile missile truck, a Pantsir S1, as the canary in the coal mine for Russia's logistical efforts.
As such an expensive piece of equipment, he would have expected its maintenance to be first-rate. Yet its tires were crumbling just a few weeks into the war -- what Telenko refers to as "a failure mode."
If trucks are not moved frequently the rubber in their tires becomes brittle and the tire walls vulnerable to cracks and tears. Telenko says the problem is common when tires are run with low inflation to cope with the sort of muddy conditions that Russian forces are facing in the Ukrainian spring.
For Telenko, who for more than a decade specialized in maintenance problems in the US military's truck fleet, the condition of the Pantsir S1 is a revealing mistake.
"If you're not doing (preventive maintenance) for something so important, then it's very clear the entire truck fleet was treated similarly," he says.
Ukrainian soldiers in front of damaged Russian military trucks in the town of Trostsyanets, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Kyiv on March 28.
Telenko's theory has echoes of US World War II Gen. Omar Bradley's famous quote that "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." And he is not the first to have detected a lack of professionalism in Russia's military, which includes hundreds of thousands of conscripts.
In one notorious incident early in the war, a 40-mile (64-kilometer) convoy of Russian tanks, armored vehicles, and towed artillery became stalled 19 miles (30 km) outside Kyiv, bogged down according to Britain's Ministry of Defense not only by Ukrainian resistance but "mechanical breakdowns" too.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN's Don Lemon that Russia had made "missteps" and "struggled with logistics," while on Saturday a senior US defense official said the Russians had still not solved "their logistics and sustainment problems" and would be unable to reinforce their forces in eastern Ukraine "with any great speed."
A satellite image of the stalled 40-mile-long convoy of Russian tanks, armored vehicles, and towed artillery in southern Invankiv.
Another 'bad sign'
Phillips O'Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, sees another "bad sign" for Russian truck logistics: its use of civilian trucks to replace military ones lost in battle.
"Civilian trucks are not made to military grade. They're not made to carry the loads, they're not made to carry the specific pieces of equipment," and in many cases cannot even operate off roads, O'Brien says.
The rigors of war are already trying enough for the sturdiest military grade truck, let alone a civilian one.
"A single mile in peacetime, if you drive it in wartime is like 10 or 20 miles (16 to 32 km) because you are pushing the truck hard with huge payloads," O'Brien says.
Switching between the two introduces a maintenance problem, as spare parts may not be compatible. And, as O'Brien points out, "You don't want to have to get a new truck every time an old one breaks down."
Compounding the problem, according to Alex Vershinin, a former US Army officer who served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, is that when vehicles do break down Russia has limited resources to recover them.
An ambulance truck marked with a "Z" is seen destroyed at the central train station that was used as a Russian base in Trostyanets, Ukraine, on March 30.
The Russian army's battalion tactical groups -- those at the spearhead of its advances into Ukraine -- normally have only one light and one heavy recovery vehicle, even in units featuring dozens of vehicles, Vershinin wrote last month for the US Military Academy's Modern War Institute. This means combat vehicles sometimes need to be diverted to towing duties and sometimes broken down "vehicles need to be towed up to a hundred miles," wrote Vershinin.
O'Brien suggests Russia has neglected its trucks largely because they are not glitzy enough for a military keen to show off its cutting edge weapons systems.
In recent years, Putin has boasted about Russia's hypersonic missiles like the Zircon and Kinzhal, stealth fighter jets like the Su-57, and its modern fleet of 11 ballistic missile submarines.
"Often glamorous dictator militaries are good at the showy weapons, they buy the fancy aircraft and the fancy tanks, but they don't actually buy the less glamorous stuff," O'Brien says.
A truck that was being used by the Russian military lies destroyed in Trostyanets, Ukraine, on March 29.
Conscription and corruption
At the root of Russia's logistical problems, experts say, are two things that plague its military: conscription and corruption.
About 25% of the Russian military's million troops are conscripts, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies -- though many experts believe that figure may be misleading, suspecting some of the non-conscript troops are either coerced or tricked into enlisting.
Russia's conscripts tend to serve one-year stints, occupy the lower ranks, and fill many of the positions in the logistics chain, including vehicle maintenance.
"You can't really learn anything in a year about maintaining military systems," Telenko says.
Conscripts also have little motivation as they know their time in the job is so limited, he says.
A senior US defense official said Wednesday said Washington is seeing morale problems among Russia's conscripts, who make up "almost half" of its forces in Ukraine.
"We have evidence, even recent evidence, that they have been disillusioned by this war, weren't properly informed, weren't properly trained, weren't ready, not just physically but weren't ready mentally for what they were about to do," the US official said.
By contrast, in the US military vehicle maintenance is handled by a volunteer non-commissioned officer corps, professional sergeants and corporals who stay for extended enlistments and are motivated by pay rises and promotions.
"You want to have as good people maintaining logistics as you do for every other branch," says O'Brien, at the University of St Andrews. He adds, in reference to Russia's apparent struggles, "Were they in a shape for a logistics war or did they not just take it seriously?"
Then there is the corruption that experts say has dogged the Russian military for years.
Matthew Stephenson, a Harvard Law School professor and editor in chief of the Global Anti-corruption Blog, wrote in March that corruption had a particularly corrosive effect on the Russian military's maintenance and supply logistics.
"All of these problems that anti-corruption experts and national security specialists had been emphasizing for years do seem to be manifesting in the current Russian invasion," he wrote.
"Corruption -- in the form of embezzlement or bribery -- can also lead to the purchase of substandard equipment, for example by giving the contract for equipment or maintenance to a less qualified supplier that is more willing to pay kickbacks. Or the person in charge of allocating the maintenance or procurement budget can simply report spending the full budgeted amount on high quality products or services, but then purchase low quality substitutes and pocket the difference.
Telenko's view is that some of the effects are now being seen on the battlefield. He says money that should have been used for maintenance is "likely lining the pockets of officers in charge of the conscripts who would be servicing the trucks."
The aftermath of an explosion that destroyed a Russian truck in the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 4.
A truck too far?
There are other, subtler, signs of Russian struggles that might easily be missed by anyone who isn't logistically minded, experts say.
For instance, says Alex Lord, Europe and Eurasia analyst at the Sibylline strategic analysis firm in London, Russia's military has historically relied on its large manpower reserves to handle logistics, rather than mechanized systems using wooden pallets and forklifts.
Telenko gives the example of loading artillery shells onto a truck. A forklift can lift a pallet of two dozen shells in a single go, while manually lifting individual shells onto a truck would consume far more time and manpower.
This makes Russian logistics around 30% less efficient than leading Western militaries, says Jason Crump, CEO of Sibylline and a veteran of 20 years in the British military.
"This means that it takes more trucks to do a given task in the same time, so greater fuel use and wear and tear," Crump says.
It also means Russian trucks spend more time standing still while loading and unloading, according to Lord.
"This provides opportunities for Ukrainian forces to target them -- as we have seen Ukrainian commanders exploit numerous times during the current campaign," he says.
All these problems only exacerbate the problems facing Moscow in what is already an uphill struggle for its forces given the distances involved.
Trucks can usually operate up to 90 miles (145 kilometers) from their supply depot, Telenko points out.
But Ukraine is about the size of Texas, almost 800 miles (1,287 kilometers) wide and 350 miles (563 kilometers) long.
That means Russia would need to open numerous supply depots inside Ukraine for its troops to advance farther into Ukraine's interior.
With Moscow already pulling back under fierce Ukrainian resistance that seems like a tall order. Russia is already thought to have lost a substantial number of trucks.
Building more to replace them could take at least six months, Telenko estimates, by which time more losses would be likely.
"I don't see how the Russians can maintain their current positions, let alone make any offensive moves with their current truck fleet," he says.
"Trucks are the backbone of any modern mechanized military force, and if you don't have them you walk."
And if you walk, you don't win.
CNN's Michael Conte contributed to this report.
CNN · by Brad Lendon, CNN
25. The Mercenaries Behind the Bucha Massacre
"Professional" soldier? Sure that was not Sean's subtitle - I know the head line editor probably meant "professional "as in corporate professional and those working for profit and not the way we talk about soldering as a professional and calling.
Excerpts:
The Wagner Group is part of a wider and worrying trend in international relations. The number of mercenary operations seems to be increasing and it’s because hired guns allow clients to wage war brutally with minimal political costs. Every time mercenaries get away with something—from assassinating the president of Haiti to springing billionaires from jail—it serves as an advertisement to future clients. Should this trend continue, we should expect more massacres and torture. The sort of violence perpetrated in Bucha may become a common facet of modern war.
The Mercenaries Behind the Bucha Massacre
Professional soldiers like the Wagner Group let clients wage war brutally at minimal political cost.
A mural in Belgrade, Serbia praises the Russian Wagner group and its mercenaries fighting in Ukraine, March 30.
Photo: Pierre Crom/Getty Images
Germany’s foreign-intelligence service recently intercepted secret messages confirming Russian mercenaries known as the Wagner Group played a leading role in the massacre in Bucha, Ukraine. For those who track the Wagner Group, this was expected. In recent years, it has become Vladimir Putin’s weapon of choice because it offers plausible deniability. Hiring mercenaries is a foolproof way to confound international laws prohibiting savagery in war. The Wagner Group has left a trail of atrocities everywhere it’s gone: Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic, Mali and now Ukraine. And other nations are following Moscow’s example.
It’s impossible to know for certain whether the Wagner Group’s brutality is the work of rogue warriors or Russian policy, but it is plausible it’s the latter. Coercion and terror are a time-tested imperial strategy for pacification, from the First Jewish-Roman War (66-73) to the Second Chechen War (1999-2000), during which Mr. Putin flattened Grozny. When the fighting was over, the city looked like Stalingrad after the Nazi’s five-month siege—post-apocalyptic, with only skeletal buildings left standing and scorched rubble burying unknown dead. Immoral but effective, Mr. Putin’s bombardment ended the war in Russia’s favor.
Ukraine should expect similar treatment. The mass graves in Bucha indicate how freely the Wagner Group can inflict terror. If Mr. Putin’s mercenaries do something worthy of disapproval, he can simply disavow them, as he did after the Wagner Group got shellacked by U.S. troops at the Battle of Kasham in 2018 in eastern Syria. Days after the battle, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed it as “fake news.” Moscow’s protestations aside, American soldiers killed more Russians that night than any night during the Cold War, but the bloodshed didn’t escalate to World War III because both sides invoked plausible deniability. It’s unlikely they could have done so if Russian troops were involved. This ambiguity lets the Wagner Group act as an extension of Russia’s grim strategy and send a gruesome warning to states that might oppose Mr. Putin’s imperial ambitions without Moscow suffering the consequences.
Wagner mercenaries are generally proud of their work. I started speaking with them last year, when a member of the group first approached me because of my background as a former military contractor. This led to conversations with others. In general they remind me of other mercenaries I’ve interviewed; they do it for the money, adventure, profession of arms, or simply lack a life plan. What sets them apart from other mercenaries, aside from their superior lethality, is that many Wagner guys are also pro-Putin and support his vision of restoring Greater Russia. Most rank-and-file mercenaries don’t care about politics, but some Wagner contractors view their work as another way to serve the motherland.
For other Wagner mercenaries, the charm is wearing off. There seems to be a recognition among many that they are ultimately cannon fodder. They would rather chase lucrative contracts in the Middle East. Moscow prevents this in a typically Russian way. If Wagner personnel are caught talking to outsiders about their covert work, the Russian government can arrest them for being mercenaries, which is strictly banned under Russian law. The Kremlin hires them illegally, and then prosecutes them if they squeal. It’s a diabolical way of maintaining discipline.
International law can’t be easily used to bring the Wagner Group to heel. One would assume that the laws of armed conflict—binding treaties Russia has signed—would deal harshly with mercenaries, but the rules mostly ignore hired guns. One exception is Article 47 of the 1977 Geneva Protocols I, which defines and outlaws mercenaries but is almost unusable against the Wagner Group. The rule’s characterization of a mercenary is so restrictive yet imprecise that almost anyone can wiggle out of it. Wagner mercenaries fighting in Ukraine wouldn’t fit the definition because they are Russian and the protocols’ wording excludes anyone who is “a national of a Party to the conflict.” Moreover, the law stipulates that a mercenary is a nonstate combatant motivated primarily by the “desire for private gain,” which is difficult to prove in any circumstance. In 2005, the United Nations established a working group on the use of mercenaries, which has done nothing meaningful.
Even if a strong mercenary ban existed in international law, no one would be capable of enforcing it. World leaders wouldn’t authorize a foreign state to enter their countries and arrest people, and there’s no international consensus to empower a multilateral body like the U.N. to take up that role. Even if someone did show up to arrest Wagner Group members, there’s nothing stopping the mercenaries from simply opening fire on law enforcement. If they could be apprehended alive, the sort of international trials Wagner Group fighters would undergo are notoriously ineffectual and expensive. Having worked in war zones across Africa, I have never heard a society demand that hundreds of millions of dollars be spent on a Hague trial. After mercenaries devastate a community, people would generally rather take the money and rebuild their lives. And forget about sanctions. The Wagner Group and the oligarch the State Department identifies as its owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, have been under U.S., U.K. and European Union sanctions for years. It hasn’t diminished their operations. (Mr. Prigozhin has denied he is linked to the Wagner Group.)
Mercenaries and atrocities have gone hand in hand throughout history. It’s one of their chief selling points. In 1209 Pope Innocent III hired a mercenary army for a crusade against the Cathars, a heretical sect in southern France, after the assassination of the papal legate Innocent had sent to counter their unorthodox beliefs. The papal forces crushed town after town until they came to the Cathars’s stronghold in Béziers. The mercenaries tore through the streets, killing Cathars and Catholics alike. Panic-stricken residents fled to the churches seeking sanctuary but received none. “Kill them all, God will know his own,” the replacement legate supposedly said. The quote may be apocryphal, but that’s what the mercenaries did.
The Wagner Group is part of a wider and worrying trend in international relations. The number of mercenary operations seems to be increasing and it’s because hired guns allow clients to wage war brutally with minimal political costs. Every time mercenaries get away with something—from assassinating the president of Haiti to springing billionaires from jail—it serves as an advertisement to future clients. Should this trend continue, we should expect more massacres and torture. The sort of violence perpetrated in Bucha may become a common facet of modern war.
Mr. McFate is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a professor of International Security Studies at Georgetown, and author of “The New Rules of War: How America Can Win—Against Russia, China and Other Threats.”
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26. TikTok created an alternate universe just for Russia
Excerpts:
The experience of some ordinary TikTok users inside Russia accords with the researchers’ timeline.
One told The Post that their For You page had remained lively through most of March, with new posts from popular Russian creators and influencers, as well as some content about Ukraine, all of it from pro-Russian sources. Blog posts explaining how to get around TikTok’s restrictions were easy to access on the Russian Internet. It was only content from outside Russia that had disappeared.
But after about March 23, there seemed to be no new content at all on Russian TikTok, according to the user, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid attention from government authorities. Pages of people posting from Ukraine, the person added, were empty.
TikTok created an alternate universe just for Russia
The Chinese-owned social media giant weathered Putin’s information crackdown by muzzling its users there and cutting them off from the outside world, while allowing state propaganda
Yesterday at 8:00 a.m. EDT
The Washington Post · by Will OremusToday at 8:00 a.m. EDTBy Will OremusToday at 8:00 a.m. EDT · April 13, 2022
But the wildly popular, Chinese-owned social media app also walled off Russian users from seeing any posts at all from outside the country, including from Ukraine — effectively creating a second, censored version of its platform. For the tens of millions of Russians on TikTok, the outside world has fallen silent.
TikTok’s block on outside content appears to have effectively purged the app of non-Russian content. But its block on Russian content has proved porous, letting pro-government propaganda slip through. New research from the European nonprofit Tracking Exposed, shared with The Washington Post, shows that videos bearing pro-war hashtags such as “for us” and “Putin top” continued to proliferate on TikTok in Russia for weeks after the block, while previously popular antiwar hashtags all but vanished from the platform.
“In just one month, TikTok went from being considered a serious threat to Putin’s national support for the war to becoming another possible conduit for state propaganda,” said Giulia Giorgi, a researcher at Tracking Exposed, which has been studying the platform’s policies and actions in Russia since the invasion began in February. “Our findings show clearly how TikTok’s actions influenced that trajectory.”
The nonprofit’s report, published Wednesday, underscores how TikTok has taken a different and less transparent approach in Russia than other global tech giants. By muzzling its users, the company has been able to keep operating in Russia, while Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have been banned or blocked. But it has left Russians with a version of its service that one user in the country described as “a ghost town.”
Among the new findings is that TikTok appears to have belatedly closed a loophole in late March that Russian propagandists and creators alike had been exploiting to evade its ban on new video uploads from inside the country. Since March 26, according to Tracking Exposed and others, TikTok users who access the app from Russia cannot see any new content at all, with the app’s For You page limited to posts from inside Russia before that date. Yet thousands of pro-Putin posts that went up between March 6 and March 26, circumventing TikTok’s stated policies, remain available on the platform, uncontested by any outside or antiwar narratives.
TikTok acknowledged that it has blocked Russian users since March 6 from seeing any content from elsewhere in the world, even old content — a measure the company says it took to protect its users and employees from Russia’s draconian “fake news” law, passed March 4. Spokesperson Jamie Favazza also said the company has not “made any changes to our service in Russia since March 6,” though when pressed on the apparent March 26 stoppage of content, she added that “with respect to implementation, we continue working to enforce those changes.”
“Our findings unequivocally show that TikTok is not being transparent about its actions in Russia,” said Marc Faddoul, Tracking Exposed’s co-director.
Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory, said global social media platforms have long faced dilemmas between following repressive local laws and upholding principles of free speech and human rights in countries with authoritarian leanings, and there are no easy answers. In Russia, TikTok appears to have chosen the former. The question, he said, is whether it did so for business or political reasons — and if it’s the latter, what that tells us about its decision-making.
The concern, Stamos went on, is that “the people who ultimately make the product and policy decisions are in Beijing,” where the Chinese government has an increasingly close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
TikTok’s Favazza emphatically denied the notion that TikTok’s content policies are set or even influenced by its China-based parent company, ByteDance. Favazza said that TikTok’s Singapore-based CEO has “full autonomy for all decisions about TikTok’s operations,” and that TikTok’s head of trust and safety is based in Dublin.
Unproven suspicions that the Chinese Communist Party could influence TikTok products and policy overseas, including in the United States, have haunted the company in recent years. President Donald Trump sought to ban the app in 2020, citing fears that China could gain access to users’ private data or use TikTok’s algorithms to shape the content that users see. India permanently banned TikTok last year.
Natalia Krapiva, tech-legal counsel for the nonprofit Access Now, whose mission is to defend “digital civil rights” around the world, said it was concerning that TikTok hasn’t clearly communicated how it is implementing its policies in Russia. Krapiva, who was born in Russia and said she has friends in the country, said blocking posts without carefully closing loopholes enables motivated, savvy actors to continue posting while ordinary users can’t.
“It’s an unusual approach,” Krapiva said of TikTok’s ban on outside content. “It’s unclear, and it’s not justifiable. People have a right to access to information, and not just information that the government wants them to hear.”
TikTok does not operate in ByteDance’s home country of China. Instead, ByteDance offers a similar but censored app there, called Douyin. Now critics say it may be laying the groundwork for a second splinter app in Russia, though the company said that is not the case. Favazza said it has restricted its app in Russia solely to protect the safety of its users and employees. “We continue to evaluate the evolving circumstances in Russia to determine when we might fully resume our services with the safety of our community and employees as our top priority,” she added.
TikTok rose to prominence among teens around the world as a dancing and music video app, but in recent years, it has evolved into a major source of information, news and political discourse. Its impacts have proved harder for academics to study than those of its more established rivals, in part because it doesn’t provide the same tools to researchers on topics such as disinformation.
In February, as Russia amassed tanks along the Ukrainian border, young people around the world learned about it on TikTok. When missiles lit up the night sky over Kyiv and reduced a food market to rubble, it was documented on TikTok. In Russia, antiwar activists decried the invasion and posted footage of street protests in St. Petersburg. Commentators dubbed it “the first TikTok war.”
But by the first week of March, only two weeks into the war, voices of Russian dissent were nowhere to be found on the app.
As TikTok implemented its ban on new uploads and live streams from Russia, Salvatore Romano, head of research for Tracking Exposed, noticed that the number of videos protesting the invasion had dropped to zero from hundreds the day before. The nonprofit, founded in 2016, focuses on how tech giants like YouTube and Amazon track people’s online behavior to power opaque recommendation algorithms.
From his home laptop in Padua, Italy, Romano conducted daily monitoring of TikTok’s For You algorithm, which creates a personalized feed of videos for each user based on their interests. He was studying the prevalence of popular pro-war and antiwar hashtags across multiple countries as part of a project called TikTok Observatory, funded through grants from the San Francisco-based nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.
What Romano and his team soon realized was that TikTok had begun blocking not only new videos from within Russia, as the company announced in an update to a policy blog post on March 6, but all content from outside Russia. It wasn’t targeting antiwar or anti-Putin content specifically. It had simply cut off Russian users from the rest of TikTok’s 1 billion users.
Yet in the days that followed, it became clear that the block on new Russian content was not total. The researchers found what appeared to be a network of accounts working together to publish pro-war propaganda that was visible to Russian users, suggesting that these accounts had found a loophole in TikTok’s geographic blocking.
Geographic blocking can be tricky and difficult to pull off, especially when implemented quickly, as TikTok’s policy in Russia had to be, Stamos noted. Common methods include blocking IP, or Internet protocol, addresses from a given country, which can be circumvented by virtual private networks, or using a phone’s location or country codes on its SIM card, which may not work if the user is on a desktop device.
The findings by Tracking Exposed dovetailed with reporting by a journalist at Vice, David Gilbert, who reported on March 11 that Russian TikTok influencers were part of a secret channel on the messaging app Telegram in which they were being paid to post pro-Kremlin propaganda to TikTok. For instance, one coordinated campaign asked users to post videos “calling for national unity, using an audio track featuring Putin calling for all ethnic groups in Russia to unite at this time of conflict.” Gilbert reported that the channel’s administrators gave the influencers “a step-by-step guide on how to circumvent TikTok’s ban on uploads from Russian accounts.”
As the researchers kept up their daily monitoring, they noticed that the volume of pro-war and pro-Putin content seemed to be steadily growing. By March 23, they said, common pro-war hashtags had returned to nearly the popularity that they had enjoyed before the block was put in place. Yet antiwar hashtags, which had flourished until March 6, stayed relatively quiet.
That doesn’t necessarily imply TikTok was targeting antiwar hashtags for censorship. As the researchers acknowledged, it would make sense for TikTok users in Russia to avoid using such easily searchable hashtags, given the country’s laws criminalizing dissent.
Tracking Exposed also noted that its findings on the relative popularity of pro-war and antiwar hashtags are not comprehensive. It limited its analysis to six of the most popular hashtags from each category and did not analyze the prevalence of pro-war or antiwar content on the platform more broadly. Anecdotally, Romano said the researchers noticed that several prominent accounts that had taken antiwar stands before March 6 simply stopped posting altogether afterward.
It wasn’t just private accounts taking advantage of the loopholes after March 6. Among the accounts posting in that period was that of the state-owned news service Sputnik News. On March 17, it posted a video mocking President Biden for misspeaking. On March 22, it posted a video of what it said was a Canadian activist interrupting a formal event by shouting pro-Russian talking points before evidently being escorted out. The Russian-language caption translates roughly to, “A Canadian expressed an unpopular opinion and paid for it.” The posts remained visible on TikTok as of April 12, at least outside Russia.
Asked whether it has taken down any content that Russians managed to post in circumvention of its block in the country, TikTok said its takedowns are governed by its community standards.
Then, on March 26, all the numbers went to zero. No new videos were being posted on TikTok for Russian users at all. It seems that TikTok had fully implemented its block at last. Yet all the pro-war propaganda from the preceding weeks remained available on the platform for Russian users, with their For You pages slowly growing stale with recycled content.
For all the concerns about the opacity of TikTok’s policies, Stamos and Krapyva both acknowledged that Russia’s actions had left social media platforms with few good options. Facebook and Twitter may have stood firm on censorship, but that didn’t do their users in Russia much good because the platforms are now blocked. While Google’s YouTube remains operational in Russia, there is a sense among observers that it could be banned any day.
The experience of some ordinary TikTok users inside Russia accords with the researchers’ timeline.
One told The Post that their For You page had remained lively through most of March, with new posts from popular Russian creators and influencers, as well as some content about Ukraine, all of it from pro-Russian sources. Blog posts explaining how to get around TikTok’s restrictions were easy to access on the Russian Internet. It was only content from outside Russia that had disappeared.
But after about March 23, there seemed to be no new content at all on Russian TikTok, according to the user, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid attention from government authorities. Pages of people posting from Ukraine, the person added, were empty.
Chris Alcantara contributed to this report.
The Washington Post · by Will OremusToday at 8:00 a.m. EDTBy Will OremusToday at 8:00 a.m. EDT · April 13, 2022
27. Biden’s blunt comments on Ukraine can veer from U.S. policy
I like many of the President's blunt and unscripted comments. However, we need a President who is a master communicator who describes a consistent national narrative and whose comments guide the messaging of all other elements of the government. The Commander In Chief must also be the Strategic Influencer in Chief.
In point of fact his comments do not veer from US policy. He makes the policy through his comments.
Biden’s blunt comments on Ukraine can veer from U.S. policy
The Washington Post · by Tyler PagerYesterday at 7:48 p.m. EDTBy Tyler PagerYesterday at 7:48 p.m. EDT · April 13, 2022
President Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” although U.S. officials had not made that legal determination. During his trip to Europe last month, he seemingly urged regime change in an ad-libbed line at the conclusion of a speech in Warsaw, then clarified he was expressing “moral outrage” rather than articulating American policy.
Then on Tuesday, the president once again veered from his prepared remarks, labeling Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine a “genocide,” despite top U.S. officials saying last week they had not yet seen evidence of actions meeting that definition, and even though a legal review on the matter has not been completed.
Biden’s off-the-cuff comment marked the latest example of the tension between his often-emotional response to Putin’s brutal war and the international implications of a president’s words. Throughout his political career, Biden has cultivated a reputation for unscripted candor, a trait allies laud as humanizing but adversaries deride as undisciplined.
“I’m impressed by the fact that if he’s horrified and moved by what he’s witnessing, as we all are, that he doesn’t couch it in nice language,” said Harold Koh, who served as legal adviser at the State Department during the Obama administration. “He says what he thinks it is. I’d rather have more politicians be more candid than be more clever with their words.”
But in the midst of the largest land war in Europe since World War II, Biden’s tendency to deviate from official U.S. policy has the potential to complicate efforts to end the conflict and confuse allies and partners, some diplomats say.
Asked about Biden’s comment, French President Emmanuel Macron warned Wednesday that an “escalation of rhetoric” could impede efforts to “stop this war and rebuild peace.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki faced questions Wednesday on how allies are expected to know when Biden is expressing U.S. policy and when he is simply voicing his personal views. She framed Biden’s genocide remark as evidence of his honesty.
“When the president ran, he promised the American people he would shoot from the shoulder … and tell it to them straight,” she said. “His comments yesterday, not once but twice, on war crimes, are an exact reflection of that. I don’t think anyone is confused about the atrocities we’re seeing on the ground, the horrors we’re seeing on the ground.”
She added, “The president was speaking to what we all see, to what he feels is clear as day.”
But that reaction is at odds with the State Department’s painstaking process for reaching a genocide determination, which among other things requires clear documentation that the perpetrators intended to wipe out a group in whole or in part. Last month, for example, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the slaughter of the Rohingya by the Burmese military was a genocide.
Blinken described how the department had combed through detailed reports by an array of independent sources.
“Given the gravity of this determination, it was also important that this administration conduct its own analysis of the facts and the law,” Blinken said. He added, “Percentages, numbers, patterns, intent: these are critically important to reach the determination of genocide.”
Biden, however, did not appear to rely on any of those. “The president was calling it like he sees it, and that’s what he does,” Psaki said.
A genocide designation by the U.S. government does not automatically trigger any particular action. But it can add pressure on the U.S. to intervene before it’s ready, diplomats say, and can force the accused into a more defiant stance. Beyond that, they add, a rigorous process ensures that the grave term is not used loosely.
State Department officials said Wednesday they are not now declaring a genocide in Ukraine. Rather, they are helping with the global effort to document evidence of alleged war crimes to see if that “legal threshold [of genocide] is met,” said department spokesman Ned Price.
The process of declaring a genocide is arduous and can take months, Koh said, adding that the State Department must work with intelligence agencies in the United States and abroad to determine whether war crimes were committed “with the intent to destroy the Ukrainian people as a whole.” The agency will eventually produce a lengthy report in which it concludes with varying levels of confidence whether a genocide occurred.
“Intent is hard to prove because you need some sort of smoking gun — a memo or directive or unclassified telephone call saying something like ‘Kill them all,'” Koh said. He added that Biden is “perfectly entitled to say as a matter of personal belief that he believes that Putin has that intent, but I think that’s different from saying that the United States has the evidence that it could prove that case beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”
The United Nations defines genocide as an attempt to destroy, in part or in whole, an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. Russia has carried out a brutal campaign of killings throughout Ukraine, and investigators have uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses in towns like Bucha.
Human rights advocates say the extended genocide investigation should not infer with broader efforts to hold Russia responsible.
“There needs to be accountability for mass atrocity,” said Adam Keith, director of accountability at Human Rights First. “Genocide is one type of mass atrocity, and the Genocide Convention has complicated standards. It’s hard to prove.”
Since World War II, the United States has only made eight formal declarations of genocide, including a determination that Turkey’s killing of Armenians during World War I qualified. In a reflection of the label’s volatility, Turkish leaders spent decades trying to avoid having it applied to the century-old events.
One question is whether Biden’s heartfelt declaration might influence the official process.
“Once the president of the United States has said that it looks like genocide to him, that does put a lot of pressure on the State Department and the lawyers in particular, to reach that same conclusion,” said John B. Bellinger, III, who served as legal adviser to the State Department in George W. Bush’s administration.
He added: “I don’t think that the president was off base. He certainly did get ahead of the formal State Department process, but that’s not the first time that this has happened.”
Biden first referred to Russia’s war in Ukraine as a genocide Tuesday afternoon at an event in Menlo, Iowa, as he assailed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for its impact on rising prices. “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank — none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away,” he said.
White House officials were caught off guard, as they did not anticipate Biden to make such an important declaration during a speech about ethanol in Iowa. But as officials were flooded with inquiries from reporters, Biden and his aides decided he would make it clear he intended to make the comment and that it reflected his personal belief.
Before boarding Air Force One back to Washington, Biden told reporters he would “let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies.” But he said, “It sure seems that way to me.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately praised Biden’s remark, writing on Twitter, “Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil.”
On Wednesday, Psaki vigorously defended Biden’s comments — and their timing.
“He’s the president of the United States and the leader of the free world, and he’s allowed to make his views known at any point he would like,” Psaki said.
The Washington Post · by Tyler PagerYesterday at 7:48 p.m. EDTBy Tyler PagerYesterday at 7:48 p.m. EDT · April 13, 2022
28. WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
For reflection.
WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID
It’s not just a phase.
Illustrations by Nicolás Ortega
What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:
Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.
The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.
Explore the May 2022 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
Babel is a metaphor for what some forms of social media have done to nearly all of the groups and institutions most important to the country’s future—and to us as a people. How did this happen? And what does it portend for American life?
The Rise of the Modern Tower
There is a direction to history and it is toward cooperation at larger scales. We see this trend in biological evolution, in the series of “major transitions” through which multicellular organisms first appeared and then developed new symbiotic relationships. We see it in cultural evolution too, as Robert Wright explained in his 1999 book, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Wright showed that history involves a series of transitions, driven by rising population density plus new technologies (writing, roads, the printing press) that created new possibilities for mutually beneficial trade and learning. Zero-sum conflicts—such as the wars of religion that arose as the printing press spread heretical ideas across Europe—were better thought of as temporary setbacks, and sometimes even integral to progress. (Those wars of religion, he argued, made possible the transition to modern nation-states with better-informed citizens.) President Bill Clinton praised Nonzero’s optimistic portrayal of a more cooperative future thanks to continued technological advance.
The early internet of the 1990s, with its chat rooms, message boards, and email, exemplified the Nonzero thesis, as did the first wave of social-media platforms, which launched around 2003. Myspace, Friendster, and Facebook made it easy to connect with friends and strangers to talk about common interests, for free, and at a scale never before imaginable. By 2008, Facebook had emerged as the dominant platform, with more than 100 million monthly users, on its way to roughly 3 billion today. In the first decade of the new century, social media was widely believed to be a boon to democracy. What dictator could impose his will on an interconnected citizenry? What regime could build a wall to keep out the internet?
The high point of techno-democratic optimism was arguably 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and ended with the global Occupy movement. That is also when Google Translate became available on virtually all smartphones, so you could say that 2011 was the year that humanity rebuilt the Tower of Babel. We were closer than we had ever been to being “one people,” and we had effectively overcome the curse of division by language. For techno-democratic optimists, it seemed to be only the beginning of what humanity could do.
In February 2012, as he prepared to take Facebook public, Mark Zuckerberg reflected on those extraordinary times and set forth his plans. “Today, our society has reached another tipping point,” he wrote in a letter to investors. Facebook hoped “to rewire the way people spread and consume information.” By giving them “the power to share,” it would help them to “once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.”
In the 10 years since then, Zuckerberg did exactly what he said he would do. He did rewire the way we spread and consume information; he did transform our institutions, and he pushed us past the tipping point. It has not worked out as he expected.
Things Fall Apart
Historically, civilizations have relied on shared blood, gods, and enemies to counteract the tendency to split apart as they grow. But what is it that holds together large and diverse secular democracies such as the United States and India, or, for that matter, modern Britain and France?
Social scientists have identified at least three major forces that collectively bind together successful democracies: social capital (extensive social networks with high levels of trust), strong institutions, and shared stories. Social media has weakened all three. To see how, we must understand how social media changed over time—and especially in the several years following 2009.
In their early incarnations, platforms such as Myspace and Facebook were relatively harmless. They allowed users to create pages on which to post photos, family updates, and links to the mostly static pages of their friends and favorite bands. In this way, early social media can be seen as just another step in the long progression of technological improvements—from the Postal Service through the telephone to email and texting—that helped people achieve the eternal goal of maintaining their social ties.
But gradually, social-media users became more comfortable sharing intimate details of their lives with strangers and corporations. As I wrote in a 2019 Atlantic article with Tobias Rose-Stockwell, they became more adept at putting on performances and managing their personal brand—activities that might impress others but that do not deepen friendships in the way that a private phone conversation will.
Once social-media platforms had trained users to spend more time performing and less time connecting, the stage was set for the major transformation, which began in 2009: the intensification of viral dynamics.
Babel is not a story about tribalism. It’s a story about the fragmentation of everything.
Before 2009, Facebook had given users a simple timeline––a never-ending stream of content generated by their friends and connections, with the newest posts at the top and the oldest ones at the bottom. This was often overwhelming in its volume, but it was an accurate reflection of what others were posting. That began to change in 2009, when Facebook offered users a way to publicly “like” posts with the click of a button. That same year, Twitter introduced something even more powerful: the “Retweet” button, which allowed users to publicly endorse a post while also sharing it with all of their followers. Facebook soon copied that innovation with its own “Share” button, which became available to smartphone users in 2012. “Like” and “Share” buttons quickly became standard features of most other platforms.
Shortly after its “Like” button began to produce data about what best “engaged” its users, Facebook developed algorithms to bring each user the content most likely to generate a “like” or some other interaction, eventually including the “share” as well. Later research showed that posts that trigger emotions––especially anger at out-groups––are the most likely to be shared.
Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: Belshazzar’s Feast, John Martin, 1820.
By 2013, social media had become a new game, with dynamics unlike those in 2008. If you were skillful or lucky, you might create a post that would “go viral” and make you “internet famous” for a few days. If you blundered, you could find yourself buried in hateful comments. Your posts rode to fame or ignominy based on the clicks of thousands of strangers, and you in turn contributed thousands of clicks to the game.
This new game encouraged dishonesty and mob dynamics: Users were guided not just by their true preferences but by their past experiences of reward and punishment, and their prediction of how others would react to each new action. One of the engineers at Twitter who had worked on the “Retweet” button later revealed that he regretted his contribution because it had made Twitter a nastier place. As he watched Twitter mobs forming through the use of the new tool, he thought to himself, “We might have just handed a 4-year-old a loaded weapon.”
As a social psychologist who studies emotion, morality, and politics, I saw this happening too. The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking.
It was just this kind of twitchy and explosive spread of anger that James Madison had tried to protect us from as he was drafting the U.S. Constitution. The Framers of the Constitution were excellent social psychologists. They knew that democracy had an Achilles’ heel because it depended on the collective judgment of the people, and democratic communities are subject to “the turbulency and weakness of unruly passions.” The key to designing a sustainable republic, therefore, was to build in mechanisms to slow things down, cool passions, require compromise, and give leaders some insulation from the mania of the moment while still holding them accountable to the people periodically, on Election Day.
The tech companies that enhanced virality from 2009 to 2012 brought us deep into Madison’s nightmare. Many authors quote his comments in “Federalist No. 10” on the innate human proclivity toward “faction,” by which he meant our tendency to divide ourselves into teams or parties that are so inflamed with “mutual animosity” that they are “much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to cooperate for their common good.”
But that essay continues on to a less quoted yet equally important insight, about democracy’s vulnerability to triviality. Madison notes that people are so prone to factionalism that “where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.”
Social media has both magnified and weaponized the frivolous. Is our democracy any healthier now that we’ve had Twitter brawls over Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Tax the Rich dress at the annual Met Gala, and Melania Trump’s dress at a 9/11 memorial event, which had stitching that kind of looked like a skyscraper? How about Senator Ted Cruz’s tweet criticizing Big Bird for tweeting about getting his COVID vaccine?
It’s not just the waste of time and scarce attention that matters; it’s the continual chipping-away of trust. An autocracy can deploy propaganda or use fear to motivate the behaviors it desires, but a democracy depends on widely internalized acceptance of the legitimacy of rules, norms, and institutions. Blind and irrevocable trust in any particular individual or organization is never warranted. But when citizens lose trust in elected leaders, health authorities, the courts, the police, universities, and the integrity of elections, then every decision becomes contested; every election becomes a life-and-death struggle to save the country from the other side. The most recent Edelman Trust Barometer (an international measure of citizens’ trust in government, business, media, and nongovernmental organizations) showed stable and competent autocracies (China and the United Arab Emirates) at the top of the list, while contentious democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and South Korea scored near the bottom (albeit above Russia).
Recent academic studies suggest that social media is indeed corrosive to trust in governments, news media, and people and institutions in general. A working paper that offers the most comprehensive review of the research, led by the social scientists Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, concludes that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.
When people lose trust in institutions, they lose trust in the stories told by those institutions. That’s particularly true of the institutions entrusted with the education of children. History curricula have often caused political controversy, but Facebook and Twitter make it possible for parents to become outraged every day over a new snippet from their children’s history lessons––and math lessons and literature selections, and any new pedagogical shifts anywhere in the country. The motives of teachers and administrators come into question, and overreaching laws or curricular reforms sometimes follow, dumbing down education and reducing trust in it further. One result is that young people educated in the post-Babel era are less likely to arrive at a coherent story of who we are as a people, and less likely to share any such story with those who attended different schools or who were educated in a different decade.
The former CIA analyst Martin Gurri predicted these fracturing effects in his 2014 book, The Revolt of the Public. Gurri’s analysis focused on the authority-subverting effects of information’s exponential growth, beginning with the internet in the 1990s. Writing nearly a decade ago, Gurri could already see the power of social media as a universal solvent, breaking down bonds and weakening institutions everywhere it reached. He noted that distributed networks “can protest and overthrow, but never govern.” He described the nihilism of the many protest movements of 2011 that organized mostly online and that, like Occupy Wall Street, demanded the destruction of existing institutions without offering an alternative vision of the future or an organization that could bring it about.
Gurri is no fan of elites or of centralized authority, but he notes a constructive feature of the pre-digital era: a single “mass audience,” all consuming the same content, as if they were all looking into the same gigantic mirror at the reflection of their own society. In a comment to Vox that recalls the first post-Babel diaspora, he said:
The digital revolution has shattered that mirror, and now the public inhabits those broken pieces of glass. So the public isn’t one thing; it’s highly fragmented, and it’s basically mutually hostile. It’s mostly people yelling at each other and living in bubbles of one sort or another.
Mark Zuckerberg may not have wished for any of that. But by rewiring everything in a headlong rush for growth—with a naive conception of human psychology, little understanding of the intricacy of institutions, and no concern for external costs imposed on society—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other large platforms unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.
I think we can date the fall of the tower to the years between 2011 (Gurri’s focal year of “nihilistic” protests) and 2015, a year marked by the “great awokening” on the left and the ascendancy of Donald Trump on the right. Trump did not destroy the tower; he merely exploited its fall. He was the first politician to master the new dynamics of the post-Babel era, in which outrage is the key to virality, stage performance crushes competence, Twitter can overpower all the newspapers in the country, and stories cannot be shared (or at least trusted) across more than a few adjacent fragments—so truth cannot achieve widespread adherence.
The many analysts, including me, who had argued that Trump could not win the general election were relying on pre-Babel intuitions, which said that scandals such as the Access Hollywood tape (in which Trump boasted about committing sexual assault) are fatal to a presidential campaign. But after Babel, nothing really means anything anymore––at least not in a way that is durable and on which people widely agree.
Politics After Babel
“Politics is the art of the possible,” the German statesman Otto von Bismarck said in 1867. In a post-Babel democracy, not much may be possible.
Of course, the American culture war and the decline of cross-party cooperation predates social media’s arrival. The mid-20th century was a time of unusually low polarization in Congress, which began reverting back to historical levels in the 1970s and ’80s. The ideological distance between the two parties began increasing faster in the 1990s. Fox News and the 1994 “Republican Revolution” converted the GOP into a more combative party. For example, House Speaker Newt Gingrich discouraged new Republican members of Congress from moving their families to Washington, D.C., where they were likely to form social ties with Democrats and their families.
So cross-party relationships were already strained before 2009. But the enhanced virality of social media thereafter made it more hazardous to be seen fraternizing with the enemy or even failing to attack the enemy with sufficient vigor. On the right, the term RINO (Republican in Name Only) was superseded in 2015 by the more contemptuous term cuckservative, popularized on Twitter by Trump supporters. On the left, social media launched callout culture in the years after 2012, with transformative effects on university life and later on politics and culture throughout the English-speaking world.
What changed in the 2010s? Let’s revisit that Twitter engineer’s metaphor of handing a loaded gun to a 4-year-old. A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly 1 billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.
Social media has given voice to some people who had little previously, and it has made it easier to hold powerful people accountable for their misdeeds, not just in politics but in business, the arts, academia, and elsewhere. Sexual harassers could have been called out in anonymous blog posts before Twitter, but it’s hard to imagine that the #MeToo movement would have been nearly so successful without the viral enhancement that the major platforms offered. However, the warped “accountability” of social media has also brought injustice—and political dysfunction—in three ways.
First, the dart guns of social media give more power to trolls and provocateurs while silencing good citizens. Research by the political scientists Alexander Bor and Michael Bang Petersen found that a small subset of people on social-media platforms are highly concerned with gaining status and are willing to use aggression to do so. They admit that in their online discussions they often curse, make fun of their opponents, and get blocked by other users or reported for inappropriate comments. Across eight studies, Bor and Petersen found that being online did not make most people more aggressive or hostile; rather, it allowed a small number of aggressive people to attack a much larger set of victims. Even a small number of jerks were able to dominate discussion forums, Bor and Petersen found, because nonjerks are easily turned off from online discussions of politics. Additional research finds that women and Black people are harassed disproportionately, so the digital public square is less welcoming to their voices.
Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: Venus and Cupid, Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine, by 1860.
Second, the dart guns of social media give more power and voice to the political extremes while reducing the power and voice of the moderate majority. The “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right, known as the “devoted conservatives,” comprised 6 percent of the U.S. population. The group furthest to the left, the “progressive activists,” comprised 8 percent of the population. The progressive activists were by far the most prolific group on social media: 70 percent had shared political content over the previous year. The devoted conservatives followed, at 56 percent.
These two extreme groups are similar in surprising ways. They are the whitest and richest of the seven groups, which suggests that America is being torn apart by a battle between two subsets of the elite who are not representative of the broader society. What’s more, they are the two groups that show the greatest homogeneity in their moral and political attitudes. This uniformity of opinion, the study’s authors speculate, is likely a result of thought-policing on social media: “Those who express sympathy for the views of opposing groups may experience backlash from their own cohort.” In other words, political extremists don’t just shoot darts at their enemies; they spend a lot of their ammunition targeting dissenters or nuanced thinkers on their own team. In this way, social media makes a political system based on compromise grind to a halt.
Finally, by giving everyone a dart gun, social media deputizes everyone to administer justice with no due process. Platforms like Twitter devolve into the Wild West, with no accountability for vigilantes. A successful attack attracts a barrage of likes and follow-on strikes. Enhanced-virality platforms thereby facilitate massive collective punishment for small or imagined offenses, with real-world consequences, including innocent people losing their jobs and being shamed into suicide. When our public square is governed by mob dynamics unrestrained by due process, we don’t get justice and inclusion; we get a society that ignores context, proportionality, mercy, and truth.
Structural Stupidity
Since the tower fell, debates of all kinds have grown more and more confused. The most pervasive obstacle to good thinking is confirmation bias, which refers to the human tendency to search only for evidence that confirms our preferred beliefs. Even before the advent of social media, search engines were supercharging confirmation bias, making it far easier for people to find evidence for absurd beliefs and conspiracy theories, such as that the Earth is flat and that the U.S. government staged the 9/11 attacks. But social media made things much worse.
The most reliable cure for confirmation bias is interaction with people who don’t share your beliefs. They confront you with counterevidence and counterargument. John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that,” and he urged us to seek out conflicting views “from persons who actually believe them.” People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain. People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.
In the 20th century, America built the most capable knowledge-producing institutions in human history. In the past decade, they got stupider en masse.
In his book The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch describes the historical breakthrough in which Western societies developed an “epistemic operating system”—that is, a set of institutions for generating knowledge from the interactions of biased and cognitively flawed individuals. English law developed the adversarial system so that biased advocates could present both sides of a case to an impartial jury. Newspapers full of lies evolved into professional journalistic enterprises, with norms that required seeking out multiple sides of a story, followed by editorial review, followed by fact-checking. Universities evolved from cloistered medieval institutions into research powerhouses, creating a structure in which scholars put forth evidence-backed claims with the knowledge that other scholars around the world would be motivated to gain prestige by finding contrary evidence.
Part of America’s greatness in the 20th century came from having developed the most capable, vibrant, and productive network of knowledge-producing institutions in all of human history, linking together the world’s best universities, private companies that turned scientific advances into life-changing consumer products, and government agencies that supported scientific research and led the collaboration that put people on the moon.
But this arrangement, Rauch notes, “is not self-maintaining; it relies on an array of sometimes delicate social settings and understandings, and those need to be understood, affirmed, and protected.” So what happens when an institution is not well maintained and internal disagreement ceases, either because its people have become ideologically uniform or because they have become afraid to dissent?
This, I believe, is what happened to many of America’s key institutions in the mid-to-late 2010s. They got stupider en masse because social media instilled in their members a chronic fear of getting darted. The shift was most pronounced in universities, scholarly associations, creative industries, and political organizations at every level (national, state, and local), and it was so pervasive that it established new behavioral norms backed by new policies seemingly overnight. The new omnipresence of enhanced-virality social media meant that a single word uttered by a professor, leader, or journalist, even if spoken with positive intent, could lead to a social-media firestorm, triggering an immediate dismissal or a drawn-out investigation by the institution. Participants in our key institutions began self-censoring to an unhealthy degree, holding back critiques of policies and ideas—even those presented in class by their students—that they believed to be ill-supported or wrong.
But when an institution punishes internal dissent, it shoots darts into its own brain.
The stupefying process plays out differently on the right and the left because their activist wings subscribe to different narratives with different sacred values. The “Hidden Tribes” study tells us that the “devoted conservatives” score highest on beliefs related to authoritarianism. They share a narrative in which America is eternally under threat from enemies outside and subversives within; they see life as a battle between patriots and traitors. According to the political scientist Karen Stenner, whose work the “Hidden Tribes” study drew upon, they are psychologically different from the larger group of “traditional conservatives” (19 percent of the population), who emphasize order, decorum, and slow rather than radical change.
Only within the devoted conservatives’ narratives do Donald Trump’s speeches make sense, from his campaign’s ominous opening diatribe about Mexican “rapists” to his warning on January 6, 2021: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The traditional punishment for treason is death, hence the battle cry on January 6: “Hang Mike Pence.” Right-wing death threats, many delivered by anonymous accounts, are proving effective in cowing traditional conservatives, for example in driving out local election officials who failed to “stop the steal.” The wave of threats delivered to dissenting Republican members of Congress has similarly pushed many of the remaining moderates to quit or go silent, giving us a party ever more divorced from the conservative tradition, constitutional responsibility, and reality. We now have a Republican Party that describes a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol as “legitimate political discourse,” supported—or at least not contradicted—by an array of right-wing think tanks and media organizations.
The stupidity on the right is most visible in the many conspiracy theories spreading across right-wing media and now into Congress. “Pizzagate,” QAnon, the belief that vaccines contain microchips, the conviction that Donald Trump won reelection—it’s hard to imagine any of these ideas or belief systems reaching the levels that they have without Facebook and Twitter.
Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: Vanity, Nicolas Régnier, c. 1626.
The Democrats have also been hit hard by structural stupidity, though in a different way. In the Democratic Party, the struggle between the progressive wing and the more moderate factions is open and ongoing, and often the moderates win. The problem is that the left controls the commanding heights of the culture: universities, news organizations, Hollywood, art museums, advertising, much of Silicon Valley, and the teachers’ unions and teaching colleges that shape K–12 education. And in many of those institutions, dissent has been stifled: When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.
Liberals in the late 20th century shared a belief that the sociologist Christian Smith called the “liberal progress” narrative, in which America used to be horrifically unjust and repressive, but, thanks to the struggles of activists and heroes, has made (and continues to make) progress toward realizing the noble promise of its founding. This story easily supports liberal patriotism, and it was the animating narrative of Barack Obama’s presidency. It is also the view of the “traditional liberals” in the “Hidden Tribes” study (11 percent of the population), who have strong humanitarian values, are older than average, and are largely the people leading America’s cultural and intellectual institutions.
But when the newly viralized social-media platforms gave everyone a dart gun, it was younger progressive activists who did the most shooting, and they aimed a disproportionate number of their darts at these older liberal leaders. Confused and fearful, the leaders rarely challenged the activists or their nonliberal narrative in which life at every institution is an eternal battle among identity groups over a zero-sum pie, and the people on top got there by oppressing the people on the bottom. This new narrative is rigidly egalitarian––focused on equality of outcomes, not of rights or opportunities. It is unconcerned with individual rights.
The universal charge against people who disagree with this narrative is not “traitor”; it is “racist,” “transphobe,” “Karen,” or some related scarlet letter marking the perpetrator as one who hates or harms a marginalized group. The punishment that feels right for such crimes is not execution; it is public shaming and social death.
You can see the stupefaction process most clearly when a person on the left merely points to research that questions or contradicts a favored belief among progressive activists. Someone on Twitter will find a way to associate the dissenter with racism, and others will pile on. For example, in the first week of protests after the killing of George Floyd, some of which included violence, the progressive policy analyst David Shor, then employed by Civis Analytics, tweeted a link to a study showing that violent protests back in the 1960s led to electoral setbacks for the Democrats in nearby counties. Shor was clearly trying to be helpful, but in the ensuing outrage he was accused of “anti-Blackness” and was soon dismissed from his job. (Civis Analytics has denied that the tweet led to Shor’s firing.)
The Shor case became famous, but anyone on Twitter had already seen dozens of examples teaching the basic lesson: Don’t question your own side’s beliefs, policies, or actions. And when traditional liberals go silent, as so many did in the summer of 2020, the progressive activists’ more radical narrative takes over as the governing narrative of an organization. This is why so many epistemic institutions seemed to “go woke” in rapid succession that year and the next, beginning with a wave of controversies and resignations at The New York Times and other newspapers, and continuing on to social-justice pronouncements by groups of doctors and medical associations (one publication by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, for instance, advised medical professionals to refer to neighborhoods and communities as “oppressed” or “systematically divested” instead of “vulnerable” or “poor”), and the hurried transformation of curricula at New York City’s most expensive private schools.
Tragically, we see stupefaction playing out on both sides in the COVID wars. The right has been so committed to minimizing the risks of COVID that it has turned the disease into one that preferentially kills Republicans. The progressive left is so committed to maximizing the dangers of COVID that it often embraces an equally maximalist, one-size-fits-all strategy for vaccines, masks, and social distancing—even as they pertain to children. Such policies are not as deadly as spreading fears and lies about vaccines, but many of them have been devastating for the mental health and education of children, who desperately need to play with one another and go to school; we have little clear evidence that school closures and masks for young children reduce deaths from COVID. Most notably for the story I’m telling here, progressive parents who argued against school closures were frequently savaged on social media and met with the ubiquitous leftist accusations of racism and white supremacy. Others in blue cities learned to keep quiet.
American politics is getting ever more ridiculous and dysfunctional not because Americans are getting less intelligent. The problem is structural. Thanks to enhanced-virality social media, dissent is punished within many of our institutions, which means that bad ideas get elevated into official policy.
It’s Going to Get Much Worse
In a 2018 interview, Steve Bannon, the former adviser to Donald Trump, said that the way to deal with the media is “to flood the zone with shit.” He was describing the “firehose of falsehood” tactic pioneered by Russian disinformation programs to keep Americans confused, disoriented, and angry. But back then, in 2018, there was an upper limit to the amount of shit available, because all of it had to be created by a person (other than some low-quality stuff produced by bots).
Now, however, artificial intelligence is close to enabling the limitless spread of highly believable disinformation. The AI program GPT-3 is already so good that you can give it a topic and a tone and it will spit out as many essays as you like, typically with perfect grammar and a surprising level of coherence. In a year or two, when the program is upgraded to GPT-4, it will become far more capable. In a 2020 essay titled “The Supply of Disinformation Will Soon Be Infinite,” Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, explained that spreading falsehoods—whether through text, images, or deep-fake videos—will quickly become inconceivably easy. (She co-wrote the essay with GPT-3.)
American factions won’t be the only ones using AI and social media to generate attack content; our adversaries will too. In a haunting 2018 essay titled “The Digital Maginot Line,” DiResta described the state of affairs bluntly. “We are immersed in an evolving, ongoing conflict: an Information World War in which state actors, terrorists, and ideological extremists leverage the social infrastructure underpinning everyday life to sow discord and erode shared reality,” she wrote. The Soviets used to have to send over agents or cultivate Americans willing to do their bidding. But social media made it cheap and easy for Russia’s Internet Research Agency to invent fake events or distort real ones to stoke rage on both the left and the right, often over race. Later research showed that an intensive campaign began on Twitter in 2013 but soon spread to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, among other platforms. One of the major goals was to polarize the American public and spread distrust—to split us apart at the exact weak point that Madison had identified.
If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse.
We now know that it’s not just the Russians attacking American democracy. Before the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, China had mostly focused on domestic platforms such as WeChat. But now China is discovering how much it can do with Twitter and Facebook, for so little money, in its escalating conflict with the U.S. Given China’s own advances in AI, we can expect it to become more skillful over the next few years at further dividing America and further uniting China.
In the 20th century, America’s shared identity as the country leading the fight to make the world safe for democracy was a strong force that helped keep the culture and the polity together. In the 21st century, America’s tech companies have rewired the world and created products that now appear to be corrosive to democracy, obstacles to shared understanding, and destroyers of the modern tower.
Democracy After Babel
We can never return to the way things were in the pre-digital age. The norms, institutions, and forms of political participation that developed during the long era of mass communication are not going to work well now that technology has made everything so much faster and more multidirectional, and when bypassing professional gatekeepers is so easy. And yet American democracy is now operating outside the bounds of sustainability. If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse during the next major war, pandemic, financial meltdown, or constitutional crisis.
What changes are needed? Redesigning democracy for the digital age is far beyond my abilities, but I can suggest three categories of reforms––three goals that must be achieved if democracy is to remain viable in the post-Babel era. We must harden democratic institutions so that they can withstand chronic anger and mistrust, reform social media so that it becomes less socially corrosive, and better prepare the next generation for democratic citizenship in this new age.
Harden Democratic Institutions
Political polarization is likely to increase for the foreseeable future. Thus, whatever else we do, we must reform key institutions so that they can continue to function even if levels of anger, misinformation, and violence increase far above those we have today.
For instance, the legislative branch was designed to require compromise, yet Congress, social media, and partisan cable news channels have co-evolved such that any legislator who reaches across the aisle may face outrage within hours from the extreme wing of her party, damaging her fundraising prospects and raising her risk of being primaried in the next election cycle.
Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in their district. One example of such a reform is to end closed party primaries, replacing them with a single, nonpartisan, open primary from which the top several candidates advance to a general election that also uses ranked-choice voting. A version of this voting system has already been implemented in Alaska, and it seems to have given Senator Lisa Murkowski more latitude to oppose former President Trump, whose favored candidate would be a threat to Murkowski in a closed Republican primary but is not in an open one.
A second way to harden democratic institutions is to reduce the power of either political party to game the system in its favor, for example by drawing its preferred electoral districts or selecting the officials who will supervise elections. These jobs should all be done in a nonpartisan way. Research on procedural justice shows that when people perceive that a process is fair, they are more likely to accept the legitimacy of a decision that goes against their interests. Just think of the damage already done to the Supreme Court’s legitimacy by the Senate’s Republican leadership when it blocked consideration of Merrick Garland for a seat that opened up nine months before the 2016 election, and then rushed through the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. A widely discussed reform would end this political gamesmanship by having justices serve staggered 18-year terms so that each president makes one appointment every two years.
Reform Social Media
A democracy cannot survive if its public squares are places where people fear speaking up and where no stable consensus can be reached. Social media’s empowerment of the far left, the far right, domestic trolls, and foreign agents is creating a system that looks less like democracy and more like rule by the most aggressive.
Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: The Arch Heretics, Gustave Doré, c. 1861.
But it is within our power to reduce social media’s ability to dissolve trust and foment structural stupidity. Reforms should limit the platforms’ amplification of the aggressive fringes while giving more voice to what More in Common calls “the exhausted majority.”
Those who oppose regulation of social media generally focus on the legitimate concern that government-mandated content restrictions will, in practice, devolve into censorship. But the main problem with social media is not that some people post fake or toxic stuff; it’s that fake and outrage-inducing content can now attain a level of reach and influence that was not possible before 2009. The Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen advocates for simple changes to the architecture of the platforms, rather than for massive and ultimately futile efforts to police all content. For example, she has suggested modifying the “Share” function on Facebook so that after any content has been shared twice, the third person in the chain must take the time to copy and paste the content into a new post. Reforms like this are not censorship; they are viewpoint-neutral and content-neutral, and they work equally well in all languages. They don’t stop anyone from saying anything; they just slow the spread of content that is, on average, less likely to be true.
Perhaps the biggest single change that would reduce the toxicity of existing platforms would be user verification as a precondition for gaining the algorithmic amplification that social media offers.
Banks and other industries have “know your customer” rules so that they can’t do business with anonymous clients laundering money from criminal enterprises. Large social-media platforms should be required to do the same. That does not mean users would have to post under their real names; they could still use a pseudonym. It just means that before a platform spreads your words to millions of people, it has an obligation to verify (perhaps through a third party or nonprofit) that you are a real human being, in a particular country, and are old enough to be using the platform. This one change would wipe out most of the hundreds of millions of bots and fake accounts that currently pollute the major platforms. It would also likely reduce the frequency of death threats, rape threats, racist nastiness, and trolling more generally. Research shows that antisocial behavior becomes more common online when people feel that their identity is unknown and untraceable.
In any case, the growing evidence that social media is damaging democracy is sufficient to warrant greater oversight by a regulatory body, such as the Federal Communications Commission or the Federal Trade Commission. One of the first orders of business should be compelling the platforms to share their data and their algorithms with academic researchers.
Prepare the Next Generation
The members of Gen Z––those born in and after 1997––bear none of the blame for the mess we are in, but they are going to inherit it, and the preliminary signs are that older generations have prevented them from learning how to handle it.
Childhood has become more tightly circumscribed in recent generations––with less opportunity for free, unstructured play; less unsupervised time outside; more time online. Whatever else the effects of these shifts, they have likely impeded the development of abilities needed for effective self-governance for many young adults. Unsupervised free play is nature’s way of teaching young mammals the skills they’ll need as adults, which for humans include the ability to cooperate, make and enforce rules, compromise, adjudicate conflicts, and accept defeat. A brilliant 2015 essay by the economist Steven Horwitz argued that free play prepares children for the “art of association” that Alexis de Tocqueville said was the key to the vibrancy of American democracy; he also argued that its loss posed “a serious threat to liberal societies.” A generation prevented from learning these social skills, Horwitz warned, would habitually appeal to authorities to resolve disputes and would suffer from a “coarsening of social interaction” that would “create a world of more conflict and violence.”
Depression makes people less likely to want to engage with new people, ideas, and experiences. Anxiety makes new things seem more threatening. As these conditions have risen and as the lessons on nuanced social behavior learned through free play have been delayed, tolerance for diverse viewpoints and the ability to work out disputes have diminished among many young people. For example, university communities that could tolerate a range of speakers as recently as 2010 arguably began to lose that ability in subsequent years, as Gen Z began to arrive on campus. Attempts to disinvite visiting speakers rose. Students did not just say that they disagreed with visiting speakers; some said that those lectures would be dangerous, emotionally devastating, a form of violence. Because rates of teen depression and anxiety have continued to rise into the 2020s, we should expect these views to continue in the generations to follow, and indeed to become more severe.
The most important change we can make to reduce the damaging effects of social media on children is to delay entry until they have passed through puberty. Congress should update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which unwisely set the age of so-called internet adulthood (the age at which companies can collect personal information from children without parental consent) at 13 back in 1998, while making little provision for effective enforcement. The age should be raised to at least 16, and companies should be held responsible for enforcing it.
More generally, to prepare the members of the next generation for post-Babel democracy, perhaps the most important thing we can do is let them out to play. Stop starving children of the experiences they most need to become good citizens: free play in mixed-age groups of children with minimal adult supervision. Every state should follow the lead of Utah, Oklahoma, and Texas and pass a version of the Free-Range Parenting Law that helps assure parents that they will not be investigated for neglect if their 8- or 9-year-old children are spotted playing in a park. With such laws in place, schools, educators, and public-health authorities should then encourage parents to let their kids walk to school and play in groups outside, just as more kids used to do.
Hope After Babel
The story I have told is bleak, and there is little evidence to suggest that America will return to some semblance of normalcy and stability in the next five or 10 years. Which side is going to become conciliatory? What is the likelihood that Congress will enact major reforms that strengthen democratic institutions or detoxify social media?
Yet when we look away from our dysfunctional federal government, disconnect from social media, and talk with our neighbors directly, things seem more hopeful. Most Americans in the More in Common report are members of the “exhausted majority,” which is tired of the fighting and is willing to listen to the other side and compromise. Most Americans now see that social media is having a negative impact on the country, and are becoming more aware of its damaging effects on children.
Will we do anything about it?
When Tocqueville toured the United States in the 1830s, he was impressed by the American habit of forming voluntary associations to fix local problems, rather than waiting for kings or nobles to act, as Europeans would do. That habit is still with us today. In recent years, Americans have started hundreds of groups and organizations dedicated to building trust and friendship across the political divide, including BridgeUSA, Braver Angels (on whose board I serve), and many others listed at BridgeAlliance.us. We cannot expect Congress and the tech companies to save us. We must change ourselves and our communities.
What would it be like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? We know. It is a time of confusion and loss. But it is also a time to reflect, listen, and build.
This article appears in the May 2022 print edition with the headline “After Babel.”
29. Elon Musk launches hostile takeover bid of Twitter
Tesla and Twitter.
I wonder if he could radically alter the social media space.
Elon Musk launches hostile takeover bid of Twitter
The Tesla CEO, who recently became the social media company’s largest shareholder, is offering $54.20 per share.
By Aaron Gregg
Today at 7:34 a.m. EDT|Updated today at 7:44 a.m. EDT
Tech billionaire Elon Musk is seeking to buy the social media platform Twitter and make it a private company, promising to “unlock” the company’s “extraordinary potential,” the latest twist in a stunning multiweek saga.
In a securities filing dated Wednesday, Musk described his offer of $54.20 per share as “my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
The hostile takeover bid comes after a wild two weeks between Musk and Twitter, which was full of head fakes and at least one lawsuit.
The company’s share price closed on Wednesday at around $46 per share but it was up 10 percent in premarket trading Thursday morning. If Musk decided to unload his shares, it could send the company’s stock price sharply lower.
Through the course of this year, Musk quietly acquired 9.2 percent of the shares of Twitter, suddenly becoming its largest shareholder. Musk is a prolific Twitter user but also a frequent critic, and in late March he suggested in a tweet that he was considering launching his own social media company.
On April 5, Twitter surprised employees and investors by announcing that it was appointing Musk to its board of directors.
He was supposed to start his new position on April 9, a role that outraged some employees and led Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal to announce that Musk would join employees for an “ask me anything” event.
Over the weekend, Musk unloaded a series of sharply barbed tweets at the company, acting more as a bomb-throwing critic than as a board member.
At 6:33 a.m. Pacific on Saturday, Musk asked “Is Twitter dying?” He continued tweeting as the weekend went on, questioning Twitter’s most popular users, its San Francisco headquarters and its process for authenticating accounts. Before he was done, he made a lewd joke about removing the "W" from the company’s name.
Musk’s hostile takeover bid met mixed reactions from Twitter’s users Thursday morning. Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist, said Twitter is “too important” to be owned and controlled by a single person.
“The opposite should be happening," Wilson tweeted. "Twitter should be decentralized as a protocol that powers an ecosystem of communication products and services.”
Tech industry analyst Dan Ives said he suspects Musk will succeed in his bid to acquire Twitter, although questions remain around financing, regulations, and balancing Musk’s time between his two other companies, SpaceX and Tesla.
“The next step will be Twitter’s Board officially reviewing the Musk filing/letter and then it’s get-out-the-popcorn time as we expect many twists and turns in the weeks ahead as Twitter and Musk walk down this marriage path,” Ives wrote.
Reed Albergotti and Faiz Siddiqui contributed to this report.
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
