Quotes of the Day:
"We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."
- Epictetus
"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it."
- Robert Frost
"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue."
- Edward R. Murrow
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 19 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Its offensive slowed, Russia uses long-range missiles to devastating effect.
3. Russia’s Halting Progress in Attack on Ukraine Puts Focus on Resupply Efforts
4. Here are 5 reasons to keep a no-fly zone in Ukraine on the table
5. War in Ukraine: America is learning the art of humility
6. Opinion | Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine
7. Ukraine: Mariupol school sheltering civilians hit by bomb — live updates - Belarusian rail connections to Ukraine reportedly cut
8. Anonymous: How hackers are trying to undermine Putin
9. US veterans tell us why they are traveling thousands of miles to help in Ukraine
10. 'We win, they lose': America must end the danger Putin poses
11. Kyiv calling: famous Clash anthem reborn as call to arms
12. Russia throws untrained civilians from occupied Donbas into hot spots of its war in Ukraine
13. Owning A ShortWave Radio Is Once Again A Subversive Activity
14. How the West Can Win a Global Power Struggle
15. Week in politics: Consequences for China; Zelenskyy asks for help; Court confirmation
16. Army Officer Tulsi Gabbard Faces Ire for Peddling Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Biolabs
17. US Cyber Command wants more information operations specialists
Crowdsourcing PSYOP:
Beton (Бетон) - Kyiv Calling (official cover version of London Calling of The Clash)
Free Ukraine - Resistance Channel
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 19 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 19 (PUtin's war)
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 19
Frederick W. Kagan, George Barros, and Kateryna Stepanenko
March 19, 3 pm ET
Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine. That campaign has culminated. Russian forces continue to make limited advances in some parts of the theater but are very unlikely to be able to seize their objectives in this way. The doctrinally sound Russian response to this situation would be to end this campaign, accept a possibly lengthy operational pause, develop the plan for a new campaign, build up resources for that new campaign, and launch it when the resources and other conditions are ready. The Russian military has not yet adopted this approach. It is instead continuing to feed small collections of reinforcements into an ongoing effort to keep the current campaign alive. We assess that that effort will fail.
The ultimate fall of Mariupol is increasingly unlikely to free up enough Russian combat power to change the outcome of the initial campaign dramatically. Russian forces concentrated considerable combat power around Mariupol drawn from the 8th Combined Arms Army to the east and from the group of Russian forces in Crimea to the west. Had the Russians taken Mariupol quickly or with relatively few losses they would likely have been able to move enough combat power west toward Zaporizhiya and Dnipro to threaten those cities. The protracted siege of Mariupol is seriously weakening Russian forces on that axis, however. The confirmed death of the commander of the Russian 150th Motorized Rifle Division likely indicates the scale of the damage Ukrainian defenders are inflicting on those formations. The block-by-block fighting in Mariupol itself is costing the Russian military time, initiative, and combat power. If and when Mariupol ultimately falls the Russian forces now besieging it may not be strong enough to change the course of the campaign dramatically by attacking to the west.
Russian forces in the south appear to be focusing on a drive toward Kryvyi Rih, presumably to isolate and then take Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west but are unlikely to secure any of those cities in the coming weeks if at all. Kryvyi Rih is a city of more than 600,000 and heavily fortified according to the head of its military administration. Zaporizhiya and Dnipro are also large. The Russian military has been struggling to take Mariupol, smaller than any of them, since the start of the war with more combat power than it is currently pushing toward Kryvyi Rih. The Russian advance on that axis is thus likely to bog down as all other Russian advances on major cities have done.
The Russian military continues to commit small groups of reinforcements to localized fighting rather than concentrating them to launch new large-scale operations. Russia continues to commit units drawn from its naval infantry from all fleets, likely because those units are relatively more combat-ready than rank-and-file Russian regiments and brigades. The naval infantry belonging to the Black Sea Fleet is likely the largest single pool of ready reserve forces the Russian military has not yet committed. Much of that naval infantry has likely been embarked on amphibious landing ships off the Odesa coast since early in the war, presumably ready to land near Odesa as soon as Russian forces from Crimea secured a reliable ground line of communication (GLOC) from Crimea to Odesa. The likelihood that Russian forces from Crimea will establish such a GLOC in the near future is becoming remote, however, and the Russian military has apparently begun using elements of the Black Sea Fleet naval infantry to reinforce efforts to take Mariupol.
The culmination of the initial Russian campaign is creating conditions of stalemate throughout most of Ukraine. Russian forces are digging in around the periphery of Kyiv and elsewhere, attempting to consolidate political control over areas they currently occupy, resupplying and attempting to reinforce units in static positions, and generally beginning to set conditions to hold in approximately their current forward positions for an indefinite time. Maxar imagery of Russian forces digging trenches and revetments in Kyiv Oblast over the past several days supports this assessment.[1] Comments by Duma members about forcing Ukraine to surrender by exhaustion in May could reflect a revised Russian approach to ending this conflict on terms favorable to Moscow.
Stalemate will likely be very violent and bloody, especially if it protracts. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties. The World War I battles of the Somme, Verdun, and Passchendaele were all fought in conditions of stalemate and did not break the stalemate. If the war in Ukraine settles into a stalemate condition Russian forces will continue to bomb and bombard Ukrainian cities, devastating them and killing civilians, even as Ukrainian forces impose losses on Russian attackers and conduct counter-attacks of their own. The Russians could hope to break Ukrainians’ will to continue fighting under such circumstances by demonstrating Kyiv’s inability to expel Russian forces or stop their attacks even if the Russians are demonstrably unable to take Ukraine’s cities. Ukraine’s defeat of the initial Russian campaign may therefore set conditions for a devastating protraction of the conflict and a dangerous new period testing the resolve of Ukraine and the West. Continued and expanded Western support to Ukraine will be vital to seeing Ukraine through that new period.
Key Takeaways:
- We now assess that the initial Russian campaign to seize Ukraine’s capital and major cities and force regime change has failed;
- Russian forces continue efforts to restore momentum to this culminated campaign, but those efforts will likely also fail;
- Russian troops will continue trying to advance to within effective artillery range of the center of Kyiv, but prospects for their success are unclear;
- The war will likely descend into a phase of bloody stalemate that could last for weeks or months;
- Russia will expand efforts to bombard Ukrainian civilians in order to break Ukrainians’ will to continue fighting (at which the Russians will likely fail);
- The most dangerous current Russian advance is from Kherson north toward Kryvyi Rih in an effort to isolate Zaporizhiya and Dnipro from the west. Russian forces are unlikely to be able to surround or take Kryvyi Rih in the coming days, and may not be able to do so at all without massing much larger forces for the effort than they now have available on that axis;
- The Russians appear to have abandoned plans to attack Odesa at least in the near term.
The Ukrainian General Staff continues to report Russian efforts to find and deploy reinforcements to fight in Ukraine as well as continuing problems of morale and discipline in the Russian military. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 19 that Russia was redeploying elements of the 40th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade and the 155th Separate Naval Infantry Brigade, both from the Eastern Military District, to “replenish the losses of the Eastern Military District group” in Belarus.[2] The Ukrainian General Staff reports that Russian soldiers are continuing to desert and refuse orders.[3] The General Staff renewed warnings on March 19 that the Russians might use false flag attacks or other staged provocations to justify further conscription and mobilization in Russia.[4] Such actions would not generate additional usable combat power for many months. The Russian military might even struggle to train new conscripts to standard given losses, including those sustained by the 437th Training Regiment as reported in our previous update.[5]
The Russian military is increasing its aerial, missile, and artillery bombardment of populated Ukrainian areas as its conventional mechanized advances culminate.[6] Russia announced the use of its Kinzhal hypersonic missile to strike an ammunition depot in Ivano-Frankivsk on March 18.[7] The use of such an expensive, rare, and high-end system to hit an ammunition depot was likely signaling and demonstrating intent and capability to escalate rather than seeking to achieve a concrete military objective. The Kinzhal is a dual-use missile that can carry a nuclear payload, although the one used in Ukraine bore a conventional high-explosive payload.[8] Its use likely signaled Moscow’s willingness to consider using low-yield nuclear weapons in addition to demonstrating the capability to use hypersonic weapons.
We do not report in detail on the deliberate Russian targeting of civilian infrastructure and attacks on unarmed civilians, which are 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.
Russian forces are engaged in four primary efforts at this time:
- Main effort—Kyiv (comprised of three subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv;
- Supporting effort 1a—Luhansk Oblast;
- Supporting effort 2—Mariupol and Donetsk Oblast; and
- Supporting effort 3—Kherson and advances northward and westward.
Main effort—Kyiv axis: Russian operations on the Kyiv axis are aimed at encircling the city from the northwest, west, and east.
Subordinate main effort along the west bank of the Dnipro
The Russians have likely abandoned plans to encircle Kyiv from the west or to assault to seize the city from the west in the coming weeks. They are instead likely seeking to set conditions for an expanded artillery and missile bombardment of the city by moving into effective artillery range of its center.
Russian forces remained in a defensive posture to the west and northwest of Kyiv. Satellite imagery provided by Maxar Technologies shows Russian armored vehicles dug into defensive revetments near Antonov Airfield as of March 17.
Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies
Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies
Russian 152 millimeter self-propelled howitzers have a maximum range of close to 25 kilometers.[9] Russian forces are within that distance of Kyiv’s center in some places, but consolidated Russian positions around Antonov Airfield, for example, are outside the optimal range ring for targeting central Kyiv. The Russians reportedly attempted to cross the Irpin River and seize the town of Mochun, just inside this range-ring, on March 18 but were defeated.[10] The suburb of Brovary on the eastern bank of the Dnipro is within range, a fact that may help explain the Russians’ tenacity in trying to secure their positions in that location.
Subordinate supporting effort — Chernihiv and Sumy axis
There were no significant changes to the situation on this axis in the past 24 hours. We have updated our map to show expanded Russian areas of controlled terrain based on more detailed reporting from the Ukrainian General Staff and other sources. The expanded areas of assessed Russian control in our map of March 19 DO NOT INDICATE THAT THE RUSSIANS HAVE MADE FURTHER GAINS, ONLY THAT WE HAVE RECEIVED SUFFICIENTLY DETAILED AND RELIABLE REPORTING OF PREVIOUS GAINS TO ADJUST OUR MAP. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 18 that up to three Russian brigades remained in defensive positions around Chernihiv city.[11] The Ukrainian General Staff also noted that roughly three Russian brigades remain in positions in the eastern suburbs of Kyiv on March 18 but had taken no significant actions in the past 24 hours.[12]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv:
Russian forces, mainly drawn from the 6th Combined Arms Army and the Northern Fleet, did not engage in notable activity around Kharkiv City on March 19.[13] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on March 18 that the Russians were reinforcing their positions near the city with two elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army and the 1st Guards Tank Army.[14] The General Staff reports that Russian forces continue to press Sumy and Izyum and warns that they are preparing a renewed drive from Kharkiv west toward Kyiv and Poltava, among other locations at some unspecified time.[15]
Supporting Effort #1a—Luhansk Oblast:
Russian forces continued their assault on Rubizhne, northwest of Severodonetsk, on March 18 and 19 and have secured areas in the western and northwestern outskirts according to the Ukrainian General Staff.[16] They are also continuing offensive operations at Popasna, southwest of Severodonetsk, likely in an effort to blockade Severodonetsk itself.[17]
Supporting Effort #2—Mariupol and Donetsk Oblast:
Russian forces continued their grinding block-by-block advance into Mariupol on March 19, although without apparently making much new progress.[18] The Russians continue to attack civilian targets with air, missile, artillery, and even tank main gun rounds.[19]
Supporting Effort #3—Kherson and advances northward and westwards:
Russian forces appear to have abandoned efforts to cross the Southern Bug and establish a ground line of communication toward Odesa for the time being. The Ukrainian General Staff reports that Russian troops near Mykolayiv focused on establishing logistics systems but did not conduct major offensive operations on March 19.[20] Russian forces have instead continued their advance toward Kryvyi Rih, hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, about 130 kilometers west of Zaporizhiya.[21] The head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration described the situation and recent Russian efforts to advance on the city on March 19.[22] Russian forces attempted to land an aircraft at the city’s airport, he reported, but failed. They then began advancing with armored columns of 10-20 vehicles each (likely the mechanized companies of a one or more battalion tactical groups). They have since formed an extended front line that they are fortifying, he said.
Immediate items to watch:
- Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol or force the city to capitulate within the coming weeks;
- Russia will expand its air, missile, and artillery bombardments of Ukrainian cities;
- Russian forces will likely continue efforts to reach Kryvyi Rih and isolate Zaporizhiya;
- Russian forces around Kyiv will continue efforts to push forward into effective artillery range of the center of the city;
- Russian troops will continue efforts to reduce Chernihiv and Sumy.
[5] Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 18 | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org)
[8] Kinzhal | Missile Threat (csis.org)
[9] 2S19 152-mm Self-Propelled Howitzer (globalsecurity.org)
[22] https://t dot me/stranaua/31783
2. Its offensive slowed, Russia uses long-range missiles to devastating effect.
Is this the future of war? WIll long range missiles become the main weapons of war (with the ability to bring massive devastation on population centers?). Is a combination of influence, cyber, and long range missiles the combination we need to focus on being able to defend against?
Its offensive slowed, Russia uses long-range missiles to devastating effect.
March 19, 2022, 8:15 p.m. ET
Ukrainian soldiers cleared out rubble from a military barracks building in Mykolaiv earlier this month.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Even as the Russian ground advance on key targets including Kyiv and Odessa remains stalled, it has used long-range rockets in recent days to devastating effect against the Ukrainian military and infrastructure.
As the war grinds on, the strikes are a reminder of how Russia’s vastly superior armaments give it a distinct advantage, even as what was meant to be a lightning blitz to take out the Ukrainian government turns into a grueling war of attrition.
In the first week of the war, it is not clear how many Russian strikes hit their targets, but Piotr Lukasiewicz, an analyst at Polityka Insight, a Warsaw-based research institute, said that they did serious damage to Ukraine’s command and control centers.
“They disabled an important headquarters and communications center in the beginning with precision strikes,” he said.
Just as the Russians are plagued by logistical and resupply issues, the Ukrainians are struggling to replace the stationary systems that the Russians have destroyed or disabled.
“Gradually Ukrainians are losing their radars or warning systems,” Mr. Lukasiewicz said.
The Russians also have shown that their weapons can hit with precision. A strike on a barracks in Mykolaiv on Friday that was housing 200 marines, killing dozens, was among the deadliest of the war. It also came with little warning, according to the mayor, Oleksandr Senkevich, with no air alarms sounding. The strike raised questions about Ukrainian tactics and why they would have concentrated so many soldiers in one location on the front lines.
A Ukrainian civilian helped soldiers clear the rubble and search for bodies and survivors on Saturday at a military school hit by Russian fire this week.
Mr. Lukasiewicz said that Ukraine, like Poland, still bases many of its troops and command and control in the same locations where they were based when it was a part of the Soviet Union. This has given the Russians another advantage.
“For them to obtain the exact locations of barracks, headquarters and military units would simply involve going through the archives,” he said.
The expansion of targets to the west, he said, was a pretty obvious strategy: fighting the troops in front of you while trying to cut their supply lines and communications systems.
In recent days, Russian cruise missiles fired from the Black Sea have struck a sprawling training base just 12 miles from the Polish border and, separately, a location near the Lviv airport used to repair MiG fighter jets — a staple of what is left of the Ukrainian air force. In both instances, the Russians did not fire a single missile but barrages.
The Ukrainians claimed to have shot down more than a dozen, but a number got through. The same is true regarding recent missile strikes on airports in other parts of western and central Ukraine.
At the same time, Russia claimed on Saturday that it had used a hypersonic missile to hit an underground warehouse for missiles and aviation ammunition in a western Ukrainian village. If confirmed, that would be the first battlefield use of the weapon that flies at superfast speeds and can easily evade American missile defense systems.
The Ukrainians said that the type of missile had yet to be determined and a video of the strike released by the Russian ministry of defense did not clearly demonstrate that it was indeed a hypersonic missile.
Also on Saturday, an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs, Anton Gerashchenko, claimed that Russia, for the first time in Kyiv, was using “projectiles that descend on parachutes.” Those bombs, unlike laser targeted long-range missiles, are designed to inflict maximum damage.
Benjamin Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, said that the recent strikes underscore how Russia’s targeting of civilians is part of their strategy.
“These strikes confirm that they do have precision capabilities, as we’d assumed,” he said in an email message. “Which also confirms that their use of indiscriminate strikes in cities is not because they don’t have precision munitions. It is deliberate, also as we’d assumed.”
In just over three weeks, Russia has launched more than 1,000 missiles and rockets at Ukrainian targets, according to the Pentagon. The vast majority, according to British officials, have been “dumb bombs” targeting civilians.
John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, warned recently that as Russian ground forces found their advances stymied by fierce Ukrainian resistance, they would rely more on long range cruise missiles and other rockets.
After the training base north of Lviv near the Polish border was hit, he said, Russia was doing more than just “sending a message.”
“They are clearly expanding some of their target sets here,” Mr. Kirby said.
While Russia has hit military targets with precision strikes, it has also destroyed wide swaths of civilian areas in cities across Ukraine.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
While experts have been puzzled by Russia’s failure to gain complete control over the Ukrainian skies, they are certainly dominant — Russian surface-to-air missile capabilities can reach anywhere in Ukraine, according to military analysts. Russia is believed to fly some 200 sorties per day while Ukraine flies five to 10.
The vulnerability of Ukraine’s military infrastructure is why President Volodymyr Zelensky has for weeks been asking NATO to “close the skies” with a no-fly zone — a step the alliance will not take. Mr. Zelensky acknowledged recently that such a move was unlikely, but stepped up his calls for air defense systems to help blunt the impact of the Russian aerial bombardment.
Slovakia has agreed to provide its S-300 air defense systems — which can shoot down cruise missiles — and MiG-29s to Ukraine “immediately” if it can get replacements in a timely manner, Slovakia’s defense minister, Jaroslav Nad, told reporters in a joint news conference with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on March 17. Mr. Austin said there was no agreement to announce but that the discussions were an indication of the urgent work being done to help Ukraine defend itself.
Russia’s heavy use of missiles in the war also suggest some weaknesses that favor the Ukrainians.
These missiles, fired from hundreds of miles away, have no ability to hit mobile defense systems, according to a panel of military fellows at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan research group. That means “Russia has almost no ability to prevent mobile resupply,” the panel said.
Further, it is unclear how long Russia could sustain barrages of multiple cruise missiles aimed at a single target.
Dr. Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow for sea power and missile defense at the Royal United Services Institute, said Russia’s supply of cruise missiles may be limited. One report, he wrote recently, has suggested about 120 were produced in 2018.
“I’d expect the cruise missile arsenal to be large but not limitless,” he said in a statement. “They would have to be careful about what they hit.”
3. Russia’s Halting Progress in Attack on Ukraine Puts Focus on Resupply Efforts
Logistics remain a key constant in all forms of warfare.
Russia’s Halting Progress in Attack on Ukraine Puts Focus on Resupply Efforts
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suspends activities of 11 political parties seen as close to the Kremlin
By Alan Cullison
Updated March 20, 2022 8:40 am ET
KYIV, Ukraine—Russia appears to be preparing to reset its forces after more than three brutal weeks of combat and limited ground gains in its assault on Ukraine, while the situation in the embattled port city of Mariupol worsened.
Ukraine’s military said early Sunday that Russian forces were largely busy replenishing losses in people and equipment with otherwise little movement by the invading army. Russia also has been mobilizing people in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, occupied by Russia, to reinforce its military, according to the Ukrainian armed forces.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that it fired a number of long-range weapons at targets in Ukraine, including its new Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile. It is the second time in as many days Russia said it has employed the weapon Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled in 2018. Western and Ukrainian experts have cast doubt on Russia’s initial claim of using the sophisticated missile.
Russia’s ministry also said it struck a military base in Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region where it alleged foreign fighters were located.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivering a video address in Kyiv, Ukraine.
PHOTO: HANDOUT/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky Sunday said his country’s military was imposing heavy losses on Russian troops, but added “We are well aware that Russia has just a bottomless human resource and a lot of equipment, missiles and bombs.”
Mr. Zelensky, meanwhile, suspended activities of 11 political parties with ties to Russia Sunday, which Ukrainian officials believe serve as fronts for Kremlin interests. Moscow has been seeking to install pro-Russian leaders in areas it has conquered since the start of its invasion.
Ukrainian officials have long considered some of them to be fronts for the Kremlin. The leader of one of them, Viktor Medvedchuk, escaped from his home where he was under house arrest in Kyiv days after Russia’s invasion began last month, according to Ukrainian officials.
In Mariupol, where fighting has reached the streets, Ukrainian officials said an art school where around 400 people had been sheltering was bombed by Russia, trapping people beneath the rubble. Their condition was uncertain.
People fleeing from Mariupol in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A damaged church after Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine.
PHOTO: EVGENIY MALOLETKA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mariupol’s City Council on Sunday said about 4,000 civilians in the city have been killed since the start of the fighting. It also accused Russian forces of forcibly evacuating residents of the city’s Livoberezhny district to Russia and into the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk, the pro-Russian breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
“People who are being forcibly transported onto Russian territory are having their Ukrainian passports seized and given papers that have no legal weight and are not accepted in the civilized world,” the council said in a statement posted to Telegram on Sunday.
Russia hasn’t commented on the reports of forced evacuations from Mariupol.
Mariupol is a strategic objective for Moscow as it attempts to open an overland corridor to the annexed region of Crimea and shift the momentum in its three-week-old invasion. During weeks of bombardment and attack, Ukrainians said they had kept Russian forces at bay on Mariupol’s outskirts, but that changed Saturday, Ukrainian officials said.
“Fierce battles between the defenders of Mariupol and the occupier continue, including on the city streets,” said a report on the Telegram channel of the volunteer group Azov Battalion, whose members have been fighting alongside regular government forces inside the city.
The capture of Mariupol would be a victory for Russia, which has so far failed to take any big Ukrainian cities since the start of its invasion.
People who were evacuated from Irpin in Kyiv, Ukraine.
PHOTO: ROMAN PILIPEY/SHUTTERSTOCK
An apartment block destroyed by a Russian strike in Kyiv, Ukraine.
PHOTO: CHRISTOPHER OCCHICONE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russia anticipated a speedy capture of Mariupol, a traditionally Russian-speaking city, which would have freed up its forces to encircle Ukrainian army units in eastern regions and allowed others to push farther toward the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. But the city has been a hard target, and its defenders have endured weeks of shelling and siege.
Russian military leaders have been desperate for a symbolic victory to offer Mr. Putin, analysts say, and U.S. officials have detected indications of tension in the Russian intelligence and defense apparatuses over the lack of military progress.
“The commanders on the Russian side have to be desperate for a ‘win’—they want to show Putin results,” said Emily Harding, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst and Senate Intelligence Committee staff member now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington. “Conquering Mariupol would give them something to show for the heavy losses they’ve taken.”
Russian invasion
Areas no longer controlled by Ukraine as of Friday
Direction of invasion forces
RUSSIA
Controlled by or allied to Russia
Primary refugee crossing locations
Chernobyl
Not in operation
Ukraine territory, recognized by Putin as independent
Nuclear facilities
BELARUS
Kharkiv
Rivne
POLAND
Kyiv
Luhansk
Khmelnitsky
Dnipro
Lviv
Donetsk
UKRAINE
Convtrolled by
separatists
Zaporizhzhia
Mariupol
South
Ukraine
TRANSNISTRIA
Sea of Azov
Kherson
MOLDOVA
Odessa
ROMANIA
CRIMEA
Sevastopol
Black Sea
200 miles
200 km
Sources: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Russia-controlled area in eastern Ukraine); Dr. Phillip Karber, Potomac Foundation (Russian incursions, refugee crossing locations); International Atomic Energy Agency, Energoatom (nuclear facilities)
Max Rust and Emma Brown/The Wall Street Journal
Kyiv has tried to relieve Mariupol, so far unsuccessfully. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Ukraine’s president, said there was no way for Ukrainian forces to break Russia’s siege, addressing criticism the government isn’t doing enough.
Mariupol’s proximity to the Russian border means Moscow could easily bring significant air power to bear on it from nearby military hubs, such as Crimea and the southern Russian city of Rostov, he said.
The closest Ukrainian units to Mariupol are more than 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, away, he said, and the vast treeless steppe around the city provides no cover from Russian attacks.
A humanitarian corridor has been agreed to evacuate residents from Mariupol and to send aid, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Sunday. It is one of seven humanitarian corridors agreed for Sunday, she said. Those corridors have at times had to be abandoned after coming under fire.
Local residents carrying water from a warehouse on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine.
PHOTO: ALEXEI ALEXANDROV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Parts of the Russian offensive have been bogged down by poor planning and logistics, and forces have encountered fierce Ukrainian counterattacks. Some of Russia’s ground advances stalled this week in the midst of mounting casualties. Four Russian generals have died, the Ukrainian government said. Some U.S. government calculations estimate that as many as 7,000 Russian troops have been killed in action, though officials caution that those are uncertain estimates.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Saturday that given Russia’s operation has “stalled on a number of fronts,” it made sense Moscow was working to boost the capability going forward. He added, though, that the U.S. hasn’t seen concrete evidence of that taking place.
Mr. Zelensky called on Russia to negotiate and said that in the coming days he would address other nations such as Israel, Italy and Japan, just as he addressed the U.S., Canada, Germany and Switzerland.
“It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine,” he said. “Otherwise, Russia’s losses will be so huge that several generations won’t be enough to rebound…Ukraine’s proposals are on the table.”
—Matthew Luxmoore contributed to this article.
4. Here are 5 reasons to keep a no-fly zone in Ukraine on the table
Excerpts:
First, according to the intelligence community, Putin will likely "double down" rather than be deterred from further aggression, so whatever atrocities have been committed, it could be much worse in the coming weeks.
Second, while the United States and its allies try to draw a bright line between indirect confrontation—providing weapons and economic sanctions—versus direct conflict, Putin may not view the situation the same way.
Third, while a no-fly zone policy incurs significant risks, there are several steps on the escalatory ladder between that and World War III.
Fourth, by ruling out a no-fly zone policy now, the United States loses potential leverage for a future settlement. Research suggests that sanctions, in and of themselves, rarely force states to abandon core security concerns.
Finally, there is a question of global strategic precedents. The United States is entering a new and more dangerous period, and many of its adversaries are or will soon be armed with nuclear weapons.
Here are 5 reasons to keep a no-fly zone in Ukraine on the table
A no-fly zone policy as an option retains American leverage
Published March 16, 2022 2:00pm EDT
In an impassioned speech Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked Congress whether it was "too much to ask" for the United States to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine. So far, though, the answer is yes.
While the United States has, for the most part, been willing to entertain many forms of support to Ukraine, senior administration and congressional leaders have categorically ruled out declaring a no-fly zone over the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivers a virtual address to Congress by video at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2022. (Drew Angerer, Pool via AP) (Drew Angerer, Pool via AP)
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, when asked about the no-fly zone, cautioned that the United States wants to "end this war in Ukraine, not start a larger one. Senators Marco Rubio and Joni Ernest similarly warned that declaring a no-fly zone "would be World War III." Prominent journalists have echoed these sentiments, writing that the United States should "banish the phrase ‘no-fly zone’" because it would "kick-start World War III." Noted defense analysts have agreed.
All are essentially arguing that a no-fly zone policy is not a passive measure, that it involves shooting down Russian aircraft and attacking Russian air defenses. It is, in effect, war. Given that Russia is a nuclear adversary, therefore the thinking goes, the policy of a no-fly zone should be off the table. While American policymakers are rightfully hesitant to implement a no-fly zone policy, however, it could be a strategic mistake to say so in public.
First, according to the intelligence community, Putin will likely "double down" rather than be deterred from further aggression, so whatever atrocities have been committed, it could be much worse in the coming weeks. Russian forces have already shelled civilian targets indiscriminately and attacked a nuclear power plant, risking a nuclear catastrophe. Putin has already questioned the "future of Ukrainian statehood" and threatened using nuclear arms—a threat that top Russian analysts believe is plausible.
In other words, while there should be a high threshold for the United States and its allies to ever risk direct confrontation with Russia, at this point, the United States cannot be guaranteed that Russia will not cross that line.
Second, while the United States and its allies try to draw a bright line between indirect confrontation—providing weapons and economic sanctions—versus direct conflict, Putin may not view the situation the same way. After all, perhaps from the Russian perspective, if the American missile shoots down a Russian aircraft, would it matter whether an American or a Ukrainian pulls the trigger? Moreover, Putin already likened the West’s economy-crushing sanctions to "a declaration of war." And in fairness, the extent and gravity of the West’s sanctions in the end may have a larger, longer lasting impact on Russia than whatever comes of a potential no-fly zone policy.
Third, while a no-fly zone policy incurs significant risks, there are several steps on the escalatory ladder between that and World War III. The Russians first must choose to challenge the no-fly zone. If they do, the United States and its allies must then shoot at the Russian forces. And then, the Russians need to respond in kind. From there, the question becomes whether the violence spirals out of control or remains tit-for-tat. While escalation is possible, both sides arguably also have the incentive to keep the conflict limited to Ukraine itself, if only to avoid mutual annihilation.
Fourth, by ruling out a no-fly zone policy now, the United States loses potential leverage for a future settlement. Research suggests that sanctions, in and of themselves, rarely force states to abandon core security concerns. Indeed, some analysts have argued that Putin likely baked in at least some of the cost of sanctions into his calculations to invade Ukraine. Consequently, pushing Putin to reverse course in the country might require threatening something more, which could include direct intervention.
Finally, there is a question of global strategic precedents. The United States is entering a new and more dangerous period, and many of its adversaries are or will soon be armed with nuclear weapons. This currently applies to Russia, but also China, North Korea and, potentially, at some point, Iran as well. American policy vis-à-vis Ukraine, therefore, sends a broader message to these other adversaries: If the United States rules out options—like a no-fly zone policy—a priori, then it could send a powerful signal to other nefarious actors that if one has nuclear weapons, one can shield oneself from any American military action.
As an operational choice, the United States and its allies may not want to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine right now. Such a decision would likely come at the cost of American lives, potentially a lot of them. It would also incur risk, including potentially nuclear escalation. There are a slew of logistical and operational factors that would need to weighed as well. All these factors may make an indirect approach of supplying Ukraine with anti-aircraft systems the preferable tactical option for the moment.
As a matter of strategic policy, though, American leaders should leave a no-fly zone on the table. Given its behavior over the last several weeks, Russia may force the United States’ hand. And even if the United States never implements it, keeping a no-fly zone policy as an option retains American leverage and avoids dangerous global precedents. Indeed, the only worse option to implementing a no-fly zone may be ruling out such a policy entirely.
5. War in Ukraine: America is learning the art of humility
Excerpts:
Today Washington is holding back, resisting the emotional pleas of Zelensky to use that military clout. It's sending weapons, intelligence and cyber-support. But for the moment it won't do more.
America knows it could impose, and most probably enforce, a no-fly zone. It has the jets and missiles and pilots to do so. But, as the White House says repeatedly, mobilising the might of the Pentagon won't necessarily end this war, it might make it worse. The more America leads, the greater the risk that Putin can sell this to his own people as a fight between Russia and the US.
Which is why you won't hear this White House talk about regime change, or democracy, or even freedom in Russia.
...
"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nature and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," the newly re-elected president declared. Talk about hubris.
Yet the White House also understands the risks of not being more assertive. It knows that not intervening could lead to the deaths of countless more Ukrainian civilians, and President Putin may strike a Nato country anyway. So it walks a tightrope with potentially horrifying consequences, recognising that there are no good answers. The US is left to help Ukrainians from the sidelines. And maybe that is all they can do.
It is enough to make anyone more humble.
War in Ukraine: America is learning the art of humility
By Katty Kay
US special correspondent
Published
1 hour ago
America is learning the art of humility. That's a good thing for the rest of the world.
The country that began this century by invading not one but two countries, has become more modest in the face of the nightmare that is Ukraine. Forget shock and awe, this is the era of caution and apprehension. That's what having no good options will do for you.
Friday's two-hour phone call with China's President Xi, superpower to superpower, was a sign of how hard it will be for America to stop this war. The US's leverage over China is limited, and readouts from both sides suggest the call didn't achieve much. But it was part of an orchestrated diplomatic strategy that contrasts with much of the first year of Joe Biden's presidency.
After the fiasco of the Afghan withdrawal last summer, America lost credibility with its European allies. US intelligence looked unprepared, and the operation of leaving was staggeringly incompetent. What's more, European diplomats complained, America didn't really consult with allies. America pulled out on its own precipitous timetable, leaving countries that still had forces and personnel in the country scrambling. When some Europeans said it would be smart to leave a residual Nato force, the White House ignored the pleas.
That heavy-handed mission was followed by another. In September, the White House announced a nuclear submarine security pact between Australia, Britain and the US. The pact left the French, who had been negotiating their own sub sale to the Australians, out in the cold. Worse, the Elysee Palace said it learned of the new deal from the press. It was a masterclass in how not to handle your oldest ally. The French were so furious that President Biden apologised and admitted the US had been clumsy.
But the damage was done.
By the autumn of 2021 Europeans were disappointed in the Biden administration and felt their hopes that a post-Trump America would be more collegial were ill-founded. When Washington started ringing the alarm bell about Russia and Ukraine, Europeans weren't in much mood to listen. "War-mongering" was how one EU diplomat described it to me.
Whether it was the lesson of Afghanistan or the nature of this particularly difficult catastrophe, we don't know, but the White House handled this crisis very differently.
From the start it has consulted with its allies, many of whom were sceptical. There are reports that US diplomats approached Europeans as equals not subordinates. The administration shared highly secret intelligence in a manner that was unprecedented. In the months that led up to the invasion senior White House officials made multiple trips to meet their European counterparts. President Biden made regular phone calls to European leaders.
This wasn't Iraq in 2002, it wasn't Trump's America First, it wasn't Afghanistan in 2021. This was genuine alliance building.
On 27 January there was an indication that the shuttle diplomacy was bearing fruit. A full month before the invasion, during an otherwise ordinary press briefing, the White House spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, announced that German Chancellor Olaf Sholz would visit the White House on 7 February.
Securing that visit of the brand new German leader was an indication that the administration both anticipated what was coming, and knew what was needed: German co-operation. A visit to the White House is a coup for any foreign leader, it's a useful weapon of soft power. Yes, President Zelensky's articulate appeals also played a big part in shifting German policy, but US diplomacy helped win German support.
Beyond diplomacy, there is a new recognition here of Washington's military limits, a realisation that force won't get America everything it wants, however strong its army. That's an unusual position for the world's biggest military.
When Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait in 1990, the US rallied the world to put boots on the ground to get him out. In 1999 President Clinton ordered Nato jets to conduct airstrikes in Kosovo. After 9/11, the US strong-armed a coalition of the unwilling to invade Iraq. In 2011, the US military was part of the operation that helped topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Today Washington is holding back, resisting the emotional pleas of Zelensky to use that military clout. It's sending weapons, intelligence and cyber-support. But for the moment it won't do more.
America knows it could impose, and most probably enforce, a no-fly zone. It has the jets and missiles and pilots to do so. But, as the White House says repeatedly, mobilising the might of the Pentagon won't necessarily end this war, it might make it worse. The more America leads, the greater the risk that Putin can sell this to his own people as a fight between Russia and the US.
Which is why you won't hear this White House talk about regime change, or democracy, or even freedom in Russia.
I reread President Bush's second inaugural address, delivered in 2005, at the height of the Iraq war, when neo-conservatives ran US foreign policy.
"It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nature and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," the newly re-elected president declared. Talk about hubris.
Yet the White House also understands the risks of not being more assertive. It knows that not intervening could lead to the deaths of countless more Ukrainian civilians, and President Putin may strike a Nato country anyway. So it walks a tightrope with potentially horrifying consequences, recognising that there are no good answers. The US is left to help Ukrainians from the sidelines. And maybe that is all they can do.
It is enough to make anyone more humble.
6. Opinion | Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine
Excerpts:
Cyberwar has been playing a trick on us for decades — and especially in the past weeks. It keeps arriving for the first time, again and again, and simultaneously slipping away into the future. We’ve been stuck in a loop, doomed to repeat the same hackneyed debate, chasing sci-fi ghosts.
To harden our defenses, we must first recognize cyberoperations for what they have been, are and will be: an integral part of 21st-century statecraft. The United States has a unique competitive advantage through its vibrant tech and cybersecurity industry. No other country comes even close to matching the U.S. public-private partnership in attributing and countering adversarial intelligence operations. These collaborative efforts must continue.
The contours of digital conflict are slowly emerging from the shadows, as digitally upgraded intelligence operations at the edge of war: espionage, sabotage, covert action and counterintelligence, full of deception and disinformation.
Opinion | Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine
Guest Essay
Why You Haven’t Heard About the Secret Cyberwar in Ukraine
March 18, 2022
Credit...Illustration by Erik Carter
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Mr. Rid is a professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies researching the risks of information technology in conflict.
For decades now, we have heard this refrain from the American defense establishment. We were warned that the next big state-on-state military confrontation could start with a flash-bang cyberattack: power outages in major cities, air traffic control going haywire, fighter jets bricked.
In 2022 the war came but seemingly without the cyberapocalypse and waves of pummeling digital strikes we expected. “Cyberattacks on Ukraine Are Conspicuous by Their Absence,” headlined The Economist a week into the war.
Such claims, however, are misleading. Cyberwar has come, is happening now and will most likely escalate. But the digital confrontation is playing out in the shadows, as inconspicuous as it is insidious. Several interlocking dynamics of cyberoperations in war stand out from what we have seen in Ukraine so far.
First, some cyberattacks are meant to be visible and, in effect, distract from the stealthier and more dangerous sabotage. On Feb. 15 and 16, Ukrainian banks suffered major denial-of-service attacks, meaning their websites were rendered inaccessible. Western authorities swiftly attributed the attacks to Russia’s intelligence service, and Google is now helping protect 150 websites in Ukraine from such attacks. The Anonymous collective declared cyberwar against the Russian government soon after the attack and obtained a trove of data from a German subsidiary of Rosneft, a major Russian state-owned oil firm. Ukraine’s besieged government has embraced the idea of a crowdsourced I.T. army.
But these attacks and the decentralized volunteerism are simply a distraction. In fact, often the most damaging cyberoperations are covert and deniable by design. In the heat of war, it’s harder to keep track of who is conducting what attack on whom, especially when it is advantageous to both victim and perpetrator to keep the details concealed.
The day the Russian invasion started, ViaSat, a provider of high-speed satellite broadband services, suffered an outage. The services of Ka-Sat, one of its satellites, were seriously affected. The satellite covers 55 countries, predominantly in Europe, and provides fast internet connectivity. Among the affected Ka-Sat users: the Ukrainian armed forces, the Ukrainian police and Ukraine’s intelligence service.
ViaSat later revealed that the incident started in Ukraine and then spread, affecting 5,800 wind turbines in Germany and tens of thousands of modems across Europe as well. But details on the origin of this attack remain elusive, as does attribution. The Ukrainian security establishment, of course, has no interest in revealing the details of what might be a successful command-and-control attack in the middle of an existential war. Victor Zhora, a senior Ukrainian cybersecurity official, only generally acknowledged that the ViaSat incident caused “a really huge loss in communications” at the beginning of the war.
A week into the war, the Ukrainian newspaper Pravda published the names, registration numbers and unit affiliations of 120,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. Such large leaks can have powerful psychological effects on the exposed entity, which feels vulnerable and exposed.
Once again, though, the origin of the leak remains unclear. The material could have been procured from a Russian whistle-blower or taken through a network breach. Leaked files — in contrast to hacked machines — rarely contain clues for attribution. Some of the most consequential computer network breaches may stay covert for years, even decades. Cyberwar is here, but we don’t always know who is launching the shots.
Second, cyberoperations in wartime are not as useful as bombs and missiles when it comes to inflicting the maximum amount of physical and psychological damage on the enemy. An explosive charge is more likely to create long-term harm than malicious software.
A similar logic applies to the coverage of hostilities and the psychological toll that media reporting can have on the public. There’s no bigger story than the violent effects of war: victims of missile attacks, families sheltering underground, residential buildings and bridges reduced to piles of smoking rubble. In comparison, the sensationalist appeal of cyberattacks is significantly lower. Largely invisible, they will struggle to break into the news cycle, their immediate effect greatly diminished.
We saw these dynamics play out in the Russian destructive malware “wiper” attacks of Feb. 23 and 24. Just hours before the invasion started, two cyberattacks hit Ukrainian targets: HermeticWizard, which affected several organizations, and IsaacWiper, which breached a Ukrainian government network. A third destructive malware attack was discovered on March 14, CaddyWiper, again targeting only some systems in a few unidentified Ukrainian organizations. It is unclear if these wiping attacks had any meaningful tactical effect against the victims, and the incidents never broke into the news cycle, especially when compared to the physical invasion of Ukraine by tanks and artillery.
Cyberwar has been playing a trick on us for decades — and especially in the past weeks. It keeps arriving for the first time, again and again, and simultaneously slipping away into the future. We’ve been stuck in a loop, doomed to repeat the same hackneyed debate, chasing sci-fi ghosts.
To harden our defenses, we must first recognize cyberoperations for what they have been, are and will be: an integral part of 21st-century statecraft. The United States has a unique competitive advantage through its vibrant tech and cybersecurity industry. No other country comes even close to matching the U.S. public-private partnership in attributing and countering adversarial intelligence operations. These collaborative efforts must continue.
The contours of digital conflict are slowly emerging from the shadows, as digitally upgraded intelligence operations at the edge of war: espionage, sabotage, covert action and counterintelligence, full of deception and disinformation.
Thomas Rid (@RidT) is a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and the author of “Cyber War Will Not Take Place.”
7. Ukraine: Mariupol school sheltering civilians hit by bomb — live updates - Belarusian rail connections to Ukraine reportedly cut
Excerpts:
Belarusian rail connections to Ukraine reportedly cut
Belarusian railway workers have reportedly cut off all rail connections between their country and Ukraine.
Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin thanked Belarusian railway workers for this claimed act of sabotage on Saturday.
"As of today, I can say there is no rail traffic between Belarus and Ukraine," Kamyshin was quoted as saying by Ukraine's Unian news agency. Kamyshin said that he would not give further details.
Franak Viacorka, advisor to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, tweeted about the incident and said that it had been confirmed by Belarusian railway workers, while declining to provide details.
Although Russia has moved many of its troops and military equipment into Ukraine through Belarus, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has not committed Belarusian troops to the offensive.
Ukraine: Mariupol school sheltering civilians hit by bomb — live updates
© Provided by DW Russian forces have stepped up their shelling of urban areas in Ukraine according to British military intelligence officials
- Zelenskyy says "war crimes" in Mariupol will be remembered for centuries
- Belarusian railway workers reportedly cut connections to Ukraine
- Australia announces increased support for Ukraine
- China says it's on the "right side of history"
This article was last updated at 10:50 UTC/GMT
Germany and Netherlands deploy air defense systems in Slovakia
The first units deploying Patriot air defense systems from NATO partner countries have arrived in Slovakia.
Slovak Defence Minister Jaroslav Nad said on Facebook the US-made system would initially be deployed at the Sliac airport.
German and Dutch soldiers would operate them as part of NATO moves to strengthen air defenses in Eastern Europe.
Nad stressed they wouldn't replace Slovakia's Russian-made S-300s.
Earlier in the week, he said Slovakia's was prepared to send long-range surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine provided that Western allies give them a "proper replacement."
Turkey says Ukraine and Russia closer to an agreement
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Russia and Ukraine were getting closer to an agreement on "critical" issues.
He also told Hurriyet daily there had been "rapprochement in the positions of both sides on important subjects, critical subjects."
Cavusoglu hosted foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Dmytro Kuleba of Ukraine for talks in the Turkish resort town of Antalya earlier this month.
He also spoke to both ministers after traveling to Russia and Ukraine last week.
"We can say we are hopeful for a ceasefire if the sides do not take a step back from the current positions," he said, without elaborating.
Shelling hits Mariupol art school, sheltering 400 civilians
Authorities in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said Russian forces bombed an art school in which 400 residents had taken shelter.
City officials say the building was destroyed on Saturday night, but the number of casualties was not yet known.
This follows the bombing of a theatre in Mariupol where civilians took shelter last week.
Hundreds of people were trapped beneath rubble in a basement shelter.
Mariupol has been encircled by the Russian troops, cut from energy, food and medical supplies.
Local authorities have said the siege has killed at least 2,300 people and some of them had to be buried in mass graves.
Russia says it has fired more hypersonic missiles
The Russian military said it has used more hypersonic missiles to attack Ukraine's military infrastructure.
"Kinzhal aviation missile systems with hypersonic ballistic missiles destroyed a large storage site for fuels and lubricants of the Ukrainian armed forces near the settlement of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region," the Russian defense ministry said.
On Saturday, Russia claimed to have used a hypersonic ballistic missile for the first time since it began its invasion of Ukraine. The launch took place on Friday close to the border with Romania, who is a NATO member.
Hypersonic weapons can travel much faster than five times the speed of sound, making them difficult to detect and posing a challenge to missile defense systems.
Zelenskyy suspends pro-Russian parties
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suspended 11 political parties allegedly tied to Russia.
"Given a large-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation and links between it and some political structures, the activities of a number of political parties is suspended for the period of the martial law," Zelenskyy said.
Included on the list is the Opposition Platform for Life, one of the largest pro-Russian parties represented in Ukraine's parliament. Russian President Vladimir Putin is godfather to the party's chairman Viktor Medvedchuk's daughter.
Also on the list is the Nashi (Ours) party led by Yevheniy Murayev. Before the Russian invasion, the UK accused Russia of seeking to install Murayev as the leader of a puppet government in Kyiv. Putin has denied the charge.
UK warns of further shelling and civilian casualties
British defense intelligence said Russia has made only limited progress in Ukraine over the past week.
An intelligence update said Russia would likely continue to "use its heavy firepower to support assaults on urban areas" and risk further civilian casualties.
In a similar assessment, the US-based Institute for the Study of War said a stalemate now persists in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy says Mariupol siege a war crime
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia's siege of Mariupol would "go down in history of responsibility for war crimes."
"To do this to a peaceful city, what the occupiers did, is a terror that will be remembered for centuries to come,'' Zelenskyy said in a video address.
Mariupol, a southern Ukrainian port on the Sea of Azov, had been cut off for more than two weeks. Some 400,000 people have been trapped in the city.
According to local authorities, the heavy bombardment has severed electricity, heating, and water supplies.
"Children, elderly people are dying. The city is destroyed and it is wiped off the face of the earth,'' Mariupol police officer Michail Vershnin said.
On Friday, Russia's defense ministry said that its forces were "tightening the noose" around Mariupol and that fighting had reached the city center.
Its fall would link Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, to eastern territories controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.
Zelenskyy adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the nearest forces that could assist Mariupol were already struggling against "the overwhelming force of the enemy" and that "there is currently no military solution to Mariupol."
One of Europe's biggest steel works damaged by Russian siege
According to Ukrainian officials, the Azovstal iron and steel works in Mariupol has been badly damaged as the city faces a siege from Russian forces.
Azovstal is one of the biggest iron and steel works in Europe.
"One of the biggest metallurgic plants in #Europe destroyed. The economic losses for #Ukraine are huge. The environment is devastated," Ukrainian lawmaker Lesia Vasylenko said in a tweet.
Azovstal is part of the Metinvest group, which is controlled by Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov. Akhmetov was considered pro-Russian before Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but has since accused Russian forces of "crimes against humanity."
War will have 'adverse effect on the global economy'
The Chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Beata Javorcik, told the AFP news agency that the war in Ukraine will have a major "adverse effect on the global economy."
Javorcik said that although large parts of Ukraine are still functioning, the figure of $100 billion (€90 billion) for rebuilding estimated by the Ukrainian government is equivalent to about two thirds of the country's GDP. She added that around half of Ukrainian firms have closed down.
Javorcik estimated that the number of refugees from Ukraine could reach 6 million if the conflict continues. She added that in the aftermath of the war Ukrainian refugees could stay in their new countries of residence and "serve as a bridge" to Ukraine and help strengthen economic ties.
"Even if the war stopped today, the consequences of this conflict would be felt for months to come," Javorcik said, adding that commodity prices are likely to continue increasing and that higher energy prices will lead to inflation.
"The conflict happened at a time when there was already a slowdown in the global economy, so higher energy prices are going to put more brakes on growth."
"This has implications for poverty and political stability," Javorcik added.
Javorcik said that the short-term impact of sanctions in Russia will include less international trade and lower consumer confidence. She added that even after the conflicts ends Russia could be seen as a "risky destination for investment."
Foreign Minister: China on 'right side of history'
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a Saturday statement that Beijing stands "on the right side of history" in its position on the war in Ukraine.
The comments come after US President Joe Biden warned China of the "consequences" it could face if it gave support to Russia.
"We have always stood for maintaining peace and opposing war," Wang said.
"China's position is objective and fair, and is in line with the wishes of most countries. Time will prove that China's claims are on the right side of history."
Meanwhile, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said that Western sanctions against Russia were increasingly "outrageous."
Ukraine bans pro-Russian parties
Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council has banned pro-Russian political parties from operating in the country while martial law is in place.
"Any activities of politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Saturday video address before listing the banned parties.
Among the groups affected is the Euroskeptic party Opposition Platform – For Life and Opposition Bloc, which became the country's largest opposition party after winning 43 out of 450 seats in the 2019 parliamentary election. A total of 11 parties have been banned by the move.
Australia increases support for Ukraine
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced further financial, material and humanitarian support for Ukraine, according to the public broadcaster ABC.
Morrison said that Australia will provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with an additional AU$21 million (€14 million, $15.6 million) in military assistance. This brings Australia's total military support to Ukraine up to around AU$91 million (€61 million, $67.5 million).
Morrison also announced that Australia would add AU$30 million (€20 million, €22.3 million) in emergency humanitarian assistance to the AU$35 million (€23.5 million, $26 million) already provided.
Australia's prime minister said that the country had already granted 5,000 visas to Ukrainians and was putting Ukrainian applications at the top of the list. Ukrainian arrivals will be offered a temporary humanitarian visa valid for a period of three years and which gives visa holders the right to work, study and access public healthcare.
Morrison said that Australia would also donate 70,000 tones of thermal coal to Ukraine.
Australia's government has also imposed an immediate ban on Australian exports of bauxite, alumina and aluminium to Russia. Australia is the world's largest producer of bauxite according to the Australian Aluminium council.
Ukrainian authorities: 260 dead in Kharkiv region since start of war
Ukrainian authorities said on Saturday night that at least 260 civilians have been killed in the fighting around the country's second-biggest city, Kharkiv, since the start of the Russian invasion.
Among the dead were 14 children, Ukrainian authorities said.
Kharkiv continues to be shelled by artillery and several residential buildings were hit on Saturday evening, Ukraine's UNIAN news agency reported.
Ukrainian authorities said that three civilians had died over the past 24 hours as a result of Russian shelling in the Kharkiv region.
Belarusian rail connections to Ukraine reportedly cut
Belarusian railway workers have reportedly cut off all rail connections between their country and Ukraine.
Ukrainian railway chief Olexander Kamyshin thanked Belarusian railway workers for this claimed act of sabotage on Saturday.
"As of today, I can say there is no rail traffic between Belarus and Ukraine," Kamyshin was quoted as saying by Ukraine's Unian news agency. Kamyshin said that he would not give further details.
Franak Viacorka, advisor to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, tweeted about the incident and said that it had been confirmed by Belarusian railway workers, while declining to provide details.
Although Russia has moved many of its troops and military equipment into Ukraine through Belarus, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has not committed Belarusian troops to the offensive.
Summary of Saturday's events in Ukraine-Russia crisis.
The Russian invasion has brought 30% of the Ukrainian economy to a standstill, Ukrainian Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said.
Vitaly Kim, the head of the regional administration of Mykolaiv, said Saturday that Russian air raids were taking place over the southern Ukrainian city.
Ukraine said it had evacuated 6,623 people through humanitarian corridors on Saturday.
The deputy head of the president's office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, said that 4,128 had been evacuated from the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, besieged by Russian forces.
In a bid to secure alternatives to Russian energy, Germany's Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck travelled to Qatar. Habeck recently visited Norway and is soon to visit the UAE.
The UN human rights office said 847 civilians were killed in Ukraine since the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine was launched.
China's Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said the Cold War was at the root of the war in Ukraine and attacked Western sanctions against Russia.
Russia's defense ministry claimed it used hypersonic weapons to destroy targets in Ukraine.
lo,sdi/aw (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)
8. Anonymous: How hackers are trying to undermine Putin
Crowdsourcing cyber operations. It will be interesting to assess the effectiveness and to speculate on what this will mean for the future of cyber operations in warfare.
Anonymous: How hackers are trying to undermine Putin
By Joe Tidy
Cyber reporter
Published
13 hours ago
The Anonymous hacktivist collective has been bombarding Russia with cyber-attacks since declaring "cyber war" on President Vladimir Putin in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine. Several people operating under its banner spoke to the BBC about their motives, tactics and plans.
Of all the cyber-attacks carried out since the Ukraine conflict started, an Anonymous hack on Russian TV networks stands out.
The hack was captured in a short video clip which shows normal programming interrupted with images of bombs exploding in Ukraine and soldiers talking about the horrors of the conflict.
The video began circulating on the 26 February and was shared by Anonymous social media accounts with millions of followers. "JUST IN: #Russian state TV channels have been hacked by #Anonymous to broadcast the truth about what happens in #Ukraine," one post read.
It quickly racked up millions of views.
Image caption,
The video was sent to a woman in the US, Eliza, by her father in Russia
The stunt has all the hallmarks of an Anonymous hack - dramatic, impactful and easy to share online. Like many of the group's other cyber-attacks it was also extremely hard to verify.
But one of the smaller groups of Anonymous hackers said that they were responsible, and that they took over TV services for 12 minutes.
The first person to post the video was also able to verify it was real. Eliza lives in the US but her father is Russian and called her when his TV shows were interrupted. "My father called me when it happened and said, 'Oh my God, they're showing the truth!' So I got him to record it and I posted the clip online. He says one of his friends saw it happen too."
Rostelecom, the Russian company that runs the hacked services did not respond to requests for comment.
The hackers justified their actions saying innocent Ukrainians were being massacred. "We will intensify the attacks on the Kremlin, if nothing is done to restore peace in Ukraine," they added.
Anonymous says it has also taken down Russian websites and stolen government data, but Lisa Forte, a partner at cyber-security company Red Goat says most of these attacks have so far been "quite basic".
Hackers have mostly been using DDoS attacks, where a server is overwhelmed by a flood of requests, she said. These are relatively simple to carry out and only take websites offline temporarily.
"But the TV hack is incredibly creative," she said, "and I would think quite difficult to pull off."
Who are Anonymous?
- The hacktivist collective first emerged in 2003 from the website 4chan
- The group has no leadership, its tagline is "We are legion"
- Anyone can claim to be a part of the group and hack for any cause they want, but they generally they attack organisations accused of misusing power
- Their symbol is a Guy Fawkes mask, made famous by Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta in which an anarchist revolutionary topples a corrupt fascist government
- The group has many social media accounts, with 15.5 million followers on its Twitter pages alone
Anonymous hackers have also defaced Russian websites. Forte says this involves gaining control of a website to change the content displayed.
So far, the attacks have caused disruption and embarrassment, but cyber-experts have become increasingly concerned by the explosion of hacktivism since the invasion.
They are worried that that a hacker might accidentally knock out a hospital's computer network or interrupt critical communication links.
"I've never seen anything like this," says Emily Taylor from the Cyber Policy Journal.
"These attacks do carry risks. [They] could lead to escalation, or someone could accidentally cause real damage to a critical part of civilian life."
Anonymous has not been this active in years. Roman, a Ukrainian tech entrepreneur who heads a group of hackers called Stand for Ukraine, had no links with the organisation until Russia invaded his country.
But he told me that when he and his team briefly defaced the website of the Russian state news agency, Tass, with an anti-Putin poster, they included an Anonymous logo.
Roman works from his apartment in Kyiv, co-ordinating his team as they create websites, Android apps and Telegram bots to help Ukraine's war effort, and hack Russian targets.
"I am ready to go and pick up a rifle for Ukraine, but at the moment my skills are better used at the computer. So I'm here in my home with my two laptops, co-ordinating this IT resistance."
Image source, Roman
Image caption,
Roman at work: "Sometimes I see rockets in my sky"
He says his group took a Russian regional train ticket service offline for a number of hours, although the BBC has not been able to verify this.
He defends his actions saying: "These things are illegal and wrong until there is a threat to you or your relative."
Another group that has merged with Anonymous is a Polish hacking team called Squad 303, named after a famous Polish fighter squadron in World War Two.
"We work together with Anonymous all the time and I now consider myself a member of the Anonymous movement," says one of the group, who uses the name of WW2 pilot Jan Zumbach as his moniker.
He didn't want his photograph published but another member of his team, a Ukrainian, sent a picture of himself in a helmet and mask. He described his situation as "on the barricade with a rifle during the day and hacking with the Squad/Anonymous at night".
Squad 303 has built a website allowing members of the public to send text messages to random Russian phone numbers, telling them the truth about the war. They claim to have facilitated more than 20 million SMS and WhatsApp messages.
Two Anonymous groups I spoke to cited this as the most impactful thing the collective has done so far for Ukraine.
Asked how he justified the Squad's illegal activity, Jan Zumbach said they did not steal or share any private information and were only trying to speak to Russians, with the aim of winning the information war.
However he also said they were planning a more impactful hack in the coming days.
There have been three major waves of co-ordinated DDoS attacks against Ukraine since January, plus three incidents of more serious "wiper" attacks that deleted data on a small number of Ukrainian computer systems.
In the current environment, though, it's hard to know exactly who is behind any given cyber-attack.
"The Achilles heel of Anonymous is that anyone can claim to be Anonymous, including state actors operating against what we're fighting for," says long-standing Anonymous hacker Anon2World.
"With our current rise in popularity, it's (almost) a given that there will be obvious repercussions from a government entity. As for adding to the chaos, we're used to chaos, especially online."
9. US veterans tell us why they are traveling thousands of miles to help in Ukraine
US veterans tell us why they are traveling thousands of miles to help in Ukraine
"I pray they never have to utilize anything we worked on with them, but if the war comes to Lviv, they'll be ready."
BY JEFF SCHOGOL | PUBLISHED MAR 18, 2022 8:59 AM
Former Army captain Adrian Bonenberger and his wife had begged their in-laws to get out of Kyiv, but they refused to leave Ukraine. Then the Russians launched a full-scale attack on the country.
After several sleepless nights, Bonenberger suggested to his wife that they travel to a relatively safe part of Ukraine and hire someone to drive her parents from Kyiv to a place where they could meet. He said his wife agreed, adding: “We should also plan to do something when we’re there. If we’re going to go there, we’re not going to just sit there waiting for my parents.”
And that is how Bonenberger, who deployed twice to Afghanistan while he was in the Army, and two other American veterans spent two weeks in the city of Lviv in Western Ukraine training about 50 civilians on small unit leadership and other military skills. The youngest trainees were teenagers and the oldest were in their 40s and 50s. Most of them had never carried a weapon, and none of them had any recent military experience.
One reason why Bonenberger was motivated to provide military training to Ukrainian civilians was that he remembered a video he had watched early in his Army career that showed an Iraqi teenager armed with a rocket propelled grenade getting shot, falling to his knees, and then collapsing onto his face.
“As soon as I heard about the details of the people that we were going to be training, I remembered that video and I just thought to myself like: People defending a democracy deserve more than that,” he told Task & Purpose. “These are people who would defend the city – they would run out into the street with an RPG and they would get shot down immediately. And if we could train them to be careful, then they wouldn’t do that. They’d be able to survive war and keep to the shadows, keep quiet.”
U.S. government officials have urged Americans not to travel to Ukraine because the country is far too dangerous, but so far, they have not publicly threatened anyone who goes to the warzone anyway. Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle refused to answer a question from Task & Purpose about whether Americans who provide medical support in Ukraine or fight against the Russians could be punished when they return home.
“We’ll decline to comment on hypothetical scenarios,” Hornbuckle said on Thursday. “As you are aware, the State Department has advised Americans not to travel to Ukraine.”
But this is far from a hypothetical scenario. Bonenberger is just one of many Americans – with and without combat experience – who are streaming to Poland and Ukraine to help however they can.
Prior to leaving for Ukraine, Bonenberger consulted with some lawyers and FBI agents, who advised him that there are legal consequences for Americans who serve in foreign militaries, but he would be “free and clear” to train civilians on urban defense.
Because the Ukrainian civilians had so little experience with handling weapons, Bonenberger and the other veterans spent a lot of time instructing the civilians that they should never point their muzzles at anything they did not plan to shoot, “Which, obviously precludes any of your battle buddies,” he said.
The Americans also showed the Ukrainians how to stack up and enter and clear a room, but that training was not intended to show them how to defend against Russians, he said.
“That’s a very advanced task and it’s not something that we recommended they do,” Bonenberger said. “We did that to teach them what the vulnerabilities of those things are so that when they are on the defense, they would be able to attack them more effectively. Every time we did enter and clear a room, we were like: You’re doing this, not to enter a clear a room, but because somebody is going to try to do that to you; and look how hard it is to do – look at all the opportunities you have to interrupt this formation.”
Bonenberger said that he and the other veterans also stressed that it is important for the Ukrainians to decide when to use the skills that they had learned against the Russians. “We taught them that if you see a unit moving quietly and using hand and arm signals and being careful, it’s probably not a unit you want to tangle with. But if you see another unit that’s pretty shabby and undisciplined, that’s a pretty good unit to make an example of – to fight.”
"We've been doing everything that we can to give them the tools they need to survive, because they're going to defend their city one way or another."
— CNN (@CNN) March 16, 2022
Bonenberger and two other veterans on the team, Ben Busch, and Matt Gallagher, left Ukraine on Tuesday. Later that day, CNN’s Anderson Cooper featured the three men in a story about their training efforts.
Gallagher, a former Army captain and Iraq war veteran, said he went to Ukraine because it provided a unique opportunity to help regular people in need.
Teaching the Ukrainian civilians to move and communicate was one of the most fulfilling experiences of his life and it was hard to leave them after they had accomplished so much in just two weeks, he told Task & Purpose.
“One of the cool things about the group we worked with is they pretty much knew nothing, they were a blank slate,” Gallagher said. “So, anything we gave them was new and, if we taught it well, helpful. There weren’t any bad habits to unlearn. They had all the motivation in the world; this is deadly serious for them; they see what’s happening elsewhere in their country and often know people being directly affected by the war. So, it was on us to meet that need for knowledge and skills.”
The American veterans treated the experience as a short mission with a clear purpose and timeline, so they made sure to implement several layers of security, said Gallagher, who declined to elaborate on what specific precautions the team took.
Overall, he believes the mission was a success. The Ukrainian teachers, welders, information technology workers, and lawyers whom he trained were able to come together as a capable defense force.
“I pray they never have to utilize anything we worked on with them, but if the war comes to Lviv, they’ll be ready,” Gallagher said.
While veterans like Gallagher are venturing to Ukraine to teach locals how to defend themselves, others like Ryan Chocholek have come to Poland to provide badly needed medical treatment to the constant stream of refugees crossing the border.
Iraq war veteran Ryan Chocholek providing medical treatment to children, who have fled Ukraine for Poland. (Photo courtesy of Ryan Chocholek.)
A former Army corporal and Iraq war veteran, Chocholek leads a team from the nonprofit group BTIA International Medical Aid that includes four other veterans. They are all emergency medical technicians and paramedics.
Right now, the team is operating a medical tent on the Polish side of the border, where they are treating patients suffering from hunger, exhaustion, and a wide assortment of other ailments, he said. Some of the refugees were beyond saving and died.
“The situation at the border is fluid, and complicated,” Chocholek told Task & Purpose. “I want the world to know that real human beings are caught up in a bullshit political game and land grab.”
Since Russia launched its war on Ukraine late last month, international volunteers from across the world have headed to the region to help, but not all of them are showing up prepared for the job.
Former Marine Corporal Joseph Chase is currently on the Polish border as a medic, trying to see if he can get to Ukraine to medically evacuate patients. So far, he has met other American veterans, who arrived in the warzone without helmets or body armor thinking “they could wing it.”
“Seriously, if you’re coming here you need to know why you’re getting yourself into,” Chase told Task & Purpose.
Many of the volunteers don’t understand operational security, Chase said. They wear camouflage uniforms when they travel, making them easy to identify at airports. He’s also encountered American civilians who should not be there, including a man with Parkinson’s disease, who was showing tremors even though he was on medication.
“I’ve seen a lot of Americans who would/didn’t qualify to be in the American military for some medical ailment or other reason… and they either seem to have a death wish or a crazy dream that they think they can fulfill over here,” Chase told Task & Purpose.
Chase initially thought about joining the Georgian National Legion, a group of foreigners fighting the Russians, but he ultimately found that the best way to help was assisting the Red Cross and Polish police.
“They were very happy once they knew we were veterans and there to help,” Chase said. “They trust us. The volunteers are exhausted and have been working around the clock since this all started.”
He encouraged other Americans with no military experience to help refugees rather than try to fight against the Russians. He also has a bleak prediction for those who do not heed his warning.
“A lot of these people are just going over to die,” Chase said. “And I get that, but it’s not the smart thing to do.”
Jeff Schogol
Jeff Schogol is the senior Pentagon reporter for Task & Purpose. He has covered the military for 15 years. You can email him at schogol@taskandpurpose.com, direct message @JeffSchogol on Twitter, or reach him on WhatsApp and Signal at 703-909-6488. Contact the author here.
10. 'We win, they lose': America must end the danger Putin poses
Excerpts:
In the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt’s lend-lease support of Winston Churchill through the Battle of Britain, provide Ukraine with more and better weapons. Not just small arms and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, but counter-battery radar and mortars to use against Russian artillery, anti-ship missiles to use against Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and yes, fighter aircraft. Those who find the idea of the U.S. facilitating the transfer of Polish aircraft to Ukraine too provocative should remember that Soviet pilots flew sorties against Americans during the Korean and Vietnam wars, while U.S. pilots volunteered for the Eagle Squadrons of the Royal Air Force and the Flying Tigers of China’s air force before Pearl Harbor. Help Kyiv deny Moscow air superiority over Ukraine and sea control over its littorals.
In the traditions of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Special Forces, the U.S. should train, advise and assist resistance forces to conduct unconventional warfare in Russian-occupied Ukraine. OSS did this successfully in Nazi-occupied Europe, as Green Berets did throughout the Cold War.
Reinvigorate Radio Free Europe and give it technical capabilities to defeat the Kremlin’s efforts to jam it. Allow brave dissidents to tell fellow Russians the truth about Ukraine, and the misdeeds of Putin, who expropriated over $100 billion from his countrymen. Encourage defections from the Russian army and discourage Russian families’ sons from reporting for conscription.
'We win, they lose': America must end the danger Putin poses
The Hill · by Kevin Carroll, opinion contributor · March 18, 2022
Ronald Reagan in 1977 summed up his Cold War strategy as: “We win, they lose.” Observing Ukrainian war refugees while in Poland last week — mostly mothers with babies, and the elderly — the thought occurred to me that we need Reagan-esque clarity and confidence in American policy now. The stakes cannot be higher for Ukraine, the West, democracy, the rules-based international order and the free world.
The Soviets intervened to preserve communist rule in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968; Yugoslavia descended into civil war in 1992. Yet Vladimir Putin’s Russia is doing something unseen in Europe since Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin attacked neighbors in 1939-41: invade a country, destroy its government, and subjugate its civilians through war crimes. If Putin succeeds, the world will return to the law of the jungle, which made the first half of the 20th century a time of unprecedented bloodshed.
Putin irresponsibly discusses misusing nuclear weapons in this crisis, and his forces’ attacks on Ukrainian industrial and nuclear plants attempt to create field-expedient weapons of mass destruction. None of his Kremlin predecessors was as reckless on such serious matters, except perhaps Nikita Khrushchev during the Berlin and Cuban missile crises in 1961-62, before John Kennedy stared him down.
These unsound statements and actions take place within a wider context of worsening behavior. Putin’s premiership began with his security service blowing up apartment buildings full of sleeping Russian civilians, blaming the atrocities on terrorists to justify renewing the Chechen conflict. Putin invaded Georgia in 2008. He takes personal interest in murdering defectors in creatively painful ways. If the tactics of his allies and proxies in Syria and eastern Ukraine are any indication, chemical weapons use and attacks on commercial aviation are possible.
Regarding the United States, Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election. He reportedly placed bounties on American service members in Afghanistan and likely was responsible for causing brain injuries to hundreds of U.S. officials (and their families, including children) with a directed-energy weapon. He allows Russian criminals’ ransomware attacks on America’s critical infrastructure.
Why Putin acts with increasing rashness may be unknowable, but the danger he poses is such that the strategic goal of the United States and her NATO allies should now be the defeat of Russia in Ukraine — and through that, regime change in Moscow. Here are four ways and means toward those ends.
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RELATED OP-EDS FROM THE HILL
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In the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt’s lend-lease support of Winston Churchill through the Battle of Britain, provide Ukraine with more and better weapons. Not just small arms and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, but counter-battery radar and mortars to use against Russian artillery, anti-ship missiles to use against Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and yes, fighter aircraft. Those who find the idea of the U.S. facilitating the transfer of Polish aircraft to Ukraine too provocative should remember that Soviet pilots flew sorties against Americans during the Korean and Vietnam wars, while U.S. pilots volunteered for the Eagle Squadrons of the Royal Air Force and the Flying Tigers of China’s air force before Pearl Harbor. Help Kyiv deny Moscow air superiority over Ukraine and sea control over its littorals.
In the traditions of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Special Forces, the U.S. should train, advise and assist resistance forces to conduct unconventional warfare in Russian-occupied Ukraine. OSS did this successfully in Nazi-occupied Europe, as Green Berets did throughout the Cold War.
Reinvigorate Radio Free Europe and give it technical capabilities to defeat the Kremlin’s efforts to jam it. Allow brave dissidents to tell fellow Russians the truth about Ukraine, and the misdeeds of Putin, who expropriated over $100 billion from his countrymen. Encourage defections from the Russian army and discourage Russian families’ sons from reporting for conscription.
As sanctions continue to bite into the Russian economy, those who can flee abroad likely will do so. These expatriates are great sources of information, as were emigres in World War II. The best of them can organize opposition to Putin among the Russian diaspora, and influence leaders in Russia’s intelligence and military services in positions to end his misrule.
The Biden administration is understandably concerned about escalating the conflict in Ukraine, but Putin does not share this sentiment. Taken too far, their legitimate worry can unintentionally give Moscow a form of psychological mastery over Washington policymakers, undermining principles of extended deterrence that has kept comparative peace in Europe since 1945.
Stop telling Putin what America won’t do. Asked what kept him up at night, former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis replied, “Nothing. I keep other people awake at night.” It’s time for the United States to disturb Putin’s sleep.
Kevin T. Carroll is in private legal practice. He served as an Army and CIA officer, senior counsel to the House Homeland Security Committee, and senior counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. The views expressed here are his own.
The Hill · by Kevin Carroll, opinion contributor · March 18, 2022
11. Kyiv calling: famous Clash anthem reborn as call to arms
More crowdsourcing PSYOP. The Ukrainians do a great job adapting well known songs and anthems for motivation.
Kyiv calling: famous Clash anthem reborn as call to arms
The Clash have given their blessing to a new version of their song London Calling by a Ukrainian punk band called Beton. Kyiv Calling, recorded near the frontline, has lyrics that call upon the rest of the world to support the defence of the country from Russian invaders.
All proceeds of what is now billed as a “war anthem” will go to the Free Ukraine Resistance Movement (FURM) to help fund a shared communications system that will alert the population to threats and lobby for international support.
Kyiv Calling, by the Ukrainian punk band Breton.
In the last few days the three members of Beton, which means “concrete” in Ukrainian, have rewritten the lyrics to the hit, after being given permission by the Clash’s surviving members, in order to put out a morale-boosting message of resistance and to call on other countries for aid. The new track has been mixed in Los Angeles by the music producer Danny Saber, a former member of Black Grape who has worked with David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. The new lyrics include the lines “The iron age is coming, the curtain’s coming down” and “Kyiv calling to the Nato zone/Forget it, brother, we can’t go it alone”.
Beton’s band members, Bohdan Hrynko, Oleg Hula and Andriy Zholob, recorded Kyiv Calling in a studio in Lviv lastThursday and Friday. A video for the track features footage shot by the band’s friends, family, colleagues and volunteers, and captures some of the recent attacks in towns and cities, from Kharkiv to Kyiv.
The musicians are now also playing a part in the war effort. Zholob, the guitarist and vocalist, also works as an orthopaedic doctor, and is treating war victims and soldiers, while Hrynko, the drummer and vocalist, and the bassist and vocalist, Hula, are part of the territorial defence and are ready to join the resistance when called upon. In normal times Hrynko is an architect and Hula the co-owner of a company that supplies sound and lighting kit for concerts and festivals.
“Many Ukrainian musicians are now on battlefields or in territorial defence,” said Zholob. “They’ve changed guitars to guns. We hope this song shows Ukrainians’ spirit and our defiance to Russian aggression. We are glad it is going to be played around the world as a symbol of solidarity and hope.”
The Clash in 1978.
Photograph: Andre Csillag/Rex/Shutterstock
Punk music is a major part of Ukraine’s cultural scene and is providing an outlet to express anger in the face of Russian aggression.
The original song was written in 1979 by Mick Jones and Joe Strummer, the Clash’s late singer and lyricist, while the band travelled around the world playing gigs through another period of international instability. Their travels were marked by the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Iran hostage crisis and the Ixtoc I oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Back in Britain, there was also growing public discord over Margaret Thatcher’s political power, in addition to the effect of an energy crisis. Drawing on the chaos he felt around him, Strummer wrote a chorus line that deliberately echoed the old BBC radio broadcast call sign, but was intended to come from an impending dystopian future.
Beton, who describe themselves as “punk-hardcore”, have played together for more than a decade at gigs and festivals in Ukraine, and admit they started out as more of a joke than a band. But since 2019, they have gained recognition for their powerful sound. Their latest album, last year’s Members Only, took a more serious look at the issues confronting Ukraine before the invasion, including police violence, the rise of shopping culture and joblessness.
The band has played at some of the leading Ukrainian festivals, including Zaxidfest, Tarasova Gora festival, and their fans are said to range from children to Ukrainian soldiers.
“We have no doubt about our victory, we are proud to be Ukrainians and feel the support from musicians abroad. This means so much!” said Zholob, who is also a member of FURM, a citizen-led network of thousands of people from across many professions, linking more than 30 organisations throughout Ukraine. Its mission is to restore territorial integrity and strengthen Ukraine’s sovereignty, building for a future as an EU and Nato member country.
All donations made to FURM that arise from the record will go towards the non-military work of the movement in communications and support for humanitarian partner networks and organisations.
12. Russia throws untrained civilians from occupied Donbas into hot spots of its war in Ukraine
Russian desperation or simply the inhumanity of Putin's War?
Russia throws untrained civilians from occupied Donbas into hot spots of its war in Ukraine
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Members of Russian proxy formations are seen in a tank as fighting between Russia and Ukraine continues in the city of Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast, on March 12, 2022. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Editor’s Note: The Kyiv Independent isn’t revealing last names of the people from the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine interviewed for this story for safety reasons.
Nearly every man that Oleksii, a 24-year-old resident of Russian-occupied Khrestivka in Donetsk Oblast, knows – friends, school classmates, and former colleagues from a coal mine – has been illegally conscripted by Russian-controlled proxies.
None of them have served in the military before, he says. Yet many of them have been thrown into the hottest spots of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“These people have never even held a machine gun in their hands,” Oleksii told the Kyiv Independent.
In the weeks following Russia’s all-out war that began on Feb. 24, Russian-controlled militants escalated hostilities in Donbas, the partially-occupied region in eastern Ukraine in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that was invaded by Russia in 2014.
Oleksii himself has managed to avoid mobilization by luck. When the campaign started, he was in Vinnytsia, a regional capital in central Ukraine. He arrived there to take exams at his school, Donetsk National University, where he is pursuing a master’s degree in computer sciences. The university relocated from Donetsk after Russia occupied it in 2014.
His former colleagues from the Komsomolets Donbasu coal mine, however, have faced a different fate. Oleksii says that they were abducted by Russian-backed militants right from their workplaces and deployed to the southern front in Mariupol, a city in Donetsk Oblast that has seen some of the heaviest fighting since Feb. 24.
The only friend of Oleksii who hasn’t yet been forcefully conscripted to the Russian army is 27-year-old Serhii. The Komsomolets Donbasu coal mine listed him as an “essential worker” and provided him with exemption from mobilization.
The exemption expires in April, and Serhii isn’t certain whether the coal mine will prolong it.
When asked through Oleksii to speak on the record, Serhii declined. “I won’t speak to a journalist. No offense, mate. Today I’m at home, tomorrow they can take me away, and my mom and girlfriend will stay in Khrestivka and face issues,” he wrote in a text message to Oleksii, which the Kyiv Independent has seen.
Many locals are afraid of talking with Ukrainian or Western media. Many think that the Russian Federal Security Service will access their correspondence on social media platforms or listen in on their phone calls.
In a conversation with Oleksii, Serhii confirmed that many of his co-workers from the coal mine, civilians with no previous military experience, were forcefully mobilized to the Russian army, and the majority of them are engaged in combat in Ukraine alongside Russian troops.
Seed of doubt
Oleksii provided the Kyiv Independent with access to his account on the Russian social network VK, where the Komsomolets Donbasu coal mine workers and their family members chat in a closed group.
We saw dozens of posts where the wives of illegally mobilized Donbas residents were discussing their plans on how to find their husbands: Some suggested going to Russian-occupied Donetsk for a protest near the Russian proxy headquarters, others shared that they wrote letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin asking for help but got no response.
“We have to do something! My husband called me yesterday and said they are at the forefront of combat, and it’s terrible,” Iryna wrote in a closed group.
Men in the comments were asking if there was any way to avoid mobilization or leave the occupied parts of Donbas. The group members agreed that the chances are low.
The Kyiv Independent reached one of the men who hadn’t left his house for two weeks, hiding from Russian-controlled forces. Ivan, a 25-year-old miner, said in a voice message that militants stop men everywhere, simply on their way to grocery stores, and ask for an ID. If a man doesn’t have an ID, militants take him to a “police station” for identification and, after that, send him directly to a mobilization point.
“They (militants) walk around, knock on all the apartments’ doors, looking for men,” Ivan said.
They send conscripts to what they assure is a 3-7-day military exercise but when they arrive they are deployed to fight Ukraine, according to Ivan.
He hasn’t heard from his mobilized friends for a week. At some point, Ivan stopped answering the Kyiv Independent’s questions and later deleted the chat.
Several women in the closed Komsomolets Donbasu coal mine VK group said that someone they know has already been notified that their sons, about 18-years-old, were killed in combat.
After that, they write, they began to doubt news on Russian state TV and started to watch Ukrainian TV channels on YouTube.
“Why is it rattling so terribly? Why is everything in Volnovakha and Mariupol so different from what they say on TV? What will happen to our men? Why don’t they talk about our men dying?” Natalia wondered in a post.
According to the intelligence unit of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, the vast majority of mobilized Donbas residents are sent to the hottest spots without special training “to clear obstacles and dig trenches.” The losses among new recruits reach 70-80%, the ministry said.
It also reported that Russia uses the Donetsk Metallurgical Plant to burn the corpses of Donbas residents killed in battle to hide the actual number of casualties.
No escape
In mid-February, Yevhen, another employee of the Komsomolets Donbasu coal mine, was discussing the prospective mobilization with his boss. The boss told him that mobilization would be mandatory but assured it would not happen anytime soon.
But at midnight on Feb. 21, Yevhen, 27, was told to pack his stuff and come to the mobilization point.
His wife Anastasia tried to persuade him not to go, as he had not received an official invitation. The family has two daughters, five and three years old.
But Yevhen told her that “nobody could weasel their way out.”
After enlistment, he has been moved between at least five settlements before Anastasia lost touch with her husband. The last time they talked, he was somewhere near Mariupol.
“We haven’t gotten in touch for five days,” she told the Kyiv Independent in a phone call.
Anastasia says that conscripts from Donbas were transported in a military truck with no roof for 14 hours, amid the freezing winter weather. She also said that the recruits didn’t have food and water for three days.
“They witnessed things one doesn’t even see in movies,” she said.
According to Anastasia, civilians from Donbas are forced to be at front-line positions. Otherwise, Russian forces threaten to shoot them.
Many of the Donbas conscripts are seriously wounded, or have been killed, Anastasia said.
“And I still don’t know what happened to my husband,” she added.
Author: Thaisa SemenovaThaisa Semenova is a national reporter at the Kyiv Independent. She worked as a staff writer for the Kyiv Post until November 2021. She graduated from Ukrainian Catholic University with a master’s in journalism. Twitter: ThaisaSemenova
13. Owning A ShortWave Radio Is Once Again A Subversive Activity
As a kid I enjoyed listening to broadcasts from around the world on a shortwave radio receiver I had. Shortwave and HF (high frequency) communications may become necessary when the internet and satellite communications are shut down by totalitarian authorities.
Owning A ShortWave Radio Is Once Again A Subversive Activity
An abiding memory for a teen fascinated by electronics and radio in the 1970s and 1980s is the proliferation of propaganda stations that covered the shortwave spectrum. Some of them were slightly surreal such as Albania’s Radio Tirana which would proudly inform 1980s Western Europe that every village in the country now possessed a telephone, but most stations were the more mainstream ideological gladiating of Voice of America and Radio Moscow.
It’s a long-gone era as the Cold War is a distant memory and citizens East and West get their info from the Internet, but perhaps there’s an echo of those times following the invasion of the Ukraine. With most external news agencies thrown out of Russia and their websites blocked, international broadcasters are launching new shortwave services to get the news through. Owning a shortwave radio in Russia may once again be a subversive activity. Let’s build one!
Whatever Happened To The Portable Radio?
There was a time when everyone had a radio, and radio listening was a universal occupation. From 1930s families clustered round an ornate family radio to the teenagers of the 1960s and 1970s with their portables, it’s a defining 20th century image. Though many of us still listen to radio here in 2022 the chances are that we no longer do so over AM and certainly not over shortwave. We can get instant access to almost any content online, so it’s by no means certain people will have a radio. If those shortwave transmissions are starting again, how can their intended audience pick them up? Perhaps it’s time to look at shortwave radios with a 2022 slant.
If you lack a shortwave radio and a dig around all your family’s junk hasn’t turned up a relic from decades past, then the simplest way to get one is of course to buy one. AliExpress is full of “world band” radios starting from somewhere under $20, and if you don’t mind waiting for shipping from China then it’s the path of least resistance.
But there’s the problem, international events are moving fast and there might not be the luxury of waiting three weeks, or even for that matter of being able to order one at all in a warzone. How can you make one? Yet again there’s an extremely simple option in the Silicon Labs series of one-chip radios. These provide a high-performance shortwave receiver with a minimum of external parts, and really are a miracle of integration. But yet again, in a warzone and in the middle of a chip shortage they just might not be an option. So how can you make a shortwave radio receiver using what parts might be at hand from available consumer electronics? We’ll first be taking a look at some possible avenues, and then introducing a few of the readily available building blocks.
Where Do You Start?
The best way to start is to look at the things that you might already have. Such electronic flotsam and jetsam as battery-powered AM radios, car radios, or even $10 RTL-SDR sticks. All of these can be modified or converted to receive the shortwave broadcast bands, often with readily available parts.
Probably the simplest method possible might be to directly modify an existing AM radio. I’m indebted to [Phil M6IPX] for passing me on an instructables link for a method to do this. It involves changing the resonant frequency of the ferrite rod antenna coil in the radio, and I’m guessing, relying on a harmonic of the local oscillator father than the fundamental to do the mixing. It doesn’t cover all the broadcast bands, but it might do at a pinch.
Block diagram of a receive converter
The next method lies in converting the shortwave signal from its original frequency to one that can be received by a radio you already have. Radio amateurs will be familiar with the receive converter, a device that mixes the signal from an antenna with a fixed frequency local oscillator to produce an intermediate frequency of their difference, and it should be relatively straightforward to use this technique.
An AM radio tunes in around 1 MHz and can be used with a converter to cover just one of the many shortwave broadcast bands. [Phil] again suggested a 16 MHz crystal oscillator module might be used with a mixer to tune the 15 MHz (19 m) broadcast band onto an AM radio, and a commonly available 4.433 MHz PAL colourburst crystal with a simple transistor oscillator might do the same for the 5 MHz (60 m) band. If I were making such a rough-and-ready converter for an AM radio, I’d try to find a car AM radio to serve as my IF, because these radios are well screened and have a handy co-axial antenna input.
My one-inch converter PCB
Finally, perhaps the simplest usable shortwave radio is the direct conversion receiver. Its principle is similar to the receive converter in that the signal from the antenna is mixed with that from an oscillator to yield the difference between the two, and when the local oscillator is the same frequency as the desired station that difference can be fed to an audio amplifier and listened to. It requires three relatively simple circuits in oscillator, mixer, and audio amplifier, and while it doesn’t provide acceptable performance for music radio it’s fine for speech.
The Nitty Gritty: Parts And Circuits
Having fired everyone up about receive converters and direct conversion receivers, it’s time to take a look at those building blocks. How can you make them from the components you’ll find in electronic junk, without ready access to the global electronic parts supply chain?
Crystal oscillator modules on an old graphics card
A row of through-hole diodes on a PCB
The VALOR and MEC parts are Ethernet transformers
There are many ways to make oscillators and mixers, but for our purposes the components we are interested in are crystal oscillator modules for the local oscillator, wideband RF transformers for the RF coupling, and diodes as the mixer elements. Variable frequency oscillators are a little more tricky to build but can be made from the most basic of components, but if you have a signal generator or even a Raspberry Pi with appropriate software you can use them instead.
Crystal oscillators are ubiquitous on all sorts of PC expansion cards and other computer boards, and provide a logic-level squarewave on their output pin when provided with 5 V. Meanwhile any Fast Ethernet interface will contain an RF transformer, and small signal diodes can be found across multiple different types of electronics. Beyond these parts there may be a need for the normal discrete components such as transistors and passives, but yet again these can be scavenged from a wide variety of sources.
This is the basic made-from-junk diode ring mixer. It’s not perfect, but it works.
A diode ring mixer is a very straightforward circuit using a couple of RF transformers and four diodes. It works by using the diodes as switches operating at the local oscillator frequency to alternately pass and block the signal frequency. The result is the intermediate frequency (IF), which is the difference between the incoming signal and the local oscillator. It can be very easily made with an Ethernet transformer and four signal diodes using the circuit shown. With a 100 Mbit Ethernet transformer, it should have 100 MHz bandwidth. There are multiple ways in which this circuit can be used with a suitable oscillator as either a receive converter for an AM radio or as a direct conversion receiver.
For the converter, simply connect the output of a crystal oscillator module to the local oscillator pin and feed the output to an AM radio, while for a direct conversion use a variable oscillator and connect the output to a sensitive audio amplifier such as a microphone or phono amplifier. The coupling to the AM radio can either be direct to the antenna socket of a car radio, or via several turns of wire wrapped round the case of a portable AM radio. There is a problem with this circuit in that it has no filtering and thus picks up both both the sum and the difference of local oscillator and IF frequencies, but it should be good enough to pull in a shortwave broadcast.
These are not the only ways to make a working shortwave receiver — after all everything from a crystal set upwards can be coaxed into working — but we think they are probably the best ways to make one using the electronics likely to be at hand. Perhaps you have some ideas to add to the mix? Leave them in the comments!
14. How the West Can Win a Global Power Struggle
We must be successful.
Excerpts:
This points to the final and perhaps biggest challenge for Western nations. Having shown how effectively they can sever ties with Russia, can they be equally effective in strengthening ties with each other and unaligned players like India, Brazil and Vietnam—and thus be an attractive alternative to the autocratic East?
After World War II the U.S. used trade to strengthen other democracies and bind allies, and its reward was a democratic and prosperous West. Yet since the 2000s Americans have soured on this model, as expanded trade with the likes of China brought economic turmoil and little geopolitical benefit. Mr. Trump saw trade as a zero-sum game and hit allies and adversaries alike with tariffs. He pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other Pacific rim countries, a pact covering not just tariffs but investment, intellectual property, data and the behavior of state-owned enterprises, intended as an alternative to China. Mr. Biden has resolved tariff disputes but pushed to expand “Buy American” regulations that penalize imports. He has offered no trade-agreement analog to his expanded military ties with allies in Europe and Asia, although he has promised a less ambitious “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.”
Meanwhile, China is fast cultivating its own economic sphere of influence, via foreign investment, its “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative, and trade agreements, even applying to join the TPP, renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“China has studied very carefully the American postwar model of how their global and regional military domination was augmented by financial and economic domination,” said Mr. Rudd. China, he said, seeks to achieve its foreign policy aims by making countries throughout Asia, including American allies, dependent on its trade and investment, and eventually its currency. Mr. Rudd urged the U.S. to return to the TPP and revive a similar pact with Europe. The U.S. needs to recognize where its strategic advantage lies, “which is through free trade, open commerce and open capital flows.”
How the West Can Win a Global Power Struggle
In an economic Cold War pitting China and Russia against the U.S. and its allies, one side holds most of the advantages. It just has to use them.
Russia may be an energy superpower but Taiwan is a semiconductor superpower, and semiconductors are harder to replace than oil. Therein lies a critical insight about the emerging Cold War between Russia and China on one side and the West—the U.S. and its democratic allies—on the other. This Cold War will be much more of an economic contest than the first, and the balance of economic power favors the U.S. and its allies. And it’s not even close.
Chinese President Xi Jinping likes to boast, “The East is rising, the West is declining.” When the rivalry was limited to China and the U.S., this had some resonance: At current rates of growth, China will surpass the U.S. as the world’s largest economy as soon as 2030 despite U.S. gains in the last year.
But with China partnered with Russia and the West more united than ever, this is turning into a contest of alliances, and Xi couldn’t be more wrong. In this framing, “East” and “West” are not geographic, but geopolitical, labels. If “the East” is defined as those countries with which China is closely aligned (it eschews formal alliances), only China is any sense rising. Russia was a stagnating petrostate even before sanctions eviscerated its economy. The others, such as Kazakhstan, Belarus, Pakistan, North Korea, Cambodia and Laos, are poor, slow-growing, or both. The West, defined as the European Union, the anglosphere (the U.S., Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand) and East Asia’s three big, rich democracies, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, may not be growing rapidly, but it is growing and has a gigantic head start. As former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said a Chinese official once told him: “You have all the good allies.”
By itself, China accounted for 18% of global gross domestic product at current exchange rates last year, based on International Monetary Fund data. Adding Russia and their assorted allies brings the total to just 20%. The U.S., meanwhile, accounted for 24%, and adding its allies vaults the total to 59%.
While sanctions on Russia demonstrate the West’s control of the global financial system, long-run economic advantage will come from technology and knowledge. In pure science—such as space travel and atomic energy—Russia and China certainly hold their own. But in commercially useful technology, Western companies lead in almost every field, from commercial aviation and biotechnology to semiconductors and software.
“If you have a coherent strategy across the major democracies, you’re in an enormously robust position in terms of financial, economic and technological leverage,” said former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, now president of the Asia Society think tank.
Of course the East plays a central role in the global economy. As recent market turmoil illustrates, Russia is a key supplier of not just oil and gas but metals such as palladium, used in catalytic converters, and nickel. China dominates manufacturing of countless goods whose value became abundantly clear during the pandemic, when demand for some, such as protective personal equipment, skyrocketed.
To a great extent these strengths reflect Russia’s comparative advantage in geology and China’s in factory labor. The West’s comparative advantage is in knowledge. That’s why Russia and China court Western investment. For example, to develop a complex liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the Arctic, Russia relied on Norwegian, French and Italian contractors for essential expertise, research firm Rystad Energy notes.
Russia’s innovative Arctic liquid natural gas facility in Belokamenka in the Murmansk region has relied on Norwegian, French and Italian firms for its design and construction.
Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov/TASS/ZUMA Press
Catching up with the West is no easy task, as semiconductors illustrate. Western companies dominate all the key steps in this critical and highly complex industry, from chip design (led by U.S.-based Nvidia, Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and Britain’s ARM) to the fabrication of advanced chips (led by Intel, Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung ) and the sophisticated machines that etch chip designs onto wafers (produced by Applied Materials and Lam Research in the U.S., the Netherlands’ ASML Holding and Japan’s Tokyo Electron ).
Russia and China have made efforts to reduce this dependence. Russia developed locally designed microprocessors called Elbrus and Baikal to run data centers, cybersecurity operations and other applications. Though neither has achieved significant market share, they “represent the pinnacle of local design capability,” said Kostas Tigkos, principal at Jane’s, a defense intelligence provider. Russia hoped that they would eventually displace chips made by Intel and AMD, he said. “This would not only have been the foundation for diversifying their installed base, but a stepping stone for exports of those processors to other friendly nations.” But without manufacturers like TSMC to make the chips, Russia is facing “the complete disintegration of their aspirations to develop their own industry.”
China has a much bigger semiconductor industry than Russia, and its partly state-owned national champion, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. (SMIC), could in theory make Russia’s chips, but that would take at least a year, Mr. Tigkos said. Moreover, its efforts to catch up to its Taiwanese competitor have been set back by sanctions. In 2020 the U.S. required companies using American technology to obtain a license to sell to SMIC. This effectively limited its ability to acquire advanced equipment from Netherlands’ ASML, which is critical for “any country that wants to have a competitive semiconductor industry,” Mr. Tigkos said.
Why does all this matter to the outcome of the geopolitical contest? Over time economic weight, strength and vitality are what allow countries to sustain military capability, achieve and maintain technological superiority, and remain attractive partners for other countries.
A technician inspects a semiconductor wafer at a Tower Semiconductor lab in Israel; U.S.-based Intel is acquiring the company, adding to the capabilities of Western high-technology manufacturers.
Photo: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg News
Yet GDP does not automatically equate to strategic influence. To win a Cold War, it’s not enough for the West to hold the best economic cards, it has to know how to play them. Economic statecraft, as this is called, does not come naturally to the West: Its institutions are built on the assumption that companies are private enterprises, not instruments of the state. They do business wherever it’s profitable, regardless of their home countries’ strategic interests.
No such division exists in Russia and China. Russian President Vladimir Putin used state control of key industries such as natural gas to reward or threaten neighbors. The Chinese Communist Party insists that state-owned and even private enterprises give priority to the state’s interests. In return, China tilts the playing field in those companies’ favor at home and abroad. Chinese state-sponsored hackers steal commercial secrets from Western companies, the U.S. has alleged. China is a master of economic coercion, punishing countries such as Australia or Lithuania or companies that cross its diplomatic red lines by depriving them of access to the Chinese market, knowing other countries and companies will eagerly take their place.
China has also learned how to play companies and countries in the West off against one another—favoring whoever promises to share more of its technology with Chinese partners, or avoids criticism of China.
“Over time economic weight, strength and vitality are what allow countries to sustain military capability and technological superiority. ”
Western governments, such as Germany, exaggerate China’s economic power and underappreciate their own, said Luke Patey, an expert on China’s international economic strategy at the Danish Institute for International Studies. “Germany has a full house when it comes to geoeconomics but plays like it has a pair of threes,” Mr. Patey said. The West frets that Chinese companies lead in fifth-generation telecommunications equipment—such as Huawei Technologies—and electric vehicle batteries. But, he said, “We sell short the fact that up there with Huawei are Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung,” based in Sweden, Finland and South Korea, respectively. Meanwhile Japan’s Panasonic and South Korea’s LG “are making the most sophisticated electric vehicle batteries in the world.”
For the West to play this game, it will have to more skillfully employ its ample economic assets toward geopolitical ends. The sanctions on Russia show that it can: The West showed a remarkable breadth and unity in its willingness to sustain significant economic discomfort in order to punish Russia. When the Trump administration imposed export controls on China, Taiwan did not join in but its companies were forced to comply because they use U.S. technology. This time Taiwan itself locked arms with the U.S. “Taiwan strongly condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our country joins the U.S., EU & other like-minded partners in sanctioning Russia,” its Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted.
Still, in one sense this is an easy test. Will the West’s unity persist if Ukraine slips from the headlines and economic pain mounts? More important, could it muster the same effort with China, a critical market and supplier to many companies and countries in the West?
If China attacks Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, ostracizing it from the global economy would be next to impossible. Nonetheless, Western governments have begun circumscribing business ties with China in response to its more aggressive behavior toward its neighbors and “Made in China 2025,” an economic blueprint for dominance in key technologies. Germany and Italy are applying more stringent criteria to foreign investment in their companies, wary of advanced technology being transferred to Chinese competitors. Japan is now debating an economic security law to safeguard supply chains and screen foreign investment and equipment used in sensitive infrastructure. Companies that had prioritized expansion on China are now boosting their Western presence. TSMC is building fabrication plants in Arizona and Japan while Intel has announced new or expanded facilities in Ohio, France, Germany and Italy.
Western cooperation in such efforts, though nascent, is growing. When the U.S. and European Union settled a long-running dispute over each others’ subsidies to Boeing and Airbus last year, they also agreed to develop a common approach toward “non-market economies,” i.e. Russia and China, on civil aircraft. For example, they agreed those countries cannot make investment in their aviation sectors contingent on “the transfer of technology or jobs to the detriment” of the U.S. and Europe.
Sustaining an economic edge also requires continuous reinvestment. At present, the West holds a comfortable lead. Based on purchasing power rather than current exchange rates, China and Russia spent $570 billion on research and development in 2019, the latest figures available; the U.S. and its largest democratic allies spent more than twice as much, $1.5 trillion, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a summit at the Belt and Road Forum on May 15, 2017 in Beijing, part of China’s promotion of its global investment in infrastructure.
Photo: Thomas Peter/Pool/Getty Images
When it comes to human capital, the lead narrows slightly: Russia and China have 2.5 million researchers, the U.S. and its allies about 5.2 million. It’s in the future talent pool that the gap really starts to close. China alone awards more science and engineering undergraduate degrees than the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea combined. Students in China are more likely to pursue science and engineering than in other countries. This pool of talent is a formidable engine for domestic innovation and a magnet for foreign and domestic investment. The lack of a similar pool constrains American efforts to bring critical manufacturing back to the U.S. In a speech in Taiwan last year Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, complained that American engineers “don’t want to work in the manufacturing industry…Taiwan’s superiority in this is that it has a large number of excellent and dedicated engineers willing to throw themselves into manufacturing.”
The West makes up for the shortage of homegrown talent through immigration. A study by the Peking University Institute of International and Strategic Studies earlier this year lamented that 34% of China’s top artificial intelligence talents worked in China while 56% worked in the U.S., whose “relatively relaxed and innovative scientific research environment is…favored by scientific and technological talents.” Tech entrepreneurs are motivated by freedom and wealth, both of which are slipping out of reach in China and Russia.
Thus a key factor in whether the West can sustain its edge is whether it can remain a magnet for talent. Yet the West’s openness to trade and immigration and even its commitment to democracy have come under stress. In the last decade support in Europe and the U.S. has surged for right-wing populists opposed to immigration and free trade, skeptical of NATO, and admiring of Mr. Putin. These include Marine Le Pen, a contender for president in France’s elections this spring, and former U.S. President Donald Trump, who may seek the White House again in 2024. Democracy has backslid in Hungary, Poland and the U.S., according to the think tank Freedom House.
This points to the final and perhaps biggest challenge for Western nations. Having shown how effectively they can sever ties with Russia, can they be equally effective in strengthening ties with each other and unaligned players like India, Brazil and Vietnam—and thus be an attractive alternative to the autocratic East?
After World War II the U.S. used trade to strengthen other democracies and bind allies, and its reward was a democratic and prosperous West. Yet since the 2000s Americans have soured on this model, as expanded trade with the likes of China brought economic turmoil and little geopolitical benefit. Mr. Trump saw trade as a zero-sum game and hit allies and adversaries alike with tariffs. He pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 other Pacific rim countries, a pact covering not just tariffs but investment, intellectual property, data and the behavior of state-owned enterprises, intended as an alternative to China. Mr. Biden has resolved tariff disputes but pushed to expand “Buy American” regulations that penalize imports. He has offered no trade-agreement analog to his expanded military ties with allies in Europe and Asia, although he has promised a less ambitious “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.”
Meanwhile, China is fast cultivating its own economic sphere of influence, via foreign investment, its “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative, and trade agreements, even applying to join the TPP, renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“China has studied very carefully the American postwar model of how their global and regional military domination was augmented by financial and economic domination,” said Mr. Rudd. China, he said, seeks to achieve its foreign policy aims by making countries throughout Asia, including American allies, dependent on its trade and investment, and eventually its currency. Mr. Rudd urged the U.S. to return to the TPP and revive a similar pact with Europe. The U.S. needs to recognize where its strategic advantage lies, “which is through free trade, open commerce and open capital flows.”
15. Week in politics: Consequences for China; Zelenskyy asks for help; Court confirmation
I think this is one of the most perceptive and important comments made by a journalist. This explains President Zelensky's strategic competence.
Excerpts:
SIMON: Ukraine's President Zelenskyy spoke to U.S. lawmakers this week - memorable appearance, asked for more help. An answer came hours later when President Biden announced an additional $800 million in security assistance but not a no-fly zone.
ELVING: Not a no-fly zone - now, that seems clear. But, Scott, it's hard to imagine you could be the leader of Ukraine right now and not be begging the world to intervene, to send troops, to send their fighter jets or at least to eliminate the Russian bombing from the air by setting up a no-fly zone. He has to be doing that. Zelenskyy must. But he also has to know that European powers and the United States are not going to go for any of those measures, including the no-fly zone, with all the risks of nuclear confrontation that that entails.
At the same time, by building up a lot of public expectation and support around the no-fly demand, he's making the Western countries more likely to max out on everything else. If you can't give us what we want, give us what we need. This is how he makes sure he gets the military aid and economic aid that NATO and the U.S. can give him and that it comes as fast as possible.
Week in politics: Consequences for China; Zelenskyy asks for help; Court confirmation
NPR · by Ron Elving · March 19, 2022
The U.S. continues its work to economically isolate Russia, and most lawmakers are on board. Also: a look ahead to Monday's Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Biden continues to try to increase pressure on Russia, working with U.S. allies and trying to undercut any Russian efforts to get help from China. NPR's Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks so much for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: The president had a two-hour call yesterday with China's leader, Xi Jinping. What do we know about what was said?
ELVING: Short version, we don't really know. The White House has not provided a transcript or even really a detailed summary. But the Chinese have provided a readout that suggested that they don't want to be lectured about Ukraine and Russia or Taiwan, for that matter, and they were miffed that the Biden administration wanted to talk about any of this with them in this manner.
Instead, we're told that President Biden laid out a program of consequences - that's the word that was used - economic sanctions akin to those imposed on Russia and Russians - not as severe, to be sure, but akin to them, depriving China of some of its access to markets in the U.S. and Europe if they decide to go with the Russians on this.
SIMON: Ukraine's President Zelenskyy spoke to U.S. lawmakers this week - memorable appearance, asked for more help. An answer came hours later when President Biden announced an additional $800 million in security assistance but not a no-fly zone.
ELVING: Not a no-fly zone - now, that seems clear. But, Scott, it's hard to imagine you could be the leader of Ukraine right now and not be begging the world to intervene, to send troops, to send their fighter jets or at least to eliminate the Russian bombing from the air by setting up a no-fly zone. He has to be doing that. Zelenskyy must. But he also has to know that European powers and the United States are not going to go for any of those measures, including the no-fly zone, with all the risks of nuclear confrontation that that entails.
At the same time, by building up a lot of public expectation and support around the no-fly demand, he's making the Western countries more likely to max out on everything else. If you can't give us what we want, give us what we need. This is how he makes sure he gets the military aid and economic aid that NATO and the U.S. can give him and that it comes as fast as possible.
SIMON: The House also passed a bill suspending normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus - overwhelming support in both parties. Eight Republicans did vote against it. And what's their reasoning?
ELVING: The reasoning is you can't impose sanctions with one hand and then continue to shower trade benefits on the Russians with the other. The Russians have benefited enormously on normal trade status. And by the way, this is supremely important to the Chinese as well to have that same status. As for those votes against the measures, well, there is a cadre in that party who object to the Biden administration's handling of this crisis, and they want to register that.
SIMON: We learned about the death of Alaska's single representative to the House. He was the longest-serving member of the current Congress. And that's Representative Don Young, who was 88 years old.
ELVING: Don Young, longest-serving Republican not only in the current House, but in House history. He was elected in 1973, and surely one of the most colorful congressmen we've had at any stage in congressional history. Old-school does not begin to cover it with Don Young. He was raised in California, went to Alaska around the time it became a state, inspired by Jack London. He started his career as mayor of the town of Fort Yukon, Scott. He wound up being chairman or the top Republican on powerful committees over decades in Washington, a very conservative Republican who had, nonetheless, an independent streak, willing to work with Democrats on behalf of his home state. His North Star was always Alaska.
SIMON: Looking ahead to Monday - confirmation hearings for President Biden's pick to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court begin. What are you watching for?
ELVING: One thing that we expect Republican senators to go after is her history as a judge of favoring pro-abortion rights. They will call it legislating from the bench.
SIMON: This is Judge Ketanji Brown...
ELVING: Yes, that's right.
SIMON: Ketanji Brown Jackson, yes.
ELVING: That is right. And another is her record of defending drug dealers and other street criminals. Of course, she did this as part of her job as a public defender shortly after law school. That's an important part of guaranteeing some semblance of equal treatment under the law. But let's just say it's not a lucrative job. No current members of the Supreme Court are former public defenders, and neither are very many of the Senate Judiciary Committee members. That's the committee handling these hearings.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much for being with us.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott.
NPR · by Ron Elving · March 19, 2022
16. Army Officer Tulsi Gabbard Faces Ire for Peddling Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Biolabs
Army Officer Tulsi Gabbard Faces Ire for Peddling Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Biolabs
Former U.S. representative and current Army Reserve officer Tulsi Gabbard, known for controversial positions that have often been supportive of Russian interests, was accused Sunday of pushing a "treasonous lie" by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, after her latest social media video promoted a debunked theory about biolabs in Ukraine.
In the video, which was posted to Gabbard's TikTok and other social media accounts, the former congresswoman mischaracterized U.S. support for several dozen former Soviet biolabs in Ukraine, falsely implying that the labs work with diseases like COVID-19 and that the Biden administration had been "trying to cover this up."
The unproven allegations that the U.S. is assisting Ukraine in the creation of new bioweapons were denied by various members of the federal government from the White House and the Pentagon last week. Two key points that the Pentagon noted in a fact sheet released Friday were that "after Russia launched its unlawful invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health responsibly ordered the safe and secure disposal of samples."
Defense officials have observed that the claim may be a pretext for Russian leader Vladimir Putin to increase attacks on civilian populations in Ukraine, even potentially unleashing his own biological or chemical weapons.
In the Pentagon fact sheet, the agency said that Ukraine's efforts to destroy samples at the Soviet-era facilities help "limit the danger of an accidental release of pathogens should Russia's military attack laboratories."
The fact sheet also made it clear that "unlike Russia, the United States and Ukraine are not developing biological weapons and are in full compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention." This denial was echoed by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on March 9.
Romney, in a tweet Sunday afternoon, said the video was "parroting Russian propaganda" and that Gabbard's "treasonous lies may well cost lives."
Two of Gabbard's recent social media posts with political themes have been shot with her wearing her Army uniform. In one, made in December 2021, she noted she was "wrapping up my reserve duty here at Fort Bragg in North Carolina."
Gabbard is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, serving as a civil affairs officer currently assigned to 1st Special Forces Command. That unit oversees all of the Army's Special Forces -- commonly known as the Green Berets, as well as units that conduct psychological operations, civil affairs and supporting roles.
Maj. Dan Lessard, a unit spokesman, said that "Tulsi Gabbard's comments made in her civilian capacity represent her views and not those of 1st Special Forces Command" in an email to Military.com on Monday -- the same statement he issued last week. He noted that the statement has not been changed by the release of Sunday's video.
"Our command has previously addressed the video Lt. Col. Gabbard made in uniform on Dec. 8, 2021," he added.
The Army's position on these remarks -- at least those Gabbard made in uniform -- is surprisingly soft given examples of other officers using video of themselves in uniform for political ends.
Amid the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Marine Lt. Col. Stu Scheller made a series of videos in which he berated senior military leaders for the results of the war and called out a culture that, he felt, was incapable of holding itself to account.
Scheller was stripped of command after his first video, sent to the brig, and court-martialed before being discharged.
Former Army officer Harold Earls, who served for just under six years, was investigated for possibly abusing his position after his political ads in a race for Georgia's 6th Congressional District featured video he made on active duty. Task and Purpose reported on another serving Army Reserve officer, who was investigated after making an appearance on the far-right TV network OANN amid a campaign.
Other politicians in the military have gotten warnings for appearing in political messages in uniform.
Sunday's video is not the first time Gabbard, a former congressional representative for Hawaii and a onetime presidential candidate, has been accused of trafficking in Russian talking points.
Gabbard famously met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 amid a brutal and bloody civil war and shortly after the Battle of Aleppo -- a fight that had many allegations of war crimes, including the use of chemical weapons by Syrian and Russian forces.
More recently, Gabbard has made frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson's show -- itself accused of being cozy with Kremlin talking points, according to Mother Jones -- to say that Putin's buildup of troops near Ukraine was justified because of the country's pursuit of NATO membership. "It is a legitimate security concern for Russia," Gabbard said in one appearance posted to her TikTok account before accusing the Biden administration of "smearing" those who disagree with the U.S. government position as "traitors."
Gabbard also posted a video in which she claimed that "Ukraine isn't actually a democracy" and accused Ukrainian President Vladmir Zelenskyy of silencing political opponents.
Gabbard's repeating of talking points favorable to Russia is easy to spot, but many, including experts in the field of disinformation, are quick to note that proving a relationship is much harder.
Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist with the Rand think tank, noted when he spoke with Military.com last week that "you can't always point to a direct quid pro quo."
"It gets very murky very quickly," he added.
Cohen did note that politicians on both sides of the aisle -- especially those looking to paint themselves as outsiders -- are often drawn to different aspects of the Russian talking points out of "a misplaced idea that you can be a maverick politician."
"There's a thin line between being a maverick, and just being a tool of an evil regime," Cohen cautioned.
-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @ktoropin.
17. US Cyber Command wants more information operations specialists
US Cyber Command wants more information operations specialists
Written by
Mar 18, 2022 | FEDSCOOP
The head of U.S. Cyber Command told Congress he needs more information operations experts at his organization.
“We use information operations in every cyber mission that we do. It’s that important to what’s going on to be able to communicate a message to an adversary,” Gen. Paul Nakasone told the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations Thursday. “We need more information operations trained personnel that come to our command. That’s one of the areas that I’m working very, very closely with the services.”
“Without a doubt, what we have learned is that cyber effects operations in … more of a combined arms approach with what we call traditionally information operations, is an extremely powerful tool,” said Lt. Gen. Charles Moore. “When you can perform information operations to influence adversaries’ perceptions and maybe their behavior in conjunction with those effects, you can position yourself to see real-time reflections on how they’re assessing what you’re conducting. And then you can stay ahead of their decision cycle, inside of their OODA loop: their observe, orient, decide and action [cycle] … That’s an extremely powerful tool inside the Department of Defense’s toolkit.”
As Nakasone indicated, the military branches and subordinate commands to Cyber Command have taken on a larger role in info warfare for their respective services, reorganizing and consolidating similar capabilities to provide an integrated approach.
“What we have to get to first is, let’s get more trained information operations specialists, let’s integrate them into our teams and instead of building a separate command let’s make sure that we understand that information operations spans an entire spectrum of what we need,” Nakasone said.
Nakasone declined to offer in the open hearing details as to how training can be improved, offering instead to provide specific examples to members in a classified hearing.
Deep fakes
Adversaries have become more brazen in the influence and information space in recent years, adopting new tactics and technologies to achieve their strategic interests.
One such tactic is the use of “deep fakes,” which is a seemingly realistic video of a person speaking but in fact, is fake.
Nakasone said he’s seen a growth in influence operations during his three-year tenure as the head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, adding deep fakes are one tactic used in this sphere.
It was reported this week that Russia published a deep fake video showing the president of Ukraine appearing to ask his nation to put down its arms and surrender to Russian forces.
Nakasone said the NSA is working closely with its research directorate to better understand anomalies and technologies to determine what is real and fake.
The agency is also partnering closely with the private sector, which has done leading work in this space, he noted.
“This is an area that we continue to watch very, very carefully, act very rapidly in and I think we’ll have a number of different areas that we probably can discuss in closed session as well,” he told the committee.
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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.
