Quotes of the Day:
"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
- Socrates
“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”
- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.”
- Susan Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 1 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too
3. Infographic: The weapons and equipment the US has given Ukraine so far
4. As battle for Ukraine enters a new phase, so does lethal US aid
5. Can the US Deter a Taiwan Invasion?
6. Blasts, Bombs, And Drones: Amid Carnage In Ukraine, A Shadow War On The Russian Side Of The Border
7. China’s Ukraine Conundrum
8. Ukraine’s Digital Fight Goes Global
9. Putin's War - May 2, 2022 Update | SOF News
10. Putin's chief of staff Valery Gerasimov is 'wounded by shrapnel after being sent to Ukraine
11. Ukraine says it destroyed Russia's Izyum command center, killing 200 but just missing Russia's top general
12. Russia Recasts Fight in Ukraine as War With the West
13. With Russia’s War on Ukraine, Kinzinger Introduces New AUMF
14. Taiwan considers alternatives after U.S. informs of howitzer delay
15. Ukraine’s Digital Battle With Russia Isn’t Going as Expected
16. Biden’s Dangerous New Ukraine Endgame: No Endgame
17. Russia says it's pulling out of International Space Station over sanctions
18. Iran Increases Funding for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
19. Beijing’s Ukrainian Battle Lab
20. An Assessment of Thinking Big About Future Warfare
21. Xi Jinping Is Fighting a War for China’s History
22. Foil the Financiers of Iran’s Terrorism
23. Cleo Paskal: China’s Agreement with Solomon Islands & Implications for Security in the Pacific
24. Palestinian Islamic Jihad Claims New Drone Added to its Military Capabilities
25. Russia Isn’t a Military State. It’s a Delusional One
26. Data as a Weapon: Psychological Operations in the Age of Irregular Information Threats
27. War and Adjustment: Military Campaigns and National Strategy
28. Laurence of Arabia for modern times: SAS ride CAMELS in fight against ISIS
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 1 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 1
Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan
May 1, 6:15 ET
Russian forces are setting conditions to establish permanent control over the areas of southern Ukraine they currently occupy, either as nominally independent “People’s Republics” or by annexing them to Russia. Russian sources reported that stores in occupied Melitopol and Volnovakha are beginning to transition to using the Russian ruble.[1] British Defense Intelligence reported that the ruble will be used in Kherson City starting on May 1 as part of a 4-month currency transition scheme enacted by the occupation administration.[2] These measures, which are not necessary or normal in military occupation administrations, indicate that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely intends to retain control over these areas and that his ambitions are not confined to Donbas.
Western and Ukrainian sources claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin may announce a “general mobilization” of the Russian military on May 9th. British Defense Minister Ben Wallace claimed that Putin may make this announcement, although Wallace admitted this was a personal opinion and not based on intelligence.[3] Advisor to the Ukrainian President Mikhail Podolyak amplified Wallace’s claims and stated that a general mobilization on May 9 would be consistent with the economic imperatives faced by Russia as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.[4] ISW has no independent verification of these claims, which would not in any event generate large numbers of usable soldiers for many months.
The Kremlin likely seeks to leverage its partners in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to evade Western sanctions. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported that Russia is courting CSTO members to procure input goods and materials for dual-use technologies that Russia cannot directly purchase due to Western sanctions.[5] The GUR stated that this effort will increase CSTO members’ economic dependence on Russia and enable Russian sanction evasion by using third-party countries to re-export Russian products to international markets.[6] The GUR stated that the Russian Ulyanovsk Mechanical Plant is attempting to obtain German components needed for the production of Buk surface-to-air missile systems and Tunguska missiles via Kazakhstan. Western sanctions may need to target Russia’s partners in the CSTO and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) customs union to prevent Russian sanctions evasion.
Key Takeaways
- Russian occupying forces are setting conditions to allow Russia to permanently govern occupied areas in southern Ukraine, not just in Donbas.
- Ukrainian forces likely conducted a rocket artillery strike on a Russian command post in Izyum on April 30 that struck after Russian Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov had left but killed other senior Russian officers.
- Russian forces continue to make incremental advances moving southwestward in the direction of Lyman but are largely stalled against Ukrainian positions on the pre-February 24 frontline.
- Russian forces continued re-grouping and reconnaissance on the Southern Axis and did not make any confirmed advances.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
No significant kinetic activity was reported in Mariupol. The Ukrainian Mariupol City Council stated that civilians in Azovstal began to evacuate to Zaporizhzhia.[7]
Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued to conduct unsuccessful ground assaults along the Donetsk-Luhansk frontline and did not make any substantial territorial gains on May 1.[8] Russian troops continued to focus efforts on completing the seizures of Rubizhne and Popasna with ground assaults supported by artillery.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces are blocking Ukrainian positions in the vicinity of Rubizhne and Popasna to prevent Ukrainian forces from maneuvering.[10] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces made limited advances in the direction of Lyman via Krymky and Oleksandrivka and attempted to advance toward Kurakhove via Olenivka and Novomykhailvka.[11]
Russian attacks on Ukrainian defensive positions along the pre-February 24 front lines continue to fail to make substantial progress. Repeated Russian failures to capture villages such as Zolote and Vilne suggest that pre-invasion Ukrainian defensive positions are too strong for Russian troops to storm. Russian forces are experiencing relatively more success pushing southwestward in Donetsk Oblast in the Lyman direction, however.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces mounted an unsuccessful attack against Ozerne, which indicates that Russian forces have likely made limited gains to the south and west of Yampil (which is less than 15 km southeast of Lyman) in the past 24 hours.[13]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast; defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to the Izyum axis)
Ukrainian forces likely conducted rocket artillery strikes against a command post of the Russian Airborne Forces (VDV) and 2nd Combined Arms Army in Izyum on April 30.[14] Advisor to the Head of the Ukrainian President’s Office Oleksiy Arestovych claimed that the strike may have killed Major General Andrei Simonov (reportedly the head of the Western Military District's electronic warfare troops), the chief of staff of the VDV, and other Russian officials.[15] A senior US defense official reported that Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov was present at the headquarters in Izyum but had departed to Russia before the strike.[16] Gerasimov may have been conducting a battlefield circulation (BFC) to evaluate the state of the Russian offensive in the Izyum direction. Gerasimov may have been trying to establish why the Russian offensive has largely stalled out on the Izyum axis and whether it is worth continuing to invest in strengthening their offensive grouping in that area instead of switching the operational focus to the Lyman axis of advance in Donetsk, where Russian troops are having more relative success, or other areas.[17] Commanders, even senior commanders, often conduct such BFCs in important areas to gain a better concrete and specific sense of the situation and, importantly, of the morale and capability of the individuals and units operating there. It is more likely that Gerasimov was conducting such a BFC than that he had actually taken command of military operations on this axis, as unconfirmed sources had previously reported.
Russian forces continued to shell the suburbs of Kharkiv City.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff notably reported that Russian forces are firing on Ukrainian positions near Udy and Prudyanka, both north of Kharkiv City and within 20 kilometers of the Russian border.[19] ISW did not observe evidence of Ukrainian counterattacks or Russian withdrawals from the rural Udy area. The report of Ukrainian positions in Udy suggests that Ukrainian forces hold more territory to the north of Kharkiv City than ISW had previously assessed. We have adjusted our maps to reflect this new information, which does not in our judgment reflect a recent change in the situation.
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued regrouping and reconnoitering on the Southern Axis and did not make any confirmed advances on May 1.[20] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are attempting to set conditions to mount an offensive in the directions of Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, although ISW cannot independently confirm this forecast at this time.[21] A Russian assault on Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih that occurs simultaneously with the battle for Donbas would divide Russian efforts and resources on the Southern Axis in a manner reminiscent of the initial failed Russian invasion plan.
Russian forces conducted an Onyx missile strike on an airbase in Odesa on May 1.[22] Recent increased Russian strikes on Odesa, along with continued dissemination of disinformation in Transnistria, may indicate that Russian forces are preparing for a drive on Odesa ostensibly from east and west, and possibly (in theory) supported by amphibious operations.[23] We do not judge that Russian forces have the capability to conduct such a large and complex operation at this stage of the war, or that they could plausibly threaten to seize Odesa. Russian forces may try to do so anyway or may hope that appearing to prepare for such an operation will draw Ukrainian forces to the area around Odesa.
Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
There were no significant activities on this axis in the past 24 hours.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian attacks from Izyum will likely be at least temporarily disrupted by the attack on the Russian command post in the area.
- Russian forces will likely attempt to starve out the remaining defenders of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol.
- Russian forces may be preparing to conduct renewed offensive operations to capture the entirety of Kherson Oblast in the coming days.
- Russian forces may be preparing to attempt an operation to seize Odesa from the east and west, although the success of such an operation is very unlikely.
[3] https://news dot ru/world/uolles-putin-obyavit-o-vseobshej-mobilizacii-na-9-maya/
[4] https://nv dot ua/world/geopolitics/mobilizaciya-v-rossii-podolyak-zayavil-chto-rf-myslit-korrupcionnoy-logikoy-50238217.html
[5] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/dlia-minimizatsii-ruinivnykh-naslidkiv-ekonomichnykh-sanktsii-rosiia-namahaietsia-zaluchyty-inshi-krainy.html
[6] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/dlia-minimizatsii-ruinivnykh-naslidkiv-ekonomichnykh-sanktsii-rosiia-namahaietsia-zaluchyty-inshi-krainy.html
[23] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/zvernennia-do-putina-ta-terakty-z-maibutnoho-rosiia-hotuie-provokatsii-v-pmr-na-travnevi-sviata.html
2. Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too
Excerpts:
The Biden Administration has public support for its expanding role—for now. Despite war weariness after two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe that the U.S. has a “moral responsibility” to do more to stop the killing of civilians in Ukraine, according to a Quinnipiac poll published in mid-April. In a country polarized on most other issues, a majority from both parties agreed. Three-quarters of those polled also fear that the worst is yet to come. And more than eighty per cent believe that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Yet the public’s moral outrage “stops at the water’s edge when it comes to committing the U.S. military to the fight,” Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University analyst, noted. Only nineteen per cent of Americans believe the U.S. should do more even if it risks getting into a direct war with Russia.
That conviction may soon be tested. The U.S. role has evolved—from a reactive response to Russia’s unjustified war to a proactive assertion of American leadership and leverage. Perhaps in desperation, Putin’s rhetoric has become bolder. On Wednesday, he warned that he could launch a “lightning-fast” response to any nation that intervened to thwart or threaten Russia. “We have all the instruments for this, such that no one can boast of,” he said, in an apparent reference to Moscow’s nuclear and missile arsenal. “We’re going to use them if we have to.” The war could now play out in many disparate ways. Each carries its own dangers—for the U.S. as well as Ukraine.
Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too
The U.S. is leading a new coalition of “nations of good will” as the goal expands from supporting Ukraine to weakening Russia and outlasting Putin.
By
May 1, 2022
Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too | The New Yorker
America has crossed a threshold in Ukraine, both in its short-term involvement and its long-term intent. The U.S. was initially cautious during the fall and winter as Russia, a nuclear country with veto power at the U.N. Security Council, amassed more than a hundred and fifty thousand troops along the Ukrainian border. It didn’t want to poke the Russian bear—or provoke Vladimir Putin personally. Two days after long convoys of Russian tanks rolled across the border, on February 24th, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, still claimed that America’s goal—backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid—was simply to stand behind the Ukrainian people. The White House sanctioned Russia—initially targeting a few banks, oligarchs, political élites, government-owned enterprises, and Putin’s own family—to pressure the Russian leader to put his troops back in their box, without resorting to military intervention. “Direct confrontation between NATO and Russia is World War Three, something we must strive to prevent,” President Joe Biden said, in early March.
Yet in just over nine weeks, the conflict has rapidly evolved into a full proxy war with Russia, with global ramifications. U.S. officials now frame America’s role in more ambitious terms that border on aggressive. The goal—backed by tens of billions of dollars in aid—is to “weaken” Russia and insure a sovereign Ukraine outlasts Putin. “Throughout our history, we’ve learned that when dictators do not pay the price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and engage in more aggression,” the President told reporters on Thursday. “They keep moving. And the costs, the threats to America and the world, keep rising.”
Having basically run out of appropriated funds, Biden has asked Congress for thirty-three billion dollars—for new military, economic, and humanitarian support—in the latest of several packages for Ukraine. “The cost of this fight is not cheap,” the President acknowledged. (As Politico noted, the new aid is about half the size of the entire Russian defense budget—and also more than half of the U.S. State Department’s annual budget. Over the next five months, U.S. aid to Ukraine will average more than two hundred million dollars a day.) The investment, Biden said, was a small price “to lessen the risk of future conflicts” with Russia.
For Putin, the war in Ukraine always seemed to be, at least in part, a proxy fight with NATO and its U.S. leadership. Ahead of his invasion, he publicly expressed deep paranoia about the military alliance and its further expansion into countries once aligned with the Soviet Union. He also brokered a five-thousand-word agreement with the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, to form a de-facto alliance of authoritarian regimes. They jointly opposed NATO enlargement.
Biden tried to resist that framing. At the start of the invasion, the U.S. invoked the principles of sovereignty, a democratically elected government, and territorial integrity. During the past week, however, Ukraine’s existential crisis has increasingly appeared to be America’s war, too. On April 24th, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin took a train with blacked-out windows into Kyiv to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and symbolically reinforce American support. The stealthy trip reflected the increasingly ambitious U.S. goal. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin told reporters, near the border in Poland. Blinken said, “We don’t know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign, independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.”
On Tuesday, Austin assembled defense leaders from more than forty countries—well beyond the NATO framework—at Ramstein, a U.S. base in southwest Germany, to coördinate support for Ukraine. Austin, a retired general involved in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, announced the formation of a new coalition of “nations of good will” that will meet monthly to “intensify” an international campaign to win “today’s fight and the struggles to come.” In appealing for more aid, Biden said, “We have to do our part as well, leading the alliance.”
The shift may have been inevitable, given the barbarism of the war, which has claimed thousands of civilian lives, and Russia’s challenge to the conventions and obligations of modern statecraft. “If this is left to stand, if there is no answer to this aggression, if Russia gets away with this cost-free, then so goes the so-called international order,” General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN. “And if that happens, then we’re heading into an era of seriously increased instability.” On Friday, the Pentagon press secretary John Kirby choked up at a briefing as he discussed Putin’s “depravity.”
The U.S. has become more deeply engaged for at least four reasons. Diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia has stalled amid revelations of atrocities committed by Russian troops, notably the execution of civilians in Bucha. Moscow’s early participation in peace talks never seemed credible anyway; Putin is too greedy and historically ambitious. Russia has staked claims to southern Crimea, the eastern Donbas region, and the lands between them along the strategic Black Sea. Putin is not yet ready—or, perhaps, not yet under enough pressure—to negotiate seriously.
The U.S. has also been emboldened by the stunning underperformance of the Russian military, the largest in Europe. U.S. intelligence had originally feared that Kyiv could fall within seventy-two hours. But Ukraine held the capital, and Russian forces retreated. Washington is no longer hesitant to poke the bear. Yet time still “is not on Ukraine’s side,” Milley reportedly told the coalition of defense leaders at Ramstein. His concern was reinforced on Thursday, when Russia struck cities across Ukraine just an hour after the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, speaking at a press conference in Kyiv, described the country as the “epicenter of unbearable heartache and pain.” Guterres’s trip to Kyiv followed talks with Putin in Moscow. The U.N. leader, who toured Bucha, took a clear side in the conflict. “The war is an absurdity in the twenty-first century,” he said. “The war is evil.”
The growing U.S. involvement also reflects broader fears—long held among countries on or near Russia’s borders —that Putin’s aggression will not stop with Ukraine. On April 22nd, a senior Russian military commander announced that Moscow sought “full control” over eastern and southern Ukraine in part to open the way to neighboring Moldova, a tiny, landlocked country that is supportive of the European Union but dependent on Russian energy. In congressional testimony on Thursday, Blinken cited the urgent need “to seize the strategic opportunities” and address “the risks that are presented by Russia’s overreach as countries reconsider their policies, their priorities, their relationships.” Moscow’s flagrant rhetoric about nuclear weapons has also increasingly alarmed U.S. officials. “Nobody wants to see this war escalate any more than it already has,” Kirby said, on April 27th. “Certainly nobody wants to see—or nobody should want to see—it escalate into the nuclear realm.”
The Biden Administration has public support for its expanding role—for now. Despite war weariness after two decades in Afghanistan and Iraq, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe that the U.S. has a “moral responsibility” to do more to stop the killing of civilians in Ukraine, according to a Quinnipiac poll published in mid-April. In a country polarized on most other issues, a majority from both parties agreed. Three-quarters of those polled also fear that the worst is yet to come. And more than eighty per cent believe that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. Yet the public’s moral outrage “stops at the water’s edge when it comes to committing the U.S. military to the fight,” Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University analyst, noted. Only nineteen per cent of Americans believe the U.S. should do more even if it risks getting into a direct war with Russia.
That conviction may soon be tested. The U.S. role has evolved—from a reactive response to Russia’s unjustified war to a proactive assertion of American leadership and leverage. Perhaps in desperation, Putin’s rhetoric has become bolder. On Wednesday, he warned that he could launch a “lightning-fast” response to any nation that intervened to thwart or threaten Russia. “We have all the instruments for this, such that no one can boast of,” he said, in an apparent reference to Moscow’s nuclear and missile arsenal. “We’re going to use them if we have to.” The war could now play out in many disparate ways. Each carries its own dangers—for the U.S. as well as Ukraine.
More on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
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3. Infographic: The weapons and equipment the US has given Ukraine so far
Infographic: The weapons and equipment the US has given Ukraine so far - Breaking Defense
U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. John Hawkins, left, assists Sgt. Joshua C. Sutton fire a FIM-92 Stinger missile at his target at Onslow Beach, North Carolina, May 22, 2019. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Jason Estevez)
WASHINGTON: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the US Department of Defense has transferred billions of dollars-worth of weapons and equipment to Ukrainian forces, from drones to artillery.
It’s an unprecedented flow of weapons that has shocked outside observers used to the US having to work through a famously slow arms transfer bureaucracy. It has also enabled Ukraine to not only survive the initial Russian push, but actually reclaim territory.
As a result, the Russians appear to have changed their goals, from trying to capture and pacify the whole country to trying to consolidate its control of the Donbas region. And with that change comes a change in what the US is looking to supply to Kyiv. Read more about the latest on the US-led effort, and how it’s changing, in this new Breaking Defense report:
For now, here’s what the Pentagon said it has sent:
US aid to Ukraine, based on Department of Defense announcements. (Graphic by Breaking Defense)
4.As battle for Ukraine enters a new phase, so does lethal US aid
Excerpts:
The expenditures on weaponry — and the logistics needed to get the equipment overseas — is eye-popping to analysts used to dealing with the famously slow American arms transfer bureaucracy
“This is one of the most impressive campaigns of security assistance in recent history, both in terms of the scale and the agility of it,” said Bradley Bowman, a former US Army officer and defense expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “When the Pentagon announces that a shipment is going to happen, it’s literally in the hands of Ukrainians a few days later.”
In the early days of the war, the weapons provided by the United States and its NATO allies helped address threats Ukrainian troops were facing on the ground, giving them a “tangible tactical advantage,” said Steven Horrell, a former Navy intelligence officer and defense expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Deliveries of equipment like Javelins and Stingers — as well as European-made weapons like the Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, or NLAW — were effective against tank convoys and helped thwart attempts by the Russians to gain air superiority, ultimately enabling Ukraine to turn the tide during the first phase of the war, Horrell said.
As battle for Ukraine enters a new phase, so does lethal US aid - Breaking Defense
“This has been such a plastic conflict. … I think there's a lot of indications that the Ukrainians are doing a tremendous job,” said Mara Karlin, the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities. Given that, “you can plan more and more for things that would need greater training.”
A Ukrainian soldier stands guard in the city of Severodonetsk, Donbas region. Russian forces are focusing on the country’s southeast, where desperate attempts are under way to evacuate civilians. (FADEL SENNA/AFP via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON: It’s been two months since Russia began its unprovoked invasion in Ukraine, and a new phase of the war is starting as Russia turns away from its failed assault on Kyiv and begins to coalesce artillery and air support in the eastern Donbas region.
For the United States, which has provided a total of $3.4 billion security assistance to Ukraine since the invasion started on Feb. 24, a similar transformation is in progress. While the beginning stages of the conflict saw the US send basic equipment that the Ukrainian military could pick up and use without any training — things like small arms, vehicles and the shoulder mounted Javelin anti-tank missile system — that paradigm is beginning to shift.
In recent arms packages, the United States has begun providing more advanced weaponry that requires additional training, such as howitzers, Switchblade and Ghost Phoenix drones, and US-made radars that would be unfamiliar to Ukrainian operators. In the case of the Ghost Phoenix, the United States is delivering a capability that would see its first battlefield use in the hands of the Ukrainian military.
If the war stretches out, that aperture could continue to broaden, with Ukraine getting increasingly more capable weapons, Mara Karlin, the assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, told Breaking Defense in an April interview.
“This has been such a plastic conflict. … I think there’s a lot of indications that the Ukrainians are doing a tremendous job,” she said. Given that, “you can plan more and more for things that would need greater training.”
As of the latest April 22 arms package, the United States has provided more than $4 billion worth of weapons and equipment to Ukraine since the Biden administration took office. That sum includes:
- more than 5,500 Javelin anti-tank missile systems, on top of 14,000 unspecified armor systems
- more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems
- 90 155mm Howitzers with 183,000 artillery rounds
- 16 Mi-17 helicopters
- more than 700 Switchblade loitering drones
- 121 Ghost Phoenix loitering drones
- 14 counter-artillery radars, including at least 10 AN/TPQ-36 models
- Two AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radars
- hundreds of armored vehicles
- more than 50 million rounds of ammunition
Already, the Biden administration is readying itself to assemble future arms packages.
On April 28, the White House announced a request for an additional $33 billion for Ukraine. The $20 billion earmarked for military and security assistance includes $6 billion for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative and $5 billion in additional drawdown authority, which is used when the US transits weapons from its own stockpile to the Ukrainian military.
During a speech on Thursday, President Joe Biden acknowledged that current funding authorized for Ukraine had almost been completely exhausted. The additional assistance would provide more artillery, armored vehicles, anti-armor systems and anti-air capabilities for Ukraine in the future, ensuring that its military won’t face a gap on the battlefield.
“It’s going to keep weapons and ammunition flowing without interruption to the brave Ukrainian fighters,” he said. “This so-called supplemental funding addresses the needs of the Ukrainian military during the crucial weeks and months ahead. And it begins to transition to longer-term security assistance that’s going to help Ukraine deter and continue to defend against Russian aggression.”
If approved by Congress, the Biden administration believes the $33 billion will be spent over a five-month period, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said during an April 29 press briefing. That could give Ukraine’s military an enormous boost, equivalent to what countries like Italy and Australia spend on their military in a given year and about half of Russia’s 2021 defense spending, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The next phase of conflict
The expenditures on weaponry — and the logistics needed to get the equipment overseas — is eye-popping to analysts used to dealing with the famously slow American arms transfer bureaucracy
“This is one of the most impressive campaigns of security assistance in recent history, both in terms of the scale and the agility of it,” said Bradley Bowman, a former US Army officer and defense expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “When the Pentagon announces that a shipment is going to happen, it’s literally in the hands of Ukrainians a few days later.”
In the early days of the war, the weapons provided by the United States and its NATO allies helped address threats Ukrainian troops were facing on the ground, giving them a “tangible tactical advantage,” said Steven Horrell, a former Navy intelligence officer and defense expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Deliveries of equipment like Javelins and Stingers — as well as European-made weapons like the Next-generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, or NLAW — were effective against tank convoys and helped thwart attempts by the Russians to gain air superiority, ultimately enabling Ukraine to turn the tide during the first phase of the war, Horrell said.
Those kind of weapons represented the first wave of military support. By the second month, the US and other NATO nations were working together to shuffle equipment around Eastern Europe so that old Soviet-era equipment — like Slovakia’s S-300 air defense system — could be donated to Ukraine, with the US moving forces to help backfill requirement gaps such as air defense in Slovakia.
But Russia’s more focused, territory-grabbing efforts in the Donbas mean there will likely be fewer long columns of tanks and other armored vehicles that made for juicy targets for anti-armor weapons, Horrell said.
“You’re kind of in a situation similar to … what we saw for seven years [in Western Ukraine] with an entrenched line and control,” and each side seeking to gain and hold territory, he said.
A M777 155mm howitzer is fired by US forces in a file photo. (U.S. Army/Sidney Lee)
As Russia concentrates its forces and tries to encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, Bowman said the victor in the next phase of the war will likely be whoever can “close the kill chain the fastest” — identifying an enemy target, communicating a plan of attack, and then striking the adversary before they can strike back.
“I do think that we’re in potentially decisive phase here in the Donbas,” said Bowman.
Here, Russia has fewer logistical disadvantages than it had during the assault on Kyiv. “The Russians have shorter supply lines. It’s much easier to resupply Russian forces in the Donbas than it was coming via Belarus down to Kyiv,” Bowman said.
“If you’re looking at this conflict, it’s going to be about shooting and scooting. You fire and then you move before the counter fire comes back on you,” he said. “We just cannot get Ukrainians enough artillery.”
It appears the Pentagon’s top official agrees. Speaking to reporters April 28, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that “what will be decisive in this next fight is long range fires. And as we interact with the [Ukrainian Chief of Defense] and the Minister of Defense on a routine basis, these are the kinds of things that they are requesting. “They believe that long range fires will be key in our efforts going forward. And so we are moving as quickly as we possibly can to provide them those capabilities.”
A day later, Kirby confirmed that US is giving a crash course of about five days to Ukrainian troops on the use of the howitzers in three locations outside of Ukraine, including Germany. Those troops will then return home and train other members of the military.
The United States has already made moves to get Ukraine the equipment it needs for the upcoming fight. During the month of April, the administration has authorized four different security assistance packages to Ukraine, worth a total of $2 billion.
These packages included surveillance drones such as the RQ-20 Puma, counter-artillery radars and counter-motor radars, and towed 155mm Howitzers with artillery — all materiel that will be pivotal in the conflict in the Donbas.
Horrell also noted the utility of loitering munitions like Switchblade and Ghost Phoenix, which can be used to get behind Russian lines to strike “soft targets” like artillery batteries and multiple launch rocket system batteries.
In terms of what Ukraine might need in future arms packages, it’s difficult to predict what new systems the US government might offer to help Ukraine counter Russian threats that will emerge in the next few weeks of combat, Horrell said.
“We haven’t yet seen the impact [of the latest aid],” he said. “I have high confidence that Ukraine’s requests will evolve as the fight evolves.”
According to Politico, Ukraine has asked the US government to consider sending MQ-9 Reapers and MQ-1C Grey Eagle drones. In deciding whether the fulfill that request, the US needs to consider the risks of technology falling into Russian hands and think about whether those platforms actually address Ukraine’s requirements, whether that’s for an unblinking surveillance drone or an unmanned strike asset. “Look at the capability” Ukraine says it wants, “not the piece of gear,” Horrell said.
Over the coming weeks, it’s likely that Ukraine will require more artillery, counter-battery radars and air defense systems, both Bowman and Horrell agreed.
Bowman pointed out that the United States has so far delivered towed howitzers. However, self-propelled howitzers would allow the Ukrainian military to be more mobile, as they wouldn’t have to be detached from a vehicle to be used and reattached to be towed elsewhere, he said. Another huge benefit would be added crew protection, as troops would be able to stay within the safe confines of the vehicle during the operation of a self-propelled howitzer.
As Russia continues to base warships in the Black Sea — posing a major threat to the cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv — the US and its allies should also consider giving Ukraine additional weaponry that would allow it to target naval vessels, Bowman and Horrell said.
“We want to be able to defend Odessa and Mykolaiv against a joint multi-access land and sea assault,” Horrell said. “In addition to expanding Russian led separatist held territories in the Donbas, [this war] was always about taking the whole Black Sea coast” which would “cripple Ukraine as a as a country economically.”
5. Can the US Deter a Taiwan Invasion?
Excerpts:
Briefly explained, the roots of strategic ambiguity are found in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which states that the United States will maintain the capacity to defend Taiwan but does not state whether or not the United States would actually militarily intervene if the PRC attacked – ultimately this remains a U.S. presidential decision. Strategic ambiguity has allowed the United States to protect its normalized relations with China from being completely derailed by a Taiwan-U.S. alliance while still threatening to quash a Chinese cross-strait attack. It has also helped prevent Taiwan’s more independence-leaning leaders from assuming they had a blank check from Washington to declare de jure independence, which would risk provoking a China-U.S. war in the process.
This framework worked well for American interests in a time when U.S. military power so overmatched China’s that the mere possibility of U.S. intervention was enough to outweigh the benefits of war in Chinese regime calculations, and along with it the benefits of China’s dedicated preparations for a cross-strait attack. Even as Beijing’s military power grew alongside its economy – and although Beijing probably judged that U.S. resolve to undertake military intervention was capricious and vulnerable to its diplomatic pressures (especially during periods of obvious U.S. frustration with Taiwan, such as during the Chen Shui-bian administration) – PRC inaction was in strong part decided by the danger of facing the United States’ superior military might.
Unfortunately, however, it is now more likely than not that this CCP leadership calculation has changed, and not only as a function of China’s gradually rising strength. China’s military power is certainly the first factor: Militarily the PRC can now finally hope to defeat a U.S. intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict. Just as importantly, though, the second key factor is paramount leader Xi Jinping’s apparent willingness to take the political risks inherent to a cross-strait invasion scenario.
Can the US Deter a Taiwan Invasion?
Rethinking “strategic ambiguity” is important, but in the meantime Washington must compensate for its dwindling military advantage over China with more costly signals of political resolve.
Rethinking “strategic ambiguity” is important, but in the meantime Washington must compensate for its dwindling military advantage over China with more costly signals of political resolve.
In this photo taken on April 22, 2013, new recruits practice charging with bayonets at a military training center in Hsinchu County, northern Taiwan.
Credit: AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying, File
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As the world comes to grips with Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the questions surrounding why Western deterrence has seemingly failed to prevent such a situation will be hotly debated. But beyond the implications for the United States and Europe, perhaps the most common analysis being made, rightly or not, compares Russia President Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukraine with Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s machinations regarding Taiwan (formally the Republic of China, or ROC), a de facto independent state that Beijing claims to be part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Some observers have opined that a weak response by the United States and its allies in Europe will embolden Xi to undertake a military takeover of the island. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield addressed this line of thinking in an interview with CNN when she stated, “As it relates to Taiwan and China, we are committed to protecting the security and supporting the security of the people of Taiwan… if China is making efforts toward Taiwan because of what they see happening in Ukraine, these are two different types of situations.”
The Biden administration’s repeated invocations of a possible “World War III” to deflect calls for greater U.S. material support for Ukraine’s defense are probably not helping the relevant optics in Asia. Yet the United States should be much more concerned with its day-to-day deterrence signaling toward China over Taiwan, which is woefully inadequate and prepositioned on dated calculations that make it ineffective.
Briefly explained, the roots of strategic ambiguity are found in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which states that the United States will maintain the capacity to defend Taiwan but does not state whether or not the United States would actually militarily intervene if the PRC attacked – ultimately this remains a U.S. presidential decision. Strategic ambiguity has allowed the United States to protect its normalized relations with China from being completely derailed by a Taiwan-U.S. alliance while still threatening to quash a Chinese cross-strait attack. It has also helped prevent Taiwan’s more independence-leaning leaders from assuming they had a blank check from Washington to declare de jure independence, which would risk provoking a China-U.S. war in the process.
This framework worked well for American interests in a time when U.S. military power so overmatched China’s that the mere possibility of U.S. intervention was enough to outweigh the benefits of war in Chinese regime calculations, and along with it the benefits of China’s dedicated preparations for a cross-strait attack. Even as Beijing’s military power grew alongside its economy – and although Beijing probably judged that U.S. resolve to undertake military intervention was capricious and vulnerable to its diplomatic pressures (especially during periods of obvious U.S. frustration with Taiwan, such as during the Chen Shui-bian administration) – PRC inaction was in strong part decided by the danger of facing the United States’ superior military might.
Unfortunately, however, it is now more likely than not that this CCP leadership calculation has changed, and not only as a function of China’s gradually rising strength. China’s military power is certainly the first factor: Militarily the PRC can now finally hope to defeat a U.S. intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict. Just as importantly, though, the second key factor is paramount leader Xi Jinping’s apparent willingness to take the political risks inherent to a cross-strait invasion scenario.
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
David Gitter
David Gitter is the founder and president of the Center for Advanced China Research (CACR).
6. Blasts, Bombs, And Drones: Amid Carnage In Ukraine, A Shadow War On The Russian Side Of The Border
Subversion and sabotage using a wide variety of capabilities and tactics.
Away from the active battlefronts within Ukraine, though, there’s a less bloody, less prominent front in the two-month-old war, a shadow campaign that has included attacks on military and industrial targets in Russia itself.
It’s not clear how many incidents have occurred, or whether they resulted from air strikes, or missiles, or sabotage. An unofficial tally by RFE/RL, based on open-source reporting, counts at least a dozen since the war’s beginning.
The preponderance of evidence points directly at Ukraine, but the attacks have gone largely unheralded by Kyiv.
They’ve also been played down by Russia -- for reasons that, analysts said, include embarrassment that its formidable military is unable to protect the country from being attacked from a foreign location.
Some of the incidents may also have a more mundane explanation, said William Alberque, director of strategy, technology, and arms control at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: negligence or corruption in Russia and its armed forces.
...
The Ukrainians are being opportunistic, Alberque said: Even when explosions can blamed on negligence, they’re happy to wink and nod, and let the world think they are the result of a special operation. And the Russians are happy in some cases to blame the Ukrainians, rather than admit corruption involving Russian civilian or military authorities could be to blame.
The Ukrainians “are trying to target, to get all the ammunition depots, and fuel depots. They are absolutely doing what they can to hit those facilities as much as possible,” he said. But he said it would be a mistake to ascribe every fire or blast in Russia to Ukraine.
“I don’t want to take credit from the people, the Ukrainians, who are doing actual sabotage. That’s happening. Period.” he said. “But let’s also not present Ukraine as some super-Ninja force that is slaying dragons way out in Siberia.”
Blasts, Bombs, And Drones: Amid Carnage In Ukraine, A Shadow War On The Russian Side Of The Border
April 29, 2022 19:41 GMT
By Mike Eckel
Early in the morning on April 27, a drone crashed in a muddy field southwest of the Russian city of Kursk, around 100 kilometers northeast of the border with Ukraine. Locals tracked down the destroyed device not long after, and posted photographs to Telegram and other social media.
The device appeared to be a Bayraktar TB2, a versatile Turkish-designed unmanned aerial vehicle capable of long-distance surveillance as well as dropping guided bombs or firing anti-tank missiles.
It wasn’t the Russians who were flying the drone.
And that wasn’t the only unusual thing that happened in that part of Russia that same morning: There were also two unexplained explosions at Russian military and industrial sites -- one in Kursk and one near Voronezh, not far to the east.
Nor does it appear to have been Russians who flew low-altitude attack helicopters in the pre-dawn hours of April 1 around the time that a fuel depot exploded less than 50 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the major developments on Russia's invasion, how Kyiv is fighting back, the plight of civilians, and Western reaction. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.
Since February 24, Russian forces have laid waste to towns and cities in northern, eastern, and southern Ukraine, killing thousands of civilians and forcing millions to flee in a war that prompted the West to punish Moscow with sanctions and send massive supplies of military aid and support to Kyiv.
Ukrainian forces thwarted an offensive aimed at taking Kyiv in the war’s early weeks, prompting Russian troops to withdraw from close to the capital. Much of the fighting is now focused on the region known as the Donbas and other areas in the east and south.
Away from the active battlefronts within Ukraine, though, there’s a less bloody, less prominent front in the two-month-old war, a shadow campaign that has included attacks on military and industrial targets in Russia itself.
It’s not clear how many incidents have occurred, or whether they resulted from air strikes, or missiles, or sabotage. An unofficial tally by RFE/RL, based on open-source reporting, counts at least a dozen since the war’s beginning.
The preponderance of evidence points directly at Ukraine, but the attacks have gone largely unheralded by Kyiv.
They’ve also been played down by Russia -- for reasons that, analysts said, include embarrassment that its formidable military is unable to protect the country from being attacked from a foreign location.
Some of the incidents may also have a more mundane explanation, said William Alberque, director of strategy, technology, and arms control at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: negligence or corruption in Russia and its armed forces.
“On the one hand, you have to understand that Russia is moving ammunition at scale, so accidents are going to happen,” Alberque told RFE/RL. “But once you get over, what, 22 accidents in 60 days? Then you are also going to be looking at enemy action.”
“Some of it is bravery, some of it is incompetence, some of it is Russian corruption, but let’s not get bogged down in the details,” he said. “The larger picture is that this is incredibly poor Russian planning, incredibly poor Russian execution; they’ve allowed infiltration of their airspace, and by missiles.”
Ukrainian officials, including some of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s top advisers, have merely winked at the prospect that Ukraine was willing to attack Russia itself, even as Ukrainian forces are dwarfed by Russia’s more powerful military.
"If you (Russians) decide to massively attack another country, massively kill everyone there, massively crush peaceful people with tanks, and use warehouses in your regions to enable the killings, then sooner or later the debts will have to be repaid," presidential adviser Mykhaylo Podolyak said in a post to Telegram hours after the explosions.
Contested Airspace
The incidents have been varied in their nature. One recurring theme is Turkish drones.
Ukraine has invested heavily in Turkish technology; Bayraktars are among the most advanced drones on the market. During the 2020 war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, Azerbaijan devastated Armenian forces and their allies mainly due to Bayraktars.
In October, four months before Russia sent thousands of troops into Ukraine, Ukrainian commanders used a Bayraktar to attack an artillery position of Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas in retaliation for shelling from those forces. Russia has complained publicly about Turkey, a NATO ally and general thorn in Moscow’s side in the Black Sea region, supplying the drones to Ukraine.
Ukrainian commanders have used the Turkish drones against Russian forces within Ukraine. And judging by photographs posted to social media accounts and claims from Russian authorities, they are being used routinely to fly over Russian territory.
Two days before the Bayraktar crashed near Kursk, another Turkish drone came down in the same region. Purported photos of the drone showed identification numbers and a Ukrainian flag stenciled on a wing.
On that same day, April 25, residents of Bryansk, which is about 155 kilometers northeast of the Ukrainian border, awoke to dawn skies blackened by thick smoke from a major oil pipeline that had been set ablaze. Regional Governor Aleksandr Bogomaz said a fire had broken out at the Transneft-Druzhba oil depot but no cause was given, and it was unclear if the Bayraktar could have been used to fire a missile.
An oil facility is set ablaze in Bryansk on April 25.
Russian bloggers on Telegram and elsewhere said two oil tanks had been hit by explosive devices.
Again, Ukrainian authorities made no claim of responsibility, and Russian officials did not publicly accuse Kyiv or assign blame for the fire.
Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, a former deputy chief of Ukraine’s General Staff, predicted there would be more such strikes in the future.
"We will not just watch them hit our railway stations, fuel and lubricant processing plants, and so on,” he told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service on April 25. “The time has come for this to happen to them as well.”
'War Is War'
Nor are the attacks a new phenomenon.
The day after the February 24 invasion began, a tactical ballistic missile hit the tarmac at a Russian air base in Millerovo, less than 10 kilometers from the Ukrainian border. Two Su-30 jet fighters were destroyed.
“In response to the bombing and rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities, the 19th Missile Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine struck hit the Russian air base Millerovo with a Tochka-U ballistic missile,” he said in a post to Facebook.
Yury Fyodorov, a Russian military analyst, said it was wholly plausible that Ukrainian intelligence was behind the incidents.
“Why not? After all, Russia is absolutely mercilessly bombing Ukrainian cities, warehouses, railway facilities, [civilians], and it feels entitled to do this,” he told Current Time. “War is war. And these things need to be answered in whatever ways possible.”
A still image of the fuel-depot on fire in Belgorod on April .
To date, one of the most striking incidents known to have occurred happened on April 1, when a fuel depot exploded in Belgorod, less than 50 kilometers from the border, injuring two people. Multiple videos posted to Telegram showed what appeared to be two Mi-8 helicopters flying low over villages in the vicinity shortly around the time of crash. The regional governor said the helicopters were from Ukraine.
That same day, a rocket exploded in a different part of the Belgorod region; open-source researchers said the trajectory of the rocket, and the fact that it was a model that is not believed to be in Ukraine’s arsenal, led them to believe it might have been an errant Russian missile.
“How much of this quote-unquote enemy action is due to the fact that the entire Russian system is sowed with incompetence and corruption?” Albeque said.
“Where is all this vaunted electronic warfare? Russia was supposed to have some of the world’s leading electronic warfare capabilities?” he said. “And then we have drones that are flying over these ammo dumps and oil storage depots: what the hell is that about?”
'Completely Legitimate'
While Western officials have voiced concerns about the war expanding beyond Ukraine’s borders, potentially into NATO territory, some have also effectively endorsed Ukrainian efforts to attack Russian targets within Russia itself.
It is “completely legitimate for Ukraine to be targeting in Russia’s depth in order to disrupt the logistics that if they weren’t disrupted would directly contribute to death and carnage on Ukrainian soil,” British armed forces minister James Heappey said in an interview with Times Radio on April 26.
During an appearance before a Senate committee on April 27, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked how the United States would view Ukrainian attacks inside Russia.
It was up to Ukraine, he said, to do everything “necessary to defend against Russian aggression.”
The Ukrainians are being opportunistic, Alberque said: Even when explosions can blamed on negligence, they’re happy to wink and nod, and let the world think they are the result of a special operation. And the Russians are happy in some cases to blame the Ukrainians, rather than admit corruption involving Russian civilian or military authorities could be to blame.
The Ukrainians “are trying to target, to get all the ammunition depots, and fuel depots. They are absolutely doing what they can to hit those facilities as much as possible,” he said. But he said it would be a mistake to ascribe every fire or blast in Russia to Ukraine.
“I don’t want to take credit from the people, the Ukrainians, who are doing actual sabotage. That’s happening. Period.” he said. “But let’s also not present Ukraine as some super-Ninja force that is slaying dragons way out in Siberia.”
With reporting by Current Time and RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
7. China’s Ukraine Conundrum
Note the author's affiliation: Tsinghua University is a national public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education.
Excerpts:
The memory of this awful history has informed China’s response to the war in Ukraine and hardened its commitment to avoid getting sandwiched between Washington and Moscow once again. Official Chinese statements have thus been finely calibrated to avoid provoking Russia. In an interview in March, for instance, Qin made clear that Beijing seeks a cooperative relationship with Moscow but does not support its war in Ukraine. “There is no forbidden zone for cooperation between China and Russia, but there is also a bottom line, which is the tenets and principles established in the UN Charter,” he said. In a press briefing on April 1, Wang Lutong, director-general of European affairs at China’s Foreign Ministry, sought to walk a similarly fine line: “We are not doing anything deliberately to circumvent the sanctions against Russia imposed by the US and the Europeans,” he said, adding that “China is not a related party to the crisis in Ukraine.”
In choosing a middle path on Ukraine, China has refrained from providing military aid to Moscow but maintained normal business relations with Russia, a decision that other countries have also made. For example, India—a strategic partner of the United States—has adopted a similar stance, drawing a clear distinction between military and economic affairs. Even some NATO countries have continued to buy Russian gas to heat homes through the winter. If the war in Ukraine drags on, more countries may start mimicking China’s balancing policy to minimize their own economic losses caused by the war.
As the world’s second-largest economic power, China intends to play an important role in shaping global economic norms. But it has no ambition to play a leading role in global security affairs, especially in matters of war, because of the huge military disparity between it and the United States. Shaping a peaceful environment favorable to China’s economic development remains an important diplomatic goal. As long as the United States does not offer military support for a Taiwanese declaration of de jure independence, China is unlikely to deviate from this path of peaceful development.
China’s Ukraine Conundrum
Why the War Necessitates a Balancing Act
May 2, 2022
- YAN XUETONG is Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University.
Russia’s war in Ukraine has produced a strategic predicament for China. On the one hand, the conflict has disrupted billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese trade, heightened tensions in East Asia, and deepened political polarization within China by dividing people into pro- and anti-Russia camps. On the other, China blames the United States for provoking Russia with its support for NATO expansion and worries that Washington will seek to prolong the conflict in Ukraine in order to bog down Russia. Beijing sees little to gain from joining the international chorus condemning Moscow.
Regardless of what China says or does in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to wage war in Ukraine, Washington is unlikely to soften its strategy of containment toward Beijing. And as China’s largest and most militarily capable neighbor, Russia is not a power that Beijing wishes to antagonize. Chinese policymakers have therefore sought to avoid unnecessarily provoking either rival power—abstaining from votes to condemn Russia in the UN General Assembly and carefully selecting its official statements about the war.
This balancing strategy is not without costs. Refusing to condemn Russia has strained China’s relations with some of its neighbors and distanced Beijing from many developing nations that have lined up against Russia’s war in Ukraine. It has also incurred economic costs stemming from Russia’s war that could continue long into the future. Nonetheless, in order to minimize its strategic losses, China will likely hew to this middle path until the war in Ukraine is over. One thing that might shift Beijing’s calculus and push it to side with Russia is if the United States provides military support for a Taiwanese declaration of de jure independence. Barring that, Beijing will likely continue its balancing act, since Washington’s policy of containment toward China makes it very difficult for Beijing to side with the United States on the war in Ukraine.
CAUGHT IN A BIND
Since the beginning of the conflict, Western powers have accused China of passively or even actively supporting Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. In March, for instance, The New York Times reported unverified claims that Russia shared its war plans with China ahead of the conflict. But as Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the United States, pointed out in a March 15 op-ed in The Washington Post, China had much to lose from Russia’s actions: “There were more than 6,000 Chinese citizens in Ukraine. China is the biggest trading partner of both Russia and Ukraine, and the largest importer of crude oil and natural gas in the world. Conflict between Russia and Ukraine does no good for China. Had China known about the imminent crisis, we would have tried our best to prevent it.”
In reality, Qin understated the war’s negative impact on China. The conflict has roiled commodities markets and disrupted supply chains, resulting in billions of dollars of losses for Chinese firms. The Chinese nickel titan Tsingshan Holding Group, for instance, lost $8 billion on ill-timed trades after the war dramatically caused the price of nickel to spike. War-related disruptions have also resulted in large-scale cancellations of Chinese export orders and weakened Chinese industrial productivity. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index—which tracks economic activity in the manufacturing sector—declined by 0.7 percent in March, a much worse performance than market analysts had forecast and the first monthly contraction since August 2021.
The war in Ukraine has deepened political polarization within China.
The war has also heightened tensions between China and some of its neighbors. As the rivalry between Washington and Beijing has intensified, many East Asian nations have adopted hedging strategies to balance ties to both powers. But the conflict in Ukraine has driven some of these countries to lean more heavily toward the United States. In addition, the conflict has given Washington an excuse to approve another $95 million in military aid to Taiwan—the third U.S. arms package that Taipei has received since U.S. President Joe Biden took office. And it is not just China’s relations with its neighbors that have suffered: in March, two-thirds of UN member states voted to condemn Russia in a pair of resolutions at the UN General Assembly while only five voted not to and 35 abstained. China’s presence in the latter group will be remembered by many small and midsized countries, especially in the developing world.
To make matters worse, the war has further strained relations between China and the United States and its allies. Australia, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom have all said they will join the United States in imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese companies that continue to do business as usual with Russia.
Finally, the war in Ukraine has deepened political polarization within China itself. On WeChat and other social media platforms, Chinese citizens have coalesced into opposing camps, one for Russia and the other against. Soon after the conflict began, some anti-Russia Chinese netizens began rehashing the unfairness of the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, which ceded roughly 230,000 square miles of Chinese territory to Russia. The political sensitivity of this historical event has in the past made Beijing wary of supporting any Russian efforts at territorial expansion. In this case, however, Beijing must give sincere consideration to the anti-Russian sentiment among some Chinese citizens.
“FUEL TO THE FLAMES”
Despite the war’s negative impacts on China, however, Beijing is not prepared to accept Washington’s approach toward the conflict. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Chinese government has argued that the United States provoked Russia by pushing for NATO’s eastward expansion. It now sees Washington as deliberately escalating the war in order to perpetuate it, thereby weakening both Russia and China. In a virtual call on March 5, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that China opposes any moves that "add fuel to the flames" in Ukraine. Chinese leaders and journalists have since repeated the phrase, underscoring Beijing’s distrust of Washington’s intentions. On March 30, for instance, the state-run People’s Daily published an editorial arguing that by “adding fuel to the flames” the United States “is creating larger obstacles to a political solution of this crisis.”
Having failed to deter Russia from waging war in Ukraine with threats of severe economic sanctions, the United States has shifted its goal from ending the conflict to prolonging it. In a speech in Poland on March 26, Biden said, “This battle will not be won in days or months either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead.” To Beijing, this read as an admission that the White House no longer aims to end the war but rather to prolong it in order to weaken and defeat Russia. When the following week Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to make progress toward a tentative peace plan, top U.S. officials expressed skepticism about Russia’s desire to curtail its military assault on the cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv. Of the supposed progress, Biden said, “I don’t read anything into it until I see what [Russia’s] actions are.” The next day, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that the United States planned to provide Ukraine with an additional $500 million in direct budgetary aid. As Beijing sees it, Washington is scaling up military aid to Ukraine in order to deny Russia a diplomatic off ramp for troop withdrawal. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comment last week that “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine” has only deepened China’s conviction that the United States’ priority is to weaken Russia, not to seek a swift end to the war.
Beijing now sees Washington as deliberately escalating the war in order to perpetuate it.
Nor does China believe that seeking common ground with Washington on the war in Ukraine will meaningfully improve broader Sino-U.S. relations. Even if Beijing were to join in the international condemnation of Russia, the United States would not soften its containment policy against China. Since the start of the war, some East Asian countries have publicly questioned whether Washington will sustain its focus on the Indo-Pacific while Europe is in crisis. In response, the Biden administration has been quick to reassure them. On March 28, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks told reporters: “Even as we confront Russia’s malignant activities, the defense strategy describes how the department will act urgently to sustain and strengthen deterrence with the PRC as our most consequential strategic competitor and pacing challenge.” The next day, Biden told Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong that even though the United States is focused on Ukraine, it is “strongly supportive of moving rapidly to implement the Indo-Pacific strategy.”
Chinese leaders see no reason to believe that Washington would somehow shift these priorities even if Beijing distanced itself from Moscow. In their eyes, condemning Russia publicly and siding with those enforcing sanctions against it would only open the door for the United States to impose secondary sanctions on China itself. The United States has already threatened to punish Chinese companies that do business with Russia. On February 3, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters: “We have an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill U.S. export control actions, to evade them, to get around them.”
After Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, the United States dialed up the diplomatic pressure on China. In mid-March, before U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with Yang Jiechi, the director of China’s Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, Sullivan told the media: “We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them.”
THE MIDDLE PATH
This is not the first time Beijing has found itself caught between major rival powers. Between 1958 and 1971, the People’s Republic of China faced the most hostile international environment in its brief history. During this period, it had to confront strategic threats from the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously. In response, the Chinese government devoted all its economic resources to preparing for a full-scale war against one of the two powers. To better shield its industrial base from attack, it moved many factories from more developed areas in eastern China to underdeveloped and mountainous western areas, hiding them in artificial caves. This large-scale industrial reorganization plunged China into a significant economic hardship, causing severe commodity shortages and widespread poverty.
The memory of this awful history has informed China’s response to the war in Ukraine and hardened its commitment to avoid getting sandwiched between Washington and Moscow once again. Official Chinese statements have thus been finely calibrated to avoid provoking Russia. In an interview in March, for instance, Qin made clear that Beijing seeks a cooperative relationship with Moscow but does not support its war in Ukraine. “There is no forbidden zone for cooperation between China and Russia, but there is also a bottom line, which is the tenets and principles established in the UN Charter,” he said. In a press briefing on April 1, Wang Lutong, director-general of European affairs at China’s Foreign Ministry, sought to walk a similarly fine line: “We are not doing anything deliberately to circumvent the sanctions against Russia imposed by the US and the Europeans,” he said, adding that “China is not a related party to the crisis in Ukraine.”
In choosing a middle path on Ukraine, China has refrained from providing military aid to Moscow but maintained normal business relations with Russia, a decision that other countries have also made. For example, India—a strategic partner of the United States—has adopted a similar stance, drawing a clear distinction between military and economic affairs. Even some NATO countries have continued to buy Russian gas to heat homes through the winter. If the war in Ukraine drags on, more countries may start mimicking China’s balancing policy to minimize their own economic losses caused by the war.
As the world’s second-largest economic power, China intends to play an important role in shaping global economic norms. But it has no ambition to play a leading role in global security affairs, especially in matters of war, because of the huge military disparity between it and the United States. Shaping a peaceful environment favorable to China’s economic development remains an important diplomatic goal. As long as the United States does not offer military support for a Taiwanese declaration of de jure independence, China is unlikely to deviate from this path of peaceful development.
8. Ukraine’s Digital Fight Goes Global
Excerpts:
In the absence of any official authority over volunteer hackers, state governments should brace themselves for a rise in cyber-accidents, cyberattacks, and potential escalation—and most importantly, they should attempt to regulate freelance shadow wars. Despite the West’s military contributions to the Ukrainian defense, as well as some states’ tacit approval of foreign military volunteers, the United States and its allies must work to differentiate the shadow cyberconflict—and to drive home the stakes for average citizens inclined to join the cause. A retaliatory Russian cyberattack targeting the United States could devastate critical infrastructure, the private sector, and civilians who have played no part in the conflict. Washington must make clear that hacking Russia from U.S. soil is not worth the risk. It must also revise and update its neutrality laws to account for these new forms of informal cyberconflict, to be able to hold hackers fighting from U.S. soil accountable.
Perhaps most importantly, U.S. officials should encourage the public to help the Ukrainian defense in ways that cannot be used as a pretext for retaliation. Private citizens can help by housing Ukrainian refugees, supporting Russian dissidents, and taking care not to spread disinformation about the conflict. Residents in the United States and Europe could deliver the ultimate blow to Russia by reducing energy consumption: that move would deprive the Russian government of an influx of cash and mitigate the possibility of Russia threatening energy cutoffs to retaliate against governments providing aid to Ukraine. If private citizens are looking to make a difference for Ukraine, turning off the lights at home would be a good start.
Ukraine’s Digital Fight Goes Global
The Risks of a Self-Directed, Volunteer Army of Hackers
May 2, 2022
A somewhat conventional war is underway in Ukraine, featuring organized and professional soldiers, a chain of command, advanced weapons such as drones and tanks, and state-crafted tactics and strategy. But a parallel war is also taking place, mostly in cyberspace, fueled by foreign volunteers fighting for either Russia or Ukraine. These online volunteer forces are loosely organized and don’t have a chain of command. They have grown exponentially since the war began in February—Ukrainian authorities estimate that some 400,000 hackers from numerous countries have aided the country’s digital fight so far. Several high-profile figures have offered to join the cause: the entrepreneur Elon Musk, for instance, has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a “single combat” duel to decide the fate of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have begun to engage in cyberwarfare related to the conflict, in an impressive feat of grassroots mobilization.
For those rooting for a besieged country defending its territorial integrity, this arrangement may seem to have no downside: civilians from around the world are volunteering their time and skills to help Ukraine win without expecting remuneration or reward from its government. But there are serious risks involved in waging an informal cyberbattle against Russia, particularly since cyberwarfare may be one of the few remaining tools in the Kremlin’s playbook. This parallel war sets Russia and the West on a collision course—and risks spinning out of control into a chaotic, high-stakes contest that could spread beyond the cyber-domain.
Recognizing the global momentum on its side as people around the world sought to support the Ukrainian defense, the government in Kyiv forged this informal network in the early days of the war. “We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. . . . There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front,” tweeted Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, on February 26, including a link to the newly created “IT Army of Ukraine” group on the chat app Telegram. Offers to aid Ukraine’s cyber-efforts began arriving immediately—“Let me know if our team can be of any assistance (free of charge of course),” wrote the CEO of a cybersecurity startup. Since then, the Telegram group has grown to almost 300,000 members.
People from all corners of the world have joined the digital fight. They have worked on projects ranging from disabling Russian government pages to building a website to combat Russian misinformation—and they have often succeeded. But while the efforts on the part of this volunteer army have been impressive, they could very well backfire, threatening to escalate and prolong the conflict rather than delivering a decisive victory for either side.
THE DIGITAL CAVALRY
In the wake of Russia’s invasion of its southern neighbor, civilians from around the world have sought to find ways to get involved in the conflict from afar. Some of these efforts are essentially boosterism: countless people tweet images and videos in support of one side or the other, seemingly irrespective of the accuracy of the information. But some of the volunteer work has been of the more skilled variety: a Norwegian computer expert, for instance, has created a spamming program that sends an automated message denouncing the attack to 150 Russian email addresses at a time. "Dear friend, I am writing to you to express my concern for the secure future of our children on this planet. Most of the world has condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine," reads the Russian-language message, which is followed by an English translation.
People from all corners of the world have joined the digital fight.
Participation has not been limited to the online realm: thousands of foreign volunteers have traveled to Ukraine since the start of the conflict to help the Ukrainian military defense, though their military contribution in the country has for the most part been a disappointment. Instead, cyber-aggression is by far the most powerful element of the global volunteer effort. Victor Zhora, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s information protection service, told BloombergQuint in early March that volunteers had been working on tasks ranging from gathering intelligence to attacking Russian military systems. “It’s a bit like the people who traveled to fight in Syria, but this time both [warring] parties are technologically advanced, so attacking the other side in cyberspace makes sense,” retired Major General Gunnar Karlson, the former chief of Swedish military intelligence, told me. “And receiving such volunteer help is attractive because it brings competence at no cost. For lots of people, hacking for Ukraine in particular is a very attractive alternative to donating money or traveling there to fight. All this is very positive for Ukraine.”
These informal attacks have often been successful. On February 26, for instance, the global hacking collective Anonymous declared “cyber war” on Russia and hacked Russian state television to show harrowing footage from the war, along with other pro-Ukrainian content. On April 13, the collective reportedly claimed that Russia “no longer has control over spy satellites” following a hack on its satellite program, which Russia denied. Other hackers have conducted successful attacks on Russian government websites. On March 16, cyber-intruders modified the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations website by posting a number for Russian soldiers to call if they want to defect. And some volunteers belonging to the IT Army of Ukraine have voiced a desire to go further by targeting private companies and disrupting Russian government agency operations. “There have been long queues to ATMs in Russia recently. Let’s make them even longer by shutting down online banking,” a recent comment in the Telegram group read. On April 7, the IT Army of Ukraine announced it had hacked Rossgram—a Russian facsimile of Instagram, launched after the U.S. social media platform was banned in Russia in March—and leaked user data. But the successes of Ukraine’s volunteer army of hackers in creating widespread disruption and chaos in Russia could ultimately escalate the war on the ground.
UPPING THE ANTE
In conventional conflicts, including cyberwarfare, each side follows an organizational strategy known as command and control, in which a chain of commanders has oversight and authority over assigned forces in the execution of a mission. This allows a country to decide on a military objective and ensure that everyone down to the last private collectively implements it. Without such a structure, state-on-state conflict would be a free-for-all, as different units and even individuals would attack targets of their own choosing. The command-and-control system, of course, also places ultimate responsibility on state governments.
The shadow war between a global volunteer corps supporting Ukraine and a smaller group of pro-Russia hackers operates outside any such structures. And while many hackers may see freelancing for one’s preferred side as harmless, it is anything but. “No reasonable person will want to condemn volunteers for trying to help Ukraine,” Ciaran Martin, the founding director of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, told me. “But just as volunteer soldiers from within Ukraine or from abroad who don’t know what they’re doing and aren’t operating in a proper structure can sometimes do more harm than good, so can volunteer hackers.”
State governments should brace themselves for a rise in cyber-accidents, cyberattacks, and potential escalation.
The lack of a command-and-control system—or any commanding authority, in fact—poses enormous risks. In the absence of any guidance or direction, “the volunteers . . . could do completely unhelpful things like attacking the wrong targets,” said Karlson. Many independent hackers could use the pretext of the conflict to carry out serious cybercrimes. And even though these volunteers aren’t following instructions from their home government, they are residents or citizens of countries that risk being linked to their activities. “This is more dangerous than U.S. citizens traveling to Ukraine to fight with the Ukrainian foreign legion, because it brings the very real risk of aggression launched from our territory,” said retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, the executive director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission. “Everyone instinctively understands that it’s not OK if some guy in Europe or the U.S. fires off a missile to help the Ukrainians. Volunteering as cyber-aggressors is the same thing, just in a different domain.” The efforts of thousands of foreign volunteer fighters on the ground in Ukraine have, in fact, already raised questions regarding to what extent governments should be held accountable for the participation of their citizens in the conflict. The United States is in a particularly vulnerable situation regarding pro-Ukraine freelance hacking emanating from its territory, given that U.S. President Joe Biden told Putin last year that Washington will hold Moscow responsible for hacking originating from Russian soil. Russia could well feel entitled to hold a similar position on cyber-activity emanating from the United States.
This is true on a global scale: with most of the foreign cyber-volunteers supporting Ukraine, high-profile hits by pro-Ukraine hackers could prompt an already violence-prone Kremlin to retaliate. Moscow would not retaliate against the attackers—who might be a few different individuals dispersed around the world—but against Ukraine or against the attackers’ countries of origin or residence. That, in turn, could trigger further escalation. “If you’re hacking Russia from your living room in London, it poses a risk to the [United Kingdom],” Karlson said. “Putin wouldn’t fire off cruise missiles against the UK to avenge hacking from London, but he could use such means to retaliate against hacking attacks originating in neighboring countries.” That risk extends to the countries hosting the servers that handle hackers’ traffic—including the United States. The West’s extreme dependence on electricity and the Internet already makes it an attractive target for Russia. “Just imagine what would happen if the power went out for a few hours in New York City,” Montgomery said. “And with Americans already active in this parallel war, the Russians could stage a false-flag attack to suggest an attack was being conducted from the U.S. or another Western country. Attribution is extremely hard in cyber, and that makes it hard to prove a negative.” The Ukrainian government, meanwhile, might likewise choose to retaliate against any crippling cyberattacks that appear to have a Russian connection.
Another crucial difference sets these novel volunteers apart from soldiers in the employ of armed forces: they are not obliged to follow the Geneva Conventions, nor do they seem familiar with them or with national laws that, for example, ban citizen cyber-intrusions, even against foreign countries. Ever since Russia’s invasion began, supporters of Ukraine have been sharing videos on social media of Russian prisoners of war held captive in Ukraine in what is almost certainly a genuine effort to help spread optimism regarding Ukraine’s chances of defeating its invader. But sharing footage of POWs violates the Geneva Conventions, which stipulate that “prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.” Naive social media users are thus providing Russia with an opportune pretext to likewise mistreat Ukrainian POWs. In Montgomery’s words, “Yes, the war is deplorable, but you can’t say it’s so terrible that you’ll go ahead and violate international rules and norms.”
LESS IS MORE
For many volunteer hackers, that ship may have already sailed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War, in that the invasion has compelled countless people from around the world to play a part in the struggle. But in contrast to the Spanish conflict, Ukraine’s cyber-volunteers can choose to take part from the safety of their homes. “It’s inevitable that we’ll see more such shadow wars in the future,” Karlson predicted. “And countries that can’t afford big armed forces can wage war on the cheap by appealing for volunteers to join such shadow armies. For younger generations, this could become the natural way to participate.” As the volunteer cyberwar over Ukraine grows bigger, the United States and its allies must not be caught flat-footed should this shadow conflict—or the next—threaten to spiral out of control.
In the absence of any official authority over volunteer hackers, state governments should brace themselves for a rise in cyber-accidents, cyberattacks, and potential escalation—and most importantly, they should attempt to regulate freelance shadow wars. Despite the West’s military contributions to the Ukrainian defense, as well as some states’ tacit approval of foreign military volunteers, the United States and its allies must work to differentiate the shadow cyberconflict—and to drive home the stakes for average citizens inclined to join the cause. A retaliatory Russian cyberattack targeting the United States could devastate critical infrastructure, the private sector, and civilians who have played no part in the conflict. Washington must make clear that hacking Russia from U.S. soil is not worth the risk. It must also revise and update its neutrality laws to account for these new forms of informal cyberconflict, to be able to hold hackers fighting from U.S. soil accountable.
Perhaps most importantly, U.S. officials should encourage the public to help the Ukrainian defense in ways that cannot be used as a pretext for retaliation. Private citizens can help by housing Ukrainian refugees, supporting Russian dissidents, and taking care not to spread disinformation about the conflict. Residents in the United States and Europe could deliver the ultimate blow to Russia by reducing energy consumption: that move would deprive the Russian government of an influx of cash and mitigate the possibility of Russia threatening energy cutoffs to retaliate against governments providing aid to Ukraine. If private citizens are looking to make a difference for Ukraine, turning off the lights at home would be a good start.
9. Putin's War - May 2, 2022 Update | SOF News
Putin's War - May 2, 2022 Update | SOF News
Curated news, analysis, and commentary about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tactical situation on the ground, Ukrainian defense, and NATO. Additional topics include refugees, internally displaced personnel, humanitarian efforts, cyber, and information operations.
Photo: U.S. Air Force airmen assigned to the 352d Special Operations Wing, based out of RAF Mildenhall, U.K., conduct air operations out of an MC-130J Commando II April 23, 2020, over Greece. Air Commandos always maintain a ready and capable force, postured to execute global response operations whenever they are called. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Pena).
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Big Picture of the Conflict
Russian Mobilization. There is some speculation that the Russians may announce a general mobilization. Although not immediately available, this additional manpower could be a major factor several months from now. The history of Russian wars over the last two centuries reveals that the current war in Ukraine may last significantly longer than a year. Russia will most likely default to a strategy of attrition on the battlefield; with its vast advantage in population, it can mobilize more soldiers than Ukraine. “The History of Russian Conflict Behavior Tells Us That the War in Ukraine Will be Long”, Real Clear Defense, April 29, 2022.
Ground Situation. Russian units that were based in the Kyiv region and northern part of Ukraine have been repositioned to the Donbas region. Many are understrength and are being merged into new units. By focusing activities in the Donbas region the Russians will concentrate their forces, shorten supply lines, and simplify their command and control structure. The Russians are gradually intensifying the offensive in the east of Ukraine along the entire front.
Ground attacks are preceded by artillery and rocket strikes. The movement has been incremental – as the maneuver units are ensuring that the arty and rockets have sufficiently weakened positions that they are attacking. In addition, the ground units are ensuring they don’t get too far of their logistical support. The Russian advance is occurring from three directions – the north, east, and from the south. The US DoD is estimating that the Russians have 92 operational battalion tactical groups (BTGs) in Ukraine. Not all BTGs are fully manned. Estimates of the total of BTGs in the Russian army range from 168 to 184.
Missile Attacks Continue. As of Friday (Apr 29) the Russians have launched over 1,950 missiles against targets in Ukraine (DoD estimate). The preponderance of the strikes were against Mariupol and the Donbas region. Western Ukraine, Kyiv, and Odesa are experiencing some missile strikes as well – mostly against logistical and supply centers, transportation nodes, and electrical producing plants.
Putin to Have Surgery. Russian President Putin will be undergoing a cancer operation in the ‘near future’, possibly just after the May ‘victory parade’ to be held in Moscow. While in surgery his powers will be exercised by Security Council chief Patrushev. There are news reports that Putin has abdominal cancer and Parkinson’s.
Russian CoS Wounded? General Valery Gerasimov may have suffered a slight leg wound as a result of a Ukrainian rocket attack on a Russian command post in Izyum, Ukraine on Saturday (Apr 30). Some news reports indicate that he may have left just prior to the attack. Up to 30 Russian officers were killed in the attack.
Ukrainian Defense
Artillery. All types of big guns are arriving in Ukraine. These long-range weapons will be extremely important for the type of warfare to be conducted in the Donbas region where the lines of the conflict are more clearly defined – many of them established over eight years of conflict. The artillery will assist the Ukrainians in defending territory, countering Russian artillery and rocket fire, and during counterattacks or a general counteroffensive. The long-range artillery will prove to be decisive in this ‘new phase’ of the war. The United States, Canada, and France are providing artillery that fire the 155-mm round. The M777 towed howitzer 155-mm has a range of 25 miles (Excalibur precision guided munition or PGM rounds) while the Russian D-30 122-mm has a range of 18 miles. “Western artillery surging into Ukraine will reshape war with Russia”, The Washington Post, April 30, 2022.
U.S. Training Ukrainian Military in Germany. Personnel from the Ukrainian military are being introduced and trained up in Germany on equipment that the U.S. is providing to Ukraine. This equipment includes artillery, armored vehicles, and radar systems. About 160 members of the Florida National Guard were part of the Joint Multinational Training Group in Western Ukraine and were ordered out of Ukraine prior to the Russian invasion. The unit is now in Germany and have reunited with Ukrainians to continue training. Ukrainians are being trained in three different locations in Europe, Germany being one of the locations. “U.S. Troops Train Ukrainians in Germany”, DoD News, April 29, 2022.
Ukrainian SOF Describe Battle for Key Airfield. In the opening hours of the Russian invasion 30 attack helicopters appeared over the horizon approaching the Hostomel airport located northwest of Kyiv. Ukrainian special operations forces and other units quickly surrounded and defeated the Russian SOF units that had landed and they were dispersed. What followed was two more months of heavy fighting. Two Ukrainian SOF members describe fending off the Russians and appeal for more weapons and support from the West. (The Globe and Mail, Apr 22, 2022).
Tactical Situation
Kharkiv. The Ukrainians have launched several small counterattacks out of Kharkiv city and are lessening the partial encirclement of the city by the Russians. The villages of Verkhnia Rohanka, Ruska Lozova, Slobidske, and Prilesne have been liberated from Russian control. Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city located in the northeast of the country.
Mariupol. Members of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade and the Azov Regiment are still holding out in the Azovstal plant. Located on the Sea of Azov, the coastal city of Mariupol is under siege by the Russians. This city is situated along the coastal road network that would provide Russia with a land bridge between Russia and the Crimea. Twenty civilians are reported to have been evacuated to Ukrainian held territory from the Azovstal plant on Saturday (Apr 30). About 100 people were evacuated on Sunday (May 1). There are reports that more evacuations will take place on Monday (May 2). There are over 600 wounded in a Ukrainian field hospital in the Azovstal plant.
Kherson – Rubles, Lenin, and a Referendum. Starting on Sunday (May 1) the Russians have begun the process of changing the local currency of the occupied city of Kherson to the Russian ruble. The introduction of the Russian currency is meeting some resistance from the city dwellers who are entering their third month of Russian occupation. There is speculation that the Russians will introduce a referendum asking Kherson residents if they want to declare independence from Ukraine; the result of which is a foregone conclusion. The Russian occupiers have erected a statue of Lenin that had been removed in February 2014 in the wake of the pro-Western EuroMaiden Revolution. The only safe route for leaving Kherson is south through Crimea and then into Russia, on to Georgia, and then flying to Europe. It is becoming evident that the Russians intend to stay. “Ukraine war: Resistance to Russian rouble in Kherson”, BBC News, May 1, 2022.
Mykolayiv and Odessa. The fighting is continuing in the Mykolayiv region. The Russian continue to shell the populated areas in this region; but have not made any noticeable advances on the ground. Located on the west bank of the Dnieper River close to the coast of the Black Sea, Mykolayiv is a strategic objective for the Russians that is on the road to Odessa located further west along the coast of the Black Sea.
General Information
Negotiations. Another prisoner exchange took place on Saturday (Apr 30). Seven military and seven civilian prisoners were released to Ukrainian custody.
Refugees, IDPs, and Humanitarian Crisis. View the UNHCR Operational Data Portal – Ukraine Refugee Situation (Updated daily), https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine. The UNHCR has registered 5,468,629 refugees as of April 29th. Poland has taken in over 3 million Ukrainians. As of Friday (Apr 29) 1,289,000 Ukrainians have returned to Ukraine.
Nukes in Kaliningrad? Russian officials have been warning the West and the Baltic states on their ‘interference’ with the Russian ‘special military operation’. They have warned of the dangers of escalation with threats of nuclear retaliation. One of those threats is the movement of nuclear weapons into Kaliningrad as a counter to increased support of Ukraine by Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland. However, according to some military analysts, the Russians have kept nukes in Kaliningrad for years. “Lithuanian officials puzzled by Russia’s threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad”, LRT.it, April 14, 2022.
American Killed in Ukraine. Willy Joseph Cancel, a former U.S. Marine, has died while fighting alongside Ukrainian forces a week ago on Monday (Apr 24). He was reportedly employed by a military contractor. The DoD spokesman, John Kirby, indicated that he believes the company was not contracted with the DoD and the DoD does not have any contractors working in Ukraine. He served in the Marines from 2017 to 2021. After his service with the Marines he was employed as a corrections officer in Tennessee. He had also worked as a volunteer fire fighter in New York. He was 22 years old and leaves behind a wife and young child. “Marine veteran killed fighting in Ukraine, relatives say”, Marine Corps Times, April 29, 2022. Read also, “Combat death puts spotlight on Americans fighting in Ukraine”, Military Times, May 1, 2022. Many Americans in Ukraine are not fighting, but rather assisting in providing humanitarian assistance. “Deliveries to Bucha: US Army veteran trucks aid to battle-scarred Ukrainian towns”, Military Times, April 29, 2022.
Two British Volunteers Detained by Russians. The non-profit Presidium Network said that two UK citizens were detained at a checkpoint in southern Ukraine on Monday (Apr 24). The two captured aid workers were working independently but were in touch with the Presidium Network. They were trying to rescue a family from a village south of the city of Zaporizhzhia at the time of their capture. The two men had crossed into Russian controlled territory. “Ukraine war: Two UK aid workers captured by Russia, says NGO”, BBC News, April 29, 2022.
Cyber and Information Operations
Russia’s Cyber Attacks. Heather Dinniss, a senior lecturer at the International Law Centre of the Swedish Defence University, examines the history of Russian cyber attacks against Ukraine. She covers the years pre-ceding the February 2022 invasion as well as during the past few months. “Military Networks and Cyber Operations in the War in Ukraine”, Articles of War, Lieber Institute West Point, April 29, 2022.
Report – An Overview of Russia’s Cyberattack Activity in Ukraine, Microsoft Digital Security Unit, April 27, 2022. Read the 21-page PDF here.
World Response
Finland – Soon to be a NATO Nation? Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine the status of ‘neutral’ nations in Europe may very well change – perhaps within weeks or months. Finland is acutely aware of the threat posed by Russia – it fought the 1939-1940 Winter War against the Russians . . . finally agreeing to a truce that resulted in a territorial loss for Finland. Emily Rauhala describes the steps that Finland is taking to deter Russian aggressive moves on its borders. Some reports state the Finland will apply for NATO membership on May 12th. “How Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine pushed Finland toward NATO”, The Washington Post, April 30, 2022.
Nancy Pelosi Visits Kyiv. House Speaker Nancy Pelois and five other Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives visited Ukraine and met with President Zelensky on Sunday (May 1). Their next stop will be in Poland for more meetings. (Axios, May 1, 2022).
EU Oil Embargo. Member states of the European Union are finalizing plans to enact an oil embargo against Russia. Europe’s biggest oil supplier is Russia, providing about one-quarter of the bloc’s yearly needs. The Europeans will make up the shortfall from other sources including Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Persian Gulf countries.
More Weapons for Ukraine
$33 Billion Aid Package. President Biden is asking Congress to provide billions more in aid to Ukraine. The money would provide military equipment, economic assistance, and humanitarian aid.
US Lend-Lease Bill. The US House of Representatives passed a bill that will speed up weapons supply to Ukraine. The Ukraine Democracy Lend-Lease Act of 2022 was passed by a vote of 417 – 10. The bill will by pass some of the bureaucratic procedures that have slowed down weapons shipments. The ten NO votes were all Republicans.
Denmark and Polish Weapons. The Danes are handing over 25 Piranha III armored personnel carriers (APCs) to the Ukrainians. The vehicle is made by the Swiss company MOWAG and is a highly regarded APC. Denmark is also providing 50 M113 tracked APCs and some M10 mortars with thousands of rounds. The Poles are sending over 200 T-72 tanks to Ukraine.
Stingers – Dwindling Stocks. The CEO of Raytheon, the manufacturer of the Stinger anti-aircraft missile, says that it could take a year or more to make more weapons for countries that donated them to Ukraine. The company won’t be able to ramp up production for the Stingers until 2023. The U.S. Department of Defense hasn’t bought a Stinger in over 18 years and the components for the missile are no longer commercially available. “Raytheon chief warns of delays in replenishing Stinger missile stocks”, Politico, April 26, 2022.
M113 APCs. At least five states are sending M113 armored personnel carriers to Europe to be given to Ukrainian forces. At the request of the Department of Defense, the governors of West Virginia, North Carolina, Missouri, Ohio, and Indiana are sending over 200 of the APCs to Europe. The DoD stopped buying the M113s in 2006. The APC will offer Ukraine transportation for its infantrymen and protection from small arms fire and artillery. As a tracked vehicle it will be able to traverse in fields and on dirt trails. The M113s are still operational and have had upgrades through the years. “US National Guard’s aging battle taxis find new use in Ukraine fight”, Defense News, April 29, 2022.
Abrams Tanks Needed by Poland. The transfer of weapons and ammunition has been a lifeline for the Ukrainian military. Anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft missiles, artillery, APCs, drones, and other types of equipment has been flowing into Ukraine. Poland will be buying 250 Abrams tanks, which will allow it to send its older T-72 tanks to Ukraine. “To Help Ukraine, the Administration Needs to Get Abrams Tanks to Poland Faster”, Real Clear Defense, April 29, 2022.
EUCOM’s Role? United States European Command (EUCOM) has been playing a key role in tracking logistics and transportation of military equipment to Ukraine. Headed up by a U.S. two-star Naval officer from EUCOM’s J-4 logistics directorate, a special staff with 15 donor nations ensure the swift delivery of weapons into Ukrainian hands. “What is EUCOM’s Ukraine Control Center?”, Air Force Magazine, April 29, 2022.
Commentary
Economic Warfare. Aaron Klein examines the economic impact of the multiple levels and varieties of sanctions that have been imposed on Russia. He warns us that the real damage to Russia’s economy from sanctions will take time. When assessing the progress of economic warfare, patience is important. “Multiple battlefields in time and space”, Brookings Institute, April 29, 2022.
America’s War. The United States is playing a leading role for a new coalition of nations that are supporting Ukraine and weakening Russia. In the initial days of the Russian invasion the U.S. response was measured, mostly in an attempt to not provoke Putin further with hopes that he would halt his offensive. Now that the full intent of Putin is known (we think) the U.S. has significantly stepped up its support of Ukraine. “Ukraine Is Now America’s War, Too”, by Robin Wright, The New Yorker, May 1, 2022.
Consequences of Russia’s Aggression. The geopolitical and military landscape of Europe and Asia has changed dramatically as a result of the thus-far, failed Russian invasion of Ukraine. After two months of fighting, some long-term outcomes can be predicted. “Geostrategic Consequences of Russia’s War Against Ukraine”, The RAND Blog, April 26, 2022.
SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, defense, or the current conflict in Ukraine then we are interested.
Maps and Other Resources
Maps of Ukraine
Weapons of the Ukraine War.
10. Putin's chief of staff Valery Gerasimov is 'wounded by shrapnel after being sent to Ukraine
Other reports say he departed the location just before the strike and was not injured. But I think the big issue is that Gerasimov has been sent to command operations in Ukraine.
Putin's chief of staff Valery Gerasimov is 'wounded by shrapnel after being sent to Ukraine by Russian president to secure victory', reports claim - as ANOTHER mystery explosion rocks Russian city
- Valery Gerasimov, Russian army's chief of staff, was flown out of Izyum near Kharkiv with shrapnel wounds
- The top military commander had been sent to the region to take personal control of push to grab territory
- Conflict in the region has intensified even further in recent weeks amid Russia's assault in eastern Ukraine
- Kharviv is also where Russia's ninth general, Andrei Simonov, 55, was killed in a Ukrainian attack yesterday
- Gerasimov was taken to Belgorod, where Russian military site was hit today in a suspected Ukrainian strike
- Meanwhile in Mariupol, around 100 Ukrainian civilians have been evacuated from Azovstal steel plant
- The city has been decimated by Russian airstrikes and around 1,000 civilians remain trapped in the plant
- A Ukrainian university claimed the cost of rebuilding the nation now stands at more than £70billion
PUBLISHED: 17:22 BST, 1 May 2022 | UPDATED: 19:41 BST, 1 May 2022
Vladimir Putin's top military commander has been flown out of the war zone with shrapnel wounds after being to sent to Ukraine by the Russian president to secure victory, a former Russian internal affairs minister has claimed.
Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian army, was today wounded in Izyum in Ukraine's Kharviv region, which has been at the centre of intense fighting since Russia's invasion.
Putin had sent Gerasimov to the region to take personal control of his push to grab territory in eastern Ukraine, after the Russian army abandoned its plans to take Kyiv at the end of March in favour of a concentrated assault on the Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk.
An unofficial Russian source reported that Gerasimov sustained 'a shrapnel wound in the upper third of the right leg without a bone fracture.
'The shard was removed - there is no danger to life,' he said.
But Gerasimov's injury was severe enough to have him flown away from the frontlines and back to Russia to undergo further treatment, marking another embarrassing defeat for Putin's forces.
The chief of staff's injury came just one day after Russian Major General Andrei Simonov, 55, was killed in Kharkiv, according to an adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
He is Russia's ninth general to have been killed since the start of the invasion.
Valery Gerasimov, the chief of staff of the Russian army, was wounded in Izyum in Ukraine's Kharviv region, which has been at the centre of intense fighting since Russia's invasion
Valery Gerasimov (L), Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu look on during a meeting with Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin
Russia is believed to have sustained heavy casualties in the eastern Donbas region and around cities Kharkiv and Izyum, as Ukraine's armed forces continue their bitter defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories which have been partially occupied by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014 (Ukrainian soldiers stand on an armoured personnel carrier (APC), not far from the front-line with Russian troops, in Izyum district, Kharkiv region on April 18, 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine)
Russia's military leaders are pouring troops and equipment into the east of Ukraine in an attempt to force a bloody victory after they abandoned plans to blitz through Ukraine's north and seize Kyiv earlier in the war (Ukrainian soldiers ride in a military vehicle to the front line during a fight, amid Russia's invasion in Ukraine, near Izyum, Donetsk region, Ukraine, April 23, 2022)
Military chaplain blesses Ukrainian soldiers not far from their positions at a village not far from Izyum city of Kharkiv area, Ukraine, 24 April 2022, amid the Russian invasion
Major General Andrey Simonov (picture date unknown) was an electronic warfare commander. He was killed in Kharkiv yesterday according to a Ukrainian interior ministry adviser and is the ninth Russian general to die amid the war in Ukraine
Gerasimov's wounding by the Ukrainians would be another deep psychological blow to Putin (pictured) and his faltering war campaign
Ukrainian interior ministry adviser Anton Gerashchenko said the attack on Izyum was 'the very place where…Gerasimov, who personally came to lead the attack on Slavyansk, was located'.
A 'large number' of senior officers were killed in the attack which wounded Gerasimov, Gerashchenko said.
Pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel Vertikal also alleged Gerasimov had been 'wounded near Izyum', citing unspecified sources.
'Our source reports that his legs and hips are damaged,' Vertikal said.
It suggested that three of Gerasimov's entourage had been killed before he was evacuated.
Russia is believed to have sustained heavy casualties in the eastern Donbas region and around cities Kharkiv and Izyum, as Ukraine's armed forces continue their bitter defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories which have been partially occupied by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
Russia's military leaders are pouring troops and equipment into the east of Ukraine in an attempt to force a bloody victory after they abandoned plans to blitz through Ukraine's north and seize Kyiv earlier in the war.
Britain's ministry of defence yesterday said Putin's troops in the east are still struggling to make ground despite the renewed support, citing poor tactics and the deployment of low-skilled troops as reasons for the slow progress.
'Shortcomings in Russian tactical coordination remain. A lack of unit-level skills and inconsistent air support have left Russia unable to fully leverage its combat mass, despite localised improvements,' the MoD tweeted.
'Russia hopes to rectify issues that have previously constrained its invasion by geographically concentrating combat power, shortening supply lines and simplifying command and control,' it said.
Agentstvo media outlet reported that Gerasimov was flown out of the war zone initially by an Mi-8 military helicopter to Belgorod in western Russia - the site of what is suspected to be yet another strategic strike on a Russian military site by Ukrainian armed forces.
Three Ka-52 attack helicopters circled as the Mi-8 transported Gerasimov and other top brass.
Then in Belgorod he boarded a Defence Ministry Tu-154 plane which flew to an unknown destination.
Founder of independent Conflict Intelligence Team Ruslan Leviev said an eyewitness at the airport had seen Gerasimov board the plane unaided.
'The source confirms that it was Gerasimov who flew away,' he posted.
'But he went on board himself, alive and well.'
His wounding by the Ukrainians would be another deep psychological blow to Putin and his faltering war campaign.
Gerasimov is in charge of the Russian war campaign alongside defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who was a mainstay in the early days of the war but was largely sidelined in late March amid rumblings of a falling out with Putin and suspected health concerns.
The Russian army's chief of staff was flown out of Belgorod just as new videos emerged showing a military site in the region on fire - one of many Russian sites which have mysteriously erupted into flames in recent days.
Kyiv has not acknowledged carrying out any of the attacks - which have also hit railway bridges, fuel depots and ammo dumps - but is widely thought to be orchestrating them.
The attacks are thought to be part of an attempt to cripple Russian supply lines close to Ukraine's eastern border, where Russian troops and armour is massing and forcing its way towards the front lines.
Today's attack in Belgorod is not linked to Gerasimov's wounding.
The Russian army's chief of staff was flown out of Belgorod just as new videos emerged showing a military site in the region on fire - one of many Russian sites which have mysteriously erupted into flames in recent days
Kyiv has not acknowledged carrying out any of the attacks - which have also hit railway bridges, fuel depots and ammo dumps - but is widely thought to be orchestrating them (April 26, 2022 video from Belgorod, Russia, shows explosions and a fire at an ammunition depot in the village of Staraya Nelidovka)
Meanwhile in Mariupol, around 100 Ukrainians have been evacuated from the Azovstal steelworks despite the factory suffering intermittent Russian airstrikes, according to Zelensky.
It comes as a UN 'safe passage operation' began yesterday, when officials reached the site in the decimated port city in southern Ukraine.
The city is under almost total Russian control but some Ukrainian fighters and around 1,000 civilians are thought to be holed up in the Azovstal works — a vast Soviet-era plant founded under Josef Stalin and designed with a labyrinth of bunkers and tunnels to withstand attack.
Zelensky said this afternoon that a group of about 100 people were being evacuated from the steelworks and are to be taken to Ukrainian-controlled territory in Zaporizhzhia.
'Tomorrow we’ll meet them in Zaporizhzhia. Grateful to our team,' he tweeted.
'Now they, together with #UN, are working on the evacuation of other civilians from the plant.'
Approximately 60 Ukrainian civilians were also evacuated from an area near the steelworks over the past two days.
They have now arrived at a temporary camp in Russian-held territory in the village of Bezimenne, around 30 km east of Mariupol, where they were receiving refreshments and care after weeks of suffering.
The evacuation is being coordinated with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Ukraine and Russia, but no more details are being released for the safety of evacuees, said UN spokesperson Saviano Abreu.
A woman sits with two children among bags and a rolled-up blanket, after leaving an area near the Azovstal steel plant
Civilians who left the area near Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol walk at a temporary accommodation centre in the village of Bezimenne in the Donetsk Region
A woman and child stand with a dog next to one of the buses used to evacuate civilians
The civilians were evacuated from the Azovstal steel works which is the last remaining Ukrainian holdout currently housing roughly 1,000 civilians. Pictured: Smoke rises above the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works in Mariupol on April 25
The cost of rebuilding Ukraine after invading Russians laid waste to parts of the country now stands at more than £70billion ($88billion), a Ukrainian university has claimed.
As of April 26, the total amount of documented direct infrastructure damage to Ukraine stood at £70.3 billion ($87.9 billion) with large amounts of residential buildings and roads in particular destroyed by Russian forces, according to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE).
The damage has been verified as part of an open-source data campaign by the KSE to document the damage done by the invasion as part of its 'Russia Must Pay' series
The Kyiv School of Economics was supported by Volodymyr Zelensky's government - included his Presidential Office, Ukraine's Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Infrastructure.
The research shows the direct damage to Ukrainian infrastructure - but also estimates the knock-on effect of the war on Ukraine's GDP - compounded by loss of investment, a labour exodus and defence costs at between £448 billion ($564 billion) and £478 billion ($600 billion).
The cost of the damages to roads and residential buildings account for the bulk of the large amount of money that will be necessary to rebuild Ukraine.
Over 23,000 kilometres (14,000 miles) of road has been damaged so far to the tune of £23.6 billion worth of damage.
Damage on residential building have been some of the most gruesome that have come out of the conflict as civilians could be seen being targeted by the Russian fire in their homes.
Over 40 per cent of the 37,000 square meters of real estate were damaged, destroyed or seized.residential building losses are in the Donetsk region, with Kharkiv (23 per cent) and Chernihiv (12 per cent) also badly affected.
Russian attacks have also dealt out damage on 173 industrial sites in Ukraine - with the most notorious attack coming on the steelworks in Mariupol where civilians were trapped inside while Russian fire rained down on them.
Education in Ukraine will likely suffer without the investment that is being asked for - as 1401 schools, universities and kindergartens damaged by Putin's war machine in Ukraine in the first two months of the war.
The damage was not contained to infrastructure either, with 95 religious buildings also bearing the brunt of Russian bombs and artillery.
A majority of the damage to infrastructure was done in the heavily targeted regions in the east of the country.
Putin's initial justification for the war was a 'so-called' denazification of the eastern parts of the country.
The region has been under heavier attack because of its proximity to Russian territory - allowing troops to rearm without fear of significant reprisals.
Boris Johnson vowed a 'new Marshall Plan' to rebuild Ukraine in the aftermath of Vladimir Putin's brutal war on March 9, after Volodymyr Zelensky invoked Churchill in a defiant and emotional address to British MPs in which he repeated his plea for a no-fly zone.
KHARKIV: A school that used to be occupied by Russian soldiers but now destroyed after it was retaken by Ukraine
LUHANSK: The interior of a destroyed kindergarten after it was heavily damaged by Russian shelling
MAKARIV: A heavily damaged playground outside of a kindergarten which was destroyed by a single bomb on March 7
KHARKIV: A ravaged school that used to be occupied by Russian soldiers but is now in Ukraine's hands on April 22
Britain's prime minister promised to 'protect' and 'restore' Ukraine's freedom, sovereignty and independence as he warned: 'The level of disgust and outrage at what is happening in Ukraine is mounting around the world and the noose is tightening on the Putin regime.'
He also declared his intention to implement a 'new Marshall Plan' after the war, in reference to the post-1945 American effort to revive the economies of Western Europe and create a bulwark against Stalin's expansionist USSR following the defeat of Hitler's armies.
The release of the specifics of the damage done to Ukraine and its infrastructure also comes after the Ukrainian government announced that it will seek reparations from Russia in the aftermath of the war.
Ukraine's deputy prime minister Yuliya Sviridenko declared on Friday that the Ukrainian government estimated £431.5billion ($564.9billion) worth of damage had been inflicted since Russian troops rolled across the border on February 24 - including indirect damage to their economy.
In a stunning Facebook post, Sviridenko, who is also Ukraine's minister of economic development and trade, said the damage to her nation's infrastructure alone totalled £91bn ($119bn).
She went on to declare 'the numbers are growing every day' and that 'Ukraine will seek reparations from the aggressor despite all the obstacles'.
11. Ukraine says it destroyed Russia's Izyum command center, killing 200 but just missing Russia's top general
Ukraine says it destroyed Russia's Izyum command center, killing 200 but just missing Russia's top general
Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images
Ukrainian officials said an attack on a key Russian command center in the eastern city of Izyum on Saturday evening killed about 200 Russian troops, including Maj. Gen. Andrei Simonov, but just missed hitting the chief of the general staff of the Russian military, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, who had just concluded a secret visit to the army and airborne command center. Earlier, unconfirmed reports suggested Gerasimov was wounded in the strike.
Two U.S. officials tell The New York Times that Gerasimov had been in eastern Ukraine for the past couple of days, a rare step for Russia's top uniformed officer, but could not provide any information on the attack on School No. 12, Russia's Izyum command center. A senior Ukrainian official told the Times his country had learned of Gerasimov's visit to the front lines, but that the general was already returning to Russia when the rockets struck School No. 12.
"The decision to destroy this object was taken not because of Gerasimov, but because it is an important base of operations," the official said. Gerasimov is one of three key architects of Russia's Ukraine invasion, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Putin sent Gerasimov to the front lines to "change the course" of Russia's underwhelming invasion, the Ukrainian official told the Times. "Our working assumption is that he was there because there's a recognition they haven't worked out all their problems yet," a U.S. official confirmed.
If the death of Maj. Gen. Simonov is accurate, he would be at least the 10th Russian general killed during Russia's Ukraine war. It's likely that more than a quarter of the 120 battalion tactical groups Russia committed to its invasion "have now been rendered combat ineffective," Britain's Ministry of Defense said early Monday. "Some of Russia's most elite units, including the VDV Airborne Forces, have suffered the highest levels of attrition. It will probably take years for Russia to reconstitute these forces."
In the Izyum strike, preliminary information indicates "there are senior officers among the dead," Oleksiy Arestovych, a military adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, tells The Washington Post. "Their combat readiness has been significantly damaged for the Izyum direction. I can't say that it's been fully destroyed yet."
12. Russia Recasts Fight in Ukraine as War With the West
No surprise. And despite our initial early efforts to minimize the chance of escalation this was probably inevitable.
Russia Recasts Fight in Ukraine as War With the West
Ahead of Russian May 9 holiday, Moscow links current conflict to Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany
Moscow is recasting its fight with Ukraine as a broader war between Russia and the West, as Kremlin leaders and state propaganda outlets warn Russians that the conflict with its smaller neighbor could spill over into a global clash.
The Kremlin and state-controlled media have warned in recent days that the West ultimately seeks to contain—or even destroy—Russia and have threatened retaliation, including the possibility of nuclear strikes.
The U.S. and some of its allies have ratcheted up military assistance to Ukraine as it increasingly views the war as an opportunity to constrain Russia’s ability to pursue imperial ambitions.
Pelosi Meets With Zelensky, Vows Support for Ukraine ‘Until the Fight is Done’
Pelosi Meets With Zelensky, Vows Support for Ukraine ‘Until the Fight is Done’
Play video: Pelosi Meets With Zelensky, Vows Support for Ukraine ‘Until the Fight is Done’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to Kyiv on Saturday. She is the highest level American politician to travel to Ukraine since the start of the Russian offensive. Photo: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
In response, the Kremlin has begun priming its population for the possibility of a wider and more intractable conflict. In particular, it is using the May 9 celebrations commemorating the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, a historical touchstone for millions of Russians, to draw parallels between World War II and the conflict in Ukraine.
The narrative of Russia as the victim of the West and the need to defend the country has gained new momentum in recent weeks.
“The forces that have always pursued a policy of containing Russia…they do not want such a huge and independent country that is too big for their ideas,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week. “They believe it endangers them simply by the fact of its existence, although this is far from reality. It is they who endanger the world.”
If any other country intervenes in the events “and creates strategic threats for Russia that are unacceptable to us, they should know that our retaliatory strikes will be lightning-fast,” he said, repeating a past warning. Russia has “all the tools for this, such that no one [else] can boast of,” he said. “We will use them if necessary.”
Victory Day events provide the Kremlin with an opportunity to maintain popular resolve regarding the war with Ukraine.
PHOTO: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
State media have gone into overdrive with prominent news anchors, pundits and talk-show hosts warning of the dire consequences of a loss in Ukraine.
“I think World War III is more realistic, knowing us, knowing our leader Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” said Margarita Simonyan, head of the Russian state-controlled international television network RT, during an appearance Tuesday on the program of the pro-Kremlin talk-show host Vladimir Soloviev.
“There’s no chance at all that we would simply roll over and say, ‘Oh, you know, it didn’t work out,’ ” she added. “The most incredible thing is that, in the end, all this will end in a nuclear strike.”
Mr. Soloviev replied, “But we will go to heaven, and they will simply croak,” echoing a past remark by Mr. Putin.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday: “You have a nation the size of Russia with a nuclear arsenal their size and capability and a leader that is clearly as belligerent as Vladimir Putin, we have to take seriously the escalatory rhetoric that he and his leaders have been using lately.” He added, “It would be—as irresponsible as it is for him to use that rhetoric, it would be equally irresponsible for us not to take it seriously. And so we do.”
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Before the war, Mr. Putin depicted Western military and economic support for Ukraine as a direct threat to Russia. Since then, moves by Western officials have strengthened the Kremlin’s view that they are using Ukraine to weaken Russia, some Russian analysts said.
President Biden has requested $33 billion in military and economic aid for Ukraine. The U.S. Congress has approved a lend-lease agreement to send military equipment to Kyiv, an arrangement similar to the U.S. support for Britain during World War II. Last month, the European Union foreign-policy chief, Josep Borrell, tweeted that the war between Ukraine and Russia “will be won on the battlefield.”
U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace and Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, have both argued that Russia should be expelled from the whole of Ukraine, including the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014.
The May 9 commemorations provide the Kremlin with an important opportunity to maintain popular resolve in the war.
Over the years, Mr. Putin has tried to harness the wave of patriotism connected to the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is commonly known in Russia, to bolster his position and rally the country. The conflict, in which some 27 million Soviet citizens perished, touched the lives of virtually every Russian family.
Last year, Mr. Putin said, “The enemy not only wanted to overthrow the Soviet political system but also to destroy us as a state, as a nation and wipe our peoples off the face of the earth.” He added, “We responded to the invasion by the Nazi hordes with a united, formidable and unstoppable determination to repel that invasion, to do everything in our power for the enemy to be defeated.”
In 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a Victory Day parade in Sevastopol, Crimea, weeks after Russia annexed the peninsula.
PHOTO: IVAN SEKRETAREV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
State media has also been playing on a popular perception in Russia that Ukraine is under the yoke of corrupt and inept leadership.
“Ukrainians are perceived as a suffering object, a suffering element—our brothers, whom the cunning West forced to fight against us,” said Evgeny Minchenko, head of an independent political-studies think tank in Moscow.
Along with the Victory Day parade each year, Russians participate in so-called Immortal Regiment processions, hoisting placards of loved ones who died during World War II or who survived the conflict. This year, several cities have announced that Russians will be allowed to carry photos featuring soldiers who have died in the fighting in Ukraine, in effect linking the two wars.
Several Russian cities plan to allow participants in Immortal Regiment processions, such as this one in Moscow in 2019, to carry photos of soldiers who have died in Ukraine.
PHOTO: TATYANA MAKEYEVA/REUTERS
The Russian Defense Ministry says 1,351 soldiers had been killed in the conflict as of March 25. The U.K. estimates that 15,000 Russian soldiers have died so far.
Thousands of troops and hundreds of tanks and aircraft normally parade across Red Square before an audience including the Russian president, foreign dignitaries and carefully selected veterans, the surviving few now in their late 90s.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that Moscow hadn’t invited any foreign leaders to this year’s commemoration. “The fact is that this is not an anniversary date, this is our holiday, this is a holy holiday for all of Russia and for all Russians,” he said.
Meanwhile, advertisements for military service have started to appear on billboards in cities around the country, according to photos on social media and video published by local media outlets.
In the Siberian city of Tyumen, the 72.ru news outlet broadcast videos on Tuesday of ads for contract military service that had popped up around the city. “There’s a job,” the ads say, featuring men in military fatigues holding assault rifles.
Ads for military recruitment appear to be working. Searches for contract military-service openings were up sevenfold as of April 15, compared with Feb. 20, four days before the invasion, a survey by the recruitment website SuperJob found.
Russian military vehicles rolled along Tverskaya Street toward Red Square during a Victory Day parade rehearsal last week.
PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russian state media has frequently shown Russian soldiers distributing aid to Ukrainian refugees in areas they have occupied, primarily in eastern Ukraine, and being hugged and welcomed by residents. Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian soldiers of reprisals against Ukrainian civilians.
Russians who write or say anything against the official narrative risk heavy fines or even lengthy prison time.
“Part of the population is affected by longstanding skepticism about Ukraine, as well as the desire to believe or convince themselves that their country is right in the conflict,” Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, a research center, said in an email.
13. With Russia’s War on Ukraine, Kinzinger Introduces New AUMF
With Russia’s War on Ukraine, Kinzinger Introduces New AUMF
Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) announced his introduction of a joint resolution that would authorize the use of U.S. Armed Forces to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine in the event that Vladimir Putin escalates his unjust war against our democratic allies
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Washington, DC – Today, Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) announced his introduction of a joint resolution that would authorize the use of U.S. Armed Forces to defend the territorial integrity of Ukraine in the event that Vladimir Putin escalates his unjust war against our democratic allies. This Authorization for Use of Military Force to Defend America’s Allies Resolution of 2022 would authorize the President of the United States to utilize our forces to respond to a scenario in which the Russian Federation uses chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons against Ukraine.
In making this announcement first on CBS’ Face the Nation—and following Secretary of State Blinken’s appearance in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week—Congressman Kinzinger released this statement:
“After World War II, America made our position clear—our commitment to freedom put autocrats on the defense and strengthened democracies around the world. In the last decade, we have seen this determination waver and tyrants, like Vladimir Putin, have exploited those vulnerabilities. Today, America has an opportunity to re-affirm our support to freedom-seeking people and firmly stand up to authoritarianism. After speaking with Secretary Blinken and hearing his grave concerns over Putin’s use of chemical weapons, I’m confident that the United States will show the international community that we will not stand for senseless violence. My staff and I look forward to following up with Secretary Blinken to ensure Russia is held accountable for any and all violations to international law.
“We know millions of Ukrainians are displaced, thousands have been killed, and the damage that continues to besiege them is utterly inhumane. The targeting of civilians, mass executions, and countless reports of rape by Russian forces have gone largely unchecked. We must take action to put a stop to these atrocities. Words matter, but so do our actions.
“I’m introducing this AUMF as a clear redline so the Administration can take appropriate action should Russia use chemical, biological, and/or nuclear weapons. We must stand up for humanity and we must stand with our allies.
“As the President of the United States has said, Putin must be stopped. Accordingly, the Commander in Chief to the world’s greatest military should have the authority and means to take the necessary actions to do so.”
The full text of the joint resolution can be found attached and on the Congressman’s website here. And the Congressman’s exchange with Secretary of State Antony Blinken from last week's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing can be found here.
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14. Taiwan considers alternatives after U.S. informs of howitzer delay
Excerpts:
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said, however, that because of a "crowded" production line for the M109A6, the U.S. had told it this would not happen until 2026 at the earliest.
Taiwan is considering other precision and long-range alternative weapons systems including truck-based rocket launchers made by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, the ministry added.
It did not say why the production line was snarled, but the United States has been ramping up its military support and supply of equipment for Ukraine following Russia's invasion.
Taiwan considers alternatives after U.S. informs of howitzer delay
TAIPEI, May 2 (Reuters) - Taiwan's Defence Ministry said on Monday it was considering alternative weapons options after the United States informed it that the delivery of an artillery system would be delayed due to a "crowded" production line.
Washington last year approved the potential sale of 40 155mm M109A6 Medium Self-Propelled Howitzer artillery systems to Taiwan in a deal valued at up to $750 million, which Taiwanese media said had been due to be delivered by 2023.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said, however, that because of a "crowded" production line for the M109A6, the U.S. had told it this would not happen until 2026 at the earliest.
Taiwan is considering other precision and long-range alternative weapons systems including truck-based rocket launchers made by Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, the ministry added.
It did not say why the production line was snarled, but the United States has been ramping up its military support and supply of equipment for Ukraine following Russia's invasion.
Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, is undertaking a military modernisation programme to improve its capabilities to fend off a Chinese attack, including with precision weapons like missiles.
U.S. officials have been pushing Taiwan to modernise its military so it can become a "porcupine", hard for China to attack.
U.S. arms sales to Taiwan always anger China and increase tensions between Beijing and Washington.
China considers Taiwan its most important and sensitive territorial issue.
Taiwan's government rejects China's sovereignty claims, saying only the island's people can decide their own future.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard, editing by Ed Osmond
15. Ukraine’s Digital Battle With Russia Isn’t Going as Expected
Excerpts:
Russia’s poor information security has also been a significant factor in their fumbled invasion.
A huge number of technology providers, from cybersecurity firms to cloud hosting services, have pulled out of Russia since the start of the war—either due to sanctions or to a concerted push from Fedorov and others in the Ukrainian government. “If the world were able to stop the delivery of these products to Russia, we see that they will have no infrastructure even to organize attacks,” Zhora says.
Russia’s attempts to knock out mobile and internet connections in Ukraine have mired their own communications. Their encrypted radio platform, Era, has been unreliable, leading Russian soldiers to opt for unencrypted platforms. Numerous outlets have reported details of conversations between Russians troops, their commanders, and their families—some even admitting to possible war crimes over unencrypted channels.
While Fedorov’s reform mission has played a large role in modernizing Ukraine, support from the West has certainly helped. SpaceX and the United States have sent some 5,000 Starlink terminals. Fedorov says the European Union has provided some 10 million euros toward computer systems and workstations.
Asked what Ukraine needs as the war wears into its third month, Fedorov mentions satellite equipment, including more Starlink terminals, as well as laptops, tablets, and other tools “to put our civilian infrastructure back online.” He also jokes: “Let's say that the most surefire way to keep us online for a very long time to come is to provide us with artillery, tanks, and warplanes—because that will effectively end the war. And that will remove the problem altogether.”
Ukraine’s Digital Battle With Russia Isn’t Going as Expected
Even the head of the country's online offensive is surprised by the successes—although they’re not without controversy.
Wired · by Condé Nast · April 29, 2022
When Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his full invasion of Ukraine in February, the world expected Moscow’s cyber and information operations to pummel the country alongside air strikes and shelling. Two months on, however, Kyiv has not only managed to keep the country online amidst a deluge of hacking attempts, but it has brought the fight back to Russia.
Even Ukrainian officials are surprised by how ineffective Russia’s digital war has been.
“I think that the root cause of this is the difference between our systems,” says Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s 31-year-old minister for digital transformation. “Because the Russian system is centralized. It's monopolized. And it leads to the scale of corruption and graft that is becoming increasingly apparent as the war continues.”
Speaking to WIRED from near Kyiv, Fedorov says his country has been preparing for this moment since Russia first invaded in 2014. “We have had eight years,” he says.
In recent weeks, Fedorov and the Ukrainian government have deployed the controversial face recognition program ClearviewAI to identify killed and captured Russian soldiers. They have deployed thousands of Elon Musk’s Starlink terminals to keep the country connected, even amid Russian bombardment. They have crowdsourced intelligence collection, letting ordinary Ukrainians report troop movements. And, perhaps most critically, they have beaten back aggressive attempts to knock offline their internet, energy, and financial systems.
Fedorov, who also serves as deputy prime minister, ran Ukrainian president Volodmyr Zelensky’s wildly successful election campaign in 2019, winning by nearly 50 points in the second round against incumbent Petro Poroshenko. He did so, in part, by leveraging authentic selfie videos to market the former comedian as an unconventional politician who eschews the normal trappings of politics. It’s exactly that style of video that Zelensky has uploaded regularly from the streets of Kyiv in recent weeks, offering a stark contrast with Putin’s stiff proclamations inside his palatial offices.
Ukraine has brought the war home to Russia in more cutting ways. In March, Reuters reported that Ukraine had purchased face recognition software from American company Clearview AI to identify the bodies of Russian soldiers killed in action—Kyiv later acknowledged that they were using this information to contact the families of the dead soldiers.
“We are pursuing two goals here,” Fedorov says. “First is: We are notifying their relatives, and telling them, basically, that it's not a very good idea to go to war with Ukraine. So that serves as a cautionary tale. And secondly, it's a humanitarian purpose—just telling them where their relatives, or friends, or children are so that they don't try to get this information from the Russian authorities. Because, more often than not, they can't.”
That decision hasn’t come without criticism. Contacting the families of soldiers killed in battle could be seen as harassment. Others have pointed out that being deployed in Ukraine is a PR coup for ClearviewAI, which has been embroiled in scandal over its liberal use by police forces across North America.
Fedorov, for his part, says Russia “can spin this whatever way they want. But the fact of the matter is, there are tens of thousands of Russians dying in Ukraine, and we are just providing this information to their families because that serves, among other things, a humanitarian purpose.”
There is a propaganda element to Kyiv’s use of face recognition technology as well.
“This facial recognition plays to our, let's say, to our advantage in the information space,” Fedorov says. Moscow has projected the image of a professional and volunteer fighting force. “We're trying to say that, for example, Russia is sending conscripts … we are proving that and justifying that with a lot of factual information. We can give you a list of hundreds of people who are 18 and 19 years old, with their names and with their birth dates and how and where specifically, they were conscripted. So that gives some substance to our claims.”
Fedorov says the utility goes beyond just identifying the dead.
“One interesting case study of how we used Clearview AI,” Fedorov says. “There was a man who was found in a Ukrainian hospital, claiming that he was a Ukrainian soldier who suffered from shell shock or some kind of trauma and that he forgot everything. And he was claiming that he was Ukrainian. So the doctor sent the picture to us, and we were able to ID him in a matter of minutes. We found his social network profile, and we established that he was Russian and, of course, he was brought to responsibility.”
Ukrainian officials have said that the frequency of Russian cyberattacks tripled immediately prior to the war, and they have aggressively targeted critical infrastructure since the war began.
But Viktor Zhora, deputy head of Ukraine's State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, says Moscow may have maxed out its ability to launch attacks. “Russian cyber operations likely reached their full potential," he says.
Zhora told WIRED that years of training, exercises, and cooperation with NATO have made Ukraine far more resilient to cyberattacks. Some attacks are easier to defend against than others—as we spoke, Zhora said he was monitoring an active attack on the state administration of Lviv, which had been publicly announced by Russia hours earlier.
But Zhora stresses that while it is wrong to overestimate how powerful Russia’s cyber capabilities are, it would also be wrong to underestimate its more “sophisticated” operations. “We should continue to observe their potential, like Sandworm, like a Fancy Bear, like Gamaredon, many other groups that are still active, and still very dangerous,” he says, referring to a number of Russian government hacker groups.
Brandon Valeriano, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in cyber operations, says offensive cyber operations don’t mesh well with traditional, kinetic warfare. At best, he says, “they’re enabling, they’re complimentary … they don’t transform it.”
Valeriano points to a slowdown in the tempo of Russian-backed cyberattacks targeting the United States as evidence that Moscow’s capacity isn’t as expansive as some have assessed. “They’re not organized for offensive cyber operations in the way that we think they are,” he says.
Kyiv’s ability to beat back against those operations, Valeriano says, can be attributed to “intense collaboration between Ukraine, Western powers, and NATO.” Indeed, Five Eyes signals intelligence agencies have both been providing training and support for Ukraine’s cyber defense and have been sharing threat intelligence. (Zhora stresses that information-sharing is a “two-way road.”)
Ukraine has been able to defend itself, both in cyberspace and in an outright propaganda war, because it has managed to stay online. For that, Fedorov credits a decentralized network of internet service providers and Elon Musk.
“It wouldn't be possible to restore 10 km of cable connection between villages in Chernigiv region after serious battles so quick,” he tweeted earlier this month. “Normally it takes few months.” But with one Starlink satellite, he says, five villages were reconnected in a matter of days.
“We have received over 10,000 Starlink terminals to date, and we use those where we have blind spots with, let's say, more traditional coverage,” Fedorov says. “So we are trying very hard to restore and protect our landline and mobile connections.”
Like any physical infrastructure, those Starlink terminals—which have even managed to keep the embattled city of Mariupol online—have been vulnerable to Russian shelling. Zhora says Russia has managed to hit some of those terminals but has not managed to target the system as a whole. “I suppose that it was coincidence that some shells hit these terminals and locations,” Zhora says. “It's not easy to identify and to attack them systematically.”
Keeping Ukrainians online is a clear strategic objective for Ukraine. Photo and video evidence of the brutality being doled out by the Russian army has galvanized Western support for Kyiv and led to an unprecedented level of support from NATO to help the country defend itself.
It’s also letting regular Ukrainians contribute to the collective defense.
During Zelensky’s presidential campaign, Fedorov made particular use of the messaging app Telegram, which is also popular with Russian intelligence operatives. In recent weeks, the app has been leveraged to collect evidence of possible war crimes in towns like Bucha, but also to enable Ukrainians to upload details of Russian troop movements. A Telegram bot collects photos and videos of Russian military movements, verifying Ukrainians through their digital ID,: a project spearheaded by Fedorov.
“Regular internet users—so, basically, civilians—they can go and post photos of what's happening in Ukraine,” Fedorov says.
The Ukrainian security ministry said in a tweet in March that those crowdsourced reports have directly contributed to drone strikes against Russian tanks.
“There are actually very many ways that regular citizens can contribute to the effort,” Fedorov says. One particularly “successful vector,” he says, is basically trolling. His government has been sending users “into the comment sections of posts by some very high traffic Russian influencers and just trying to talk sense into people and telling them that there's actually a war in Ukraine.”
Russia’s poor information security has also been a significant factor in their fumbled invasion.
A huge number of technology providers, from cybersecurity firms to cloud hosting services, have pulled out of Russia since the start of the war—either due to sanctions or to a concerted push from Fedorov and others in the Ukrainian government. “If the world were able to stop the delivery of these products to Russia, we see that they will have no infrastructure even to organize attacks,” Zhora says.
Russia’s attempts to knock out mobile and internet connections in Ukraine have mired their own communications. Their encrypted radio platform, Era, has been unreliable, leading Russian soldiers to opt for unencrypted platforms. Numerous outlets have reported details of conversations between Russians troops, their commanders, and their families—some even admitting to possible war crimes over unencrypted channels.
While Fedorov’s reform mission has played a large role in modernizing Ukraine, support from the West has certainly helped. SpaceX and the United States have sent some 5,000 Starlink terminals. Fedorov says the European Union has provided some 10 million euros toward computer systems and workstations.
Asked what Ukraine needs as the war wears into its third month, Fedorov mentions satellite equipment, including more Starlink terminals, as well as laptops, tablets, and other tools “to put our civilian infrastructure back online.” He also jokes: “Let's say that the most surefire way to keep us online for a very long time to come is to provide us with artillery, tanks, and warplanes—because that will effectively end the war. And that will remove the problem altogether.”
More Great WIRED Stories
Wired · by Condé Nast · April 29, 2022
16. Biden’s Dangerous New Ukraine Endgame: No Endgame
Excerpts:
Many experts also say they don’t believe the Russian president would gain much advantage from the use of tactical nuclear weapons inside Ukraine—and he is considered enough of a rational actor that he would never contemplate launching nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States. But Putin has also indicated previously that he cannot accept the separation of an independent Ukraine from Russian control, writing in a July 2021 essay that such a development would be “comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.”
Robert Gallucci, a former senior U.S. nuclear arms negotiator, said the Russian nuclear threats are a new tactic and “should be taken seriously if we were to get involved directly in conflict with Russian forces in or around Ukraine, that is, on or across the Russian border.”
Beebe, who is currently director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said he believed the outcome would most likely stretch into a volatile stalemate—but one that could well be more unstable and dangerous than much of the Cold War. “Most likely we’re going to end up in some sort of long-term unstable confrontation that divides Ukraine and divides Europe where there aren’t rules of the game,” he said. “It’s not so much a new cold war as it is a festering wound in Europe.”
Matters could get even dicier if a newly emboldened West and NATO expand their reach beyond Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, as British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss suggested in a speech this week. Truss said that “NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats. We need to preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with our allies like Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”
That in turn raises the prospect for a drawn-out global cold war with not only Russia but China as well. And it is one that could easily turn hot, Beebe said, with the United States and its allies faced off against an alliance of “a resource-rich Russia partnered with a technologically and economically powerful China.”
Biden’s Dangerous New Ukraine Endgame: No Endgame
With his strategy to “weaken” Russia, the U.S. president may be turning the Ukraine war into a global one.
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U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and combatant commanders at the White House in Washington on April 20. Win McNamee/Getty Images
In a dramatic series of shifts this week, U.S. President Joe Biden and his NATO allies have escalated their policy of helping to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression into a policy of undermining the power and influence of Russia itself. In so doing, some observers fear, they are leaving Russian President Vladimir Putin little choice but to surrender or double down militarily, raising the possibility of widening his war beyond Ukraine.
On Thursday, Biden urged Congress to provide $33 billion in additional military, economic, and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine—more than double the previous amount—and said he was sending a clear message to Putin: “You will never succeed in dominating Ukraine.” Beyond that, Biden said in remarks at the White House, the new policy was intended “to punish Russian aggression, to lessen the risk of future conflicts.”
That followed an equally clear declaration this week from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who after a meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the U.S. objective is now to curtail Russia’s power over the long term so it does not have the “capability to reproduce” its military assault on Ukraine. “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” Austin said in a stopover in Poland.
The shift may have been what prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to declare afterward that Washington and the West had entered a “proxy” war with Russia, risking another world war that, Lavrov warned, could go nuclear. “The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it,” Lavrov said. Putin also again suggested this week, as he has since the beginning of his invasion on Feb. 24, that he still had the option of using nuclear weapons against NATO, saying, “We have all the instruments for this [to respond to a direct threat to Russia]—ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to.”
The newly aggressive U.S. approach won plaudits from many quarters—in particular from current and former NATO officials who insist the Russian nuclear counterthreats are only empty rhetoric.
“It’s the only way to go forward,” said former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in an interview. “In Putin’s thinking it doesn’t make any difference, because he would only claim that the Western policy is to weaken Russia anyway. So why not speak openly about it? The mistake we made in the past was to underestimate the ambitions of Vladimir Putin, to underestimate his brutality. At the same time, we overestimated the strength of the Russian military.”
The new U.S. and NATO strategy is partly based on Ukraine’s continuing battlefield success against Putin, who has been forced to scale down his ambitions from a full takeover of Ukraine to a major new assault in its eastern and southern parts. NATO allies including Germany, which until this week had equivocated on sending heavy offensive weaponry to Ukraine, have ratcheted up their aid in response. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, under political pressure at home and abroad, announced earlier this week that his country would provide 50 anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
Yet other Russia experts expressed worry that the United States and its Western allies are, in effect, crossing the very redlines they have avoided until now. For most of the two-month conflict, Biden has refused to authorize any military support, such as major offensive weapons or a no-fly zone, that might be perceived as putting U.S. or NATO forces in direct conflict with Russia. Now, some observers worry that with the additional aid and tougher economic sanctions, the U.S. president is forcing Putin into a corner in which he can only fight on or surrender. The latter course would mean relinquishing Putin’s career-long aim of strengthening Russia against the West. Yet Putin, who has long said the West’s goal was to weaken or contain Russia, has never been known to surrender during his decade and a half of aggressive moves against neighboring countries, mainly Ukraine and Georgia.
“In the Kremlin’s eyes the West is out to get Russia. It was unspoken before. Now it’s spoken,” said Sean Monaghan, an expert on Europe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If you combine this with Biden’s comments, at his summit in Poland last month, that ‘this man [Putin] cannot remain in power,’ all that turns this a territorial war into a wider confrontation and might make negotiating a settlement to end the war in Ukraine far more difficult or even impossible at the present.” (Biden officials later said that the president was not seeking regime change in Russia.)
George Beebe, a former chief of Russia analysis for the CIA, said that the Biden administration may be in danger of forgetting that the “the most important national interest that the United States has is avoiding a nuclear conflict with Russia.” He added that “the Russians have the ability to make sure everyone else loses if they lose too. And that may be where we’re heading. It’s a dangerous corner to turn.”
Perhaps the most worrisome turn of events is that there no longer appears to be any possibility of a negotiated way out of the war—despite Putin’s statement to visiting United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres that he still hopes for such a solution.
“It’s one thing to pursue a policy of weakening Putin, quite another to say it out loud. We have to find a way for Putin to achieve a political solution, so perhaps it is not wise to state this,” said one senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“It’s getting more dangerous,” said Charles Kupchan, a former senior U.S. official and now a scholar of international relations at Georgetown University. “We need to start moving beyond Javelins and anti-tank missiles and talk about a political endgame.” Or, as Beebe put it, “We need to find a way of somehow discreetly conveying to the Russians that we would be willing to ease sanctions in the context of an international settlement. The military aid to Ukraine could also be used as leverage.”
Yet any such negotiation looks less likely than ever. Both sides appear to be settling in for a long fight. After meeting with Putin and Lavrov on Tuesday, Guterres acknowledged that an imminent cease-fire was not in the cards and that the war “will not end with meetings.”
Only a month ago Zelensky was floating the idea of a neutral Ukraine that did not join NATO, and he suggested that separatist forces in eastern Ukraine should be acknowledged. But Zelensky has since told European Council President Charles Michel that, in light of Russian atrocities, Ukrainian public opinion was against negotiations and favored continuing the war.
Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden have indicated they are interested in joining the NATO alliance, breaking with their longtime policy of nonalignment and potentially creating a new hair-trigger environment along Russia’s northern border. That would deliver a devastating blow to Putin, who has often cited NATO’s eastward expansion as a casus belli for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
And there is little prospect that any of these tensions will abate anytime soon. Austin also convened a 40-nation “Ukraine Contact Group” this week that was readying itself for what Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has said is likely a “protracted conflict” that will be “at least measured in years.”
Biden has not said what the U.S. response might be if Putin deploys tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. Moreover, neither side has set any clear rules in the post-Cold War environment for the deployment of nuclear weapons—especially as Cold War-era arms agreements such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty have been shelved and nuclear weapon delivery systems have become faster and more governed by automatic digitized systems. Under a Kremlin policy known as “escalating to de-escalate”—threatening to go nuclear if the West tries to stop him—Putin has year by year reintroduced nuclear weapons into his conventional war calculations. During his two decades in power, he has authorized the construction of nuclear-powered cruise missiles, transoceanic nuclear-armed torpedoes, hypersonic glide vehicles, and more low-yield nuclear weapons on the European continent.
Yet Putin has never come this close to threatening to use them, nor has he made clear if or how he might do so. Until the Ukraine crisis, U.S. strategists had not considered their deployment to be a credible threat. Most believe Putin would first escalate using cyberattacks or other non-nuclear capabilities.
Many experts also say they don’t believe the Russian president would gain much advantage from the use of tactical nuclear weapons inside Ukraine—and he is considered enough of a rational actor that he would never contemplate launching nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States. But Putin has also indicated previously that he cannot accept the separation of an independent Ukraine from Russian control, writing in a July 2021 essay that such a development would be “comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.”
Robert Gallucci, a former senior U.S. nuclear arms negotiator, said the Russian nuclear threats are a new tactic and “should be taken seriously if we were to get involved directly in conflict with Russian forces in or around Ukraine, that is, on or across the Russian border.”
Beebe, who is currently director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said he believed the outcome would most likely stretch into a volatile stalemate—but one that could well be more unstable and dangerous than much of the Cold War. “Most likely we’re going to end up in some sort of long-term unstable confrontation that divides Ukraine and divides Europe where there aren’t rules of the game,” he said. “It’s not so much a new cold war as it is a festering wound in Europe.”
Matters could get even dicier if a newly emboldened West and NATO expand their reach beyond Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, as British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss suggested in a speech this week. Truss said that “NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats. We need to preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with our allies like Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”
That in turn raises the prospect for a drawn-out global cold war with not only Russia but China as well. And it is one that could easily turn hot, Beebe said, with the United States and its allies faced off against an alliance of “a resource-rich Russia partnered with a technologically and economically powerful China.”
Michael Hirsh is a senior correspondent at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @michaelphirsh
17. Russia says it's pulling out of International Space Station over sanctions
Russia says it's pulling out of International Space Station over sanctions
Axios · by Fadel Allassan · May 1, 2022
Russia says its pulling out of the International Space Station over sanctions meant to punish the country for Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg reports, citing state media outlets Tass and RIA Novosti.
What he's saying: “The decision has been taken already, we’re not obliged to talk about it publicly,” said general director Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos, per state media.
- “I can say this only — in accordance with our obligations, we’ll inform our partners about the end of our work on the ISS with a year’s notice.”
Rogozin has threatened on multiple occasions to pull out of the space station and let it fall back to Earth in an uncontrolled deorbit in protest of sanctions on Russia, Axios' Jacob Knutson reports.
-
NASA had said last month Russia was committed to the ISS, despite threats from Rogozin that it would end cooperation on the station.
The big picture: Before Russia's invasion, the space station had been one of the rare areas of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia despite the increasingly hostile relationship that had developed between the two countries.
Axios · by Fadel Allassan · May 1, 2022
18. Iran Increases Funding for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Excerpts:
Despite the IRGC’s track record and continued misbehavior, the Biden administration has been considering removing the group from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). Such a step would reduce the ability of U.S. victims of Iranian terrorism to sue the IRGC and providers of material support to the IRGC, reduce options for criminal prosecutions and penalties, and signal to others that a terrorist group can receive sanctions relief without having to cease its support for terrorism. Perhaps that is why 900 Gold Star family members and wounded veterans wrote another letter earlier this month asking Biden not to delist the IRGC.
The 14 percent increase in the IRGC’s budget makes clear that Tehran is as determined as ever to fund the group and support terrorism. If past is prologue, one should expect more IRGC-backed terrorism targeting Americans, Israelis, Arab partners, and others if Tehran receives tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
Iran Increases Funding for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
Iran significantly increased its funding in 2021 for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s primary tool for exporting Islamist extremism and supporting terrorist groups, according to a new report released on Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This budget increase strongly suggests that the regime would use any financial windfall associated with a new nuclear agreement to boost support for its regional proxies and paramilitary forces.
“In 2021 Iran’s military budget increased for the first time in four years, to $24.6 billion,” SIPRI stated. “Funding for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps continued to grow in 2021—by 14 per cent compared with 2020—and accounted for 34 per cent of Iran’s total military spending.”
While precisely measuring Iran’s military spending is difficult given its opaque funding mechanisms and the IRGC’s entwinement with the private sector, Tehran has long used the IRGC and its Quds Force to support terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and a bevy of other militias in Iraq and Syria. These organizations constitute vital tools in Iran’s hegemonic campaign for regional supremacy, which aims to attack, undermine, and control other governments in the Middle East at the expense of U.S. interests and those of its allies.
That fact is why over 1,000 veterans and family members of those killed or wounded by Iran-backed organizations wrote to President Biden in January urging him not to release frozen Iranian funds until Tehran compensates the families of the victims.
Despite the IRGC’s track record and continued misbehavior, the Biden administration has been considering removing the group from the U.S. list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO). Such a step would reduce the ability of U.S. victims of Iranian terrorism to sue the IRGC and providers of material support to the IRGC, reduce options for criminal prosecutions and penalties, and signal to others that a terrorist group can receive sanctions relief without having to cease its support for terrorism. Perhaps that is why 900 Gold Star family members and wounded veterans wrote another letter earlier this month asking Biden not to delist the IRGC.
The 14 percent increase in the IRGC’s budget makes clear that Tehran is as determined as ever to fund the group and support terrorism. If past is prologue, one should expect more IRGC-backed terrorism targeting Americans, Israelis, Arab partners, and others if Tehran receives tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief.
Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP) at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where Ryan Brobst is a research analyst. For more analysis from the authors and CMPP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Bradley on Twitter @Brad_L_Bowman. Follow FDD on Twitter at @FDD and @FDD_CMPP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
19. Beijing’s Ukrainian Battle Lab
Excerpts:
Among the weightiest strategic-level issues generated by the Russo-Ukrainian war will be the issue of nuclear deterrence. One can imagine that PLA analysts and others in the Chinese national security community will study the role that Russia’s possession of a serious nuclear deterrent is playing in shaping the choices of the United States and NATO in their responses to Moscow’s operations, including the early decision not to intervene militarily. Doing so will likely validate Beijing’s decisions, made long before the Ukraine war, to increase the size and survivability of its nuclear arsenal. At the same time, it could also raise questions about the future efficacy of China’s long-standing “no first use” nuclear doctrine. One suspects the nuclear issue will be looked at long and hard by Beijing’s military and civilian strategists.
Overall, then, we should assume the PLA will devote considerable resources during and after this conflict to absorbing the lessons of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If the past serves as prologue, there will be no rush to judgment. There will be symposia, conferences, debates, articles, and books dissecting all dimensions of the war. At the operational and tactical levels of war, those lessons will either validate or result in adjustments to issues such as doctrine, including tactics, techniques, and procedures, the optimal employment of systems, and even political work. Strategically, such lessons may even affect future nuclear doctrine and impact Beijing’s calculus for the potential use of force. Officials in Beijing continue to state that this conflict is not something they wished to see. We should take that statement at face value. Nevertheless, the Russian military campaign is providing the PLA with another “battle lab” from which it will continue to learn as it studies the wars of other countries.
Beijing’s Ukrainian Battle Lab - War on the Rocks
Among those observing the Russian military’s ongoing operations in Ukraine, few will be watching and assessing its performance more intensely than those in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Analyzing the wars of other countries continues to play an important role in Beijing’s decision-making about military modernization, along with the PLA’s own field experiments and its increasing use of big data, AI, and simulations. In the first phase of the Ukraine conflict, PLA analysts — who have traditionally held the Russian military in high regard — will undoubtedly find Russian operations wanting.
The People’s Republic of China views the military element of national power, and natural resources, as Moscow’s strong suits in its post-Soviet incarnation. Consequently, the success or failure of this operation will certainly color Beijing’s views about the “comprehensive national power” of the Russian Federation in general and the state of the Russian armed forces in particular.
Second, assessing Russian operational performance may have very direct implications for the PLA’s own recent and future reform and modernization choices. In 2016, the PLA underwent the most sweeping reorganization in its history in an attempt to better position itself to be able to fight modern information-age warfare. Some key aspects of that reorganization were based on what it learned from the United States. However, the PLA also incorporated lessons learned from Russia’s New Look military reforms, which began in late 2008. The PLA’s professional military journals often contain articles discussing the latest developments in Russian military affairs, as well as those taking place in the U.S. joint force. And of course, the Chinese and Russian militaries are close institutionally, conducting general staff talks and attending each other’s schools of professional military education. In November 2021, the two signed a “roadmap for closer military cooperation, 2021-2025,” which, among other things, aims to normalize combined naval and air patrols such as the one they conducted a month earlier, through the Tsugaru Strait north of Japan. Therefore, assessing Russian operational performance will be a high-priority task for PLA analysts as they move closer to their Russian counterparts.
Third, the Chinese and Russian armed forces have been conducting combined exercises with each other for many years. Russia’s performance in Ukraine will provide the PLA with a sense of the difference between training and actual combat. This issue is of great importance for the PLA, which is all too aware of the fact that it has not seen large-scale combat since it invaded Vietnam in 1979. However, the PLA views the Russian military as having significant combat experience, and comparatively speaking they are right. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian military has fought in Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, eastern Ukraine, Syria, and now all of Ukraine. Therefore, PLA operations research analysts will be leaning into their computer terminals following and assessing how Moscow is faring in its latest deployment. One lesson they may draw is that even for militaries with extensive experience, war remains a difficult business.
Fourth, the technical performance of Russian weapons systems — their strengths and vulnerabilities — will be of particular interest. Although Beijing has a significant indigenous defense manufacturing sector, the PLA still has in its inventory Russian-manufactured or Russian-inspired weapons, systems, and platforms.
At this point, it is too early to state with high confidence what military professionals in China think they are learning from Russia’s operations. Like others around the world, the PLA’s analysts presumably are accruing data and trying to absorb what is unfolding in real-time, which is never easy. Moreover, the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase as the Russian military regroups and refocuses its operations in the east and southeast. More than likely, the PLA’s best analyses will be done months from now. Nevertheless, we can engage in some modest but informed speculation about what we suspect will animate PLA attention at the operational and strategic levels of conflict.
At the operational level, PLA analysts will notice that Russian operations to date seem to be violating some of the PLA’s time-honored “Basic Campaign Principles” (基本战役原则). Four in particular seem to have gone by the wayside. First, the Russian military has clearly underestimated the “enemy” while apparently overestimating its own capabilities, a significant shortcoming. The operative PLA campaign principle is “know the enemy and know yourself” (知彼知己). Next, based on the seemingly disjointed Russian operations conducted in the northern, eastern, and southern parts of Ukraine at the inception of hostilities, Moscow’s operations will likely be judged to have violated the PLA campaign principle of “unified coordination” (协调一致). Third, apparent Russian problems with logistics and other combat service support functions will suggest to PLA analysts that Russia failed to follow the principle of “comprehensive support” (全面保障). Finally, from the very beginning, Moscow’s military planners failed to adhere to, nor seemingly even attempted to achieve, the universal principle of war: “surprise,” which the PLA’s campaign principles state as “take the enemy by surprise” (出敌不意). Moscow’s problems in this regard have been compounded by Washington’s public deployment of intelligence, which should suggest to observers in Beijing the increasing difficulty in this day and age of achieving strategic-level surprise.
As long-time students of Russian doctrine, the PLA will likely be wondering, if not incredulous, about the apparent lack of “jointness” in Russian operations. Moscow’s Ukraine campaign looks very much like ground-force-centric combined arms warfare — the very type of warfare that the PLA is trying to move beyond for major operations. In November 2020, after 20 years of experimentation, the PLA totally revamped its doctrine for joint operations. The new PLA paradigm for joint operations, known as “Integrated Joint Operations” (一体化联合作战), calls for unity of effort and integration among the services across land, sea, air, and key high-tech battlespace domains such as cyberspace, outer space, and the electromagnetic spectrum — all under a unified command and control structure. Moreover, the PLA intends to push joint operations down to the tactical level, whereas previously joint operations were reserved for large-scale campaigns. The Integrated Joint Operations concept is driving multiple dimensions of PLA activity — national and theater-level organizational structure, command-and-control authorities and architectures, the development of capabilities, training, as well as professional military education. Instead of demonstrating elegant 21st-century joint operations with high-tech assets — as the U.S. military does and the PLA aspires to be able to do — Russia, the PLA will observe, seems to be reverting to ground, air, and missile attacks employed as blunt instruments. These Russian operations do not exemplify the “operational art” that the PLA hopes to be able to implement. And because the PLA has been an ardent student, if not admirer, of Russian doctrine for decades, PLA strategists and planners can only be wondering, “why?”
Next, as the PLA is the “armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party,” it is a political force as well as a military force. The PLA has a corps of political officers to enforce discipline, strengthen the link between the military and the party, attend to civil-military dynamics, and deal with the personnel aspects of warfare. As such, the PLA will pay close attention to reports about the human and cognitive dimensions of the war. PLA analysts will read reports about poor morale among Russian troops, alleged desertions, lack of tactical communications discipline, indiscriminate attacks against Ukrainian noncombatants, and accusations of war crimes. They will also pay attention to stories about protests in Russia by citizens who are opposed to “Putin’s war” and Moscow’s repressive responses. At the same time, PLA political officers and others will likely marvel at how well Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has wielded information warfare and strategic communications as a force multiplier. Indeed, Zelensky and the Ukrainian military are in fact practicing what the PLA refers to as the “Three Warfares” (三种战法) — public opinion warfare, psychological warfare, and legal warfare. Reading these stories will undoubtedly vindicate for the PLA their continuing emphasis on “political work” (政治工作) among the troops and the local populace and will justify the PLA’s new joint doctrine addressing both political work and national mobilization. These stories from the battlefields of Ukraine will also likely provide additional data points underscoring for political officers and others why the PLA must remain a political force. They will also raise questions about the efficacy of the post-Soviet iteration of the political commissar system in the Russian armed forces.
Beyond the operational and tactical, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the international responses it catalyzed is likely generating discussions about larger order strategic-level issues, such as the implications of strong international economic sanctions for the future of Chinese national security, the ability of liberal democracies across regions to present a united front in the face of a common galvanizing threat, the inherent power of alliances, and the rapid return of the United States to a global leadership role. And while the government in Beijing denies any political parallels between the situation in Ukraine with that of Taiwan, the PLA and others may find both operational and strategic lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian war to be relevant to that scenario.
Among the weightiest strategic-level issues generated by the Russo-Ukrainian war will be the issue of nuclear deterrence. One can imagine that PLA analysts and others in the Chinese national security community will study the role that Russia’s possession of a serious nuclear deterrent is playing in shaping the choices of the United States and NATO in their responses to Moscow’s operations, including the early decision not to intervene militarily. Doing so will likely validate Beijing’s decisions, made long before the Ukraine war, to increase the size and survivability of its nuclear arsenal. At the same time, it could also raise questions about the future efficacy of China’s long-standing “no first use” nuclear doctrine. One suspects the nuclear issue will be looked at long and hard by Beijing’s military and civilian strategists.
Overall, then, we should assume the PLA will devote considerable resources during and after this conflict to absorbing the lessons of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If the past serves as prologue, there will be no rush to judgment. There will be symposia, conferences, debates, articles, and books dissecting all dimensions of the war. At the operational and tactical levels of war, those lessons will either validate or result in adjustments to issues such as doctrine, including tactics, techniques, and procedures, the optimal employment of systems, and even political work. Strategically, such lessons may even affect future nuclear doctrine and impact Beijing’s calculus for the potential use of force. Officials in Beijing continue to state that this conflict is not something they wished to see. We should take that statement at face value. Nevertheless, the Russian military campaign is providing the PLA with another “battle lab” from which it will continue to learn as it studies the wars of other countries.
David M. Finkelstein is a retired U.S. Army officer and long-time student of Asian security affairs. He is the director for China & Indo-Pacific Security Affairs at CNA, an independent research institute in Arlington, Virginia. The views expressed are strictly his own.
Image: Chinese Ministry of National Defense
20. An Assessment of Thinking Big About Future Warfare
Excerpts:
Implementing big ideas involves turning vision into things, concepts into capabilities and formations, and orchestrating grand actions in accordance with the vision[11]. Big ideas matter but after all, success is judged by adaptation.
Land forces, and particularly the U.S. Army, have been affected more than other military forces by the existential crisis in supposed relevance caused by the end of the Cold War, the lopsided victory in the First Gulf War, the advent of information technologies, revival of irregular and stability operations, and globalization. There are critical, outstanding disconnects between U.S./western military theory, forces, and doctrine that are, most likely, hampering the effective linking of military strategy to national policy.
An Assessment of Thinking Big About Future Warfare
Marco J. Lyons is a U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who has served in tactical and operational Army, Joint, and interagency organizations in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and in the Western Pacific. He is currently a national security fellow at Harvard Kennedy School where he is researching strategy and force planning for war in the Indo-Pacific. He may be contacted at marco_lyons@hks.harvard.edu. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature, nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: An Assessment of Thinking Big About Future Warfare
Date Originally Written: April 15, 2022.
Date Originally Published: May 2, 2022.
Summary: There are critical, outstanding disconnects between U.S./western military theory, forces, and doctrine that hamper linking military strategy to national policy. Big ideas about future warfare matter primarily around seizing and maximizing advantages over potential adversaries to compel favorable policy outcomes. The big ideas are useful and matter because identifying, developing, and deploying warfighting advantages unfolds over long periods of time.
Text: Far more than any particular revolution in military affairs, western powers are witnessing what may be called an extended revolution in strategic affairs. Such dramatic and wide-reaching change in warfare and how it is conceived involves 1) fundamental questions of the utility and most effective forms of power and diplomacy; 2) challenges to future force planning caused by advances in information technologies, long-range, precision fires, and hybrid combinations of symmetrical and asymmetrical capabilities, and whether these define a new warfighting regime and character of war; and 3) influences of globalization – or more specifically, the security environments created by the various forces making up social and economic globalization – on militaries. Bringing these three dynamics together – and more may be added to the list – in a deeply integrated way will almost certainly yield a new paradigm of warfare.
Both change and continuity are expected characteristics of the future security environment. Thinking about future big ideas is really only possible because there is enough continuity in history and military affairs[1]. Understanding future war is helped by elaborating on seven critical contexts or broad categories of circumstances: political, social-cultural, economic, military-strategic, technological, geographical, and historical[2].
It is difficult if not impossible to talk about big ideas in future warfare without referencing the possibilities for revolutionary change. One of the more popular ideas about the likelihood of new forms of warfare is the revolution in military affairs, or RMA, which nearly dominated defense publications and discussions in the 1990s. The term has a special linguistic power by implying historic, almost inevitable change[3]. Examinations of military history yield periods of profound change in war’s ever-changing character, and sometimes these periods may be called revolutionary, but these assessments are still difficult to complete in a fully persuasive manner[4]. There is no consensus view of the RMA as a way of thinking about future warfare.
The early days of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) seemed to fall both within and outside the more traditional lines of western war[5]. But just because the U.S. Air Force contributed the core capabilities that allowed Joint Force commanders to achieve effects with air power in Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks did not mean that the character of military operations more broadly had changed. Early OEF was a case of what was possible given the seven critical contexts identified above. Although there are convincing reasons to believe that the character of future warfare will change, and probably change in significant ways, the fundamental nature of war will remain the same[6].
Defense planners thinking about the character of future warfare will be well-served by using a simplified list of four operational challenges. These operational challenges could be used to explore needed capabilities and force postures. The four might be: 1) early halt of an invasion with depth (e.g., Ukraine) or without (e.g., the Baltic states); 2) early attack and early counteroffensive to destroy an enemy combined arms army without the benefit of a massive force buildup first (e.g., Taiwan); 3) effective and low-risk intervention in an ongoing, complex conflict zone or region; and 4) effective low-risk peace enforcement in complex terrain including megacities[7]. There is nothing revolutionary about these four.
It is inherently difficult to predict the exact course of future change, especially since future enemies will invariably have a say in these eventualities. Nonetheless it is important for defense planners to have a clear sense of the character and general scope of future conflict. While technology will almost certainly continue to evolve, including in the critical areas of reconnaissance and long-range precision fires, there is no overwhelming evidence that the character of future operations will change dramatically for ground forces in most types of missions, and especially in close combat in complex and urban terrain[8]. Tactical continuity is supreme.
Big ideas about future warfare matter primarily around seizing and maximizing advantages over potential adversaries. Generally, the big ideas are useful and matter because identifying, developing, and deploying warfighting advantages always unfolds over longer periods of time. Finally, the exact nature of future warfighting advantages is highly situational – or contextual – and potential adversaries are presumably trying to counter friendly attempts to secure advantages[9]. The tension in “big idea versus context” illustrates the interactive nature of war.
Doctrine and the other dimensions of force development are profoundly shaped by the reigning big ideas that capture the attention of military leaders and organizations. Those big ideas sketch what the organizations in question are prepared to do, against which opponents, in which operational environments[10]. So the U.S. Army, on the one hand, may want to cling to the big idea that the most consequential future conflicts will be major theater, conventional forces, maneuver and fire campaigns. Nonetheless, the indicators are that irregular fights – alongside large-scale combat operations – in complex hybrid combinations are not going anywhere.
Implementing big ideas involves turning vision into things, concepts into capabilities and formations, and orchestrating grand actions in accordance with the vision[11]. Big ideas matter but after all, success is judged by adaptation.
Land forces, and particularly the U.S. Army, have been affected more than other military forces by the existential crisis in supposed relevance caused by the end of the Cold War, the lopsided victory in the First Gulf War, the advent of information technologies, revival of irregular and stability operations, and globalization. There are critical, outstanding disconnects between U.S./western military theory, forces, and doctrine that are, most likely, hampering the effective linking of military strategy to national policy.
Endnotes:
[2] Colin S. Gray, “The 21st Century Security Environment and the Future of War,” Parameters 38, no. 4 (2008): 18, https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol38/iss4/7/. Also see Warren Chin, “Technology, War and the State: Past, Present and Future,” International Affairs 95, no. 4 (July 2019): 765–783. Chin concludes that the relationship between war and the state may be in for dramatic change – an existential crisis – as another wave of industrialization, impacts of artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies on societies and economies, as well as possible global climate emergencies tax the modern state to the point of breakdown.
[3] Lawrence Freedman, The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 1998), 7–8.
[4] Carlo Alberto Cuoco, The Revolution in Military Affairs: Theoretical Utility and Historical Evidence, Research Paper, no. 142 (Athens, Greece: Research Institute for European and American Studies, April 2010), https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/115259/rieas142b.pdf.
[10] Terry Terriff, “The Past as Future: The U.S. Army’s Vision of Warfare in the 21st Century,” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 15, no. 3 (2014): 195–228, https://jmss.org/article/view/58119/43736.
21. Xi Jinping Is Fighting a War for China’s History
Excerpts:
A select group of historians convened for a special conference at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-affiliated research institute, in Beijing the following year and concluded that historical nihilism was one of the main tactics “hostile international forces” were using to try to Westernize and divide China. They called for a more disciplined approach to the study of history that would “safeguard ideological security” and “create a positive image of China.”
Just as the party’s focus on the country’s past “national humiliation” after the Tiananmen crackdown had seen a sudden surge of scholarship on the subject, so too now did historical nihilism became a hot topic for research. New papers and initiatives proliferated. Qiushi (“Seeking Truth”), the party’s ideology journal, devoted a special section on its website to the battle to combat historical nihilism, complete with a banner quote from Xi: “History is history, truth is truth, and no one can change history or truth.”
This wasn’t true. The Communist Party had rewritten plenty of the country’s history. The extent of the human-made famine under Mao had been erased, as had the scale of the violence during the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre. It would be more accurate to say that history and truth were whatever the leadership said they were at that moment, and no one was allowed to challenge that version of events. But the party presented its campaign against historical nihilism as a patriotic mission, and the hunt for historical nihilists was on.
Xi Jinping Is Fighting a War for China’s History
Fear of “historical nihilism” has haunted China’s leadership for years.
By Katie Stallard, a senior editor covering China and global affairs at the New Statesman magazine.
China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin strode out to the Gate of Heavenly Peace in the center of Beijing. The sky overhead was perfectly blue. The crowds waved their red flags in perfect unison. This was the entrance to the Forbidden City when China’s last emperors ruled, and it was where Mao Zedong declared the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. But that wasn’t why they were here. They had come to commemorate Victory Day, the anniversary of the end of World War II in China—or as it was known there, the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and World Anti-Fascist War.
This article is adapted from Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea, by Katie Stallard, Oxford University Press, 304 pp., $29.95, May 2022
“In that devastating war, the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression started first and lasted longest,” Xi said in his speech on Sept. 3, 2015. “The unyielding Chinese people fought gallantly and finally won total victory over the Japanese militarist aggressors, thus preserving the achievements of China’s 5,000-year-old civilization and defending the cause of peace for mankind.” Then, to celebrate that peace, there was a massive military parade.
Twelve thousand troops marched into Tiananmen Square in perfect lockstep. When they reached Xi, their heads snapped right, a sea of resolute faces turning to salute their commander in chief. From the crowded press pen, I squinted up at the tiny figures of Xi and Putin on the balcony high above us as the soldiers goose-stepped past below. Most of all, I was struck by the sound, the boots stamping out a relentless drumbeat on the pavement and then the low guttural growl of the tanks. They rumbled past in a cloud of engine smoke, and they were so heavy I could feel the ground shaking beneath my feet. Next came a procession of the country’s latest, most formidable weaponry. There was the new long-range strategic missile, the Dong Feng (East Wind) 5B, designed to carry a nuclear warhead and capable of reaching targets in Western Europe and the United States, and the Dong Feng 21D anti-ship missile, dubbed the “carrier killer” for its purported ability to sink an aircraft carrier.
Putin shaded his eyes from the sun on the balcony. Xi looked straight ahead. His face was impassive, even slightly bored. Fighter jets roared through the sky above us, followed by a thunderous swarm of attack helicopters that made downtown Beijing look like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Clearly this was as much about demonstrating the country’s growing strength as it was about remembering the past. But then, both leaders insisted the two were inextricably linked.
Xi was then midway through his first term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while Putin, his increasingly close friend, had been in power for 15 years. Putin said they had first bonded over family memories of World War II while they shared a late-night shot of vodka and “sliced some sausage” at an Asia-Pacific leaders’ summit in 2013, and they evidently also shared an understanding of the conflict’s wider resonance. The two leaders deployed their extensive security forces to crush dissent and silence their opponents, but they also both appealed to the history of the war to rally public support.
In Russia, Putin exploited the sacred myth to frame the country’s contemporary challenges and cast his enemies as traitors, and in China, too, Xi was intensifying focus on the conflict and turning to the past to serve his contemporary needs. The Victory Day celebrations in 2015 were a case in point. While the extraordinary scale and seamless choreography made this look like a long-held tradition, it was not. In fact, this was the first time the victory parade had ever been held. Victory Day was one of three new national holidays that had been created the previous year, along with an annual day to commemorate the Nanjing Massacre, which was carried out by Japanese troops during World War II, and Martyrs’ Day, which was dedicated to all those who had given their lives to defend the country.
It is not unusual for a country to designate memorial days to honor its fallen, but this was all happening 70 years after the end of the war. It had taken long enough for the Soviet leadership to reinstate Victory Day—almost two decades after Joseph Stalin canceled the holiday there—but it took the CCP another half-century to come around to the idea.
The new memorial days were just the beginning. Xi called for a renewed effort to study the history of the conflict, although on the party’s terms, and while Chinese suffering during the war with Japan had played an important role in the party’s post-Tiananmen patriotic education campaign, he now turned up the volume and shifted the emphasis. As well as remembering the country’s suffering during the conflict as part of the broader “century of humiliation” China had endured before the party came to power, he said the war should also be remembered as the beginning of the end of that humiliation and the start of the journey to what he called the “China Dream of national rejuvenation.”
The victory over Japan was the “first complete victory won by China in its resistance against foreign aggression in modern times,” Xi said in his Victory Day speech in 2015. Not only did it “put an end to the national humiliation of China,” he said, but also this “great triumph represented the rebirth of China, opened up bright prospects for the great renewal of the Chinese nation, and set our ancient country on a new journey.” What was more, the victory “reestablished China as a major country and won the Chinese people the respect of all peace-loving people around the world.”
This was an important part of Xi’s narrative of the war and another point on which he and Putin agreed: that as the nations that had sacrificed the most to save the world from fascism, the war had earned them the right to respect. They presented themselves as the founders and guardians of the postwar international order, instead of its greatest threat. Putin had illegally annexed Crimea a year earlier, and he was fighting a covert war in Ukraine at the time, while Xi was installing surface-to-air missiles and military facilities on artificial islands in the South China Sea. But both leaders claimed they were the ones upholding world peace and it was U.S. hegemony that posed the real danger.
“All countries should jointly uphold the international order and system underpinned by the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter [which China was the first to sign],” Xi said. They should “build a new model of international relations based on mutually beneficial co-operation and advance the noble cause of global peace and development.” In his telling, China’s growing military strength was simply to defend its interests and ensure the country would never again be pushed around. Even as the tanks and the intercontinental ballistic missiles rolled through Tiananmen Square, the official commentary assured viewers that China’s rise would always be peaceful.
“Our generation is lucky to be born at a time when the country will not be bullied by others,” remarked one student at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University after watching the military parade. “Now we will show the world how strong China is,” said an 8-year-old girl.
***
When Xi was unveiled as the CCP’s new general secretary in November 2012, there were some predictions that he would unleash a series of pragmatic reforms. “Mao’s body will be hauled out of Tiananmen Square on his watch,” wrote Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times in January 2013. “And Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning writer, will be released from prison.” Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, who had served under Mao as one of the first generation of Chinese Communist revolutionaries, had supported economic reforms, Kristof pointed out (he was not alone in his optimism), and Xi’s mother had elected to live in the “capitalist enclave” of Shenzhen. His daughter was studying at Harvard University in the United States. But as with Kim Jong Un, who took over across the border in North Korea the previous year, those early predictions turned out to be wrong. Instead of loosening his grip, Xi consolidated power and reasserted the party’s role in the economy and across all aspects of society. Liu died in detention in 2017, with Mao still firmly ensconced in his mausoleum.
Like Putin and Kim, Xi saw history as a crucial tool for maintaining power. It was the foundation on which the party built its claim to rule and framed its appeals for public support. It was the basis on which they attacked their opponents and the answer to the question as to why China needed the Communist Party at all. As Deng Xiaoping had urged in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown, they needed to continually remind people “what China was like in the old days and what kind of country it was to become” before the rise of the CCP.
Also, like Putin, Xi had seen for himself what happened when a communist regime lost power. Xi was a midranking party official in the southeastern province of Fujian when he watched the Soviet Union collapse. “All it took was one quiet word from Gorbachev to declare the dissolution of the Soviet Communist Party, and a great party was gone,” he reportedly later said. He had given considerable thought to how the CCP could avoid the same fate, and it was one of the first issues he raised after becoming general secretary. “Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse?” he asked party members in a closed-door speech in December 2012, less than a month after taking office. “An important reason was that their ideals and convictions wavered,” he said. “In the end, nobody was a real man, nobody came out to resist.”
He repeated that message a few weeks later when he returned to the Soviet collapse during a seminar for senior officials. “The struggle in the ideological sphere was extremely fierce,” Xi said of the situation in the Soviet Union at the time. “There was a complete denial of Soviet history, denial of Lenin, denial of Stalin, pursuit of historical nihilism, confusion of thought.” With discipline breaking down and the party’s history under attack, he said, “the great Soviet Communist Party scattered like birds and beasts. The great Soviet socialist nation fell to pieces.”
Xi was determined not to repeat those mistakes. As he saw it, national security was not just a physical or a material concept. They also had to guard against threats in the ideological sphere. And already there were signs of some of the same looming dangers for the CCP as there had been in the Soviet Union. Organizational discipline had collapsed, corruption was spiraling, and ideological control was failing. If they wanted to avoid the same fate, they would have to act fast. Public support, Xi warned, was a matter of the party’s “survival or extinction.” Unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, he intended to put up a fight.
In the spring of 2013, a secret communique known as Document No. 9 circulated among senior officials. The party faced a “complicated, intense struggle” in the ideological realm, the document warned, setting out a series of “false ideological trends” that must be confronted. These included efforts to promote “Western constitutional democracy,” “universal values,” “civil society,” and “historical nihilism,” which meant denying the party’s version of history. The goal of this historical nihilism, the document explained, was to undermine the party’s legitimacy and challenge its “long-term political dominance.” In other words, if the party wanted to hold on to power, it would have to strengthen its grip on the country’s history. Officials were urged to wage a “perpetual, complex, and excruciating” struggle, making ideological work a top priority in their daily schedules.
A select group of historians convened for a special conference at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government-affiliated research institute, in Beijing the following year and concluded that historical nihilism was one of the main tactics “hostile international forces” were using to try to Westernize and divide China. They called for a more disciplined approach to the study of history that would “safeguard ideological security” and “create a positive image of China.”
Just as the party’s focus on the country’s past “national humiliation” after the Tiananmen crackdown had seen a sudden surge of scholarship on the subject, so too now did historical nihilism became a hot topic for research. New papers and initiatives proliferated. Qiushi (“Seeking Truth”), the party’s ideology journal, devoted a special section on its website to the battle to combat historical nihilism, complete with a banner quote from Xi: “History is history, truth is truth, and no one can change history or truth.”
This wasn’t true. The Communist Party had rewritten plenty of the country’s history. The extent of the human-made famine under Mao had been erased, as had the scale of the violence during the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre. It would be more accurate to say that history and truth were whatever the leadership said they were at that moment, and no one was allowed to challenge that version of events. But the party presented its campaign against historical nihilism as a patriotic mission, and the hunt for historical nihilists was on.
22. Foil the Financiers of Iran’s Terrorism
Excerpts:
Mr. Biden’s chief Iran negotiator, Robert Malley, already offered in April 2021 to lift U.S. terrorism sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and the country’s financial and energy sectors. His argument is that the sanctions were imposed illegitimately—that the Trump administration labeled institutions terrorist entities simply to make it harder for a future administration to lift sanctions as part of a possible nuclear deal. The Obama administration, however, claimed that the U.S. retained the right to impose terrorism sanctions on Iran even under its 2015 nuclear accord.
Lawmakers must intervene. In 2017, while the U.S. was still participating in the Iran deal, Congress nearly unanimously passed a law mandating terrorism sanctions on the IRGC and its affiliates. They should do so again—and prohibit Mr. Biden from lifting sanctions on Iranian institutions financing a terrorist organization’s plots against Americans.
Legislation should also threaten sanctions against directors of the Swift financial network if they reconnect terror-sponsoring Iranian banks, including the central bank, to their system.
If the “IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists,” as Mr. Biden insists, the U.S. should stop at nothing to deny them the resources to sponsor terrorism.
Foil the Financiers of Iran’s Terrorism
The Biden administration believes Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist organization. So why lift sanctions on banks that help fund it?
By Richard Goldberg
May 1, 2022 4:49 pm ET
When news broke in March that Mr. Biden was considering Iran’s request to take the IRGC off the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the White House faced outcries from Congress, allies in the Middle East, former U.S. officials and Gold Star Families whose loved ones were killed by the IRGC in Iraq. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken if the IRGC is a terrorist organization. “They are,” Mr. Blinken replied.
The next day at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Mark Milley faced the same question. “In my personal opinion, I believe the IRGC Quds Force to be a terrorist organization, and I do not support them being delisted from the foreign terrorist organization list,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said. The Quds Force is one of several branches of the IRGC.
A State Department spokeswoman added last month that “the president shares the chairman’s view that IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists.” A senior administration official told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that the president “doesn’t intend to concede on the terrorist designation, even though this may be a dealbreaker,” in Mr. Ignatius’s paraphrase.
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These sound like clear statements that the IRGC belongs on the list, though they leave open the possibility of a related concession with a similar effect: The administration may remove the IRGC in its entirety from the terror list and replace it with the narrower designation of the IRGC Quds Force—giving a pass to the vast IRGC-controlled business empire that subsidizes Quds Force operations. Either way, given IRGC plots to assassinate current and former U.S. officials, Mr. Biden owes Congress an explanation why he is offering to inject the Quds Force with billions of dollars by lifting terrorism sanctions on the institutions that illicitly fund the organization.
In 2018 the Treasury Department imposed terrorism sanctions on Iran’s Bank Melli and its financial and corporate subsidiaries and partners “for assisting in, sponsoring, or providing financial, material, or technological support” for the Quds Force. The department also imposed sanctions on Bank Tejarat for its financial support of Mahan Air, the force’s preferred airline for support to terror operations.
Less than a year later, the Treasury revealed that the Quds Force had been using the Central Bank of Iran to receive “the vast majority of its foreign currency” since at least 2016. The bank also “facilitated the transfer of several billion U.S. dollars and euros to the IRGC-QF” between 2018 and early 2019. The department imposed terrorism sanctions on both the Central Bank of Iran and Iran’s sovereign-wealth fund, the National Development Fund, which Treasury described as a “slush fund for the IRGC-QF.”
U.S. sanctions officials didn’t stop digging. In 2020, the Treasury imposed terrorism sanctions on Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum, national oil company, tanker company, petrochemical company and other energy entities, citing tens of millions of dollars they directed to the Quds Force.
The Biden administration hasn’t presented any evidence that the Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Co. or other banks and companies halted their support to the IRGC or Quds Force. The White House knows these entities fund terrorism but still wants to lift sanctions. The result? Making it easier for a terrorist organization to access and move money—putting U.S. forces, interests and allies in jeopardy.
Mr. Biden’s chief Iran negotiator, Robert Malley, already offered in April 2021 to lift U.S. terrorism sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and the country’s financial and energy sectors. His argument is that the sanctions were imposed illegitimately—that the Trump administration labeled institutions terrorist entities simply to make it harder for a future administration to lift sanctions as part of a possible nuclear deal. The Obama administration, however, claimed that the U.S. retained the right to impose terrorism sanctions on Iran even under its 2015 nuclear accord.
Lawmakers must intervene. In 2017, while the U.S. was still participating in the Iran deal, Congress nearly unanimously passed a law mandating terrorism sanctions on the IRGC and its affiliates. They should do so again—and prohibit Mr. Biden from lifting sanctions on Iranian institutions financing a terrorist organization’s plots against Americans.
Legislation should also threaten sanctions against directors of the Swift financial network if they reconnect terror-sponsoring Iranian banks, including the central bank, to their system.
If the “IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists,” as Mr. Biden insists, the U.S. should stop at nothing to deny them the resources to sponsor terrorism.
Mr. Goldberg is a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served as White House National Security Council director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction, 2019-20.
23. Cleo Paskal: China’s Agreement with Solomon Islands & Implications for Security in the Pacific
Cleo Paskal: China’s Agreement with Solomon Islands & Implications for Security in the Pacific | CDA Institute
An Interview with Cleo Paskal
Could you provide a brief overview of the domestic political situation in Solomon Islands?
To understand the situation, we need to look at three distinct strands: domestic Solomon Islands, China, and Australia. The complexities of domestic politics in Solomons goes back quite some time. That intersects with what China wants to do in the region, and what Australia has been doing in the region. Understanding how those three trajectories have developed separately, then braided together, is key to understanding how we got here.
In terms of domestic politics, Solomons is somewhat of a colonial construct, consisting of hundreds of islands, and many cultures, and languages. Inequities built into the structure of the country created tensions, resulting in a civil war that peaked in the late 1990s. The main belligerents were from the province of Malaita—the most populous province – and the island of Guadalcanal, which is home to the capital, Honiara.
The civil war ended in 2000 when all parties involved – including the central government, which at the time was headed by the same man who is Prime Minister at the moment, Manasseh Sogavare – agreed to the Townsville Peace Agreement. A key component of that agreement, Part IV, was the devolution of power.
Economics and politics had been too centralized in Honiara, and the provinces felt that there wasn’t enough equitable distribution of development. Devolution of power would mean that the provinces would have much more control over their own issues – a dynamic familiar to Canadians.
After the end of the civil war, the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI)—led by an Australian peacekeeping force—was deployed in Solomons for over a decade. The cost of peacekeeping was quite high for Australia, in blood and treasure. But it never implemented Part IV of the agreement. So, the issue of inequitable distribution among the provinces, and the accompanying resentment, was never resolved.
It was easier for RAMSI to deal with a somewhat compliant, centralized government in the capital that Canberra could use to administer and negotiate with the individual provinces. It was also convenient for the Australians to deal with people who told them what they wanted to hear, rather than what they needed to hear to establish real security. The result was an inadvertent creation of a centralized state that had vassal-like qualities.
When the government of the newly elected Prime Minister Sogavare switched Solomons’ diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 2019—without any real debate allowed in the country—it was apparent the now-centralized, softened system could easily be controlled through elite capture. The way RAMSI was deployed, and the fact that the underlying devolution issues were never dealt with, created a near-turnkey dynamic, whereby a softened state relatively quickly moved from one country to another. China then employed full-on political warfare—leveraging money, information warfare, and intel—and increasingly centralized and vassalized Solomon Islands to the point where it could garner a security agreement.
This mess took decades to create, three parties to action, and it isn’t what the majority of the people of Solomon Islands want. Many did not want the pivot to China and almost all don’t want the security agreement with China. PM Sogavare doesn’t represent the democratic will of the people of Solomon Islands, who want Part IV of the Townsville Peace Agreement, devolution of power, and strategic independence—which would align them more naturally with the West, from a position of strength, not vassalhood.
An initial draft of the China-Solomon Islands security agreement was leaked online last month. What were your key takeaways from this document?
The switch to China and the new security agreement have been immensely unpopular domestically. Sogavare is a corrupt, pro-PRC, anti-democratic, increasingly authoritarian individual, who now has the backing of the Chinese state.
The new security agreement looks like it’s from the 19th-century. A key element of the 19th-century colonial agreements was that the people of the colonial power had their own policing, and effectively, their own judiciary. A draft of the security agreement says that the Chinese, if allowed by the Solomon Islands government, will have the right to protect ‘Chinese people and interests’. This is problematic because the CCP considers any ethnic Chinese person with links back to China to be overseas Chinese.
Also, some in Solomons are on record as not wanting to have CCP-linked ‘interests’ operating in their areas. For example, the people and government of the province of Malaita don’t want any new licenses in their province going to CCP-linked businesses—partly because, as the provincial government wrote in the Auki Communique, China is systemically atheist, while Malaita respects freedom of religion, and are in fact, devout Christians. It’s authoritarian atheism versus freedom of religion and national choice.
Many provincial leaders, Chiefs, and church groups are against the security agreement because they view it as targeting them and their independence. They see this as PM Sogavare getting an army to suppress internal dissent, that will work to protect the Chinese and himself, as their proxy.
The women’s groups, in particular, have been outspoken against the security agreement because they are scared – they previously successfully defended against PRC encroachment on their rights, making them targets. Solomon Islands is quite a matrilineal country, and the women have a lot of influence. The reason why a Chinese-government linked company failed in its attempt to lease the strategically located Tulagi Island after the original switch in 2019, was because the women pushed back and said no.
Despite enormous internal dissent in Solomons against the PM, Australian partners seem to be appeasing Sogavare. Two Australian spy chiefs visited and didn’t meet with the Leader of the Opposition, the church groups, the Chiefs, or the women’s groups—they only met with Sogavare and his coterie. This reinforces his prestige.
Interestingly, the recent American delegation’s visit, led by the National Security Council head for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, met with the Leader of the Opposition and church leaders, reportedly against the advice of the Australians. It was an important move and marked the U.S. as keen to engage with the whole of Solomons society, not just the government of the day.
Those who want to see the situation change, for the sake of Solomon Islands, and regional security, have very eager people on the ground in Solomon Islands, for whom this is a critical issue and will fight if given the chance – as we saw with the women of Tulagi. The weapons they need to fight are democracy, transparency, accountability, rule of law, and all of the things that we say that we believe in. Australia has not been facilitating that for them for whatever reasons, but the recent U.S. visit shows other approaches are now being tried.
Are there concerns that bilateral security agreements, such as the one between China and Solomon Islands, creates greater opportunity for the use of lawfare tactics? How can Solomon Islands promote their resilience? Is there room for liberal democratic nations to contribute?
This is the frontline of the clash between systems. Prime Minister Sogavare is seeking justifications so he can postpone the scheduled 2023 federal election. Now that Solomon Islands is embedded with China, it is adopting the characteristics of that state.
A standard component of the PRC political warfare game plan in target countries is to identify and exacerbate existing internal divisions as well as create more internal divisions through mass-customized manipulation, including via social media. These social divisions can then escalate into violence, which can be used to justify an authoritarian response. These crackdowns make countries less popular with liberal democracies, which in effect, pushes them closer to China.
This is happening in Solomons. If Solomon Islands had a free and fair election, Sogavare would be gone, the security agreement would be abrogated, and there’s a good chance they would go back to Taiwan. If Solomons were to switch back to Taiwan though, it would be a huge loss of face for Xi domestically. The security agreement was a bold move by China. If the electorate responded by voting out Sogavare, that sets a bad precedent for someone who is trying to spread authoritarianism around the world. At the same time, if Sogavare were ousted from power, he could be prosecuted on corruption charges. The stakes are high for both leaders, which makes it all the more likely that they would try to instigate violence or create a false flag security situation, for example in Malaita, that ‘justifies’ a crackdown.
I can’t emphasize enough just how high the stakes are here. We shouldn’t be competing on Chinese terms. It shouldn’t be: ‘you’ve got a security agreement? We’ll give you a security agreement; you’re bribing people? We’ll bribe people! You’re threatening to invade? We’ll threaten to invade!’ We should compete by offering to support what is unique to liberal democracies – democracy, transparency, accountability, rule of law, and let the people of Solomons use those tools to liberate their own country.
Solomon Islanders who are on the ground, who are fighting the fight for their own country— their message is being suppressed by existing structures. The Australians were warned months in advance that a security agreement was coming down the pipeline and that message never got out. We need to give space to the people of Solomon Islands to come up with solutions—for example, they want Part IV of the Townsville Peace Agreement. They understand the situation better than anybody. They were colonized before, and they don’t want to be colonized again.
The rapacious way in which the Chinese have conducted business in Solomon Islands has been extremely socially disruptive – people have been removed from their land.
Solomon Islanders have been trying to be heard – and those attempts have been thwarted and distorted. Demonstrators wanted to meet with PM Sogavare when parliament reopened in November to express grievances, including how the Chinese were conducting business. During these peaceful demonstrations, the police used tear gas, which lead to panic and chaos. What we are hearing now is the demonstrators were redirected toward Chinatown. Some demonstrators became opportunistic, and Chinatown was looted and burned. That was widely reported. What is less known is that within a day, the community was cleaning up Chinatown, the mothers were making their sons return things that had been looted – they were getting it back under control themselves.
Meanwhile, there was talk of a vote of no confidence (which is how Sogavare lost power twice before), some police advised Sogavare to resign and MPs supporting Sogavare questioned their political future. There was an opening for change. But, at Sogavare’s request, Australia deployed a peacekeeping operation to ‘secure’ Solomon Islands, which Sogavare used to demonstrate to MPs that he had the support of Australia, as well as China. As a result, there was a failed no-confidence vote and Sogavare stayed in office.
Then, Sogavare invited in Chinese ‘police advisors’, which Australia couldn’t do anything about as they had already deployed themselves, signifying that the situation was serious enough to necessitate deploying troops and police. How could they object now that China was doing the same? Canberra got played.
Considering the geographic proximity of Solomon Islands to Australia, New Zealand, and Guam, does this raise any concerns for Five Eyes (FVEY) members? What should Canada be thinking about in terms of addressing China’s expansion into the Pacific?
To understand the geostrategic value of Solomon Islands, we have to understand WWII-era Japanese Imperial strategy in the region.
China’s military is growing and modernizing at a rate the world has never seen during peacetime. The most important, and most visibly large component of that, is the People Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). To deploy its navy freely, China needs to break out of the first island chain –the string of island countries running roughly in parallel to the Chinese coast, from Japan, through Taiwan, then Philippines to Malaysia, and on down.
China’s building of military bases on seized and artificial islands in the South China Sea allows it to project power forward, towards the chain. Beyond the first island chain, China has been engaging in political warfare to try and embed itself in other islands, so it can squeeze Taiwan from both sides. If there is a kinetic event over Taiwan, Beijing wants to ensure that resupply can’t come from the east and that it can deploy to the east as well.
Around the same time that Solomons switched from Taiwan, the Pacific island country of Kiribati also switched from Taiwan to China. There has been discussion about China redeveloping an old WWII U.S military airstrip on Canton Island in Kiribati for ‘tourism’ – it just happens to be, in Pacific Ocean terms, relatively close to Hawaii.
This kind of political warfare is happening across the Pacific Islands – Solomon Islands is the tip of the iceberg. China uses a similar strategy across the region—identifying divisions, buying up politicians, and setting things in motion. One set of tools it uses is its Three Warfare strategy – psychological warfare, media warfare, and lawfare. That includes buying up the media and promoting the narrative that ‘China’s rise is inevitable, you’re better off rising with our boat, rather than trying to cut yourself off and sink on your own’.
One area of focus has been the roughly west to east arc of island nations off the northern coast of Australia – Papua New Guinea, Solomons, Vanuatu, even France’s New Caledonia – if you can control this island chain, you can interdict Australia and New Zealand. You can cut them off. That was the Japanese playbook during WWII. In that context, Bougainville and Papua New Guinea are areas of concern that need to be watched very carefully. If Beijing gains control, that arc would create an island chain restricting Australia’s actions – it would replicate the first island chain blocking China but, in this case, it would be Australia blocked in. Some in Australia are fond of talking about the Pacific Islands as Australia’s backyard, but if the Pacific Islands can’t escape Beijing’s orbit, Australia will be in China’s backyard.
FVEY has been relying on Australia and New Zealand to provide accurate information and assessments on the islands—we wouldn’t be in this situation if that had happened. The Leader of the Opposition of Solomon Islands has been warning Australia since August that a security agreement with China was being negotiated. Nothing happened. The result of that doubt about Canberra and Wellington truly understanding what is going on in the region is that the UK, for example, has reopened three high commissions in Pacific Islands. If London thought things were going well with Australia and New Zealand on this front, it wouldn’t be investing in and opening up missions in Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu. The Japanese, who are among the best-informed missions and most respected in the region, are opening a new embassy in Kiribati and a new consulate in New Caledonia. The failure of Australia and New Zealand in creating an environment where the Pacific Islands are prosperous and secure from the metric of their own people, has created an opening for China, and concern among allies.
Countries like Japan and India, who see this apparent mismanagement as a huge security risk to a free and open Indo-Pacific, will want to be less reliant on Australia; or bypass it, which would be a real shame, especially considering the costs Australia has incurred for standing up to China in other areas. However, it surely was not a good sign that Australian spy chiefs went to Solomons and did not speak to the Leader of the Opposition, the church groups, or women’s groups. It is not reassuring from a FVEY perspective, and, notably, the U.S. delegation made sure to do so during their short visit.
Could you speak to whether Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has influenced the security environment within the Indo-Pacific?
Both Ukraine and Afghanistan have been bad for the U.S. The American withdrawal from Afghanistan created an enormous security problem for India—a key QUAD member. They left behind $80 billion worth of weapons to Islamic extremists who have their targets set on India.
One complaint you hear in the region is that India, Japan, and South Korea are still being charged normal rates for U.S weapons that are now being given to Ukraine for free. The U.S has said China is the biggest threat – these countries are on the frontline against China and want weapons to fight them. They know China is coming.
At the same time, Western sanctions are driving up fuel and food prices. Sri Lanka, where you’ve got food riots, is already in debt to China, and China is in a position to ask them for strategically important concessions. India is trying to offer Sri Lanka alternatives, but it is also being economically squeezed.
The focus on Ukraine is legitimate. There is no question that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is horrible. However, it’s creating cascading effects across the Indo-Pacific which are reinforcing a perception that the West is not consistently responsible in its use of great power, and even its allies can be negatively affected by this. It is not that the U.S is not smart, but it is important to understand that this is how it is being perceived. When you are talking about Ukraine to an Indian, they have Afghanistan, China, Sri Lanka – they have all of these other concerns to consider as well.
To pivot to Canada, as both a G7 country and FVEY member, Canada is this almost invisible, yet large player in the rules-based international order. We have been living under the American security umbrella for a very long time. We are protected by three oceans, and we have one land border, with our main security provider. It has been easy for us to drop our guard because other people have been guarding us.
That doesn’t mean that we’re not vulnerable, especially because this is the phase of Chinese warfare that is mostly political, not kinetic. Their goal is to ‘win without fighting.’ The character in Chinese that means ‘win’ in that phrase does not mean it as we would understand it in English, but rather, to force the other side to submit. The CCP model is to create a permanent state of submission of others. It doesn’t mean winning a kinetic battle against Canada—it’s Canada supporting Chinese policies at the UN, buckling on trade deals, giving access to energy markets, that sort of thing. Just because our kinetic perimeter has been guarded by others, doesn’t mean we are protected from political warfare. If we’re going to be more useful to ourselves and our allies, we need to have a greater awareness of the political warfare being waged by China, Russia, and others against Canada. We are, in some cases, losing this battle.
We could be working on transparency, accountability, and democracy issues with Solomon Islands if we wanted, but we are not. Whether we realise it or not, we are already immersed in a battle of political warfare, and we need to bolster, not just our perimeters, but the core of what it means to be Canadian. Otherwise, we will suffer the same fate as the Solomon Islands.
24. Palestinian Islamic Jihad Claims New Drone Added to its Military Capabilities
Palestinian Islamic Jihad Claims New Drone Added to its Military Capabilities | FDD's Long War Journal
On the occassion of International Quds Day, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) published footage of a previously unknown drone called Jenin.”
PIJ spokesperson, Abu Hamza, stated the drone was added to the group’s military capabilities to reinforce the Gaza Strip.
“Today we reveal the Jenin drone, which operates in the air force, which our mujahideen continue to reinforce inside the besieged Gaza Strip,” Hamza noted.
The PIJ publication shows observation video from the ground and from a drone hovering over what appears to be three Israel Defense Forces (IDF) vehicles parked adjacent to the Gaza security fence on Aug. 7, 2019. After a few moments, the drone releases an explosive projectile over one of the vehicles but misses by several feet.
The second half of the footage shows a room that appears to contain several types of drones operated by PIJ. The video concludes with a brief clip of the “Jenin” operating over what is presumed to be the Gaza Strip.
While the footage is important in the context of understanding PIJ’s military capabilities, especially in the field of drones, the publication appears to be exaggerated and edited in a manner to deceive the viewer.
Despite the group saying it was unveiling a new drone, its publication begins with operational activity of a different drone, purportedly from three years ago. This is easily discernable since the drone hovers over its target thus suggesting the drone is similar to the DJI S1000 and not the “Jenin” showed later in the publication.
Additionally, the actual footage of the “Jenin” fails to show any significant operational activity despite the clip’s description of it being on “one of its jihadist missions.”
As previously noted, understanding PIJ’s military capabilities is important. However, the video lacks detail and evidence. Perhaps the lack of information was done intentionally to keep its capabilities a secret from the IDF.
Other than the previously unseen video of an unsuccessful attack against an IDF military vehicle, and the clip of other possible drones in its arsenal, PIJ was able to demonstrate their new drone “Jenin” can fly, but failed to prove anything more significant in its touted publication.
Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
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25. Russia Isn’t a Military State. It’s a Delusional One
Excerpts:
How did Mr. Putin think he could win this war? The answer has to do with state delusion. It is easy to mistake Russia for a military state. It isn’t. It’s true that the Russian state is run by siloviki (roughly translated as “the enforcers”), but those strongmen are from the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, not the army.
Mr. Putin, himself a former KGB officer, has long been highly suspicious of a possible army coup. The incompetence of the Russian military is at least partly intentional—designed to reinforce that the FSB, not the army, was in charge of running Russian society. The FSB and its political allies told Mr. Putin what he wanted to hear: namely, that Russia had an extensive network of sympathizers in Ukraine who would hand the country to him on a platter. A state with this level of incompetence and delusion simply wouldn’t have survived in the 19th century.
Things are different today. Sanctions are much preferred to direct fighting. And while economic sanctions can isolate a rogue regime, they can’t crush it. Mr. Putin has gotten many things wrong in his current war, but he did get one thing right. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization won’t go to war over Ukraine. And this is perhaps the biggest reason why he must be crushed. If not, more Vladimir Putins will follow, including those with a much firmer grip on reality.
Russia Isn’t a Military State. It’s a Delusional One
For all the talk of Putin’s mistakes, he was right in guessing that NATO won’t fight for Ukraine.
By Yulia Latynina
May 1, 2022 1:37 pm ET
When Russian tanks were shelling the nuclear core at the Zaporozhskaya power plant with live rounds, not all of the shells exploded because they were too old and decrepit. This story, told to me by Piotr Kotin, head of the company that owns the plant, is a metaphor for Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.
The current Russian army is a replica of Joseph Stalin’s Red Army, designed to saturate minefields with bodies. During World War II, while U.S. generals were parachuting onto battlefields with their troops and sharing their hardships, Soviet generals stayed far from the front and sent wave after wave of doomed conscripts against impregnable defenses. So it is no surprise that their successors asked troops under their command to dig trenches in the highly radioactive soil of Chernobyl and sent units into the meat grinder of Chornobaivka.
The incompetent and corrupt Russian army blundered into this war. Soldiers picked the wrong roads. Broken tanks littered the thoroughfares well before contact with the enemy: mired in mud, out of fuel and, above all, lost. In the 21st century, with satellites dotting the sky, the Russian army was using outdated Soviet paper charts with towns that had changed names and roads that no longer existed.
Why weren’t Russian troops using the Global Positioning System or its Russian counterpart, Glonass? It seems, among other things, that the Russian army fell victim to its own propaganda. Before the war, Mr. Putin had been fascinated with the acquisition of new weapons. Among the most important were electronic countermeasures, or ECM. They were supposed to be a game-changer that could be used to black out GPS, disrupt communications, and take over drones or deliberately crash them into the ground.
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ECM units were indeed marching with all Russian columns as they entered Ukraine. But they didn’t work as planned. Instead of knocking Turkish drones out of the skies, the ECM units blacked out all communications, including the Russian army’s. “This is the problem of ECM. It either isn’t working, or, when it’s working, it’s wrecking your side much more than the enemy’s,” says Victor Kevluk, a military expert with Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies.
The Russian army blinded itself on foreign land, while the Ukrainians knew their way in the dark. So instead of relying on new technology, the Russians turned to an old tactic: mass terror. Russian soldiers raped Ukrainian women and executed Ukrainian men. Mariupol is being razed to the ground. Former Ukrainian General Staff Col. Oleg Zhdanov vividly described to me in an interview how, in Berezovka, “the dug-in tanks made a shooting range with fleeing civilian cars as targets.”
The mass terror was the direct consequence of mass lying, for it is easier to expend ammunition on a bunch of fleeing civilians than to engage a real military target. Even the looting has become organized. Ruslan Leviev, founder of the open-source-based Conflict Intelligence Team, claimed in an interview that soldiers are driving stolen cars laden with loot to Russia to sell them on improvised markets, and they pay part of the proceeds to their officers.
This is truly amazing. A modern army doesn’t loot. It is doubtful that the same army that left Bucha toting trophy dishwashers will be able to regroup swiftly to fight in the Donbas.
How did Mr. Putin think he could win this war? The answer has to do with state delusion. It is easy to mistake Russia for a military state. It isn’t. It’s true that the Russian state is run by siloviki (roughly translated as “the enforcers”), but those strongmen are from the Federal Security Service, known as the FSB, not the army.
Mr. Putin, himself a former KGB officer, has long been highly suspicious of a possible army coup. The incompetence of the Russian military is at least partly intentional—designed to reinforce that the FSB, not the army, was in charge of running Russian society. The FSB and its political allies told Mr. Putin what he wanted to hear: namely, that Russia had an extensive network of sympathizers in Ukraine who would hand the country to him on a platter. A state with this level of incompetence and delusion simply wouldn’t have survived in the 19th century.
Things are different today. Sanctions are much preferred to direct fighting. And while economic sanctions can isolate a rogue regime, they can’t crush it. Mr. Putin has gotten many things wrong in his current war, but he did get one thing right. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization won’t go to war over Ukraine. And this is perhaps the biggest reason why he must be crushed. If not, more Vladimir Putins will follow, including those with a much firmer grip on reality.
Ms. Latynina was a journalist with Echo of Moscow and Novaya Gazeta, Russian press outlets that have been shut down during Russia’s war with Ukraine.
26. Data as a Weapon: Psychological Operations in the Age of Irregular Information Threats
Conclusion:
The information environment is decisive terrain for modern combat. It is characterized by increasing complexity, and analysis and speed are the key drivers to successfully influence target populations. Current doctrine and processes are effective in uncontested information environments; they offer few answers for a social media-driven world. The PSYOP community must modernize its capabilities, which is not a protracted, multibillion-dollar process. Rather, it requires exploitation of publicly available information, skill training, automated and machine learning–aided workflows, and software solutions. Moreover, PSYOP modernization will enable multiple warfighting functions, including intelligence, mission command, and sustainment. As the secretary of the Army’s message to the force made clear, data modernization is critical for the United States to remain competitive against hostile state actors.
Data as a Weapon: Psychological Operations in the Age of Irregular Information Threats - Modern War Institute
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is arguably the first war to be documented and fought on social media. At the beginning of the war, Ukraine seized the initiative in the information environment, which helped Ukraine garner significant international support. Domestically, social media content, like the video of a Ukrainian farmer stealing a Russian tank with his tractor, has boosted Ukrainian morale. But these messages compete for influence in a space full of unprecedented amounts of content and disinformation. Making sense of, and creating advantages from, this deluge of information is a strategic imperative for any modern military.
A few weeks prior to the invasion, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth outlined her priorities for the US Army in a letter to the force, underlining the pivot toward great power competition with Russia and China, and the massive digital modernization required to face this threat. Her second priority highlighted the need to upgrade the US Army’s data and network capabilities to maintain its advantage in contested areas. This is because the information environment is increasingly complex and important for the cognitive aspect of conflict. If the US Army hopes to deliver decisive effects in the information environment, it must modernize the capabilities of psychological operations (PSYOP) units, which are designed to operate in this space against both near-peer adversaries and irregular threats.
Constrained and Unconstrained Information Environments
American PSYOP units are still primed to use the planning processes of past wars, when radio broadcasts, leaflets, and handbills were the primary means to communicate with target populations. These methods work well only within constrained information environments—low-resource settings with scarce telecommunications infrastructure and low internet penetration rates. For example, ISIS created such an environment with its ban on private and WiFi-enabled internet. As a result, traditional PSYOP methods like leaflets were effective because only ISIS and coalition narratives were vying for influence.
But US adversaries often operate in unconstrained information environments that are highly contested, enabled with high internet access, and filled with effectively unlimited media narratives and sources. Just outside of ISIS-controlled areas, we found, in our experience conducting and leading PSYOP operations, that the same PSYOP teams were dramatically less effective because they lacked the analytical capabilities to truly contest an unconstrained information environment.
US PSYOP teams in Somalia performed similarly. The rural areas were highly constrained due to low literacy, low internet penetration, and the confiscation of smartphones by antigovernment forces. The Somali National Army and US teams performed well in these areas by communicating through handbills, posters, stickers, and leaflets, heavy with explanatory imagery. In contrast, PSYOP teams struggled in urban areas, where the information environment was unconstrained, consisting of mixed media via high internet access, television, radio, and traditional news media. Both Somalia and Iraq demonstrate that a variety of environments exist in close proximity to each other and that PSYOP units need to understand them at a granular level if they are to wield influence effectively.
First-Mover Advantages
PSYOP’s main output—influence—relies on the ability to collect information, analyze it, and rapidly exploit the information environment. This is increasingly difficult in unconstrained environments, where adversaries have access to more advanced data aggregation, monitoring capabilities, and effective use of social media. Russia and China excel in this regard.
But analysis alone is not enough; speed matters too. The competition for influence has a distinct first-mover advantage. Research shows that simply countering fake news with accurate information is not entirely effective due to cognitive bias and the misinformation effect, whereby bad information can change people’s perceptions of past events. It is therefore critical to engage with adversarial narratives before they gain traction, which can generate credibility, especially when corroborated by outside observers.
These dynamics are currently playing out in Ukraine. Russia’s information warfare campaign relies on both state-sponsored networks and covert channels to spread disinformation. Information warfare, propaganda, and cyberattacks against Ukrainian infrastructure are meant to break Ukraine’s will to fight. Internally, Russia is targeting its citizens by blocking Western social media and news platforms while simultaneously pushing pro-invasion propaganda. This has created a constrained information environment and has further divided the country between those who rely on state-sponsored media and those who use VPNs and other methods to circumvent censorship.
Surprisingly, Russia’s external disinformation efforts have been largely ineffective because Ukrainian messages are transmitted quickly and target allied populations already skeptical of Russian media. Ukraine’s social media campaigns have enlisted international and domestic support, by showing civilian harm and mythologizing heroes—whether real or exaggerated—like the Ghost of Kyiv and the soldiers of Snake Island. Additionally, the United States, Ukraine, and other Western powers successfully prebunked Russian disinformation by releasing intelligence regarding Russian operations before they occurred. In aggregate these campaigns enabled Ukrainian messaging to dominate Western opinion and have been decisive in eliciting foreign military aid.
To fully counter information threats, the PSYOP community must gain a similar first-mover advantage in both constrained and unconstrained environments. Active anticipation, identification, and engagement with narratives as they emerge is a critical component of effective PSYOP, but to do this in an unconstrained information environment requires significant improvements to collection and analytic capabilities.
What Does PSYOP Modernization Look Like?
The PSYOP community must modernize to rapidly understand the information environment and effectively influence target populations. PSYOP begins with collection and analysis to “sense and make sense” of the information environment, but the Army’s doctrinal processes leave PSYOP as a low priority due to their focus on kinetic threats. This limitation can be overcome, in part, by investing in more access to publicly available information, such as modern network architecture that can ingest and warehouse such data. Then, making sense of the environment requires improved capabilities to exploit data with automated processes, software tools, and skill training.
The Team Level—Field More Automated Tech
With improved capabilities, a standard twelve-soldier PSYOP detachment could iterate on approved campaigns in real time and produce more decisive effects. In an unconstrained environment, the digital complexity of social media can only be adequately exploited using automated processes. A standard algorithmic toolkit might include language-translation tools, multimodal algorithms to process memes and videos, social media API scraping tools, and unfettered access to open-source news and publicly available datasets. In constrained information environments, PSYOP teams need tools that support language translation, optical character recognition for translating written or newspaper text, and speech-to-text translation. These capabilities would allow for quick insights into the target audience without the constant need for trained linguists. Commercial artificial intelligence is already transcribing and translating the Russian army’s unsecure radio broadcasts in Ukraine.
The Planners—Develop Dashboards with Broad Capabilities
PSYOP planners conducting initial target audience analysis can benefit from a standardized dashboard with livestream information on trending social media topics, event-based alerts, and audio-to-text machine translation. Fielded software solutions might encompass a mix of different commercial off-the-shelf software or the acquisition of larger software standardized across the force to automate many manual tasks and enable better anticipation and identification of emerging narratives. Such a toolkit could be used across the spectrum of information environments.
The Community Level—Accept Risk to Acquire Technical Skills
In conjunction with technical upgrades, the PSYOP community needs soldiers with technical competence, but training often creates short-term risk for commanders through personnel gaps and financial costs. Fortunately, some training paths have already been pioneered, such as the Joint Special Operations Command’s data literacy pipeline, which sends participants to industry for three months of training. This program ensures a return on investment by selecting only motivated and technically competent personnel. Alternatively, data bootcamps, such as Code Academy, provide flexible content delivery and are a fraction of the cost of a traditional advanced degree. Data skills that go beyond widely available commercial platforms are important to develop more agile PSYOP campaigns in all environments.
All upskilling approaches also require a follow-on plan for integrating soldiers into roles where they may use these skills, ideally on a team that can provide more in-depth on-the-job training and domain knowledge. Finally, all of these initiatives create a climate in which soldiers are encouraged to “fail fast and learn fast” because technical skill and innovation are rewarded.
Competing in a Data-Driven World
The information environment is decisive terrain for modern combat. It is characterized by increasing complexity, and analysis and speed are the key drivers to successfully influence target populations. Current doctrine and processes are effective in uncontested information environments; they offer few answers for a social media-driven world. The PSYOP community must modernize its capabilities, which is not a protracted, multibillion-dollar process. Rather, it requires exploitation of publicly available information, skill training, automated and machine learning–aided workflows, and software solutions. Moreover, PSYOP modernization will enable multiple warfighting functions, including intelligence, mission command, and sustainment. As the secretary of the Army’s message to the force made clear, data modernization is critical for the United States to remain competitive against hostile state actors.
Jon Reisher is a master’s student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College pursuing a degree in public policy and management. He is also an active duty PSYOP major with multiple deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Middle East.
Charity Jacobs is a PhD candidate at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, a data scientist with the Department of Defense, and a military intelligence major with the US Army Reserve. Her research interests include applied machine learning, natural language processing, and disinformation detection.
John Beasley holds a master of business administration from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He is also an FA30 (information operations) major with the US Army Reserve with multiple deployments to Afghanistan and East Africa.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
27. War and Adjustment: Military Campaigns and National Strategy
Excerpt:
With its focus on the relationship between military operations and grand strategy, Lissner’s work exists at the intersection of military history, diplomatic history, and international relations theory. The first two of these scholastic disciplines — military and diplomatic history — have weathered an onslaught of perceived irrelevance in traditional history departments across the United States and Great Britain. This trend, especially given the current international context, is equal parts perplexing and frightening. Lissner’s book, however, is an ode to not just the relevance but the indispensability of these disciplines. In her study, she thoroughly mines the military and diplomatic history of her three main case studies and then, true to her background in political science, develops a theoretical framework to make sense of these observed tendencies. Theories and even theoretical frameworks tend to make historians, myself included, run for the hills; but Lissner’s points in this regard, both in this new book and her aforementioned chapter, are immensely practical. In future years, we might hope to see other scholars take this framework and apply it to other periods of conflict and diplomacy. For now, though, we can enjoy a work that is fascinating, stimulating, and belongs in the canon of the history and practice of American grand strategy.
War and Adjustment: Military Campaigns and National Strategy - War on the Rocks
The Anglo-Boer War between October 1899 and May 1902 was both embarrassing and transformative for the United Kingdom. Despite their eventual victory, British forces were initially surprised and even humiliated by the tactical success of the outmanned but skillful troops of the Boer republics. The Battle of Spion Kop in January 1900 marked one of the more shocking defeats early on. Winston Churchill, then 25 and serving as a war correspondent, wrote that “Men were staggering along alone, or supported by comrades, or crawling on hands and knees, or carried on stretchers. Corpses lay here and there. Many of the wounds were of a horrible nature.”
The effect of the war on domestic politics in Britain was notable. The historian AJP Taylor described it as bringing “first the culmination and then the end of an arrogant, boastful epoch, in which British public opinion seemed to have abandoned principles for power.” Comments by a prominent Liberal member of parliament attest to this judgment. Speaking from the opposition benches in 1900, William Vernon-Harcourt complained that the British government, on top of its mounting debt, was the “best hated people in the world.”
The embarrassing military campaign came at a time when the international order was changing. The economic and naval superiority that Britain had enjoyed for long stretches of the 19th century — which allowed it to maintain a policy of non-intervention on the continent — had been narrowing with the rise of ambitious powers like Germany, Russia, the United States, and France. Kaiser William II spoke in these years of Germany needing to obtain its own “place in the sun”, while U.S. President William McKinley had proclaimed in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War that America had “become a world power.” These factors, along with rising tensions with France and Spain, unsettled British leaders and the public. “The Empire,” wrote the British journalist W.T. Stead, had been “stripped of its armour, has its hands tied behind its back and its bare throat exposed to the keen knife of its bitterest enemies.”
Though an election in 1900 had returned the Conservative Party and its leader, Lord Salisbury, to Downing Street, there were great changes to come. Indeed, one of the great strategic shifts of British diplomatic history occurred in these years. The result, to varying degrees, of both the Boer War and the changing international landscape, the United Kingdom allied with Japan in 1902 (its first such agreement in over a century) and later reached an entente with France and a rapprochement with the United States. These actions clearly departed from the decades-long British policy of non-intervention and marked a grand strategic reset of the first order — one that firmly launched the United Kingdom away from a policy of non-intervention. The key architect of this policy, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Lansdowne described it as such. “In these times no nation which intends to take its part in the affairs of the civilized world can venture to stand entirely alone.”
The effects of military campaigns on a nation’s grand strategy seem an obvious topic of importance for scholars. How can such moments of violence — when societies expend men and material and expose themselves and others to the most existential of risks—not mark dramatic moments of reflection on the purpose and direction of national strategy? Great strategic scholars from Michael Howard and Colin Gray to Lawrence Freedman and Hew Strachan have drawn these connections in their own work, especially as it relates to alterations after the termination of conflict. Yet fewer have examined the way in which information from the battlefield has, in real-time, shifted major strategic assessments on a national level. In her new book Wars of Revelation, Rebecca Lissner explores this connection in the American context by examining three of the country’s major conflicts in the 20th century — the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf wars — and their effects on American grand strategy. Rich in historical detail, the book uses these case studies to deliver a new theoretical framework for scholars of strategic studies, the “Informational Theory of Strategic Adjustment,” and even offers a persuasive contrast to some of the more established analyses of American foreign policy in the post-1945 period.
It is a welcome contribution from one of the rising, even leading, scholars in the field of security studies. A writer who has already helped us navigate the complex and sometimes frustrating topic of grand strategy, Lissner has also become one of the more respected voices on the future international order and American foreign policy. She has been a member of the Biden administration since its earliest days, having served as the deputy then acting director of strategy on the National Security Council staff and more recently as deputy national security advisor to the vice-president. It’s no stretch to assume, and perhaps hope, that many of her insights contained in this volume are considered during the ongoing official debates in Washington.
At the heart of the book is the relationship between grand strategy and the conduct of war, a connection with long historical roots. The concept of grand strategy itself originated in the early-19th century, used to describe the “grand” scale and size of the European armies during the French Revolutionary Wars. By the first decade of the 20th century, the term had expanded to include other aspects of foreign policy, including non-military instruments such as finance and trade. This fuller definition of the term was due in large part to the writings of British thinkers such as Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett, and J.F.C. Fuller. Another was Basil Liddell Hart, who wrote in 1929 that “while the horizons of strategy is bounded by the war, grand strategy looks beyond the war to the subsequent peace.” In the period after World War II, this basic conception held. Michael Howard described grand strategy as not just “war fighting, but war avoidance,” which, throughout the Cold War, included nuclear deterrence.
It is worth noting that some writers such as Hew Strachan and Lukas Milevski have argued that the evolution of the concept of grand strategy — one that extends far from the anchor of violent conflict — has rendered the term meaningless. In his admirable book, Milevski argues the concept has become “standard-less” and “incoherent”, while Strachan argued years before that that it “no longer has coherence as an intellectual concept.”
While Lissner is not a part of this camp — early on she outlines her working conception of grand strategy as “the highest-order and most consequential dimension of statecraft” — she is clear that this particular study “uses the lens of military power, military threats, and military posture to illuminate how a state conceives of its role in the world.” This approach has traces of the understanding championed by the likes of Barry Posen, whose definition of grand strategy Lissner cites, and who for years has highlighted the links between military doctrine and grand strategic thinking. In many ways, this is a refreshing view given that students of grand strategy, myself included, tend to occupy themselves with other political, economic, social, and moral phenomena related to the practice of statecraft. Lissner, however, doesn’t mince words when she reminds us of what is arguably the most important dimension: “Wars are crucibles of grand strategy,” she insists.
On this basic judgment, Lissner profiles three of the most important military campaigns the United States has waged since World War II and assesses when and how grand strategic thinking changed among policymakers in Washington. The research is rigorous and is based on an impressive mix of primary and secondary sources. Some comments, even those seemingly made in passing, leave a mark. One example comes in her chapter covering the Vietnam War, where, before making her primary contribution, she reiterates that we can’t treat American grand strategy as somehow conceptually tidy between 1945 and 1991. There were, as she points out, key grand strategic adjustments in the 1960s and 1970s (among other periods) which had a great effect on the direction of national strategy. This subtle reminder, as much historical scholarship tends to do, bursts the illusion of simple narratives.
Moreover, the work is not intended to revise existing historiographies per se, but her findings have led her to arguments that certainly go against some existing historical accounts. Her analysis of grand strategic adjustments made during the Korean War seems to run up against earlier works by John Lewis Gaddis, Thomas Christensen, and Ronald Krebs. Concerning Gaddis in particular, where he sees alterations in grand strategy between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, Lissner discerns more continuity across these periods, a result, she says, of initial strategic reassessments made by the Truman Administration during the Korean War. The case put forward here is sound, convincing, and worthy of being considered among these larger historiographical debates.
The stated contributions of the book, as she notes early on, is to first push back on an existing school of thought — one centered around the “null hypothesis”, which argues that there is no connection between military intervention and grand strategic change — and then to introduce her own theoretical framework. Central to her framework is a recognition that the “audit of battle,” a phrase she borrows from Kenneth Pollack, does in fact alter threat assessments and grand strategic assumptions and objectives. Specifically, it tends to alter a state’s understanding of its own military capabilities as well as that of its adversaries and allies — perceptions which, in turn, lead to adjustments in a state’s grand strategic outlook. Important here is a further qualification between grand strategic “adjustment” and “overhaul,” a distinction she described in a chapter for the recent Oxford Handbook of Grand Strategy. The latter term refers to a change in a state’s first level of grand strategy, something she describes as “a state’s orientation toward the international system,” whereas strategic adjustment refers to changes made in the second level of grand strategy. She defines this second tier as comprising “Subordinate levels of foreign policy behavior: assumptions about current and prospective threats and opportunities, and the availability and relative utility of the tools of national power.”
With its focus on the relationship between military operations and grand strategy, Lissner’s work exists at the intersection of military history, diplomatic history, and international relations theory. The first two of these scholastic disciplines — military and diplomatic history — have weathered an onslaught of perceived irrelevance in traditional history departments across the United States and Great Britain. This trend, especially given the current international context, is equal parts perplexing and frightening. Lissner’s book, however, is an ode to not just the relevance but the indispensability of these disciplines. In her study, she thoroughly mines the military and diplomatic history of her three main case studies and then, true to her background in political science, develops a theoretical framework to make sense of these observed tendencies. Theories and even theoretical frameworks tend to make historians, myself included, run for the hills; but Lissner’s points in this regard, both in this new book and her aforementioned chapter, are immensely practical. In future years, we might hope to see other scholars take this framework and apply it to other periods of conflict and diplomacy. For now, though, we can enjoy a work that is fascinating, stimulating, and belongs in the canon of the history and practice of American grand strategy.
Andrew Ehrhardt is an Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Image: National Archives and Records Administration
28. Laurence of Arabia for modern times: SAS ride CAMELS in fight against ISIS
Laurence of Arabia for modern times: SAS ride CAMELS in fight against ISIS in Mali during reconnaissance missions, senior military official says
- SAS emulate Laurence of Arabic as they combat ISIS on top of camels in Mali
- Britain's elite special forces modelled the tactic after the Bedouin, an Arab tribe
- Cars faced mechanical issues in the UN peacekeeping mission in north Africa
PUBLISHED: 12:32 BST, 1 May 2022 | UPDATED: 16:31 BST, 1 May 2022
Daily Mail · by Tom Brown For Mailonline · May 1, 2022
SAS members are saddling-up on a caravan of camels, as Britain's elite special forces echo Lawrence of Arabia during reconnaissance missions in Mali.
The UK's elite forces are preparing for reconnaissance missions in Mali have been operating in the region for almost 10 years, opting to ride camels rather than mechanical vehicles according to a senior military source.
'Vehicles need to be maintained and refueled every few days - the vehicle logistical support is a real hindrance,' said the source. 'Camels store fat in their humps and can go for up to 10 days without needing food and water.'
The idea was reportedly hatched when the special forces started employing local Bedouin guides, a nomadic Arab tribe who has inhabited the region and used camels for centuries.
Stock image: The photo depicts Belgian Special forces riding camels in Chad between 2008-2009, as no verifiable photos have emerged of the SAS. A senior military source has said the SAS is riding camels while on reconnaissance missions in Mali, fighting against ISIS
Vehicles used in missions have been stymied by mechanical issues, clogging up with sand, according to the Mirror. A senior military source said camels were more efficient.
The UK deployed a task group 300-strong to Mali in December 2020 to support the UN peacekeeping mission, which is made up of soldiers from 56 different countries.
The SAS have been deployed to the region, but the reports mark the first public acknowledgements that the forces have emulated the tactics of Thomas Edward Lawrence, the British officer made famous for his role during the Arab Revolt of 1916.
Lawrence of Arabia was the name given to a British Intelligence Officer, who fought alongside Arab guerrilla forces in the Middle East during the First World War.
British special forces soldiers are pictured with weapons during a rescue operation. The SAS have been deployed to the region, where vehicles used in missions have been stymied by mechanical issues
The UK deployed a task group 300-strong to Mali in December 2020 to support the UN peacekeeping mission, which is made up of soldiers from 56 different countries
The SAS has its origins in desert warfare, when elite British forces were dropped deep within the north African desert during World War II.
It was formed as 62 Commando in July 1941 to undertake small-scale raids behind enemy lines, drawing its men from No 7 Commando and also operating under the title L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade.
The term 'brigade' was usually used to refer to a unit of 5,000 men — a title the SAS adopted to deceive the enemy into believing the force was larger than it was in reality.
The SAS was created during the Second World War, when small bands of soldiers were dropped behind enemy lines in North Africa and Europe.
UK forces operate in the Hombori mountains in Mali at sunset. The Menaka region is home to many of the actors in the Sahelian conflict
The Royal Air Force Chinooks currently deployed in Mali in support of French Military Operations there have passed a significant milestone after recording 3000 hours of operational flight time
The news comes as Vladimir Putin launches a search for British SAS forces alleged to be fighting in western Ukraine.
The Kremlin's Investigative Committee (IC), often referred to as Putin's personal CIA, said it will look into 'the facts of the activities of British SAS saboteurs in Ukrainian regions,' in particular Lviv, according to state-controlled outlet RIA Novosti.
Earlier on Saturday, the IC claimed that 'at least two groups of specialists in sabotage and guerrilla warfare from the British Special Air Service (SAS) have been sent to the Lviv region'.
An IC source claimed SAS operatives in Ukraine 'are specialists in sabotage and partisan activities, recruiting and training agents to work in hostile territory'.
Russia appears to base its investigation on information allegedly received from captured Ukrainian troops.
Russia, basing its information allegedly received from captured Ukrainian troops, said the SAS is working in war zones under cover of medical workers
Missiles continue to bombard Ukraine. The Kremlin's investigative Committee claimed: 'At least two groups of specialists in sabotage and guerrilla warfare from the British Special Air Service (SAS) have been sent to the Lviv region'.
The SAS is 'considered one of the most highly qualified in the world in organising coups d'etat, mass protest rallies, contract killings of political figures, recruiting agents, including those in the highest echelons of power, and preparing terrorist attacks', said the RIA Novosti report.
'This is no ordinary special force - these are intellectuals, in each group there is always an ideologist, you can say a professor, and the rest are particular specialists,' said a Russian law enforcement source.
The report claimed that the SAS often work in war zones under cover of medical workers.
'With a high degree of probability, these specialists arrived in order to improve the skills and efficiency of the Ukrainian special services in coordinating the activities of sabotage groups in the territories of Ukraine controlled by Russian troops,' said the IC source.
The committee is headed by Russia's top criminal investigator, Alexander Bastrykin, who was a university classmate of Vladimir Putin's.
Earlier this month it was reported that SAS troops have trained local forces in Kyiv for the first time since the war began.
Two officers from separate battalions stationed around the country's capital said special forces had trained their troops on two occasions in early April.
British military trainers have had a presence in Ukraine since Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014, but were withdrawn in February as the likelihood of Putin ordering an all-out invasion of Ukraine increased.
A UK defense source said they do not comment on stories related to special forces.
Daily Mail · by Tom Brown For Mailonline · May 1, 2022
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
