|
Quotes of the Day:
Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once — and then stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them, and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.
- Alvin York, sergeant and Medal of Honor recipient who was one of the most decorated U.S. Army soldiers of World War I
"Our worst enemies are not the ignorant and simple, however cruel; our worst enemies are the intelligent and corrupt."
- Graham Greene
"Someone ought to do it, but why should I?
Someone ought to do it, so why not I?
Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution."
- Annie Besant
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 23
2. How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success
3. Interview with Professor Kong Jierong: Xi Jinping lost the respect of the Chinese people
4. OPINION: Unbreakable Resilience (Ukraine)
5. How an Unusual Coalition Outfoxed China and Russia at the U.N.
6. China angered, Taiwan cheered by new U.S. defence act
7. Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers
8. How Much Time Does Taiwan Have?
9. Biden Signs National Defense Authorization Act Into Law
10. Mike Waltz petitions Joe Biden on behalf of Afghan commando arrested near the border
11. The CIA is using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia
12. How are Western tech companies helping Ukraine fight Russia's hackers?
13. Volodymyr Zelensky Is Unstoppable
14. U.S. colonel says troops watching outside Ukraine "ready if the call comes"
15. How Would a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Play Out?
16. Three foreign policy developments to watch for in 2023
17. Game changing year of troubles, conflicts ends in Asia
18. China is about to get tougher on deepfakes in an unprecedented way. Here's what the rules mean
19. Breaking China’s Hold
20. How Twitter hid US-military info ops from the public - Responsible Statecraft
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 23
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-23
Key Takeaways
- ISW assesses that the Kremlin has been setting conditions for a new most dangerous course of action (MDCOA)—a renewed offensive from Belarus possibly aimed at Kyiv—since at least October 2022. The Kremlin may be conducting an information operation or may actually be preparing for this MDCOA, which ISW continues to assess to be unlikely but possible.
- Prominent Russian pro-war milbloggers are amplifying the possibility of the MDCOA over the winter-spring period.
- The Russian military continues to trip indicators for the MCDOA, reinforcing an information operation designed to establish the plausibility of the MDCOA or preparations to execute it.
- The Russian military has more clearly been setting conditions for an offensive in northwestern Luhansk Oblast.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reportedly preparing to present a peace plan in February 2023, which could be timed to exploit a failed Russian winter offensive.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin’s renewed public appearances likely indicate that he has become more concerned about his popularity and image in Russia.
- Russian forces conducted at least two reconnaissance-in-force operations in northern and northeastern Ukraine on December 22-23.
- Ukrainian forces likely made tactical gains east and south of Bakhmut City over the past 72 hours.
- Russian forces are continuing to establish defensive positions in left-bank Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts and are conducting defensive operations in southern Ukraine.
- The Kremlin is intensifying its censorship efforts to silence concerns over an expansion of the Russian Armed Forces and a second mobilization wave.
- Ukrainian partisans continued to target Russian officials in occupied territories.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 23
understandingwar.org
Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, Layne Philipson, and Frederick W. Kagan
December 23, 9:30 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Moscow has been setting conditions for a new most dangerous course of action (MDCOA)--a renewed invasion of northern Ukraine possibly aimed at Kyiv--since at least October 2022.[1] This MDCOA could be a Russian information operation or could reflect Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actual intentions. Currently available indicators are ambivalent—some verified evidence of a Russian buildup in Belarus makes more sense as part of preparations for a renewed offensive than as part of ongoing exercises and training practices, but there remains no evidence that Moscow is actively preparing a strike force in Belarus. Concern about the possibility that Putin might pursue this MDCOA is certainly not merely a Ukrainian information operation intended to pressure the West into supplying Kyiv with more weapons, as some Western analysts have suggested. ISW continues to assess that a renewed large-scale Russian invasion from Belarus is unlikely this winter, but it is a possibility that must be taken seriously.
Prominent Russian pro-war milbloggers are amplifying the possibility of the MDCOA over the winter-spring period. Former Russian military commander Igor Girkin, a prominent critical voice in the Russian milblogger space, responded to ongoing discussions within the Russian information space on December 23 about Russia’s capacity to renew an assault on northwestern Ukraine from Belarus to sever ground lines of communication (GLOCs) between Kyiv and Europe.[2] Girkin broke the MDCOA into two possible sub-courses of action: Russia can invade from Belarus in an effort to capture territory or could alternatively conduct a diversionary operation to draw Ukrainian forces from other parts of the theater.[3] Girkin argued that the Russian military could not effectively conduct an offensive operation to capture territory, but that a diversionary operation to support a Russian offensive elsewhere in Ukraine would make military sense. Girkin also pointed out that public discourse about this MDCOA had spread throughout the Russian-language internet and noted that other prominent milbloggers have hypothesized different scenarios for the MDCOA.[4]
Some milbloggers have been speculating about the likelihood of a renewed Russian attack on northern Ukraine since at least October 2022. Prominent Russian Telegram channel Rybar, whose author is currently part of Putin’s mobilization working group, stated on October 20 that there were rumors of an “imminent” Russian offensive operation on Lviv, Volyn, Kyiv, Chernihiv, or Kharkiv.[5] Another milblogger claimed on October 20 that joint forces in Belarus are too small to attack Kyiv but stated that he would not object if Russian forces attacked Chernihiv City.[6]
Putin’s upcoming meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg on December 26-27 will advance the Russian information operation around the MDCOA even if it does not directly support preparations for it. Lukashenko’s office announced that Putin and Lukashenko will meet during a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) heads of state meeting in St. Petersburg on December 26-27.[7] This meeting will advance the Kremlin's existing information operation about the MDCOA, as Putin's December 19 visit to Minsk did, given the growing Russian military presence in Belarus.[8]
The Russian military continues to trip limited indicators for the MCDOA, reinforcing an information operation designed to establish the plausibility of the MDCOA or actual preparations for executing the MDCOA. The Russian Ministry of Defense ostentatiously announced on November 24 that it has a field hospital in Belarus.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 23 that Russian forces are planning to deploy at least one more field hospital in Belarus.[10] Field hospitals are not necessary for training exercises and could indicate preparation for combat operations. The appearance of field hospitals in Belarus in early 2022 was among the final indicators observed before Russia commenced its full-scale invasion.[11] Russia continues to deploy forces to Belarus under the rubric of training. Some Russian T-90 tanks, reportedly deployed to Belarus in late December 2022, were observed with winter camouflage.[12] Equipping tanks with winter camouflage is not wholly necessary for training activity and could indicate preparation for actual winter combat operations. The deployment of field hospitals and repainting tanks could also be parts of an information operation.
The Russian military has been much more clearly setting conditions for an offensive in northwestern Luhansk Oblast, however. The Ukrainian General Staff reported observing an increased volume of railway transport of personnel, military equipment, and ammunition to combat areas on December 23.[13] Geolocated footage published on December 23 also shows a train loaded with Russian T-90M and T-62M tanks heading toward Luhansk Oblast from Rostov Oblast.[14] ISW previously observed Russian forces transferring elite airborne troops and other elements that previously operated in the Kherson and Kharkiv directions to Luhansk Oblast.[15] The Kremlin continues to prioritize committing mobilized men to stabilize the Svatove-Kremina line over other areas of the front such as Bakhmut, Avdiivka, or western Donetsk Oblast. Russian forces are unlikely to attack across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast after just withdrawing from western Kherson, and Russian mining and fortification efforts in Zaporizhia Oblast indicate that Russian forces do not seek to conduct an offensive there. The Kremlin could also attempt a spoiling attack on southeastern Kharkiv Oblast from Luhansk Oblast to regain lost territories west of the Oskil River. It is far from clear whether Russian forces would be able to effectively conduct such an operation since the terrain advantages the Ukrainian defenders and Russian offensive capabilities are very limited.
The Russian military may nevertheless attempt to conduct a diversionary attack on the ground or in the information space against northern Ukraine, likely in an effort to divert Ukrainian forces from defending in Donbas or in conjunction with an offensive in Luhansk or, less plausibly, elsewhere. Chief of the Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Kyrylo Budanov stated on December 23 that Russia is trying to divert Ukrainian forces from the southeast by setting up a feint in Belarus, noting that military activity in Belarus is an element of a disinformation campaign.[16] The success of the Russian diversionary attack, however, relies on Russia’s ability to convince Ukraine of the plausibility of the threat of a deeper offensive operation. Ukrainian military officials continue to indicate that Ukrainian forces are prepared to defend their northern borders, and Ukraine’s fierce defenses around Bakhmut demonstrate that Ukrainian forces can hold off much larger numbers of Russian attackers.[17]
ISW’s December 15 MDCOA warning forecast about a potential Russian offensive against northern Ukraine in winter 2023 remains a worst-case scenario within the forecast cone.[18] ISW currently assesses the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine from Belarus as low, but possible. Belarusian forces remain extremely unlikely to invade Ukraine without a Russian strike force. Ukrainian military officials noted that Russia had not created strike groups in Belarus.[19] Russian milbloggers also note that Russia has not fixed fundamental flaws in its military campaign such as the lack of new equipment, poor leadership, and insufficient forces to sustain a successful offensive operation.[20]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reportedly preparing to present a peace plan in February 2023, which may be timed to exploit a failed Russian winter offensive. The Wall Street Journal, citing Ukrainian and European diplomats, reported on December 22 that Zelensky’s team is planning to present an unspecified peace plan in February 2023.[21] Zelensky laid out a 10-point peace plan at the G20 summit in November 2022 that requires Russia to make concessions, including withdrawing all its troops from Ukraine and respecting Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity under international law.[22] Zelensky may be preparing to present this peace plan around an anticipated failed Russian military offensive in early 2023.
The Kremlin continues to deflect criticism about Russia’s military failures in Ukraine by rhetorically narrowing the definitions of its initial war objectives without formally changing them. When asked about the Russian invasion’s progress, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that Russian forces achieved “significant progress” in its war objective of “demilitarization” of Ukraine on December 23.[23] Girkin lambasted Peskov’s response, sarcastically noting that Ukraine’s armed forces increased from about 250,000 personnel before the war to 700,000 personnel today and that Ukrainian forces are now equipped with advanced Western anti-tank ground missiles, precision artillery, and other systems that Ukraine did not have before Russia’s invasion.[24] ISW continues to assess that Russia’s maximalist war objectives have not changed despite Peskov’s floundering to save face with the Kremlin’s Russian domestic audience.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s renewed public appearances likely indicate that he has become more concerned about his popularity and image in Russia. Putin has been seemingly making more public appearances in Russian cities and more frequently delivering vague statements about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in recent days compared to his marked absence from public activity outside the Kremlin throughout the first ten months of the war.[25] Putin visited the KBP Instrument Design Bureau in Tula Oblast (an arms manufacturing facility) on December 23 and reportedly also planned to visit the Uralvagonzavod machine-building factory in Nizhny Tagil on the same day before canceling the event at the last minute.[26] Such appearances are likely a part of the Kremlin’s effort to present Putin as a wartime leader and regain the dominant narrative in the domestic information space as Russia heads into the second year of the war.[27] Putin consistently relied on in-person appearances throughout his rule, which helped him to create an image of an all-seeing and ever-present ruler.[28] Putin may be attempting to set favorable conditions in the information space ahead of Russia's next presidential elections in early 2024.
Key Takeaways
- ISW assesses that the Kremlin has been setting conditions for a new most dangerous course of action (MDCOA)—a renewed offensive from Belarus possibly aimed at Kyiv—since at least October 2022. The Kremlin may be conducting an information operation or may actually be preparing for this MDCOA, which ISW continues to assess to be unlikely but possible.
- Prominent Russian pro-war milbloggers are amplifying the possibility of the MDCOA over the winter-spring period.
- The Russian military continues to trip indicators for the MCDOA, reinforcing an information operation designed to establish the plausibility of the MDCOA or preparations to execute it.
- The Russian military has more clearly been setting conditions for an offensive in northwestern Luhansk Oblast.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reportedly preparing to present a peace plan in February 2023, which could be timed to exploit a failed Russian winter offensive.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin’s renewed public appearances likely indicate that he has become more concerned about his popularity and image in Russia.
- Russian forces conducted at least two reconnaissance-in-force operations in northern and northeastern Ukraine on December 22-23.
- Ukrainian forces likely made tactical gains east and south of Bakhmut City over the past 72 hours.
- Russian forces are continuing to establish defensive positions in left-bank Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts and are conducting defensive operations in southern Ukraine.
- The Kremlin is intensifying its censorship efforts to silence concerns over an expansion of the Russian Armed Forces and a second mobilization wave.
- Ukrainian partisans continued to target Russian officials in occupied territories.
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.
- Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Eastern Ukraine
- Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and one supporting effort);
- Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
- Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
- Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)
Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)
Russian forces likely conducted at least two reconnaissance-in-force missions in northern and northeastern Ukraine on December 22-23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks in Vysoke in Sumy Oblast (Vysoke is on the international border 50 km southeast of Sumy City) and Khatne in Kharkiv Oblast (about 8 km from the international border and 90 km northeast of Balakliya).[29] Sumy Oblast Military Administration Head Dmytro Zhyvytskyi reported that Ukrainian territorial defense forces destroyed a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group in Vysoke on December 22.[30] Russian reconnaissance of Ukraine’s northern border advances both a Russian information operation designed to convince Ukraine and the West that Russian forces will attack northern Ukraine, as well as preparations for an actual operation.
Ukrainian forces may have captured another village in the direction of Svatove. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces shelled Kolomyichykha in Luhansk Oblast (10 km northwest of Svatove) for the first time on December 23.[31] Geolocated combat footage posted on December 22 but likely from an earlier date shows pro-Ukrainian Belarusian volunteer forces shelling Russian positions in Kolomyichykha. Ukrainian forces may have advanced into Kolomyichykha recently.[32]
Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian attacks along the Kreminna-Svatove line. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled attacks against Stelmakhivka (15 km northwest of Svatove), Andriyivka, Chervonpopivka (6 km northwest of Kreminna), and Ploshanka (2 km from the R-66 Kreminna-Svatove highway).[33] Pro-Kremlin Telegram channel WarGonzo reported that Russian artillery targeted Ukrainian forces in the vicinity of Chervonopopivka on December 23.[34] ISW assesses that Ukrainian forces are likely in Chervonopopivka despite the lack of visual evidence of Chervonopopivka’s liberation.[35]
Russian sources claim that Ukrainian forces intensified reconnaissance activities near Dibrova (5 km southwest of Kreminna). The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian forces destroyed two Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups in the forests south of Dibrova on December 23.[36] A prominent Russian milblogger amplified reports that Ukrainian forces intensified reconnaissance in this same forest area on December 22.[37]
Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Ukrainian forces likely made tactical gains east and south of Bakhmut City over the past 72 hours.
Ukrainian forces likely drove Russian forces that temporarily entered eastern Bakhmut back to the industrial zone in eastern Bakhmut over the past 72 hours. Geolocated footage posted on December 23 shows Ukrainian forces conducting indirect fire against Russian forces in Bakhmut’s eastern industrial areas.[38] The footage, if confirmed to be recent, supports previous Ukrainian social media reports that Ukrainian forces conducted a tactical counterattack that repelled Russian forces from the outskirts of Bakhmut on December 21.[39] Girkin stated on December 22 that Ukrainian forces drove Wagner Group forces in Bakhmut out of positions they occupied several days ago and back to the eastern industrial zone.[40]
Ukrainian forces recaptured a trench line 700 meters west of Ozarianivka (13 km south of Bakhmut) around December 22. Geolocated combat footage posted on December 23 shows elements of Ukraine’s 28th Mechanized Brigade after clearing a previously Russian-occupied trench west of Ozarianivka, likely on December 22.[41] A prominent Russian milblogger stated that elements of Ukraine’s 28th Mechanized Brigade were fighting in Ozarianivka and failed to retake the settlement on December 23.[42]
Russian forces continued offensive operations on Bakhmut on December 23. A Russian source claimed that Russian forces captured the eastern part of Klishchiivka (4 km south of Bakhmut) on December 23, though ISW is unable to verify this claim.[43] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Yakovlivka, Bakhmutske, Bakhmut City, Mayorsk, and Niu York.[44]
Russian forces conducted strikes against unspecified Ukrainian targets in Ukraine’s rear area in Kramatorsk on December 22-23. Russian sources reported that Russian forces struck Ukrainian concentration areas and a barrack.[45]
Russian forces continued to conduct offensive operations in western Donetsk Oblast on December 23. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks on Vodyane, Krasnohorivka, and Marinka.[46] Russian Naval Infantry elements continue to operate in western Donetsk Oblast. Geolocated combat footage posted on December 22 shows Ukrainian forces repelling Russian Naval Infantry elements west of Neskuchne (30 km west of Vuhledar).[47] Footage from mid-to-late December documents elements of the Pacific Fleet’s 40th Naval Infantry Brigade operating in the Vuhledar area.[48]
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Russian forces are continuing to establish defensive positions in left-bank Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts and are conducting defensive operations in southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 23 that Russian forces are engineering positions along the Krasnoperekopsk-Dzhankoy highway in northern Crimea.[49] Satellite imagery also shows that Russian forces constructed trenches around the perimeter of Tokmak, an operationally significant settlement in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast on Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Berdyansk and Melitopol.[50] The head of the Ukrainian Joint Press Center of the Tavrisk Direction Defense Forces, Yevhen Yerin, stated that Russian forces have not changed their tactics in southern Ukraine and are continuing to use sabotage and reconnaissance groups to reconnoiter the islands on the Dnipro River delta in Kherson Oblast.[51]
Russian forces continued to shell Ukrainian positions and civilian infrastructure in Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on December 23.[52] Ukrainian military officials and social media users shared footage that reportedly showed Russian forces shelling Kherson City with white phosphorus munitions.[53] Ukrainian military officials added that the use of incendiary munitions against civilian populations is a war crime. Yerin also noted that Russian forces are continuing to use the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as cover for their forces.[54]
Social media users amplified video of an explosion reportedly caused by a Ukrainian strike on the Russian headquarters in Tokmak on December 22.[55]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
The Kremlin is intensifying its censorship efforts to silence concerns over an expansion of the Russian Armed Forces and a second mobilization wave. Two anonymous sources affiliated with Russian state media structures told The Moscow Times that the Kremlin banned Russian federal outlets from covering mobilization news.[56] The sources added that the order came from the Russian presidential administration and will effectively bar state media from offering forecasts on mobilization or even sharing statements about mobilization from senators and parliamentarians. An independent Russian human rights project, OVD-Info, found that the Kremlin has been intensifying its repressive measures throughout 2022 by banning over 210,000 websites and adopting 22 new repressive laws further limiting rights for free speech and assembly.[57] The Kremlin, however, is not introducing similar repressive measures against the pro-war milbloggers who have been consistently criticizing Russian war efforts and military failures to their ever-growing audiences.
Wagner Group-affiliated milbloggers revisited their critiques of the Russian commander responsible for the disastrous assault on Pavlivka, Donetsk Oblast, in late October. A few milbloggers noted that an unnamed Russian commander had not signed a document that would award Russian naval infantry operating in Pavlivka Hero of Russia status.[58] Milbloggers hypothesized that unspecified figures within the Russian military command might be holding a grudge against the naval infantry for exposing the high Russian casualties in Pavlivka that resulted from poor leadership. Wagner-affiliated milbloggers are continuing to criticize the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) likely in an effort to enhance the reputation of Wagner forces at the expense of the conventional Russian military establishment.
The Kremlin is attempting to introduce new provisions to incentivize more Russians to join the war effort. The Russian Federation Council approved a law on December 23 that suspends legal proceedings against mobilized servicemen and volunteers who participate in hostilities during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.[59] This law will also require Russian banks to suspend debt collection and the repayment of loans. This law could incentivize Russians with pending criminal proceedings or bank loans to join the war effort. The Kremlin continues to target migrants to recruit them into the war. A milblogger reported that Russian enlistment officials were distributing pamphlets advertising military service to migrants in Moscow.[60]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian officials continued efforts to consolidate administrative control of occupied territories on December 23. A pro-Russia Telegram channel stated that the Russian Federation Council presented eight Russian-appointed representatives of occupied territories with official certificates on December 23. The pro-Russian Telegram channel also amplified Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko's claims that these individuals represent civilians in occupied territories who reject Ukrainian authority and seek to preserve “their” language, history, and culture.[61]
Ukrainian partisans continued to target Russian occupation officials in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast on December 23. Russian and Ukrainian sources confirmed that Ukrainian partisans wounded two likely Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in an improvised IED attack in the center of Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast.[62]
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to intensify law enforcement crackdowns to identify possible partisan activities in occupied territories. Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated on December 23 that Russian FSB officials justify searches of private residences, phones, and documents as “counter-sabotage” measures seeking to identify possible partisans in occupied-Luhansk Oblast.[63] Ukrainian Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov stated on December 23 that Russian occupation authorities are continuing to arrange forced evacuations and intensify pressure on Ukrainian civilians to identify partisans in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast.[64] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 22 that approximately 500 Russian Rosgvardia servicemen arrived in Berdyansk to strengthen administrative control and law enforcement.[65]
Russian occupation officials are demolishing a Ukrainian cultural landmark in Mariupol, likely in an effort to conceal the destruction Russian forces caused when seizing the city. Ukrainian Culture and Information Policy Minister Oleksandr Tkachenko stated on December 23 that Russian officials are destroying the Mariupol Drama Theater to cover up war crimes, noting that Russia does not care about the destruction of Ukrainian cultural landmarks.[66] A pro-Russia milblogger rejected these accusations on December 23, instead referring to previous Russian occupation officials’ statements that part of the Drama Theater must be destroyed in order to fully restore it by 2023.[67] ISW reported on December 2 that Maxar satellite imagery from November 30 showed that Russian forces established a poorly-constructed fence around the Mariupol Drama Theater.[68]
Russian occupation officials continue to seize and redirect civilian infrastructure to support Russian forces. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 23 that Russian forces seized multiple tourist facilities to house Russian servicemen and transformed a recreation center into a military hospital to treat wounded Russian servicemen in Berdyansk, Zaporizhia Oblast.[69] Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated on December 23 that Russian forces are taking civilian doctors in occupied Luhansk Oblast to work in military hospitals.[70]
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
[7] https://president dot gov dot by/ru/events/aleksandr-lukashenko-sovershit-rabochiy-vizit-v-rossiyskuyu-federaciyu-1671801265
[9] https://tvzvezda dot ru/news/20221124427-ewCAB.html
[23] https://ria dot ru/20221223/spetsoperatsiya-1840796746.html?utm
[26] https://t.me/epoddubny/14313; https://t.me/sashakots/37813; http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/70179; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/12/23/na-urale-zhdali-vizita-putina-hotya-ofitsialno-o-nem-ob-yavleno-ne-bylo-mestnye-smi-pishut-chto-poezdku-v-posledniy-moment-otmenili
[51] https://armyinform dot com dot ua/2022/12/23/rosiyany-prodovzhuyut-vykorystovuvaty-zaes-yak-obyekt-prykryttya-yevgen-yerin/
[53] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/12/23/rosiyany-obstrilyaly-herson-fosforom/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=21&v=ydV1_15o3eY&feature=emb...
[54] https://armyinform dot com dot ua/2022/12/23/rosiyany-prodovzhuyut-vykorystovuvaty-zaes-yak-obyekt-prykryttya-yevgen-yerin/
[56] https://www dot moscowtime dot io/2022/12/23/gosudarstvennim-smi-zapretili-pisat-o-mobilizatsii-a29544
[57] https://meduza dot io/feature/2022/12/23/v-2022-godu-kreml-ne-tolko-vtorgsya-v-ukrainu-no-i-ustroil-masshtabnye-politicheskie-repressii-v-rossii; https://data dot ovdinfo dot org/repressii-v-rossii-v-2022-godu
[59] https://t.me/kommunist/14432; https://tass dot ru/obschestvo/16672771; https://t.me/readovkanews/49510
[62] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/12/23/v-melitopoli-pidirvaly-avto-z-okupantamy/; https://t.me/ivan_fedorov_melitopol/1087; https://t.me/wargonzo/9980; ...
understandingwar.org
2. How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success
Excerpts:
Ukrainian special operations forces will likely play a key role over the winter months, now that Russia has a large coast to defend in the south, and Ukraine will probably make further attempts at offensive operations in the coming months when the ground freezes. As long as Ukraine continues to receive sufficient ammunition, particularly for artillery, and spare parts, it stands a good chance of retaking territory. That said, the conflict may become more attritional, seeing incremental gains instead of breakthrough operations. The question is whether these advantages will prove sufficient for Ukrainian forces to retake territory from entrenched Russian troops in layered defensive positions. Much will depend on how well Russia integrates mobilized soldiers into an effective fighting force and the level of foreign assistance both Ukraine and Russia continue to receive.
Despite numerous examples of poor conditions, minimal training, delayed payments, faulty equipment, incompetent leadership, and other problems (including a mass shooting at a training range), mobilized soldiers are providing Russia with more manpower. They’ve enabled the Russian military to stabilize vulnerable lines and conduct a withdrawal from Kherson. Poorly trained soldiers are of minimal value in offensive operations, as Russian infantry attacks at Bakhmut suggest, but it is easier to train someone to man a defensive position. Even elite units, such as the Russian Airborne Forces’ 331st Airborne Regiment and 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, are receiving mobilized soldiers as combat replacements. This is a significant vulnerability for Russia, but, thus far, mobilized soldiers appear to be more of an asset than a liability, though there is undoubtedly variance. The extent to which Russia can create semi-effective mobilized units or successfully integrate mobilized soldiers into existing units will be an important factor in how effectively Russia can sustain this war, particularly during the winter. If Russia fails to train, lead, and integrate mobilized soldiers properly, Ukraine may find an opportunity to achieve another breakthrough when the weather and ground conditions improve.
Another key factor for Russia and Ukraine is foreign support, especially in terms of artillery ammunition. Potential deals for artillery ammunition from North Korea and unmanned aerial vehicles or possibly surface-to-surface missiles from Iran, would likely affect how long Russia can continue this war. However, Ukraine’s war effort also depends heavily on external material support, which is constrained both by availability and policy restrictions. Ammunition availability might be the single most important factor that determines the course of the war in 2023, and that will depend on foreign stockpiles and production. As it stands, the Russian military will struggle to restore offensive potential, but it can drag out a stubborn defense. Ukraine appears advantaged long term, but the longer the war goes on, the greater the uncertainty, and advantage is not predictive of outcomes.
How the Battle for the Donbas Shaped Ukraine’s Success - Foreign Policy Research Institute
@@RALee85
Michael Kofman serves as Director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA and as a Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC.
fpri.org · by @@RALee85
Bottom Line
- Ukraine’s successes in Kherson and Kharkiv were largely a result of the losses it inflicted on the Russian military in the Battle for the Donbas in the spring and early summer.
- Attrition enabled successful maneuver warfare.
- The course of the war in 2023 will depend heavily on external support and how well Russia integrates mobilized soldiers.
As the Russian-Ukrainian War enters the winter, Ukrainians have reason to be cautiously optimistic about the course of the war. Following a strategic offensive at the end of August in multiple regions, Ukrainian forces have retaken nearly all of Kharkiv Oblast, parts of the Donetsk Oblast, and the right bank of Kherson Oblast. Several factors enabled Ukrainian offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv, but much of that success stems from the earlier Battle for the Donbas. Russia’s advances in the Donbas, from April to July, proved to be a pyrrhic victory, tactical successes at the expense of strategic vision. Russia expended valuable manpower and artillery ammunition, while Ukraine pursued a defense-in-depth strategy. By September, NATO arms deliveries had reduced Russia’s critical advantage in artillery and Moscow didn’t have sufficient forces or ammunition to hold the territory occupied, which set the stage for Ukraine’s successful offensives.
The battle for the Donbas bled the Russian military of manpower, at a time when it lacked the forces to both hold captured territory and continue offensives. The Russian military offset this deficit by dramatically increasing its rate of artillery fire. This burned through Russia’s second most critical resource, artillery ammunition. The net effect of both decisions showed itself in the fall, when Russia lacked the manpower to defend Kharkiv and the artillery ammunition to hold defensive lines in Kherson. Since then, Moscow has been able to compensate for the manpower deficit with mobilization, but recent fighting in Bakhmut suggests Russian forces are conserving ammunition, no longer firing at the rate they did in earlier phases of the war.
The most important inflection point of this war was at the end of March when the Kremlin realized it could not seize or encircle Kyiv and achieve its maximalist objectives. The Russian military still had several advantages over the Ukrainian military at this point, but it didn’t have the forces to continue advancing in most directions and had sustained heavy personnel and equipment losses. Ukraine and Russia were negotiating, and Ukrainian officials had signaled a willingness to make certain concessions; however, the two sides never reached an agreement. It isn’t completely clear how close these negotiations came to a final deal, but when Russia pulled its forces from northern Ukraine—leading to the discovery of the atrocities committed in Bucha and other towns occupied by Russian forces—the immediate prospects of further negotiations ended. Russia’s best option was to end the war at this point while extracting limited concessions. Once Russian forces no longer threatened Kyiv and other cities in the north, Russia’s bargaining position and ability to coerce Ukraine decreased substantially.
After the initial phase of Russia’s invasion failed in February and March, the chief of the Russian General Staff’s Main Operational Directorate, Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy, announced that Russia would focus on seizing all of the Donbas. Russian forces retreated from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy Oblasts, and were redeployed to Kharkiv, the Donbas, or southern Ukraine.
However, there was an obvious problem with Moscow’s new strategy. Even if Russian forces managed to seize the entire Donbas region, there was little reason to believe that would force Ukraine to concede and end the war on Russian terms. Instead, the Kremlin’s thinking was increasingly characterized by strategic procrastination and wishful thinking. Moscow appeared to focus on its minimal war aims, without an understanding of how they would lead to achieving long-term strategic goals, or how the war might end. Despite a structural mismatch of military means to political ends, and no war termination strategy, Russian leadership committed to a campaign focused on occupying more territory in the Donbas, while trying to hold everything else. This approach consumed Russian manpower and ammunition at an unsustainable rate, setting the stage for successful Ukrainian offensives in the fall, and may well prevent the Russian military from restoring offensive potential even after this winter.
Manpower Woes
During the initial invasion, Russia committed more than 80 percent of its permanent readiness battalion tactical groups as well as units from the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia) and the Russian proxy Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republic’s army corps (their forces are essentially part of the Russian military). This meant the Russian military only had a limited reserve if the invasion force was unable to quickly achieve Russia’s objectives. This was a high-risk, heavily leveraged operation, with no discernible hedge in the event things went badly wrong. In comparison, the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 with approximately 40 percent of its maneuver battalions, which left it with a large enough initial reserve for a more sustainable rotation.
When Russia’s regime-change plans went awry, the Russian military decided to send additional battalion tactical groups from critical locations, such as Kaliningrad, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Tajikistan, leaving Russia vulnerable if crises broke out along its borders. This consumed much of the remaining active force. Many of these battalions began the war understrength and then sustained heavy losses from April through June. As the Russian military burned through officers, and enlisted professionals, the number of officers and soldiers who refused to fight grew once many of them discovered that the punishment would be minimal. As many as 20–40 percent of soldiers in some units refused to return to Ukraine when they retreated from northern Ukraine back to Russia. The problem with refuseniks expanded over the course of the spring and summer. Combined with high levels of attrition, by September this resulted in Russian units having barely 20 percent of their expected manning levels in Kharkiv.
All of these problems began much sooner. Most Russian battalion tactical groups were likely at less than 50 percent of their authorized strength by May during Russia’s attempts to seize more of the Donbas. This meant that the Russian military faced a serious manpower problem when it began that campaign without a workable method for generating additional forces. Instead of adopting a strategy that took into account these limitations, Moscow decided to throw its forces into a costly, attritional struggle in the Donbas without a clear strategy for ending the war. Russia’s tactical successes in the Donbas in May and June would lead to a strategic failure in the fall. Despite these issues, Russia’s strategy in the Donbas might have succeeded without increased foreign support to Ukraine in the late spring and early summer. Ukraine was significantly outgunned in May and June, and its position would have been far more precarious if it had not begun to receive substantial deliveries of howitzers and ammunition, which continued throughout the summer and fall. Moscow may have misjudged Western commitment to Ukraine during this phase, since Washington and other NATO members provided little heavy equipment before the spring. Nonetheless, Russia did not appear to change its strategy as Ukraine began to receive and effectively employ these artillery systems.
Russia had few good options to ameliorate its manpower issues, and piecemeal solutions were going to result in a steady degradation of the force. Unlike enlisted servicemen in the US military, Russian conscripts are not trained at centralized schools, but instead mostly by their units. Yet, Russia invaded Ukraine with the vast majority of its permanent readiness units, and many units likely pulled their training officers and non-commissioned officers to make up for shortages. This meant the Russian military was in a poor position to recruit and train new units and was not well-designed to fight a large-scale protracted war without mobilization. While some suspected Vladimir Putin might order a partial mobilization in May, he appeared to be under the belief that the Russian military could grind its way to victory in the Donbas without such drastic measures. This was another case of political procrastination, as Russia’s options went from bad to worse.
Instead, the Russian military adopted four types of stopgap measures to sustain the war: forming reserve battalions with much lower manning levels, creating regional volunteer battalions, forcibly mobilizing men in occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, and increasing dependence on organizations like the Wagner Group. In order to compensate for its understrength battalion tactical groups, Russia began to recruit volunteers to serve in the Russian military, National Guard, and Russian proxy Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics units in the spring. Many of these volunteers previously fought in the Donbas or had military experience and generally signed short three- or six-month contracts. The most ideologically supportive or financially desperate men—the contracts were generally well above the average salary in many cities—signed contracts to fight, but most received less than a week of training before deploying to Ukraine.
Russia also began to rely more heavily on the Wagner Group and other semi-private paramilitary groups. Unlike the Russian military, which depends on conscription for its recruiting needs, Wagner had an established infrastructure across Russia to recruit volunteers and to train and equip them for various jobs. Russia also chose to mobilize adult men in the occupied areas of the Donbas early in the war. As the spring and summer progressed, the force fighting for Russia was increasingly composed of volunteers, mobilized men, and private military contractors. By August, when Ukraine began its offensives, Russia’s front lines were often manned by mobilized Russian proxy Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics units, Rosgvardia units not equipped for conventional war, or understrength Russian military units composed of volunteers who had signed contracts after the war began. It was not a professional force.
Although the Russian military still had a number of conventional advantages in April, Russia’s revised military objectives gave its commanders little room for operational art or creativity. Instead, the Russian campaign in the Donbas would often consist of frontal assaults on entrenched positions in the most fortified part of the country. Russian forces compensated by leaning heavily on their significant artillery advantage. When it achieved its greatest successes in May and June, the Russian military was firing substantially more artillery rounds each day than the Ukrainian military (although daily fire rates of 50,000–60,000 seem unrealistic figures). Despite this advantage, Russia’s advance was still slow and costly, because the military lacked the forces to conduct maneuver warfare or maintain momentum from any breakthrough. Outgunned Ukrainian soldiers holding the defensive lines in the Donbas in the spring and early summer were instrumental to Ukraine’s future offensives. They ensured that any Russian offensive would involve heavy losses, and they slowed down Russia’s advance, which bought critical time as Ukrainian troops trained on and received increasingly sophisticated NATO artillery systems and high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS). Consequently, Ukraine’s successes in Kharkiv and Kherson in the fall were due to the losses sustained by Russia in the spring.
The arrival of HIMARS had an almost immediate effect on the battlefield. Russia’s logistics system is fairly antiquated and centralized, which meant it still relied heavily on large ammunition depots. Ukrainian HIMARS began to target these depots with explosive results. They also began to strike Russian command posts, and they were likely responsible for the strikes on the headquarters of Russia’s 20th Motorized Rifle Division and 106th Airborne Division in July. The destruction of these ammunition depots didn’t stop Russian artillery, but it significantly reduced the number of rounds they could fire every day. Additionally, Ukraine’s inventory of Western artillery would prove to be more effective at counter-battery fire, particularly once Ukraine began to receive precision-guided artillery rounds like the Excalibur. Since artillery was Russia’s greatest advantage during the Battle of the Donbas, the arrival of HIMARS and Western artillery was critical.
Ukraine’s ability to effectively employ HIMARS and artillery depended heavily on the success of its air defenses to prevent the Russian Air Force from targeting them or conducting interdiction missions. Continued attrition also reduced Russia’s manpower advantage. Ukraine mobilized a substantial number of civilians at the beginning of the war, but not all were effectively trained and equipped. However, by the late summer, much of Russia’s force was not professional or well-trained either. These factors meant that Russia’s advances in the Donbas slowed dramatically after Lysychansk was taken at the beginning of July. By that point, it was clear that Russia had neither a sufficient advantage in artillery nor maneuver forces to achieve significant successes. The Kremlin had reached another inflection point.
Moscow decided to reinforce its position on the right bank of Kherson in July and August with elite Airborne Forces units, as well as Eastern Military District units that were based along the Izyum front in anticipation of an expected Ukrainian offensive. By moving those forces to Kherson, Russia was tacitly acknowledging it would no longer be able to advance much in the Donbas. The decision also left Russia’s forces defending in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia at greater risk since they would have fewer reserves available in case of a Ukrainian offensive. By the end of August, Russia also began to deploy its 3rd Army Corps, which was a new type of volunteer unit. Unlike previous volunteers who received minimal training and often served as combat replacements, the 3rd Army Corps was composed of regional volunteer battalions supported by local governments that would spend a month at the Mulino and Totskoye training ranges in Nizhny Novgorod and Orenburg before deploying. The 3rd Army Corps also received modern BMP-3, T-80BVM and T-90M tanks, and other equipment. But it failed to meet its personnel targets, and there wasn’t a clear plan for raising additional volunteer forces after it was deployed to Ukraine. Once again, Russia developed a short-term plan without a long-term vision of victory. The 3rd Army Corps was deployed to Ukraine at the end of August, but it was unable to stem Ukraine’s offensives. Putin still declined to declare a general mobilization.
Ukrainian Breakthrough in Kharkiv
The extent of Russia’s manpower issues became clear after Ukraine’s successful offensive in Kharkiv. Captured documents and Russian Telegram channels indicated that many Russian military units holding the front lines were substantially understrength—including two units at less than 25 percent of their authorized strength—and had lost critical equipment, such as counter-battery radars, which had not been replaced. In particular, Russian Telegram channels emphasized the lack of infantry soldiers. Russian military correspondent Alexander Kots said that he knew of Russian brigades with only sixty infantry soldiers left when mobilization was announced. In addition, Ukraine captured a number of soldiers from different specialties who were serving in combat roles, such as a sailor who claimed he had served at a naval munitions storage base before being assigned as part of a tank crew with only minimal training as well as soldiers from Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces. In another case in Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukrainian forces captured a Russian paratrooper who served in a tank with a member of Wagner and a mobilized man from Lukhansk Oblast. There were also cases of military band members who were deployed and killed during fighting as far back as March. These anecdotes were similar to how the Russian military was forced to pull any available servicemen regardless of their specialty to man piecemeal units to fight during the wars in Chechnya. To sustain its repeated assaults on Bakhmut, Wagner began to recruit prisoners and sent them to the front line as well at the end of the summer.
Russia simply did not have sufficient forces to hold an expansive front in Ukraine. Russian units in Kharkiv were convinced in July that Ukraine would conduct an offensive in the region, and the intensity of the fighting increased throughout July and August, which began to take an increasing toll on Russian forces. Recovered letters also showed that a number of Russian soldiers based in Kharkiv requested to take leave a week prior to Ukraine’s offensive. Indeed, several Russian Telegram channels run by Russian fighters or correspondents embedded with Russian forces were warning for much of August of a Ukrainian buildup in Kharkiv, and multiple channels warned about a buildup near Balakliya one week prior to the offensive, which is where Ukraine’s breakthrough occurred. There were multiple indications that Ukraine was about to conduct an offensive and that Russian forces in Kharkiv were vulnerable. Nonetheless, the Russian military appears to have only taken minimal, if any, steps to prepare. Most likely, Russian political leadership refused to allow a retreat, but the military simply did not have the forces or equipment available to reinforce the region.
Ukraine’s Kharkiv operation was a well-planned and executed combined arms operation, but it benefitted significantly from the fact that Russian forces were simply in no position to defend that region. In brief, combined arms maneuver was possible because of the high levels of attrition suffered by Russian forces in the run-up to the offensive and the lack of cohesion among remaining units. Ukrainian forces infiltrated past Russian lines and achieved a breakthrough at a weak point in Russia’s lines that was reportedly held by mobilized Luhansk People’s Republic forces with Rosgvardia SOBR and OMON—roughly analogous to police SWAT and riot police—in the second echelon. Russian sources, including Igor Girkin, claimed that the LNR forces lacked sufficient heavy weapons and the SOBR servicemen did not know how to properly employ heavy weapons, such as automatic grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles, and recoilless rifles, and only conducted minimal coordination with the artillery unit in the area. In addition to the poorly-equipped forces holding the front lines, Russia lacked a sufficient reserve in Kharkiv to stop Ukrainian breakthroughs. Russian channels said that Ukraine effectively employed artillery and HIMARS prior to the offensive and conducted a rapid offensive with both heavy tank and mechanized infantry units as well as light reconnaissance, airborne, and special operations forces, which created chaos behind Russia’s lines. Ukraine also pushed ground-based air defenses forward, which prevented the Russian Air Force from stopping the advance. Ukrainian forces rapidly advanced to Kupyansk and then Izyum, forcing Russian forces to withdraw from both towns and most of Kharkiv Oblast.
In contrast, it took Ukraine more than two months to retake the entire right bank of Kherson after beginning its offensive. Ukrainian forces also employed combined arms, armor, special operations forces, HIMARS, artillery, as well as TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles in Kherson, but they were unable to achieve a breakthrough until October. However, Russian forces were still able to prevent this breakthrough from leading to a collapse of Russian lines on the right bank. The greatest difference in the two campaigns was the quality and density of Russian forces defending. The forces in Kharkiv were understrength and poorly trained—the Russian Western Military District’s forces have performed the worst in this war—whereas the Russian Airborne Forces in Kherson were more capable and better led, according to Russian channels. Russia built layered defenses in Kherson and the terrain was more open, which made it easier to locate attacking forces with unmanned aerial vehicles and engage them with artillery. In addition, it appeared Russia was using its scarce supply of precision-guided munitions more often in Kherson than elsewhere along the front. This included Russian KUB and Lancet loitering munitions, which are more often employed by Russia Special Operations Forces or Airborne Forces; Iranian Shahed 136/131 (Geran-2) loitering munitions; longer-range LMUR missiles launched from Mi-28MN attack helicopters, which were often used to target Ukrainian river crossings; and Krasnopol laser-guided artillery rounds. Aside from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicles, Russia tested all these munitions in Syria, and many appear to be relatively effective. However, Russia didn’t possess them in sufficient quantities for such a large-scale war, including enough Orlan-30 unmanned aerial vehicles that can laze targets for Krasnopol rounds.
After Ukraine’s success in Kharkiv, Putin reportedly turned down requests from his generals to pull back from the right bank of the Dnipro. However, Putin acquiesced to their request to begin a general mobilization, and the first mobilized soldiers would be deployed to Ukraine less than a week later. The priority was holding back Ukraine’s advances in Lyman and across the Kreminna-Svatove front in Luhansk Oblast, so Russia deployed mobilized soldiers with minimal training, and Russian Telegram channels shared a number of anecdotes of costly mistakes committed by these untrained units. In Kherson, Ukraine continued to attrit Russian forces while targeting the bridges across the Dnipro River and the ferries that kept Russian forces supplied.
Russia likely could have kept its forces on the right bank of the Dnipro for longer, but those units would have continued to fight at a disadvantage. While Russia’s best troops were stuck in Kherson, Ukrainian forces would continue to advance elsewhere. Additionally, it would take time to properly train and equip mobilized soldiers, unlike those who were quickly thrown into combat. The Dnipro was an obvious natural barrier that could help Russia use its scarce forces to hold its front line across Ukraine. Had Russia pulled back across the Dnipro in July or August and used the river as a barrier, it possibly could have held Kharkiv, or at least made it a more costly offensive.
Nonetheless, Ukraine still had an advantage in precision fires with HIMARS, Excalibur, and other precision-guided artillery rounds. However, Kherson reveals that the overall effect of HIMARS may be overstated, and its impact leveled off after the first two months of use on the battlefield. Russian forces were able to sustain artillery fire, and ultimately to withdraw from Kherson with most of their equipment, despite the threat of interdiction posed by Ukrainian precision fires. Adaptations to HIMARS included displacing logistics hubs out of range, hardening command posts, and introducing decoys to make targeting more difficult. Russian forces in Kherson were holding positions across a river, depending on ferries and a dam crossing point for logistics. Yet the fighting was grinding, with high rates of attrition on both sides. Kherson offers a cautionary tale on the challenge of offensive maneuver against an entrenched opponent with sufficient artillery and air defense.
Russia appears to have conducted a competent withdrawal without sustaining heavy losses, which is possibly a reflection of the improved command and control after Army Gen. Sergey Surovikin was appointed the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine. Surovikin has since used these forces to reinforce the fighting in Bakhmut and Svatove. Russia’s current strategy appears to be focused on buying time to raise a larger force composed of mobilized soldiers with better training and equipment than those who have already been deployed. Russia also began a strategic bombing campaign in early October with cruise missiles and Iranian loitering munition strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure targets—primarily power and water plants—in apparent hopes of disrupting Ukraine’s economy, undermining civilian morale, and raising the costs of the war for Kyiv and its Western supporters. This is an asymmetric response to Ukraine’s advantages on the battlefield, which the Russian military is struggling to match. Consequently, Ukraine has an incentive to continue to try to advance and inflict losses on the Russian military over the winter.
Looking Forward
The results in Kharkiv and Kherson give a somewhat conflicted view of Ukraine’s prospects to quickly liberate more territory. Although Ukraine can move forces from Kherson to reinforce other parts of the front, it is unlikely to find Russian defenses as vulnerable as they were in Kharkiv in September. The Russian military will now have a much higher force density to terrain ratio, and can conserve ammunition if it pursues a largely defensive strategy. In addition, Russian forces elsewhere don’t face the same constraints as they did on the right bank in Kherson with a large river behind them in range of Ukrainian HIMARS. Russian forces, including Wagner, have been building additional defensive lines since the Kharkiv offensive. This suggests that further offensives by Ukraine will be more difficult, potentially involving more incremental gains at a higher cost, because the conditions are less propitious than they were in Kherson and Kharkiv.
Ukraine still has a number of advantages, however. The winter will likely present greater issues for Russia than Ukraine, because the gap between units with better discipline and morale becomes greater when the weather is poor. The force fighting for Russia is increasingly involuntary—composed of mobilized men from Russia or Ukraine, short-term volunteers who are forced to continue serving, prisoners fighting for Wagner, and soldiers who previously refused to fight who are now being compelled to do so with the threat of criminal penalties—compared to Ukraine’s better-motivated military. Ukrainian soldiers also have clearer strategic goals than their Russian counterparts and the Ukrainian military’s leadership has proven to be competent and to prioritize troop welfare more than Russia’s. All of these factors are advantages that Ukraine can exploit.
Ukrainian special operations forces will likely play a key role over the winter months, now that Russia has a large coast to defend in the south, and Ukraine will probably make further attempts at offensive operations in the coming months when the ground freezes. As long as Ukraine continues to receive sufficient ammunition, particularly for artillery, and spare parts, it stands a good chance of retaking territory. That said, the conflict may become more attritional, seeing incremental gains instead of breakthrough operations. The question is whether these advantages will prove sufficient for Ukrainian forces to retake territory from entrenched Russian troops in layered defensive positions. Much will depend on how well Russia integrates mobilized soldiers into an effective fighting force and the level of foreign assistance both Ukraine and Russia continue to receive.
Despite numerous examples of poor conditions, minimal training, delayed payments, faulty equipment, incompetent leadership, and other problems (including a mass shooting at a training range), mobilized soldiers are providing Russia with more manpower. They’ve enabled the Russian military to stabilize vulnerable lines and conduct a withdrawal from Kherson. Poorly trained soldiers are of minimal value in offensive operations, as Russian infantry attacks at Bakhmut suggest, but it is easier to train someone to man a defensive position. Even elite units, such as the Russian Airborne Forces’ 331st Airborne Regiment and 155th Naval Infantry Brigade, are receiving mobilized soldiers as combat replacements. This is a significant vulnerability for Russia, but, thus far, mobilized soldiers appear to be more of an asset than a liability, though there is undoubtedly variance. The extent to which Russia can create semi-effective mobilized units or successfully integrate mobilized soldiers into existing units will be an important factor in how effectively Russia can sustain this war, particularly during the winter. If Russia fails to train, lead, and integrate mobilized soldiers properly, Ukraine may find an opportunity to achieve another breakthrough when the weather and ground conditions improve.
Another key factor for Russia and Ukraine is foreign support, especially in terms of artillery ammunition. Potential deals for artillery ammunition from North Korea and unmanned aerial vehicles or possibly surface-to-surface missiles from Iran, would likely affect how long Russia can continue this war. However, Ukraine’s war effort also depends heavily on external material support, which is constrained both by availability and policy restrictions. Ammunition availability might be the single most important factor that determines the course of the war in 2023, and that will depend on foreign stockpiles and production. As it stands, the Russian military will struggle to restore offensive potential, but it can drag out a stubborn defense. Ukraine appears advantaged long term, but the longer the war goes on, the greater the uncertainty, and advantage is not predictive of outcomes.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan organization that seeks to publish well-argued, policy-oriented articles on American foreign policy and national security priorities.
fpri.org · by @@RALee85
3. Interview with Professor Kong Jierong: Xi Jinping lost the respect of the Chinese people
This is a Google translation of a Voice of America article published today. It was flagged for me by a friend from China as it tracks with his views about some of what is happening inside China.
Kong Jierong is Professor Jerome Cohen of NY Law School, et al.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_A._Cohen
(Cohen was originally known in Chinese as Kong Jierong (simplified Chinese: 孔杰荣; traditional Chinese: 孔傑榮), giving him the same family name as Confucius. Mainland Chinese communists rejected this name, however, along with the Confucian values it evoked. Cohen was thus renamed 柯恩 (pinyin: Kē'ēn), a phonetic translation, although he remained known as Kong Jierong in Taiwan and Hong Kong.)
Interview with Professor Kong Jierong: Xi Jinping lost the respect of the Chinese people
December 24, 2022 00:06
In the past 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping was in a situation like riding a roller coaster. From the total of 20, he gained unprecedented supreme power. From insisting on the zero policy to stimulate civil protests, to the sudden disorderly release of the whole society in chaos. Now, almost all classes of Chinese are both helpless and angry about his incompetent ruling.
“ He seems to have lost the respect of Chinese people. ” Professor Kong Jierong, a 92-year-old and famous American expert on China, said.
A netizen said on the social networking site that the most terrifying sentence he heard recently was that he wanted “ to catch the economy himself ”; and the most funny thing was that Xi Jinping said “ I always support the private economy ”.
Kong Jierong said that for many years, ordinary Chinese people have supported the Xi Jinping class more than many CCP officials. Now this support has come out because of its ruling error “ ended in an unfortunate way ”. Not only that, “ Now they have begun to question him in other ways. ”
On Tuesday （ December 20th ）, New York Law School Honjirong, a retired professor, accepted an interview with VOA. At the end of the year, the Chinese expert who has observed, studied, and participated in the reform process in China for more than 60 years evaluated Xi Jinping's actions in 2022：
“ For Xi Jinping, this should have been a beautiful year, a year to show its peak power to the country and abroad. But it turns out that this is at least a mixed year for him. ”
Kong Jierong believes that Xi Jinping has repeatedly made mistakes in handling the epidemic, which has affected the development of China's political situation. “I think recent events, including the failures and troubles I just mentioned, make China’s power struggle more likely than ever to intensify. ”
“ The people have proved that they have ways to show resistance to him more and more. And his situation is that if he uses repression to arrest, torture, punish, or even eliminate someone who shows opposition to him, it will cause more opposition. ” Kong Jierong said.
“ China has never stood still. China's current situation development usually swings like fashion, and it swings back and forth every few years. Now, the pendulum is at the extreme of totalitarianism, and it will have its own reaction. ” Kong Jierong said.
Kong Jierong believes that in 2023, the biggest challenge facing Xi Jinping is still the new championship epidemic. “ People will see many of these extreme consequences caused by his （ Xi Jinping ） failure to take wise action in the past few years. So this is the most pressing issue. ”
Xi Jinping's leadership ability will continue to cause various confusion after a period of time. “ He has been publicly humiliated. ” The improvement of the rights awareness of the Chinese people will enhance the effectiveness of their response, Kong Jierong said.
Kong Jierong also predicted the situation of Taiwan in 2023. “Taiwan’s situation is always dangerous, ” he said. He believes that the policies and actions of the Taiwanese government and people, the United States and other Western powers, and Xi Jinping's intentions may all make Taiwan's situation more dangerous or non-hazardous. “
Kong Jierong believes that Xi Jinping may rashly attack Taiwan due to internal difficulties, but the situation in China often changes due to diplomatic interaction. “ For this reason, the US ” needs a wise policy “, while Not provoking a crisis, ” continues to support Taiwan“, but ” must allow Taiwan to adopt policies that support itself，” Conferor said.
Conferor’s judgment on the US-China relationship, which is still in a historical trough, is that “ US domestic politics has always been a difficult obstacle for the United States to adopt the correct policy towards China or overall foreign policy. ”
Kong Jierong believes that the Republican Democratic Party of the United States should have a more complex policy towards China than just hostile to China. “ is not just a call for the American public to ignore or dislike China. We must adopt a more appropriate positive attitude, which means that we cannot decouple from China, although we must make strategic adjustments in various industries. ”
New York University School of Law Professor Kong Jie Rong （ American Sound Sound Shooting ）
The following is a live interview with Professor Kong Jie Rong, a retired professor at New York University School of Law：
Reporter: Professor Kong, thank you for accepting the American Voice interview. At the end of the year, looking back on the upcoming 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping successfully obtained the third five-year term with an exception, and power reached its peak. But high centralization did not avoid the occurrence of the Black Swan incident. His new crown zero policy was protested by people everywhere. Then he suddenly canceled the strict control policy, letting go without preparation, “ lying flat ” >, letting the virus rage, people steal medicine and save themselves, the medical system is almost paralyzed, so it has caused a new huge crisis. What is your evaluation of Xi Jinping's performance this year？
He lost a big face in front of his people
Kong Jierong: For Xi Jinping, this should have been a beautiful year, a year to show its peak of power to the country and abroad. But it turns out that this is at least a mixed year for him. Overall, the last period of this year was frustrating and unpleasant. He seems to have lost the respect of the Chinese people. Over the years, Chinese people have been more enthusiastic about him than many Communist elites. Among his colleagues in the Party Central Committee and those who want to work there, he has a lot of dissatisfaction with him, but they have been unable to express it. But in general, he almost always gets great support from the masses. Of course, he controls the information that the masses can hear and learn, and he controls what the masses can usually say.
But for Xi Jinping this year, this situation ended in an unfortunate way. His new crown virus policy was denied by his own government, and he lost a big face in front of his people. They saw the great leaders of the party that other leaders could not challenge, formulated a series of policies with serious problems, made many mistakes, and now they have begun to question him in other ways.
At the same time, many other problems in China have begun to appear, and are much more than in the past few years. For several years, I have been saying that the power of the Communist Party in China has reached its peak, and their assets will no longer be more indebted than theirs. We have seen it in many ways and will continue to see this situation. China's leadership is facing many gradually accumulating crises related to water, health and pollution, and the economy. Look at what happened in the real estate market, and look at Xi Jinping’s mistakes in regulating the private industry, which has always been China’s largest source of growth. We found that his policy of alienating Chinese technology leaders was wrong. And his foreign policy, as Japan has just shown, is increasingly causing opposition in the world. Therefore, this year is a very good year for Xi Jinping but has become a bad year. I think he hopes 2023 will be better.
Reporter: There is no shortage of power struggles in the history of the CCP. The Lin Biao faction loyal to Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution and Mao's wife Jiang Qing Group fought you to death. But Xi Jinping has the ability to establish the Standing Committee of the All-Chinese Central Political Bureau. This seems to not even be possible in Mao Zedong. Does this mean that this power struggle in the history of the CCP can be avoided or reduced under the rule of Xi？
China’s power struggle is more likely than ever to intensify
Kong Jierong: I think recent events, including the failures and troubles I just mentioned, make China’s power struggle more likely than ever. Now, he （ Xi Jinping ） has the most power in the party, but this does not mean that this situation will continue, although he controls the police, including secret police and military, and propaganda machines. I think that the people have proved that they have ways to show resistance to him more and more. And his situation is that if he uses repression to arrest, torture, punish, or even eliminate someone who shows opposition to him, it will cause more opposition. So I think his situation is not happy and safe, although he may be in power for many years.
But I think that the people's sentiment is boiling, the events are brewing, China has never stood still, and China's current situation development usually swings like fashion, and it swings back and forth every few years. Now, the pendulum is at the extreme of totalitarian repression, and it will have its own reaction. And I think there will be many people who come out to challenge him gradually, in a way that is very delicate and difficult to detect at the beginning, but will definitely make him a leader very insecure.
For many years I have been urging everyone to watch the movie 《 Stalin’s Death 》, because I think that although Xi Jinping has been trying to avoid repeating the same mistakes as the collapse of the Soviet Union, it actually created a Stalin-style situation: he is the only leader Everyone knows that he is vulnerable, and he knows he is responsible. I think he will lose support more and more. Of course, no one can live forever. He is about 69 years old, and I don’t know that the Chinese are far-sighted. What will happen after 5 years or 10 years？I am very optimistic that it will have a counterproductive effect on the leadership of Xi Jinping, just as it has a counterproductive effect on the leadership of Chairman Mao. Mao cannot even trust （ his successor ） Lin Biao.
Reporter: What do you think is the biggest challenge Xi Jinping faced in 2023？He has a lot of trouble, economy, epidemic situation, social dissatisfaction.
2023：Will see the extreme consequences of Xi Jinping's incompetence
Kong Jierong: I think the biggest problem is how to deal with the virus, how to deal with the surge in the number of people who are about to get sick, and many elderly people who will die if infected with the virus. People will see many of these extreme consequences due to his （ Xi Jinping ） failing to take wise action in the past few years. So this is the most pressing issue. But I think the issue of leadership will look very confusing after a period of time. He has been publicly humiliated. The Chinese are very sophisticated, and we can see from the social media they are allowed to use that they are strongly critical and aware of his mistakes.
I think there is another area that deserves attention but is not fully emphasized, that is, many violations and violations are discussed in social media. On the one hand, Xi Jinping constantly emphasized that his government is a legal government —— is not a rule of law. It is not bound by law, but it uses the law. Later, people saw that it was using and abusing laws, and not complying with existing regulations. And although the legal profession is suppressed and rights protection lawyers are suppressed, the fact is that many lawyers are beginning to tell people in various ways that this so-called rule of law government is not actually a rule of law government. At the local and national levels, it often ignores its own Law, which makes people feel hurt and abused by them, and creates a sense of rights，This will increase effective public response.
Reporter: How do you predict Taiwan's prospects in 2023？Still dangerous？
Taiwan is always in a dangerous situation
Kong Jierong: The situation in Taiwan is always dangerous. The policies and actions of the Taiwanese government, the people of Taiwan, the United States and other Western powers, and what Xi Jinping is trying to do may make Taiwan’s situation more dangerous or less dangerous. Some people are so worried that the situation in mainland China will become so bad that Xi Jinping will be more motivated than ever to try to overcome （ against him by taking some nationalist actions against Taiwan. If he can be regarded as integrating Taiwan with the motherland as they said, if the young people in this country face unemployment and dissatisfaction, then he may take action against Taiwan to unite the country to support his government. So this is a problem. On the other hand, for him, the risk is that it will be a gamble. It is difficult to determine what action he will take, whether to use force to capture or block Taiwan. This may be the final blow. The situation in China often changes due to diplomatic interaction, and Taiwan is now a problem.
The difficulty we face in Taiwan is that general elections will be held in 2024. It is not clear who will come out to run for the Kuomintang, and who will now run for the ruling DPP. Will the next president be as stable, cautious, and respected as Cai English？Unfortunately, at this time she could not run for re-election again. It is also unclear who will inspire the confidence of the people of Taiwan and who will inspire the confidence of allies in Taiwan. Will they show good judgment in the way they support Taiwan？
On the one hand, we have to be careful, we don’t have to embarrass or anger Xi Jinping’s Beijing government. On the other hand, we must show strong support for the Taiwanese government, but don’t cross the line, which will make the Beijing government feel that it has no choice but to take stronger actions than they have taken against Taiwan so far. We need wise policies. We don’t want to provoke a crisis, but we want to continue to support Taiwan. We must let Taiwan adopt policies that can support itself. Taiwan will now have one year of military service instead of the absurd four months. This is a good step. But Taiwan has many things to do, including choosing the right weapons they buy or make by themselves. This is an uncertain future, but I think that if we are cautious and wise, and build on past policies, then we can avoid the Taiwan crisis.
Reporter: Last question, how do you predict the direction of US-China relations in 2023？Soon the United States will have a Republican House Speaker, and experts predict that he will also visit Taiwan.
The United States needs a more complex policy towards China
Kong Jierong: US domestic politics has always been a difficult obstacle for the United States to adopt the correct policy towards China or overall foreign policy. I am worried about the situation in the United States. Now, one of the few consensuses between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is hostility towards China. But we need more complicated policies than this. We cannot be hostile. As I said before, we must strive to improve our defense capabilities to prevent the worst with China. But we must work harder to improve the current bad （ bilateral ） relationship. There are many things we can do in China, and the Chinese are showing signs of at least talking about some of them gently. I hope the Biden government does more than just calling on the American public to ignore or hate China. We must adopt a more appropriate positive attitude, which means that we cannot decouple from China, although we must make strategic adjustments in various industries, which we have already begun to do. Therefore, a balanced policy is necessary, but this requires some education for the American people. Biden should take this opportunity to make an important speech to explain the pros and cons of establishing a better relationship with China and the challenges and possibilities.
Reporter: Thank you Professor Kong.
(VOA conducted a series of interviews reflecting responsible discussions and opinions on US policy. The comments made by the interviewee do not represent the position of VOA.)
4. OPINION: Unbreakable Resilience (Ukraine)
OPINION: Unbreakable Resilience
As the world watches in awe of Ukrainians’ remarkable resilience against all odds, there is arguably no greater inspiration to help, and to give.
By Joe De Sena
As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its tenth month, the world remains astounded at the unbreakable resilience of the Ukrainian people. Constant attacks by a nuclear power, resulting in more than 40,000 civilian deaths, has not broken the spirit of the Ukrainian people. Neither has the loss of heat, electricity and water in the middle of winter. Ukrainians are persevering against the odds to protect their homeland, their families, and their way of life.
A little more than 2,500 years ago, the Spartans inspired Greece – which was the great European democracy of the era – to stand against tyranny. They did so by sacrificing themselves against overwhelming odds in the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. As we think about the Ukrainian sacrifices in Mariupol, it too has inspired the great democracies of our modern time to stand unified against tyranny.
The on-going war has also inspired military veterans from countries outside Ukraine to lend aid. Some have been inspired to enlist in the Ukrainian Foreign Legion and fight on the battlefield. Others have been inspired to help by delivering humanitarian and medical assistance. People have been helping in the different ways they can. What is certain though, is that in the greatest war against tyranny of our lifetimes, no decent person can stand on the sidelines and do nothing.
The Christmas Convoy
Being inspired to help is the spirit behind the “Christmas Convoy” that provided 50 cars and light trucks full of generators and critical humanitarian and medical supplies to Kyiv. With weekly attacks on critical energy infrastructure, fuel powered generators are keeping hospitals, schools, orphanages, and government buildings operating during the war. By keeping these key facilities operating, Ukrainians are able to find the strength to endure longer and wait for their eventual victory.
Thus, the 50-vehicle convoy delivered more than three million euros worth of generators, medical supplies, and critical humanitarian aid. By meeting these key needs in the dead of winter, the international community practices the Biblical “Golden Rule” of “do unto others what you would have them do unto you”.
This international humanitarian mission was led by me as CEO and founder of the Spartan Race endurance events. The Spartan Race events celebrate the unbreakable resilience of the ancient warriors, and now quite appropriately, they honor the unbreakable resilience of the Ukrainian people during the war.
The vehicles in the Christmas Convoy were driven mostly by NATO and U.S. military veterans, including many Purple Heart recipients (the Purple Heart is a U.S. military decoration awarded to those who have been wounded in action). This group of modern-day warriors and veterans chose to answer the call of duty once again, by driving from Poland into Kyiv to make the deliveries of much-needed supplies.
Christmas is both about giving and about inspiration. Rarely in life does one get to be inspired and see the immediate satisfaction from giving to those in need. In Ukraine this year, one gets both. Someday, this war will end, and questions will be asked such as: “What did you do to help?”. “Could you have done more?”. “What difference did you make?”.
For Ukrainians, the answers will be clear because, in most cases, they had no options. They did everything they could to save their lives, families and homes. For the rest of the world, the options will range from “doing nothing” to lending a helping hand or providing aid. There can be no starker contrast in choices.
That is why the Christmas Convoy chose to make a difference.
Joe De Sena is the founder and CEO of the Spartan Race and led the Christmas Convoy to Kyiv in December 2022.
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.
5. How an Unusual Coalition Outfoxed China and Russia at the U.N.
Still more to do.
Excerpts:
From here, a committee will convene to debate the substance of the draft articles and present them to the U.N. General Assembly in the autumn of 2023, with an eye toward turning it into a full treaty for U.N. powers to adopt. No legal expert believes that a new U.N. convention on crimes against humanity would stop such crimes from being committed overnight. But it would be the first of its kind to explicitly hold states and individuals accountable on such crimes and help grease the wheels on international cooperation for documenting and prosecuting crimes against humanity.
More importantly, it would present states with a legal duty to prevent such crimes regardless of whether those crimes happened in that country or not—similar to what is laid out under the Genocide Convention. It would mandate that states that signed onto the treaty incorporate preventing and prosecuting crimes against humanity into their own national legal system. (Even advanced democracies don’t always have such laws on the books. The United States, for example, has large loopholes in its laws for prosecuting perpetrators of crimes against humanity, something senior U.S. lawmakers are currently working to fix.)
Over time, legal experts and human rights advocates hope, such a U.N. treaty could strengthen accountability and prosecution as well as have a broad, if difficult to measure, deterrent effect on governments that otherwise would commit crimes against humanity with impunity.
“We’re in a difficult moment globally now because of rising authoritarianism and conflict,” Sadat said. “And so I think it’s easy to become really cynical about the power of international law. But it’s also important to remember that without international law, you literally have no basis to combat it.”
How an Unusual Coalition Outfoxed China and Russia at the U.N.
The United Nations, thanks to a clever procedural revolt by small countries, is finally moving to close one of its last gaps on international law.
By Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy, and Anusha Rathi, an intern at Foreign Policy. FP subscribers can now receive alerts when new stories written by this author are published. Subscribe now | Sign in
Foreign Policy · by Robbie Gramer, Anusha Rathi · December 23, 2022
In mid-October, Russia, China, and a coalition of other autocratic countries sent a furious letter to a top U.N. diplomat expressing their “shock” at the maneuverings of other countries in the United Nations over a major new piece of international law. An unusual coalition of smaller U.N. powers led by Mexico, Gambia, and Bangladesh found a way to jump-start the process of creating a first-ever U.N. convention on crimes against humanity over the fierce objections of Moscow, Beijing, and their allies—who had stalled the process for three years straight.
But this time, Moscow and Beijing got outfoxed. And they knew it.
With Mexico in the lead, a coalition of countries bucked the normal procedures and traditions of consensus in a key U.N. committee that oversees international law, opening the door for the eventual adoption of the first-ever U.N. treaty addressing crimes against humanity. No such treaty exists currently, something that human rights advocates and legal scholars describe as a gaping hole in international law.
In mid-October, Russia, China, and a coalition of other autocratic countries sent a furious letter to a top U.N. diplomat expressing their “shock” at the maneuverings of other countries in the United Nations over a major new piece of international law. An unusual coalition of smaller U.N. powers led by Mexico, Gambia, and Bangladesh found a way to jump-start the process of creating a first-ever U.N. convention on crimes against humanity over the fierce objections of Moscow, Beijing, and their allies—who had stalled the process for three years straight.
But this time, Moscow and Beijing got outfoxed. And they knew it.
With Mexico in the lead, a coalition of countries bucked the normal procedures and traditions of consensus in a key U.N. committee that oversees international law, opening the door for the eventual adoption of the first-ever U.N. treaty addressing crimes against humanity. No such treaty exists currently, something that human rights advocates and legal scholars describe as a gaping hole in international law.
The process for finalizing a draft treaty on preventing crimes against humanity and getting world powers to adopt it is still years off, and the fight is far from over. But as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said in a different context, if it’s not the beginning of the end, then it’s the end of the beginning. This story is based on internal U.N. documents and interviews with nine U.N. diplomats and experts, all of whom agreed that Russia and China face an uphill battle to stymie a new U.N. treaty seen as crucial to human rights.
“To all of us who work in the trenches, there’s a sense of excitement among legal experts at the U.N. that there will actually be steps forward on this issue now,” said one U.N. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss sensitive internal U.N. matters.
The diplomatic battle is playing out against the backdrop of a surge in crimes against humanity in the past year, from Russian war crimes in Ukraine to Myanmar’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy movements to the devastating conflict in Ethiopia that has killed an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people. A U.N. convention on crimes against humanity could create a legal framework for countries to coordinate with one another on finding and bringing to justice perpetrators of crimes against humanity, whether they take place on or off a battlefield.
“Especially since the war in Ukraine, there’s been a real refocusing of international efforts to ensure justice and accountability for crimes,” said Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, a nonprofit advocacy group.
The origins of a U.N. convention on crimes against humanity can be traced back to the Nuremberg trials prosecuting Nazi war criminals in the aftermath of World War II, when the Geneva Conventions on humanitarian treatment during war and the U.N. Genocide Convention were first adopted. International legal experts for decades have called for the United Nations to create a new convention on crimes against humanity to fill the legal gap not already covered by international conventions addressing genocide, torture, war crimes, enforced disappearances, or apartheid. Crimes that could slip through these international legal cracks include murder, enslavement, rape, forced sterilization, unjust imprisonment, and others that take place outside of war zones or genocides.
“Crimes against humanity is the only Nuremberg crime that’s not codified yet in international law in an interstate treaty,” said Leila Nadya Sadat, an international law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. “So it’s a very important missing piece of the international legal architecture.”
Human rights advocates point to Iran as one example. Iranian officials involved in the brutal crackdown in recent months on protesters demanding basic rights for women may not have committed genocide or apartheid, but they committed something, and human rights advocates said those officials could face accountability in some form if there was a widely adopted international legal framework on crimes against humanity.
“It’s really important because there shouldn’t be a ‘hierarchy’ of atrocity crimes where genocide gets prevention and punishment and crimes against humanity don’t,” said Shannon Raj Singh, co-chair of the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee. “At a fundamental level, a victim is a victim, regardless of whether a perpetrator intends to destroy a group or not.”
In 2013, the International Law Commission (ILC), a body of legal experts charged with drafting proposed new conventions for the United Nations to consider adopting, added crimes against humanity to its ever-growing to-do list. In 2017, it drafted an initial set of articles for such a convention, and in 2019, it formally sent the draft to the U.N. Sixth Committee, the body that oversees international legal issues.
The Sixth Committee runs by a peculiar set of arcane traditions and wonky legalistic processes. Russia and China hoped to effectively kill any chance of a U.N. convention on crimes against humanity by bogging it down in an endless carousel of procedural hurdles, debates, and diplomatic heel-dragging, U.N. diplomats and experts tracking the issues said. They pulled it off in 2019, 2020, and 2021.
But a new coalition of countries decided to buck that trend in 2022. When the Sixth Committee met in October, its initiative caught Moscow, Beijing, and its allies off guard. Instead of following a ponderous procedure, Mexico and its allies took the draft resolution already written up by the ILC and introduced it into the committee immediately, assigned coordinators from the outset without waiting for approval from the states that opposed the initiative, and set a timetable for debating the resolution before Moscow and Beijing could mount any opposition to the process.
“We are shocked that through the Secretariat of the Sixth Committee, delegates from certain Missions announced themselves to be the coordinators for the draft resolution on Crimes Against Humanity,” Russia and China’s U.N. envoys wrote in an internal October letter to Pedro Comissário Afonso, Mozambique’s ambassador to the United Nations, who held the rotating chair of the Sixth Committee. “It is obviously contrary to the transparency, democracy and legitimacy of the long-lasting working methods of the Committee.” The letter was co-signed by U.N. envoys from North Korea, Iran, Belarus, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, Eritrea, and Nicaragua.
A letter to Mozambique’s ambassador to the United Nations from Russia's and China's U.N. envoys.
An October letter to Pedro Comissário Afonso, Mozambique’s ambassador to the United Nations, from the U.N. envoys of Russia, China, and other countries. Read the full letter here.
But what Mexico did was all aboveboard, if untraditional, according to the rules of the Sixth Committee. In another internal U.N. letter obtained by Foreign Policy to those delegates, dated a week later, Afonso wrote that the Sixth Committee “carefully considered the concerns” in their letter, but “the procedures and practices of the Sixth Committee are being followed and honoured.”
From there, support for Mexico’s initiative snowballed. The resolution initially had eight co-sponsors: Mexico, widely seen as the leader of the initiative, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Colombia, Gambia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. Then, dozens of other countries signed on.
“It went from one to eight to 86 co-sponsors,” said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch, an international nonprofit organization.
The Sixth Committee traditionally operates by consensus—meaning if one state opposes a motion, the motion effectively fails without needing to trigger a vote. But by that point, U.N. officials and experts said, Beijing and Moscow knew they were checkmated. They could either declare their opposition, trigger a vote on the resolution, and lose—by a wide and very diplomatically embarrassing margin—or grudgingly go along with it. After weeks of angry behind-the-scenes warnings and handwringing, they chose option number two.
“It really upset Russia and China, but at the end of the day, it was a smart strategy that got the resolution to actually move forward for once,” Radhakrishnan said.
Read More
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres attends a press conference.U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres attends a press conference.
From its failure to stop Russia’s war in Ukraine to its inaction on Myanmar and climate change, the institution is under fire from all sides.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the 69th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Sept. 24, 2014.U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the 69th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City on Sept. 24, 2014.
It needs to be replaced by an organization where one nation cannot escape accountability because it is in a special class.
A long-delayed report on human rights in ChinaA long-delayed report on human rights in China
A long-delayed report on Xinjiang was an important step forward, but it has critical omissions.
U.N. diplomats and experts said the unusual coalition of countries backing the new U.N. convention—from Gambia to Bangladesh—also undermined a common accusation from Russia and China that human rights initiatives at the United Nations only serve to advance the interests of Washington and its European allies.
“You had many states from different regions joining on as co-sponsors with the effect of negating the claim that, ‘Oh, these are just Western countries that care about this and are going to use it against us on account of the invasion of Ukraine,’” Dicker said.
From here, a committee will convene to debate the substance of the draft articles and present them to the U.N. General Assembly in the autumn of 2023, with an eye toward turning it into a full treaty for U.N. powers to adopt. No legal expert believes that a new U.N. convention on crimes against humanity would stop such crimes from being committed overnight. But it would be the first of its kind to explicitly hold states and individuals accountable on such crimes and help grease the wheels on international cooperation for documenting and prosecuting crimes against humanity.
More importantly, it would present states with a legal duty to prevent such crimes regardless of whether those crimes happened in that country or not—similar to what is laid out under the Genocide Convention. It would mandate that states that signed onto the treaty incorporate preventing and prosecuting crimes against humanity into their own national legal system. (Even advanced democracies don’t always have such laws on the books. The United States, for example, has large loopholes in its laws for prosecuting perpetrators of crimes against humanity, something senior U.S. lawmakers are currently working to fix.)
Over time, legal experts and human rights advocates hope, such a U.N. treaty could strengthen accountability and prosecution as well as have a broad, if difficult to measure, deterrent effect on governments that otherwise would commit crimes against humanity with impunity.
“We’re in a difficult moment globally now because of rising authoritarianism and conflict,” Sadat said. “And so I think it’s easy to become really cynical about the power of international law. But it’s also important to remember that without international law, you literally have no basis to combat it.”
Foreign Policy · by Robbie Gramer, Anusha Rathi · December 23, 2022
6. China angered, Taiwan cheered by new U.S. defence act
China angered, Taiwan cheered by new U.S. defence act
Reuters · by Reuters
SHANGHAI/TAIPEI, Dec 24 (Reuters) - China expressed anger on Saturday at a new U.S. defence authorisation law that boosts military assistance for Taiwan, while Taipei cheered it for helping boost the island's security.
China, which considers democratically governed Taiwan its own territory, expressed "strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition" regarding the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
It said the $858 billion military spending measure, which authorises up to $10 billion in security assistance and fast-tracked weapons procurement for Taiwan, contained provisions that "cause serious damage to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait".
China has never renounced using force to bring Taiwan under its control. Taiwan strongly disputes China's sovereignty claims, saying only the island's 23 million people can decide their future.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry expressed its thanks for the U.S. legislation, saying it showed the importance Washington attached to Taiwan-U.S. ties and strengthening the island's security.
Taipei will discuss the details of the act with Washington and "gradually push forward the budget formulation and actual disbursement of the various Taiwan-friendly provisions", the ministry said, without elaborating.
The United States is Taiwan's most important international backer and arms supplier, despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties. U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are a constant irritant in Beijing's relations with Washington.
Taiwan's military is dwarfed by that of its huge neighbour China. Its air force in particular has come under strain from having to scramble repeatedly to see off Chinese incursions near the island over the past three years or so.
The defence law contained an amendment restricting U.S. government purchases of products using computer chips made by a group of Chinese companies.
"The case ignores the facts to exaggerate a 'China threat', wantonly interferes in China's internal affairs and attacks and smears the Chinese Communist Party, which are serious political provocations to China," China's foreign ministry said.
Reporting by Josh Horwitz and Roger Tung; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Edmund Klamann and William Mallard
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Reuters · by Reuters
7. Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers
A long but interesting and important read.
A friend who flagged this for me provided this insightful comment. I think this comment is as or possibly more important than the article and something we should all deeply ponder.
Excellent story on Putin and how he dug the very deep hole he has found himself in at the moment. As one source says "It has been 20 years in the making." A very strong warning for the rest of us on group-think, and the attitudes of various groups when their comments are reinforced by like-thinking algorithms on social media. The echo chamber has consequences.
Putin, Isolated and Distrustful, Leans on Handful of Hard-Line Advisers
Russia’s president built a power structure designed to deliver him the information he wants to hear, feeding into his miscalculations on the Ukraine war
https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-russia-ukraine-war-advisers-11671815184?st=y959o2qijyh9q3i&reflink=article_email_share
By Evan GershkovichFollow, Thomas GroveFollow, Drew HinshawFollow and Joe ParkinsonFollow
Dec. 23, 2022 12:18 pm ET
MOSCOW—Russian troops were losing the battle for Lyman, a small city in eastern Ukraine, in late September when a call came in for the commanding officer on the front line, over an encrypted line from Moscow.
It was Vladimir Putin, ordering them not to retreat.
The president seemed to have limited understanding of the reality of the situation, according to current and former U.S. and European officials and a former senior Russian intelligence officer briefed on the exchange. His poorly equipped front-line troops were being encircled by a Ukrainian advance backed by artillery provided by the West. Mr. Putin rebuffed his own generals’ commands and told the troops to hold firm, they said.
The Ukrainian ambushes continued, and on Oct. 1, Russian soldiers hastily withdrew, leaving behind dozens of dead bodies and supplies of artillery to restock Ukraine’s weapons caches.
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
The 10-Point.
A personal, guided tour to the best scoops and stories every day in The Wall Street Journal.
Preview
Subscribe
Mr. Putin expected the war in Ukraine to be swift, popular and triumphant. For months, he struggled to come to terms with what instead became a costly quagmire, and found himself isolated and distrustful at the pinnacle of a power structure designed to reinforce his belligerent worldview and shelter him from discouraging news.
Through the summer, delegations of military experts and arms manufacturers emerged from presidential meetings questioning whether Mr. Putin understood the reality on the battleground, according to people familiar with the situation. And while Mr. Putin has since then gone to lengths to get a clearer picture of the war, they say, the president remains surrounded by an administration that caters to his conviction that Russia will succeed, despite the mounting human and economic sacrifices.
“The people around Putin protect themselves,” said Ekaterina Vinokurova, a member of his handpicked human-rights council until Mr. Putin removed her in November. “They have this deep belief that they shouldn’t upset the president.”
The resulting mistakes have shaped Russia’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine—from the initial days, when Mr. Putin thought his soldiers would be met with flowers, to recent humiliating withdrawals in the northeast and south. Over time, Mr. Putin, who has never served in the military, has become so wary of his own command structure that he has issued orders directly to the front line.
This article is based on months of interviews with current and former Russian officials and people close to the Kremlin who broadly described an isolated leader who was unable, or unwilling, to believe that Ukraine would successfully resist. The president, these people said, spent 22 years constructing a system to flatter him by withholding or sugarcoating discouraging data points.
A police officer looked at destroyed Russian armored vehicles in Lyman on Oct. 5.
PHOTO: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
U.S. officials said they have struggled to find a Kremlin insider who both has influence over Mr. Putin and also isn’t wrapped up in his narrative of Russian grievance. The president increasingly speaks of Russia in near-religious terms, as a 1,000-year-old civilization waging a holy struggle that will right historical wrongs and elevate him into a pantheon of conquering czarist leaders such as Peter the Great.
Though contact between the U.S. and Russia occurs almost every day, whether through their embassies, the Pentagon or the CIA, those conversations have become constrained, said U.S. officials, who have found some of Mr. Putin’s closest allies to be even more hard-line than the authoritarian leader himself.
Mr. Putin wakes daily around 7 a.m. to a written briefing on the war, with information carefully calibrated to emphasize successes and play down setbacks, according to the former Russian intelligence officer and current and former Russian officials.
He has long refused to use the internet for fear of digital surveillance, Russian and U.S. officials have said, making him more dependent on briefing documents compiled by ideologically aligned advisers.
Battlefield updates can take several days to reach Mr. Putin’s desk, leaving them often out of date, people familiar with the matter said. Front-line commanders report to the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor to the KGB, which edits reports for experts at the Security Council, who pass them to Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, the arch hawk who helped persuade Mr. Putin to invade Ukraine. He, in turn, passes the reports to Mr. Putin.
Mr. Patrushev and the Security Council didn’t respond to requests for comment. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said planning around what Mr. Putin refers to as a special military operation is classified as a state secret.
“The president, as earlier, has multiple channels for receiving information,” Mr. Peskov said. “Any claims that he receives distorted information do not correspond to reality.”
Mr. Putin, current and former Russian officials and people close to the Kremlin say, remains fully committed to bringing Ukraine to heel and is ready to mobilize Russia’s economy and population for years to succeed. If Western arms shipments and economic support flag, and Ukrainian morale dips, he could still emerge, on balance, as the victor in what is already the largest war in Europe since World War II.
Items that belonged to Russian soldiers littered the ground in Lyman.
PHOTO: YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
For months, a trickle of Russian officials, pro-government journalists and analysts tried to bring word in person to their president about how his invasion was floundering, according to people familiar with the matter.
When one longtime pollster reached out to Mr. Putin’s office about a survey showing lower-than-expected public support soon after the invasion, his office responded, using Mr. Putin’s first name and his patronymic middle name, “Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn’t need to be upset right now,” according to a person familiar with the exchange.
In July, as American-supplied, satellite-guided Himars rockets began to strike Russian army logistics depots, Mr. Putin summoned about 30 business leaders from defense companies to his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow, according to people familiar with the meeting. After three days of quarantine and three PCR tests, the executives sat at the end of a long wooden table, listening as Mr. Putin described a war effort he considered a success. Ukrainians were only motivated to fight, he told them, because their army was shooting deserters, according to the people.
Then Mr. Putin turned to Chief of General Staff for the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov, who said Russian weapons were successfully hitting their targets and the invasion was going according to plan. The arms makers left the meeting with a sense that Mr. Putin lacked a clear picture of the conflict, the people said.
The defense ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In September, a coterie of Russian military journalists and bloggers—all stalwart backers of the war—met with the president for more than two hours and came away with the same impression, according to people familiar with the matter.
That month, Mr. Putin met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan, and speaking softly, assured him Russia had the war under control, people familiar with the meeting said. Russian troops abandoned hundreds of square miles of territory that same week.
Vladimir Putin spoke to Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, Sept. 16.
PHOTO: SERGEI BOBYLEV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Ahead of a televised meeting with Mr. Putin’s human-rights council this month, Adviser to the President and Council Chairman Valery Fadeyev and other members of the council encouraged the group not to broach topics such as Russia’s use of mercenary forces to bolster its troops, according to Ms. Vinokurova and another former council member who was removed three weeks before the meeting.
“We were told that our task was only to speak with the president about big issues, not about small topics or private matters,” said Ms. Vinokurova.
Mr. Fadeyev confirmed that the council together had decided not to raise the subject of the mercenary forces but said there was no ban on the topic. He said questions are discussed beforehand with the presidential administration, but said that the idea that state bodies filter information for the president was “complete nonsense.”
To receive what he believes is raw information from the front, Mr. Putin has recruited four of the most popular pro-war voices on Russian social media, a mix of state TV journalists, war correspondents and pro-Kremlin propagandists who have been embedding with the army, according to people familiar with the matter. The influencers are tasked with helping a new Kremlin-run working group produce a monthly report on the progress of Russia’s troop mobilization, according to a presidential decree published on the Kremlin’s website this month.
Since March, when Mr. Putin’s invasion began to clearly falter, Western leaders have been puzzled by how a leader so singularly occupied with the status of Ukraine and the restoration of Russia’s military greatness managed to so badly underrate Ukraine’s strength and misread his own.
Some of Mr. Putin’s allies concede that information reaching the president was flawed and attribute military failures to poor planning by government officials. Konstantin Zatulin, a senior lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party who supports the war, said in an interview that the president “proceeded from an incomplete understanding of the situation and in some ways not fully correct.”
The war planners, he said, “clearly underestimated the strength of the enemy and overestimated their own.”
Mr. Putin needed only days to roll through more than a fifth of Georgia in 2008, and weeks to take Ukraine’s peninsula of Crimea in 2014—an operation that his defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Mr. Gerasimov, along with Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency and others, had advised against.
Russian soldiers in Georgia in 2008.
PHOTO: IBRAGIM CHKADUA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The SVR declined to comment.
The Russian president came to see the Crimea operation as a personal triumph. His inner circle gradually shrank down to his most hawkish advisers, who assured Mr. Putin Russian forces would seize Kyiv within days.
“He probably forgot that when he was a KGB operative he was lying to his boss,” said Indrek Kannik, a former head of analysis for Estonian foreign intelligence.
Propaganda machine
The system of self-deception was decades in the making, said Boris Bondarev, a career diplomat who resigned from his longtime post at Russia’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva after the invasion.
Diplomats at the mission learned during Mr. Putin’s two-decade rule to feed Moscow the story it wanted to hear, he said.
Junior officials and senior directors knew that to win plaudits and promotions they should exaggerate good news and play down the bad, for fear of upsetting “papa,” a nickname for Mr. Putin, once used for Russian czars.
Former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev.
PHOTO: BORIS BONDAREV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Bondarev, a counselor on arms control at the mission, could see that sanctions the West imposed on Russia in 2014 were having a much more serious impact than the country’s leadership understood. Russia’s drone production depended on European and American components. Aerospace engineering sourced items as basic as nylon from the West.
When Mr. Bondarev raised it with colleagues who might have sounded the alarm about the potential effect on Russia’s military preparedness, he recalled, he was shot down. “They said: No, there will be no consequences,’ ” he recalled. “Then consequences came.”
Russia’s foreign ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment. “It seems that people will say just about anything nowadays to get public attention,” a spokesman for the Russian mission in Geneva wrote in an email. He declined to comment further.
Diplomats filed updates to Moscow in cables typed in 14-point font, each line 1.5 spaces from the next. Good news would usually dominate the first page of each cable, with reluctant concessions to setbacks relegated to the few that followed.
“You drown these unpleasant truths in a sea of many, many compliments,” said Mr. Bondarev.
Updates relayed to the president were edited again by the Kremlin office, Mr. Bondarev added: “For him, it becomes much harder to distinguish what is correct and what isn’t.”
Overconfidence
The seeds of Mr. Putin’s overconfidence against Kyiv were planted in 2014, when his most senior war planners advised him not to seize Crimea.
Pro-Western protesters had overwhelmed riot police in central Kyiv, prompting Moscow-friendly Ukrainian President Vyktor Yanukovich to flee. Mr. Putin summoned his security chiefs to the Kremlin for an all-night operation to exfiltrate Mr. Yanukovich to Russia.
Shortly before sunrise, Mr. Putin told his staff he had resolved to take Crimea, the predominantly Russian-speaking peninsula, he said in a 2015 documentary.
An invasion would backfire, the defense minister and advisers warned Mr. Putin. But the president, convinced Russia’s Western enemies were seeking to yank Ukraine from Russia’s orbit, rejected their advice, according to the people familiar with the matter.
Russian troops surrounded a Ukrainian military base in 2014 on the Crimean peninsula.
PHOTO: DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
After a swift and nearly bloodless victory, his poll ratings soared above 80%. The Kremlin contrasted the weekslong operation to czarist Russia’s painful defeat in the 19th century’s yearslong Crimean War.
In Ukraine, the conflict eroded sympathy for Moscow and helped the country forge a common national identity. Kyiv revamped and expanded its military, jettisoning the last vestiges of Soviet doctrine to emulate NATO-style command systems.
Mr. Putin appears to have missed the shift.
In 2018, Mr. Putin, who began to speak of Russia as a military power equal to the U.S., gave his annual state of the union speech in front of a screen showing nuclear weapons striking what appeared to be Florida. “Nobody listened to Russia,” he said. “Well, listen up now.”
Inside the Kremlin, more of the polling reaching Mr. Putin was being conducted by the secret service itself, or FSO, edging out Kremlin-controlled but nominally independent polling outlets VTsIOM and FOM, whose work has its own flaws, according to people familiar with the matter. The FSO polls bypass Mr. Putin’s administration and land right on his desk, the people said.
Mr. Putin was becoming more reclusive and consulted a shrinking roster of old allies. When Sergei Kirienko, Kremlin domestic politics chief, gathered the full presidential team together in 2019, Mr. Putin lectured them for hours on Russian sovereignty and his views. “They left feeling like he was talking to himself,” said a Kremlin political consultant who spoke with several of the administration officials in the room.
‘Small circle’
When Covid arrived in 2020, the health-conscious Mr. Putin retreated from his usual residence in the Moscow suburbs to a remote estate near Lake Valdai, 250 miles from the capital, and the presidential summer residence in Sochi on the Black Sea.
There, he spent extended time with his old friend and media mogul Yuri Kovalchuk, who quarantined nearby, and the pair theorized over a shared idea of a restored Great Russia, according to people with knowledge of the relationship.
Other officials, including Mr. Peskov, the spokesman, mostly spoke to Mr. Putin through video screens, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Peskov declined to comment on the assertion.
In a speech in April, CIA chief Bill Burns said that Mr. Putin’s “circle of advisers narrowed and in that small circle it has never been career-enhancing to question his judgment or his almost mystical belief that his destiny is to restore Russia’s influence.”
Principal among them was the Security Council secretary, Mr. Patrushev, who had worked with Mr. Putin since the men were young KGB officers in Leningrad. The U.S., Mr. Patrushev has said, “would prefer that Russia did not exist at all.”
As the circle tightened, Mr. Putin became increasingly paranoid, convinced that the U.S. was stationing nuclear weapons in Ukraine, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said. Messrs. Gerasimov and Shoigu, who retained access to Mr. Putin, lacked influence to moderate his views, the officials said.
In July 2021, Mr. Putin published a 6,917-word historical essay on the Ukrainian nation, penned in isolation with Mr. Kovalchuk by his side.
From inside Ukraine, a Kremlin-connected businessman was telling Mr. Putin what he wanted to hear. Viktor Medvedchuk, a Russia-funded politician, had made Mr. Putin godfather to his daughter Darya. For years, Mr. Medvedchuk had a dedicated line to reach the president—a phone with a Russian number and a secure calling app the Ukrainians called Kremlyovka, in reference to the Kremlin, according to Yuriy Lutsenko, the former head of the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, which had tapped the phones of people linked to the Kremlin in an investigation into the 2014 downing of a Malaysian airplane above Ukraine.
Viktor Medvedchuk spoke to Mr. Putin in St. Petersburg in 2019.
PHOTO: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mr. Medvedchuk assured Mr. Putin that Ukrainians saw themselves as Russian, and would welcome the invading soldiers with flowers, said two people close to the Kremlin.
Mr. Medvedchuk, who had been arrested in Ukraine and then released to Russia as part of a prisoner swap in September, couldn’t be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, the FSB was tweaking polling data to convince Mr. Putin that Ukrainians would welcome Russian soldiers, according to Ukrainian Security Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov and a person close to the Kremlin. Other opinion surveys appeared to be entirely fabricated, said Mr. Danilov.
The FSB didn’t respond to requests for comment.
War planning fell to the FSB more than the military, according to the former Russian intelligence officer and a person close to the defense ministry. The ministry kept normal working hours in the weeks leading up to the invasion, with little sense of the urgency.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Mr. Peskov; his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov; chief of staff, Anton Vaino; and Mr. Kirienko, the domestic policy chief, weren’t aware of the plans, according to people familiar with the matter.
Fifteen days into the war, after his quick strike on Kyiv failed, Mr. Putin scowled in a gold-embroidered armchair as his defense minister briefed him over a video link in a televised meeting.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, everything is going to plan,” said Mr. Shoigu. “We report this to you every day.”
Alan Cullison, Vivian Salama and Keith Zhai contributed to this article.
Write to Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com, Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com, Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Joe Parkinson at joe.parkinson@wsj.com
Appeared in the December 24, 2022, print edition as 'Putin Leans on Hard-Line Advisers'.
8. How Much Time Does Taiwan Have?
Beware the "wag the dog" scenario.
Excerpt:
But this only buys a certain amount of time. If China’s domestic political crisis spirals, Xi could be convinced that making a move on Taiwan may provide a powerful distraction, not to mention a unifying force with the public back home. China will probably not be deterred from Taiwan, only delayed, but openings like this are rare and must be seized to negotiate any peace that can be agreed upon—if only to make time to prepare for worse possibilities.
How Much Time Does Taiwan Have?
Recent negotiations and elections may put off Chinese aggression.
By David Volodzko
Foreign Policy · by David Volodzko · December 23, 2022
When senior Chinese and U.S. officials met from Dec. 11 to 12 in Hebei and agreed to “properly handle” the Taiwan question, analysts were quick to make comparisons between Russia’s horrifying invasion of Ukraine and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China is now prepared to “gobble Taiwan,” one headline read. In a Hudson Institute talk last month, John Hemmings, senior director of Indo-Pacific foreign and security policy at Pacific Forum International, said Chinese President Xi Jinping “wants to unify Taiwan by force or by diplomacy, but he’s quite prepared and quite willing and seems to be even further preparing to do it by force.”
But U.S. President Joe Biden has been sending out a very different message after meeting with Xi last month in Bali, Indonesia. During their meeting, Xi stressed that the Taiwan question is “at the very core of China’s core interests [...] and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” calling it “China’s internal affair.” The message is clear: This is between us and Taiwan; stay out of it. But Biden left his meeting with Xi saying he did not feel there was an imminent threat to Taiwan.
According to Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, however, who spoke at the same event as Hemmings, such a remark “seems to really undermine what many of his most senior military officers have been saying publicly,” namely that China will be prepared to take Taiwan by force by 2027 “but could be even much sooner.” That said, there’s also a lot of skepticism concerning such claims, including from a top U.S. general and defense analysts.
When senior Chinese and U.S. officials met from Dec. 11 to 12 in Hebei and agreed to “properly handle” the Taiwan question, analysts were quick to make comparisons between Russia’s horrifying invasion of Ukraine and a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China is now prepared to “gobble Taiwan,” one headline read. In a Hudson Institute talk last month, John Hemmings, senior director of Indo-Pacific foreign and security policy at Pacific Forum International, said Chinese President Xi Jinping “wants to unify Taiwan by force or by diplomacy, but he’s quite prepared and quite willing and seems to be even further preparing to do it by force.”
But U.S. President Joe Biden has been sending out a very different message after meeting with Xi last month in Bali, Indonesia. During their meeting, Xi stressed that the Taiwan question is “at the very core of China’s core interests […] and the first red line that must not be crossed in China-U.S. relations,” calling it “China’s internal affair.” The message is clear: This is between us and Taiwan; stay out of it. But Biden left his meeting with Xi saying he did not feel there was an imminent threat to Taiwan.
According to Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, however, who spoke at the same event as Hemmings, such a remark “seems to really undermine what many of his most senior military officers have been saying publicly,” namely that China will be prepared to take Taiwan by force by 2027 “but could be even much sooner.” That said, there’s also a lot of skepticism concerning such claims, including from a top U.S. general and defense analysts.
There is reason to think the drums of war may be quiet for a while. The Hebei talks came after the Taiwanese local elections on Nov. 26, with a special election for one city held on Dec. 18. The center-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won five of the 22 cities and counties in the first round, while most of the rest went to the Kuomintang (KMT) and its political allies. This was a catastrophic upset and the worst election loss in the DPP’s 36-year history. As a result, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as the head of the DPP, though she will remain in office until 2024.
But there is a silver lining here. The DPP is the party of Taiwanese nationalism, whereas the KMT, at least since Taiwan became a democracy, has been the party of appeasement and cross-strait talks when it comes to Beijing. Among the many reasons analysts have given for the disastrous DPP showing is that the party early on switched to mudslinging against the KMTand playing the fiercely anti-China song , “resist Beijing, protect Taiwan.” Given Beijing’s military intimidation tactics in recent years, which ramped up in the wake of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August, the DPP assumed this old tune would play well once again. The last day of Pelosi’s trip, for example, a total of 27 Chinese warplanes crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.
But it turned out that while the threat from Beijing remains a priority for Taiwanese voters (only 1.3 percent support immediate unification), this year’s elections were instead dominated by a series of domestic political scandals. In addition, while support for unification remains low, Taiwanese do not live in constant fear of invasion. Just as South Koreans tend to be less worried about North Korean activity than people abroad, Taiwanese are often less in a panic about Beijing than, say, pundits in Washington.
Meanwhile, the pandemic dealt a nasty blow to incumbents worldwide, and the DPP was no exception. In the Taipei mayoral race, for example, DPP candidate and former Health Minister Chen Shih-chung, who headed the central government’s COVID-19 efforts, also became the focus of criticism for anyone unhappy with Taiwan’s pandemic control policies. In the end, Chen lost to Wayne Chiang, the great-grandson of the late President Chiang Kai-shek.
This is why the recent elections could make a Chinese invasion less likely, at least for now. A sweeping KMT victory does not mean Taiwanese people are any more open to unification or any less likely to put up a show of courage that would make Ukrainians proud if Beijing should decide to invade—plus, a KMT win nudges the United States to think more seriously about such things and fully prepare for the possibility.
Despite all this, however, a KMT win can be presented, whether or not it’s true, as a sign of shifting public sentiment in Taiwan when it comes to the question of unification. An invasion would be incredibly costly, and not just in economic terms. The transport and supply logistics across the Taiwan Strait are daunting. Meanwhile, Taiwan is stockpiling anti-ship missiles. And according to some estimates, the invasion could require more than 1.2 million troops. It could be an even worse disaster for China than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has turned out to be.
Therefore, anything Beijing can use as an excuse to avoid such risk without losing face by giving up on Taiwan, which is a defining topic among Chinese nationalists, is a huge win. The elections are a powerful piece of propaganda that Beijing can use to argue that no immediate action is needed, allowing Xi to, as former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously said, hide his strength and bide his time. Beijing even may genuinely believe it can achieve some form of unification through political pressure, avoiding what would be a highly risky military venture. After all, China has been threatening an invasion of Taiwan for decades.
But this only buys a certain amount of time. If China’s domestic political crisis spirals, Xi could be convinced that making a move on Taiwan may provide a powerful distraction, not to mention a unifying force with the public back home. China will probably not be deterred from Taiwan, only delayed, but openings like this are rare and must be seized to negotiate any peace that can be agreed upon—if only to make time to prepare for worse possibilities.
Foreign Policy · by David Volodzko · December 23, 2022
9. Biden Signs National Defense Authorization Act Into Law
We are committed to Ukraine for the long haul and Congress and the President recognize the importance of irregular warfare. (note my sarcastic expression regarding IW - but on a slightly serious note this is an article from the official DOD News (defense.gov) so someone must have made an editorial decision to note the importance of IW and highlight it in (though at the tail end of ) this official news release).
Highlights:
The act looks to provide long-term aid to Ukraine especially in waiving restrictions related to contracts for munitions to support Ukraine or to increase DOD's stocks of critical munitions. It also provides multi-year procurement authority for certain munitions.
The act authorizes DOD to establish a Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare to serve as a central mechanism for developing irregular warfare knowledge. The center will be open to allies and partners.
Finally, the act fully funds the U.S. Special Operations Command's budget including approximately $250 million for unfunded requirements identified by the Socom commander.
Biden Signs National Defense Authorization Act Into Law
defense.gov · by Jim Garamone
President Joe Biden has signed the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act into law allotting $816.7 billion to the Defense Department.
Austin Testimony
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III provides testimony during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Defense Department’s fiscal year 2023 budget request in April, 2022.
SHARE IMAGE:
Download Image
Image Details
Photo By: Lisa Ferdinando, DOD
VIRIN: 220407-D-BN624-0605D
The act means a 4.6 percent pay raise for military and civilian members of the department, and includes $45 billion more than originally requested to counter the effects of inflation and to accelerate implementation of the National Defense Strategy.
The act also authorizes $30.3 billion for national security programs in the Department of Energy and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and $378 million for other defense-related activities.
Although inflation has been dropping, the act authorizes $12.6 billion for inflation impacts on purchases. It also funds $3.8 billion more to account for inflation in military construction. It is a testament to the size of the agency that the act authorizes $2.5 billion for inflation impacts on DOD fuel purchases.
One of the more contentious items in the act is requiring the defense secretary to rescind the mandate that members of the armed forces be vaccinated against COVID-19. "The department will fully comply with the law," DOD officials said. "DOD remains committed to the health and safety of the force and to ensuring we are ready to execute our mission at all times."
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III ordered the mandate on August 24, 2021. The COVID-19 vaccinations have been successful. Some 98 percent of active duty service members and 96 percent of the total force have been vaccinated. Since April, only two service members have died from COVID-19.
Austin argued that the mandate is necessary to protect military readiness, and he has been clear in his support for maintaining it. Still, Congress has spoken and the department will fully comply with the NDAA, officials said.
On the personnel side, the act authorizes additional funding to address the effects of inflation on compensation. It also puts in place language allowing more service members to qualify for the basic needs allowance by increasing the eligibility threshold and allowance size from 130 percent of the federal poverty line to 150 percent. The act authorizes the defense secretary to increase this benefit to 200 percent of the poverty line when appropriate.
Aerial Refueling
An F-35A Lighting II approaches a boom to receive fuel from a KC-135 Stratotanker over Europe March 22, 2022. Airmen assigned to Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., were sent to Spangdahlem Air Base to provide additional air refueling support while airmen assigned to Hill AFB were sent to reinforce and bolster deterrence and defense capabilities of the NATO alliance.
SHARE IMAGE:
Download Image
Image Details
Photo By: Air Force Airman 1st Class Jessica Sanchez-Chen
VIRIN: 220322-F-HH678-1045D
The act increases bonuses and special pay for service members in qualifying career fields. The act also looks to give recruiters a tool to revive and extend temporary authority for targeted recruitment incentives.
Spotlight: Taking Care of Our People
DOD officials have said that roughly one-third of spouses must obtain new professional licenses every time they move to a new state. The act expands the scope of financial reimbursement related to spouse relicensing and business costs arising from a permanent change of station.
The act also calls for a pilot program to reimburse military families for certain child care costs related to a permanent change of station.
There are several changes in the act regarding housing. The act extends the authority to adjust the basic allowance for housing in high-cost areas. It encourages DOD to coordinate efforts to address housing shortages. The act also makes the assistant secretary of defense for energy, installations and environment the department's chief housing officer.
There were no surprises on active duty end strength with the Army set at 452,000; the Navy at 354,000; the Air Force at 325,344; the Marine Corps set at 177,000 and the Space Force at 8,600.
Other aspects of the act include the authorization of special duty pay for members based on cold weather climate conditions in which their duties are performed. The act also starts a program to reimburse Alaska-based service members for the cost of airfare to travel to their homes of record.
The NDAA authorizes $32.6 billion for Navy shipbuilding, an increase of $4.7 billion. This will fund 11 battle force ships including three Arleigh Burke-class destroyers; two Virginia-class submarines; two expeditionary fast transports; one Constellation-class frigate; one San Antonio-class amphibious ship; one John Lewis-class oiler and one Navajo-class towing, salvage and rescue ship.
In Formation
The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan steams in formation with ships from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Royal Australian Navy and Indian Navy during Exercise Malabar 2022, in the Philippine Sea, Nov. 11, 2022.
SHARE IMAGE:
Download Image
Image Details
Photo By: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael B. Jarmiolowski
VIRIN: 221111-N-LI114-1209D
The act also calls for the Navy to build a third Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and allocates $2.2 billion to the effort.
The act funds eight F-18E/F aircraft, 16 F-35C aircraft, 15 F-35B jets and 12 CH-53K helicopters. The legislation also authorizes two more V-22 Osprey aircraft, seven E-2D Hawkeye aircraft and five KC-130J tanker aircraft. The act funds several unmanned aerial platforms including the Triton and Stingray systems.
Spotlight: Support for Ukraine
The act authorizes the full fiscal year 2023 budget request for the European Deterrence Initiative and extends and modifies the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. It authorizes $800 million in fiscal year 2023, an increase of $500 million above the initial budget request.
More importantly, the act expresses the sense of Congress that the United States' commitment to NATO is ironclad, and emphasizes the importance of maintaining a unified response to Russia's unjust war in Ukraine and other shared security challenges, according to a release on the Senate Armed Services Committee website. The Senate release also stressed that the U.S. must continue to assist Ukraine in its fight against the unjust and unprovoked attack by Russia.
To that end, the act calls for an assessment of the required U.S. force posture and resourcing needed to implement the National Defense Strategy in Europe and uphold U.S. commitments to NATO.
Spotlight: NATO
Across the globe, the act extends the Pacific Deterrence Initiative through the fiscal year and identifies approximately $11.5 billion of investments in support of initiative objectives.
The U.S. military works alongside allies, partners and friends, and the act provides an increase of $198.5 million for partner capacity building through the International Security Cooperation Programs account within the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
Howitzer Loading
Ukrainian artillerymen load an M109 self-propelled howitzer, during training at Grafenwoehr Training Area, May 12, 2022. Soldiers from the U.S. and Norway trained Armed Forces of Ukraine artillerymen on the howitzers as part of security assistance packages from their respective countries.
SHARE IMAGE:
Download Image
Image Details
Photo By: Army Sgt. Spencer Rhodes
VIRIN: 220512-Z-EG775-294D
The NDAA also calls for an independent assessment of DOD efforts to train, advise, assist and equip the military forces of Somalia, and authorizes an increase of $10 million to support U.S. Africa Command's efforts to diversify the locations of its multilateral military exercises on the African continent.
The legislation extends the authority to assist Iraq to counter the Islamic State and provides monies to train Syrian allies against the terror group.
The act looks to provide long-term aid to Ukraine especially in waiving restrictions related to contracts for munitions to support Ukraine or to increase DOD's stocks of critical munitions. It also provides multi-year procurement authority for certain munitions.
The act authorizes DOD to establish a Center for Security Studies in Irregular Warfare to serve as a central mechanism for developing irregular warfare knowledge. The center will be open to allies and partners.
Finally, the act fully funds the U.S. Special Operations Command's budget including approximately $250 million for unfunded requirements identified by the Socom commander.
Spotlight: FY 2023 Defense Budget Spotlight: FY 2023 Defense Budget: https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/FY2023-Defense-Budget/
defense.gov · by Jim Garamone
10. Mike Waltz petitions Joe Biden on behalf of Afghan commando arrested near the border
Mike Waltz petitions Joe Biden on behalf of Afghan commando arrested near the border
floridapolitics.com · by Anne Geggis · December 23, 2022
U.S. Rep. Mike Waltz, a St. Augustine Beach Republican, is joining with U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, to make the case to President Joe Biden for paroling an asylum-seeker stopped at the southern U.S. border.
Afghan Special Forces Commando Abdul Wasi Safi is one of those soldiers left behind in war-torn Afghanistan after helping the United States and, as a result, has faced terrible choices. Now he needs help and should not be deported, the two Congressmen wrote in a letter sent Thursday.
“I fought alongside soldiers like Abdul in Afghanistan who risked their lives to build a better future for their country while keeping Americans safe,” said Waltz, a former Green Beret in the U.S. Army, in a prepared statement.
The steady stream of migrants seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border is a common reason for conservatives to raise the alarm about illegal drugs and criminal elements seeping into the country. Safi, however, presents a special and urgent case — and an opportunity for the administration to address a wrong, the two Republicans wrote to Biden.
Afghan U.S. allies like Safi who were left behind in the “disastrous and hasty exit“ as the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, “are now subject to Taliban reprisals and countless unable to escape have been killed,” Waltz said. “We owe it to those who risked their lives to fight with Americans to ensure their safety and it’s despicable this administration would rather deport Abdul than thousands of other migrants illegally crossing our southern border.”
Safi, the letter recounts, was forced to flee Afghanistan and went to Pakistan. There, he was able to get a Brazilian visitor’s visa. While waiting for an entry visa to the United States, where he could be reunited with his brother, who had gotten a Special Immigrant Visa, Safi was beaten and robbed, the letter says.
“As his personal situation worsened, Mr. Safi made the difficult decision to trek north, towards the U.S. southern border,” the letter says. “On Sept. 30, 2022, Mr. Safi was arrested by Border Patrol agents near Eagle Pass, Texas.”
Safi should not be returned to Afghanistan, given the Taliban’s brutality against those who helped American forces there, the letter says. His request for asylum, based on a credible fear of persecution, is likely to be granted, the Congressman wrote.
“With these factors and his gallant service with American forces in mind … we ask that you consider paroling Mr. Safi into the United States while he awaits a hearing on his justifiable asylum claim.”
Post Views: 0
floridapolitics.com · by Anne Geggis · December 23, 2022
11. The CIA is using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia
The CIA is using a European NATO ally’s spy service to conduct a covert sabotage campaign inside Russia under the agency’s direction, according to former U.S. intelligence and military officials. | Jack Murphy
jackmurphywrites.com · by Jack Murphy · December 24, 2022
The campaign involves long standing sleeper cells that the allied spy service has activated to hinder Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by waging a secret war behind Russian lines.
Years in the planning, the campaign is responsible for many of the unexplained explosions and other mishaps that have befallen the Russian military industrial complex since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, according to three former U.S. intelligence officials, two former U.S. military officials and a U.S. person who has been briefed on the campaign. The former officials declined to identify specific targets for the CIA-directed campaign, but railway bridges, fuel depots and power plants in Russia have all been damaged in unexplained incidents since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.
While no American personnel are involved on the ground in Russia in the execution of these missions, agency paramilitary officers are commanding and controlling the operations, according to two former intelligence officials and a former military official. The paramilitary officers are assigned to the CIA’s Special Activities Center but detailed to the agency’s European Mission Center, said the two former intelligence officials. Using an allied intelligence service to give the CIA an added layer of plausible deniability was an essential factor in U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to approve the strikes, according to a former U.S. special operations official.
While command and control over the sabotage program resides with the CIA for legal reasons, the NATO ally has a strong say in which operations go forward since it is their people taking the risks. Sources repeatedly pushed back against any notion that the NATO ally was a CIA proxy, describing it is a close partnership. The European ally whose operatives are conducting the sabotage campaign is not being named here because doing so might endanger the operational security of cells that are still operational inside of Russia.
Any covert action undertaken by U.S. agencies must be authorized by a presidential finding. After the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia had interfered with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, President Barack Obama signed such a finding for covert action against Russia before he left office, according to The Washington Post. The finding involved the National Security Agency and the military’s Cyber Command in addition to the CIA and included a scheme to plant “cyberweapons in Russia’s infrastructure,” according to the Post.
That 2016 finding also included language about sabotage operations, according to a former CIA official. Other former officials said that the current sabotage campaign would have required either an entirely new finding or an amendment to a pre-existing finding on Russia.
CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp denied any agency involvement in the wave of mysterious explosions that have struck Russia’s defense and transportation infrastructure in 2022. “The allegation that CIA is somehow supporting saboteur networks in Russia is categorically false,” the spokesperson said. Under Title 50 of the U.S. Code which authorizes covert actions, the CIA can lawfully deny the existence of these operations to everyone except the so-called “Gang of Eight” – the chairmen and ranking minority members of the congressional intelligence committees, the speaker and minority leader of the House of Representatives, and the majority and minority leaders of the Senate.
The NATO ally’s campaign overseen by the CIA is only one of several covert operations efforts being undertaken by Western nations in Russia, according to two former U.S. special operations officials. Alarmed by Russia’s February invasion, other European intelligence services have activated long-dormant resistance networks in their own countries, who in turn have been running operatives into Russia to create chaos without CIA help, according to a former U.S. military official. In addition, as has been widely reported, Ukrainian intelligence and special operations forces are running their own operations behind Russian lines.
The multiple sabotage campaigns are having an impact, according to Mick Mulroy, a former CIA paramilitary officer. “I do not know who is behind these attacks, but their value is substantial and serves multiple purposes,” he said. “Russia has had a significant problem keeping up with its logistical supply lines. These attacks further complicate its effort to supply its forces.”
They also serve to sow doubt in Kremlin minds, because they show that Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not have control over what is happening in his own country,” said Mulroy. “Is it a covert program, is it disgruntled Russians sabotaging their own plant, or is it pure incompetence of the workers? I don’t know, and perhaps the Kremlin doesn’t either. This matters to paranoid autocrats.”
Indeed, by refusing to take credit for individual acts of sabotage committed by the European spy service under the CIA’s direction the two agencies hope to send the Kremlin a message while sending Russia security services scrambling in all directions to find the culprits, according to a former U.S. military official. “With sabotage and subversion, there is a psychological component,” the former official said.
“There have been many fires across Russia over the past few months, particularly in weapons-manufacturing plants and other crucial sites,” said Russia analyst Olga Lautman, a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “Russian media has reported on these fires as separate incidents. They have not created any propaganda around these incidents and treat them as accidents.”
For instance, when a Russian Aerospace Defense Forces building burned down in late April, killing more than 20 people, Russian state media reported that the blaze was caused by faulty wiring. But the Kremlin understands that these are not just accidental fires and industrial accidents, despite what official media broadcast, according to a former U.S. intelligence official.
The overlapping nature of the various covert action campaigns behind Russian lines has created problems for the Western spy services running those missions. Over the summer, it became clear to CIA officers that there was increasingly a need for deconfliction amongst their own surrogate forces in Russia, according to two former military officials. Numerous incidents took place in which rail lines or power lines were cut that unintentionally interfered with other missions, one of them said.
Worse yet, two sabotage cells compromised each other while casing the same target, according to the two former military officials. One operative died and another was captured in the resulting firefight with Russian security services, they said. A lot of work has been done since then to prevent a repeat of such incidents, according to one of the former special operations officials.
Excerpt from a military sabotage manual
The roots of these sabotage missions inside Russia go deep. The allied spy service had emplaced some of the caches of explosives and gear used by these cells more than a decade previously, according to two former military officials. At the time, that spy service was acting unilaterally, without any CIA participation, according to a former U.S. special operations official and a person who has been briefed on the sabotage campaign.
The CIA became involved in reaction to Russia’s 2014 partial invasion of Ukraine. After the Kremlin occupied the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, the agency began planning with the allied spy service to push more operatives into Russia with orders to lay low until they were needed. The first of these sleeper cells under the combined control of the CIA and the allied spy service infiltrated into Russia in 2016, according to a former U.S. military official and a U.S. person who has been briefed on the campaign.
With the CIA’s knowledge, the allied spy service provided the undercover sleeper cell operatives with what the intelligence community calls “legends” – false biographies that would explain their presence in Russia – and the documents to back those cover stories up. There is also what a former military official called “an extensive network” of front companies that were established as platforms to support such behind-the-lines operations. “Some of them go back almost 20 years,” the former military official said.
Both intelligence agencies have made it a priority to ensure that the operatives had plausible deniability should they be discovered by the Russian security services, according to two former intelligence officials. Another priority is to minimize the risk to Russian civilians. “Part of their targeting guidance is to stay away from civilian deaths,” said a former military official.
After the 2016 infiltrations, more teams slipped into Russia over the next several years. Some smuggled in new munitions, while others have relied on the original caches, according to two former military officials and a person who has been briefed on the sabotage campaign.
Two days before February’s invasion of Ukraine, the allied spy service through which the CIA is running the sabotage campaign used a covert communications system to activate its sleeper cells across Russia, according to a former military official and a person who has been briefed on the campaign. Those cells discreetly moved to the locations of buried munitions caches around the country and dug up explosives and other material needed for upcoming operations. After inventorying and checking their equipment, the operatives waited for the orders to hit their targets.
When Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border on February 26, the sleeper cells were standing by, ready to act.
Some of the first sabotage attacks behind Russian lines occurred outside Russia, in Belarus, when “a clandestine network of railway workers, hackers, and dissident security forces” began attacking rail lines that connected Russia and Ukraine, according to The Washington Post. “Starting on Feb. 26, two days after the invasion began, a succession of five sabotage attacks against signaling cabinets brought train traffic to an almost complete halt,” the Post reported, quoting a former railway worker now living in Poland.
As the war in Ukraine has continued, some of the teams overseen by the CIA and the NATO ally’s spy service have moved back and forth across international borders to collect more munitions and to conduct mission rehearsals, according to a former military official.
The CIA and the host nation’s elite special operations unit have overseen some of those mission rehearsals, which are conducted in the allied spy service’s home country, according to a former U.S. military official and a person who has been briefed on the campaign. JSOC has also supported the sabotage operations with targeting information from intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, such as drones, that can see and hear deep into Russia, they said.
“The elite-level teams that we have the best relationships with are almost always given air surveillance support for major sabotage ops” behind Russian lines, the person who has been briefed on the campaign said, adding that some of the ISR platforms are models that have never been publicly revealed. “Drones we don’t even know about yet are loitering all over the Ukrainian and Russian airspace,” the person said.
Excerpt from a military sabotage manual
The CIA has been conducting sabotage operations since the agency’s inception in 1947. During the Cold War the agency planned and executed such operations from Cuba to Vietnam and throughout Central America. Similar missions were also a key part of the agency’s plans for Western Europe, should the Soviet Union ever have invaded.
But while those plans for a Soviet-occupied Europe involved so-called “stay behind” networks of partisans – civilians living normal lives until the enemy invades, at which point they activate to begin conducting sabotage and espionage missions – the current campaign inside Russia itself bears a closer resemblance to CIA operations ahead of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In the run up to that invasion, CIA Ground Branch paramilitary officers trained 70 Kurdish cells and then deployed them into Saddam Hussein-controlled portions of Iraq, targeting infrastructure. “We ended up with a lot of teams…operating inside Iraqi-controlled space,” said former CIA operations officer Sam Faddis, who led one of the agency teams. Their activities included derailing a 90-car train and blowing up the office of an Iraqi intelligence officer. “It’s a way of saying screw you, we’re here, this is over,” Faddis said.
While sabotage may seem like a dated concept, recalling the exploits of T.E. Lawrence (“of Arabia”) in World War I and the Office of Strategic Services in World War II, it remains a relevant tool for disrupting an enemy’s logistics and sowing confusion in his rear areas.
Rail and power lines are linear targets that can be destroyed using explosives and other techniques. “While materials have improved, the assembly of rail lines has remained essentially unchanged since trains were invented,” writes Army Maj. Daniel Meegan in his 2020 Naval Postgraduate School thesis “Breaking Other People’s Toys: Sabotage in a Multipolar World.”
Meegan used three case studies in his research: Lawrence’s campaign against the Turks in World War I, OSS operations in Greece in World War II and the Weather Underground’s domestic terrorism activity in the United States in the 1970s. He concludes that such operations “show that very small groups of saboteurs can have dramatic impacts on much larger enemy organizations. This utilization of small sabotage forces allowed leaders and planners to focus their limited manpower and materiel elsewhere while presenting their enemies with multiple dilemmas.”
Excerpt from a military sabotage manual
The U.S. government has met news of the mysterious fires and explosions in Russia with silence. But Ukraine has been goading the Kremlin on social media about the events, suggesting more than once that careless smokers are responsible for unexplained fires at Russian military facilities. After a mysterious August fire destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in Belgorod just across the border from Ukraine, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Twitter account taunted Moscow with a warning that “smoking kills!”
“Another detonation of ammo ‘due to the heat’ in the Belgorod region in russia,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry quipped on Twitter in August after news of an explosion at an ammunition depot in Belgorod. “In a few months we will find out whether russian ammo can explode because of the cold.”
Ukrainian officials have also begun to hint at their own ability to strike targets with guerrilla operations behind enemy lines — both within occupied parts of Ukraine and in Russia. In August, a senior Ukrainian official told The New York Times that an attack on a Russian airbase in Crimea was carried out by “partisans” and that a Ukrainian “elite military unit” was responsible for blowing up a Russian ammunition depot on the occupied peninsula.
“It’s been widely reported that after the 2014 invasion of Crimea, U.S. intelligence started a robust training program for Ukrainian special operations forces. It is likely that these same forces are leading the effort of these sabotage operations in Crimea now,” said Mulroy.
Meanwhile, the mysterious explosions deep in Russian territory have continued. While these acts of sabotage can have both a psychological and substantive impact on the Kremlin’s offensive, they also run the risk of escalating conflict between the Western world and Russia beyond either side’s ability to estimate — or control.
So far, the targets struck by the operatives being run by the CIA through the allied spy service have largely been of tactical, rather than strategic, value. However, the danger exists that the acts of sabotage could, along with battlefield losses, potentially paint Putin into a corner and risk nuclear escalation.
Such strikes let Russia’s leaders know that they can be hit in their backyard. That could have a double effect of constraining Russia’s military options while encouraging Putin to escalate the conflict further, according to observers. “Though their military value can be debated, such acts might play to Putin’s greatest concerns and have outsized impact on his escalatory calculus,” said former CIA officer Douglas London.
But such considerations need not necessarily inhibit covert operations, according to Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at the Center for Naval Analyses. “There is always the danger of miscalculation regarding an adversaries’ red lines,” Kofman said. “It is a persistent risk, but it must be weighed against one’s objectives and an opponent’s likely options for retaliation. The key is to navigate a space between risk aversion to the point of paralysis, and wanton recklessness.”
As the war has dragged on, some NATO allies have backed away from supporting behind enemy lines operations in Russia. As the war matured, the political implications of such operations frightened some governments, however the United States and its key NATO ally running the sabotage programs have remained aggressive and forward leaning.
The longer the war lasts, the more likely it is that the sabotage campaign will become more brazen, according to a former special operations official, particularly if Putin escalates to the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction. “As we need to send a stronger message to Putin, you may see ops in Moscow and other key cities,” the former official said.
A note on the publication of this article:
Many will ask why an article of this importance is appearing on my personal website rather than in a prestigious publication. I will not detail the entire journey this article took at this time, but will say that while working with editors at mainstream publications I was asked to do things that were illegal and unethical in one instance, and in another instance I felt that a senior CIA official was able to edit my article by making off the record statements, before he leaked a story to the New York Times to undermine this piece.
I don’t begrudge the intelligence community for attempting to keep covert operations out of the newspapers. That’s their job, and in this case they were quite effective at it. However, I do blame the press for not fulfilling the most basic premise of their job.
This article went through a vigorous fact checking process, and was deemed newsworthy as the strategic bombings of Laos and Cambodia or the CIA’s secret drone campaign in Pakistan. Yet, it nearly never saw the light of day. Journalists can lack the circumspection to examine how their organizations come to mimic the institutions of power that they claim to speak truth to. At some point the equities they build with the intelligence community and military commands become more important than informing the public.
Indeed, the Russian government knows perfectly well who is sponsoring these sabotage strikes. Moreover, the intelligence community wants them to know. The only party left in the dark is the public at large, left unaware of the shadow war taking place behind the scenes.
Ultimately, I felt that I was being asked to compromise my work and put careers ahead of my own integrity.
That’s why this piece appears here.
Related
jackmurphywrites.com · by Jack Murphy · December 24, 2022
12. How are Western tech companies helping Ukraine fight Russia's hackers?
How are Western tech companies helping Ukraine fight Russia's hackers?
forces.net · by 24th December 2022 at 12:00pm
As Russia continues to bombard Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, it is also waging a dark and far less obvious war - sowing chaos from cyber space.
Russia’s sophisticated cyber war is hitting Ukraine’s IT systems, with Western companies helping Kyiv fight off the attacks - also aimed at nations helping to supply Ukraine with weapons.
Clint Watts, a former US Army Officer and General Manager, Microsoft Digitial Threat Analysis Center, told Forces News Russia are "going after the supply chain of all those military hardware companies or transportation locations" in Poland.
However he added Russia "focuses principally in Ukraine" and they "know where their targets of opportunity are".
"The big picture of cyber war in Ukraine is that it didn't turn into cyber armagedon, with every country hacking each other," he said.
"The Russians were actually very focused on the Russian military and the Russian government using cyber very much as a compliment of their military strategy."
Watch: Inside Ukraine's battle to ward off Russian missile attacks.
Microsoft has donated $100 million of support to Ukraine and, at the start of the war, alongside other tech companies, they helped Kyiv move its digital infrastructure into the cloud and out of reach of Russian hackers.
As well as Ukraine, Russia’s expected to try and manipulate public sentiment toward the war.
"The principal way which Russia goes about fighting its European adversaries from their perspective, or the US adversaries, is by political warfare," Mr Watts said.
"And they understand that very well.
"The way they do it often... has a cyber component, which is hack and leak operations - targeting people inside European governments or the military, dumping their secrets out into the open, try and shape public perceptions around the fight between Russia and Ukraine."
forces.net · by 24th December 2022 at 12:00pm
13. Volodymyr Zelensky Is Unstoppable
Or will a faction of Republican and Democratic US Congressman undermine him?
Volodymyr Zelensky Is Unstoppable
19fortyfive.com · by Julian McBride · December 23, 2022
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has been embroiled in Europe’s largest war in eighty years. After being offered to evacuate by NATO, Zelensky stayed in the capital of Kyiv to rally his military and stated “I do not need a ride. I need ammunition.”
The results spoke for themselves.
Not just being a president but using his rallying call to his fellow countrymen to fight off an imperialist aggressor, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU) have propped up an impressive string of victories and repelled the Russian Forces (RF) from their capital.
As Ukraine reorganized its forces to counterattack the RF, Zelensky would start to visit some of the hotspots in the war.
Frontline Visits by Zelensky
Some of his earlier trips included visiting Bucha, a city which caught international attention where Russian Forces executed hundreds of civilians. Another visit included the frontlines of Luhansk during Russia’s major offensive in the spring which saw the full temporary capture of the oblast. Though these visits did not cause many quarrels in Russian media, his most recent visits this past autumn became psychological blows.
After the ZSU’s lightning offensive in Kharkiv, Zelensky visited the liberated oblast. The speed of the offensive and collapse of Russian defensive lines prompted panic in the Kremlin. Putin would immediately “annex” the four occupied oblasts and call for a partial mobilization. This would be the start of the Kremlin’s problems.
After a grueling southern offensive in Kherson, the order was made by the Russian Ministry of Defense to withdraw from the city due to supply lines being cut and before the ZSU could close in on the city. After the left bank of Kherson and the provincial capital was liberated, Zelensky would visit in less than 24 hours, much to the ire of Russian media and popular bloggers.
The message was sent—the more Moscow continues to have military setbacks, the more Kyiv would take advantage of it to lower the morale of Russian frontline forces.
The recent visit by Zelensky to Bakhmut was a major morale booster to the ZSU. Mirroring WWI trench warfare, the Battle of Bakhmut has become some of the fiercest fighting of the war since the Siege of Mariupol.
The visit of Zelensky there was seen with shock and vindication by the Kremlin. Russian media has attempted to present Bakhmut as a Ukrainian meat grinder, even though they continue to be repulsed by ZSU defenders for the past five months. With Ukraine’s presidential visit, it shows the situation of the battle has not been going the way the Kremlin has presented it has.
Waning Power in the Kremlin?
Immediately after Zelensky’s visit, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the CEO and head of the Wagner Group visited the frontlines of Bakhmut to challenge Zelensky. After his publicity stunt, Dmitry Peskov announced that Putin would visit the frontlines. This will remain to be seen as the Russian President has cancelled some of the most notable events in the wake of military setbacks.
Prigozhin’s visit to Bakhmut is opportunistic for his own personal gain. Military setbacks have brought infighting amongst Putin’s inner circle and the once internationally feared strongman has lost the prestige and fear he once commanded.
With Wagner leading combat operations in the city, Prigozhin has built up his repertoire as a potential successor if Putin’s regime falls. With the city having little tactical advantage with Ukraine’s liberation of Lyman, Prigozhin has looked for victories to prove that his mercenary organization is the best fighting force.
Further Efforts
Zelensky’s recent visit to the White House and Congress was met with thunderous applause and praise from lawmakers and POTUS. Using his charisma once again, he came to DC in the military fatigues, as he vowed to not wear a suit if his people were suffering from the Russian onslaught. This is a stark contrast to the Russian elite who deferred their kids from conscription and have refused to visit their own frontline troops.
Akin to FDR being courted by Churchill, Zelensky has convinced the strongest member of NATO and the one country who can outproduce supplies more efficiently than anyone else that Ukraine can succeed and win this war.
With Zelensky using his charisma and trusting his generals to lead the country to victory, the Ukrainian president has convinced allies that not only can his country resist Russia, but they have the military capabilities of retaking all occupied territories. With further setbacks, Kyiv looks to take advantage of Kremlin infighting, and a wartime leader who has shown more courage than Putin, Ukraine will continue to march forward to victory.
Julian McBride is a forensic anthropologist and independent journalist born in New York. He reports and documents the plight of people around the world who are affected by conflicts, rogue geopolitics, and war, and also tells the stories of war victims whose voices are never heard. Julian is the founder and director of the Reflections of War Initiative (ROW), an anthropological NGO which aims to tell the stories of the victims of war through art therapy. As a former Marine, he uses this technique not only to help heal PTSD but also to share people’s stories through art, which conveys “the message of the brutality of war better than most news organizations.”
19fortyfive.com · by Julian McBride · December 23, 2022
14. U.S. colonel says troops watching outside Ukraine "ready if the call comes"
U.S. colonel says troops watching outside Ukraine "ready if the call comes"
Newsweek · by Fatma Khaled · December 22, 2022
American troops in the 101st Airborne Division positioned near Ukraine are prepared to respond if the war with Russia reaches allied territory, U.S. Army Colonel Ed Matthaidess recently said.
The troops are positioned in a way that allows their artillery to be within easy range of Ukraine. The proximity also allows members of the division to gather intelligence and monitor fighters around the Black Sea, according to Stars and Stripes, a U.S. military news organization.
Matthaidess said on Monday that troops are "ready if the call comes."
"We are ready for whatever comes our way, and I'm very confident that we will accomplish any mission that's given to us," Major General Joseph P. "J.P." McGee, 101st Airborne Division commander, said recently during an interview at the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base headquarters in Romania, according to Stars and Stripes.
Ukrainian servicemen sit on a tank near Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, on December 22, 2022. U.S. Army Colonel Ed Matthaidess recently said that American troops in the 101st Airborne Division positioned near Ukraine are prepared to respond if the war with Russia reaches allied territory. Photo by SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images
Functioning as the division's first operational mission in Europe since World War II, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team includes nearly 5,000 soldiers along NATO's southeastern flank, with many positioned at strategic locations near Romania's coastline.
The unit was ordered to be anchored in those locations in June as part of the effort by the United States to provide support across NATO territory in case the Russian war goes beyond the borders of Ukraine.
After Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Romania was viewed as the center of U.S. efforts to prevent Russian offensives in southern Europe, according to Stars and Stripes.
Meanwhile, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with a total of $21 billion in military assistance since the war began, including this week's security aid package of $1.85 billion.
"The American people are with you every step of the way," President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a press conference at the White House on Wednesday. "And we will stay as long as it takes."
"Your money is not charity," Zelensky assured lawmakers in his address to Congress. "It is an investment in global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way. You can speed up our victory. I know it. Let the world see that the United States are here."
The military aid is meant to equip Ukrainian forces with strong weaponry, equipment and ammunition. The U.S. overall security aid package includes the MIM-104 Patriot, which is a surface-to-air missile system, Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs), Cougar mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles, and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (Humvees).
Zelensky said this week that U.S. support to Ukraine "is crucial, not just to stand in such a fight, but to get to the turning point to win on the battlefield."
"We have artillery, yes. We have it. Is it enough? Quite honestly, not really," he added.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense for comment.
Newsweek · by Fatma Khaled · December 22, 2022
15. How Would a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Play Out?
We need to think. hard about the concluding paragraph. Very hard.
The first step is bankrupting the US INDOPACIFIC Strategy and THEN taking Taiwan. We must not bankrupt ourselves in preparing to defend Taiwan. A way to think about this may be that as long as we do not bankrupt ourselves we will be able to deter China indefinitely (if it is China's assessment that they must first bankrupt us to be successful). Therefore our first line of defense may be to defend our economic instrument of power.
Excerpts:
But Shlapak, also an East Asia specialist, dismissed recent U.S. military predictions of an invasion by 2027. These “confuse capability with intent,” he said. “China is certainly increasing its capability to take actions against Taiwan, but they recognize the inherent riskiness [of invasion].” He dismissed China’s “recent hardening of language” as “a reflection of their perception of tightening U.S.-Taiwan relations.” The status quo, he believes, will not change for the next 10 years or so, unless there are significant changes in Taiwan’s or China’s stance.
Steve Tsang, director of the University of London’s China Institute, had a similar prediction. In “bean-counting terms,” China will have the capacity to invade “roughly by 2027,” Tsang said, but it will still lack the overall organizational strength to carry out a full-scale invasion. “But when the point finally comes that Xi Jinping feels that he can do so at an acceptable level of cost, then he will do so,” he said. Tsang expects Xi to stay in power for life and to act against Taiwan in 10 to 20 years. An invasion, however, is “the last option,” he said. Beijing’s preferred solution is for the Taiwanese government to surrender so that Washington is unlikely to interfere, he said, though he expects Taiwan to bolster its defense and fight back—as is “normal for a vibrant democracy.”
In Tsang’s view, Beijing’s rhetoric serves to make people believe its behavior is about Chinese unification, when it is really about a bigger goal: to “bankrupt the American Indo-Pacific strategy” and make Taiwan a stronghold in China’s growing domination of the Pacific. For China, Tsang said, control of Taiwan is a crucial step in the “dream of national rejuvenation.”
How Would a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Play Out?
War-gamers plan for Taiwan’s D-Day.
By Neal E. Robbins, a freelance journalist based in Cambridge, England.
Foreign Policy · by Neal E. Robbins · December 23, 2022
SHRIVENHAM, England—It’s 2025. China has blockaded Taiwan. Aircraft carriers, submarines, and war planes circle the island, keeping out all but humanitarian aid. U.S., Taiwanese, and allied battleships hover nearby, but tense talks have drawn a blank. Then a bloody invasion starts.
How did it come to this?
Maj. Tom Mouat watches with dismay. This is not how things usually play out. “We’ve got to a shooting war, which is really depressing,” he said. The British war-gaming expert has run this simulation before. Normally, when pitting Beijing’s ambitions of control against its democratic neighbor’s commitment to self-governance, conflict just “inches a bit closer to happening.” Then everybody backs off. But this time, as Mouat put it, there is a stream of “declarations coming out of China, and [the war in] Ukraine has changed the balance.” Even as the game’s role-players were making their moves on Nov. 9, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in the real world, told his army chiefs to “comprehensively strengthen military training in preparation for war”—words seen as a warning for Taiwan and the United States, which helps arm Taipei and maintains a “keep them guessing” policy about its willingness to come to the island’s defense.
SHRIVENHAM, England—It’s 2025. China has blockaded Taiwan. Aircraft carriers, submarines, and war planes circle the island, keeping out all but humanitarian aid. U.S., Taiwanese, and allied battleships hover nearby, but tense talks have drawn a blank. Then a bloody invasion starts.
How did it come to this?
Maj. Tom Mouat watches with dismay. This is not how things usually play out. “We’ve got to a shooting war, which is really depressing,” he said. The British war-gaming expert has run this simulation before. Normally, when pitting Beijing’s ambitions of control against its democratic neighbor’s commitment to self-governance, conflict just “inches a bit closer to happening.” Then everybody backs off. But this time, as Mouat put it, there is a stream of “declarations coming out of China, and [the war in] Ukraine has changed the balance.” Even as the game’s role-players were making their moves on Nov. 9, Chinese President Xi Jinping, in the real world, told his army chiefs to “comprehensively strengthen military training in preparation for war”—words seen as a warning for Taiwan and the United States, which helps arm Taipei and maintains a “keep them guessing” policy about its willingness to come to the island’s defense.
The major, dressed in civilian clothing, sits in a long hall lined with tanks, a drone, and a fighter jet, which are part of a training exhibit at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom, where he works. Before him, folding tables hold a pastel gaming map of East Asia dotted with wooden discs bearing icons of ships, planes, troops, nukes, money, spies, and one—printed with a blue man at a lectern—that he keeps calling “waffly diplomatic action.”
Around the table, U.K. and U.S. military and academic types—who for security reasons must remain anonymous—are playing the parts of China’s leadership, China’s military, and the governments of the United States, Taiwan, Australia, and Japan. They have set their secret policy goals and one by one propose anything they want to happen in pursuit of their countries’ aims—anything, that is, they can make a convincing argument for. The players then discuss each action. If they disagree on its plausibility, Mouat—as the game facilitator—crowdsources a judgment on its chance of success from both the other players and expert observers around the table who choose from among 10 percent to 90 percent probability cards. He then throws out the red and green casino dice, representing chance. What is deemed to be unlikely might still succeed if the numbers rolled are high enough (or vice versa). Success or failure is calculated with a probability curve combining the numbers on the dice and the average of the percentages on the cards.
Mouat, who has developed war games since 1988, has refined his rules over time based on academic research about crowdsourcing, role-playing, and prediction. A normal game, he said, takes around three hours and should not run for longer than a day. “The cone of probabilities gets wider the longer you play, so the chances of getting a good predictive outcome are less,” he said.
So-called matrix board games like this are used regularly by diplomats, policy analysts, and senior military officials not only to discover how conflicts might unfold but also to “put a face to things they know are true but are reluctant to accept,” said Rand Corporation war games expert David A. Shlapak. “Having them understand their own unspoken beliefs about the world is tremendously valuable.” Such games have helped parse many a global dilemma and are credited, for example, with a key role in the defeat of the German U-boats in World War II.
One of the earliest known war games was designed in ancient China, often credited to the general Sun Tzu. By the 17th century, complex war games had been developed, such as a “king’s game” that was widely used by the militaries of the German states. In the 19th and 20th centuries, as growing armies made full-scale mobilization practice impractical or provocative, more nations started using war games to help simulate deployment. War games have since grown apace, for both strategy and leisure. Mouat runs classified games for decision-makers in Britain and other countries; dedicated aficionados also play unclassified versions that Mouat has posted online, along with a 52-page practical guide.
Our game, which used unclassified briefing materials due to my presence as a reporter, is part of a training series for military strategists honing their analytical skills. Mouat described the exercise as “qualitative, not quantitative, less single-shot kill probability and more: How effective was [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s speech and Donald Trump’s tweet?” He has been in demand of late—especially since U.K. Defence Minister Ben Wallace, Mouat said, has been encouraging military specialists, policy officials, and parliamentarians to use the games to “do more thinking and understanding” and act less on “knee-jerk reactions.”
Tonight’s game begins in the present and opens with the Chinese government player pushing a policy of unification through economic pressure. Beijing offers Taipei subsidized food supplies to undercut U.S. interests and gain leverage over the island’s economy. None of the players object, all regarding the action as routine, so Beijing’s move goes ahead. But the island is unfazed. In its turn, Taiwan extends its compulsory military service period to boost its forces, which are massively outgunned by China. Washington sends an economic delegation to Beijing, hoping to defuse tensions, but the players and expert observers groan. The probability cards come out, setting a 30 percent chance of success, and a low dice roll shows the U.S. overture fails to help.
A year later in sped-up game time, the United States boosts military naval exercises with Australia, Japan, and other countries off the coast of the Philippines. In response, China puts on a big show of force around the Taiwan Strait, as it did for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit this past August. Lots of wooden naval and aircraft game pieces are flung out on the board to represent this display.
Mouat declares the game has now jumped another year ahead. China, rebuffed in its diplomatic overtures to Taiwan, begins a stealth occupation of the Kinmen islands. Just off China’s coast, these fortified islets are a favorite destination for ferry-borne Chinese tourists, but the latest batch turn out to be out-of-uniform soldiers, who, without firing a shot, occupy this remote bit of Taiwan. The United States announces a dispatch of new high-tech arms to Taiwan. Taiwan defends Kinmen and its other far-flung, front-line coastal islets with sea mines. China reacts forcefully with an air-and-naval blockade, cutting off Taiwan’s 23.5 million residents from the outside world. So begins a Cuban missile crisis-style standoff, with only humanitarian aid allowed in.
By now it’s early 2025. China, the United States, and Taiwan meet for negotiations, which quickly falter—with China insisting Taiwan accept Chinese control, and Taiwan standing firm in refusing this involuntary unification. Still no shots have been fired, but China masses invasion forces on its coast, a process that takes at least a month.
Will they really invade? The players debate this point, keeping in character:
China: “We are open to negotiations.”
Taiwan: “We just tried negotiating and there seemed to be an impasse.”
China: “We are saying your government has been entirely unwilling to open dialogue [as we define it]; ergo, we are going to talk to your government directly.”
Taiwan: “Untrue.”
China: “Then my policy action is to order our troops … to put boots on the ground, to not shoot civilians, make a clear beeline toward the Taiwan capital, and then take the ruling government and parliament hostage.”
Taiwan: “That is not going to work. We are going to be able to pick them up and detect them coming in quite easily. Our key government figures are probably in a bunker at this point.”
Invading Taiwan is much more difficult than invading Ukraine. Separated from the mainland by a 160-kilometer strait where rough weather makes invasion nearly impossible for all but a few months a year, Taiwan is defended on most sides by forbidding coastal cliffs. The most feasible approach is via heavily fortified low-lying lands on the west, where treacherous mudflats would make amphibious crossing under fire a nightmare for attackers. The conventional wisdom is that China, even with its 2 million-strong military and the largest navy in the world, does not yet have the capacity or adequate amphibious forces to push through an invasion in which the United States backs up Taiwan. But in this game, China is undeterred.
The Chinese government player believes the time is right. The Chinese military makes a chilling announcement: “We ask [the people of Taiwan] if they would be willing to lose absolutely everything [rather than] come to a mutually agreeable solution.” With negotiations faltering, China flies in special forces to capture the elected Taiwanese leaders in Taipei (much as Russia tried to do in Kyiv early in its invasion). Now bloodshed begins. Pressing on to a full invasion risks massive Chinese troop losses, greater catastrophe in Taiwan, and an upheaval in the global balance of power. But still the United States is dithering, unwilling to commit forces, and insists on taking the conflict to the United Nations, which consumes another week.
Here the game ends.
How the fighting and its shock waves pan out are for another game format—“a Taiwan invasion game” using different rules, Mouat said.
In the debriefing, the player representing China’s government said that she played aggressively but contended it had been “a very leveled escalation,” since Beijing had let in humanitarian aid and attempted to “starve them out” before attacking. But why did the United States fail to respond to the invasion in time? The U.S. player cited lack of global support for Taiwan’s legitimacy and post-Ukraine war fatigue. Could China or the United States really risk going without Taiwan’s world-leading microchip manufacturing? Why didn’t the United States forcefully break the blockade, imposing sanctions on China when it had a chance? Could that have persuaded China to back down? Everyone went away mulling such questions.
According to Mouat, matrix games can get things right 60 percent of the time, better than many individual analysts, but the ultimate goal is to stimulate “intelligent conversations.”
Experts consulted by Foreign Policy before the game agreed that an invasion is possible, even likely, but disagreed on when it might take place. “Given Xi Jinping’s track record, the war could start at any time, and it could unfold in ways that surprise us all,” said analyst Ian Easton, the author of The Chinese Invasion Threat. For Easton, on top of the Chinese military buildup, Beijing’s firing of ballistic missiles near Taiwan in August was “destabilizing behavior” with no basis in international law and “therefore must be regarded as a signal of hostile intent.”
But Shlapak, also an East Asia specialist, dismissed recent U.S. military predictions of an invasion by 2027. These “confuse capability with intent,” he said. “China is certainly increasing its capability to take actions against Taiwan, but they recognize the inherent riskiness [of invasion].” He dismissed China’s “recent hardening of language” as “a reflection of their perception of tightening U.S.-Taiwan relations.” The status quo, he believes, will not change for the next 10 years or so, unless there are significant changes in Taiwan’s or China’s stance.
Steve Tsang, director of the University of London’s China Institute, had a similar prediction. In “bean-counting terms,” China will have the capacity to invade “roughly by 2027,” Tsang said, but it will still lack the overall organizational strength to carry out a full-scale invasion. “But when the point finally comes that Xi Jinping feels that he can do so at an acceptable level of cost, then he will do so,” he said. Tsang expects Xi to stay in power for life and to act against Taiwan in 10 to 20 years. An invasion, however, is “the last option,” he said. Beijing’s preferred solution is for the Taiwanese government to surrender so that Washington is unlikely to interfere, he said, though he expects Taiwan to bolster its defense and fight back—as is “normal for a vibrant democracy.”
In Tsang’s view, Beijing’s rhetoric serves to make people believe its behavior is about Chinese unification, when it is really about a bigger goal: to “bankrupt the American Indo-Pacific strategy” and make Taiwan a stronghold in China’s growing domination of the Pacific. For China, Tsang said, control of Taiwan is a crucial step in the “dream of national rejuvenation.”
Foreign Policy · by Neal E. Robbins · December 23, 2022
16. Three foreign policy developments to watch for in 2023
Tell me how north Korea is conducting brinkmanship? What is the "brink?" We need to understand the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime to include the strategy of political warfare and blackmail diplomacy and the pursuit of advanced warfighting capabilities so that the regime can dominate the peninsula either through subversion or force.. Once understanding all of this we can make an assessment about any "brink" the regime has. Is a nuclear test "the brink?" I think not (unless we make it so).
Three foreign policy developments to watch for in 2023
by Tom Rogan, National Security Writer & Online Editor | December 23, 2022 08:30 AM
Washington Examiner · December 23, 2022
From the war in Ukraine to China's escalating hostility toward Taiwan, 2022 was a highly consequential year in geopolitics. Here are three things to watch for in 2023.
1) Further Russian reversals in Ukraine
Russia is likely to suffer further setbacks in Ukraine. The fundamental challenges facing Russian President Vladimir Putin's military in Ukraine are probably unsolvable. Russian forces are poorly led, badly equipped, running very short of artillery and other standoff munitions, and beset by low morale. In contrast, Ukrainian forces are highly motivated and generally well-equipped. We should expect Russian forces to struggle in the face of coming Ukrainian counteroffensives. If Crimea is threatened, Putin may order the limited use of nuclear weapons in a desperate attempt to force Western pressure on Ukraine to adopt a ceasefire. Whether the Russian military would follow a nuclear strike order is an open question.
Ukraine's already highly limited appetite to consider a ceasefire will also diminish in tandem with its growing battlefield success. Putin's ability to reopen the Belarus front in support of a successful offensive toward Kyiv is doubtful.
FROM BELARUS WITHOUT MUCH LOVE: RUSSIA'S EXAGGERATED OFFENSIVE ASPIRATIONS
2) An Israeli-Iranian showdown amid Biden-Netanyahu tensions
When Benjamin Netanyahu returns to office as Israeli prime minister, he will face two key challenges.
First, there's the frustration of a Biden administration that despises far-right members of Netanyahu's coalition government. Second, there's the rising threat of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu's challenge is that he needs the Biden administration's support if he is to increase international pressure on Iran significantly. Netanyahu will also need the Biden administration's support to develop a credible military option for degrading Iran's nuclear program. If he fails to thread the needle on these issues, Netanyahu may find himself in the unenviable position of being at once diplomatically isolated, facing an aggressive Iranian nuclear threat, an existential threat in Israeli eyes, and unable to confront that threat with confidence. Expect the Biden administration to leverage new support for Israel against greater Israeli support for U.S. concerns related to China and the war in Ukraine.
The new year may be a very significant one in U.S.-Israeli relations and for Iran's nuclear ambitions.
3) Kim Jong Un's return to nuclear brinkmanship
With escalating ballistic missile launches in 2022, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sought to pressure the Biden administration and South Korea into making economic concessions. But facing a more hawkish conservative government in power in Seoul, Kim's gambit hasn't paid off.
The new year will almost certainly entail further escalation by North Korea. While an anticipated new nuclear weapons test is yet to occur, Kim may roll the dice if he is unable to garner a more concessionary stance. There's a significant prospect of 2023 looking more like 2017 and its repeated intercontinental ballistic missile launches. Kim may gamble that this escalation will have a greater concessionary impact on the Biden administration as the United States continues to face the distraction of the war in Ukraine and escalating tensions with China. On that point, Beijing may seek to leverage Kim's escalation to extract its own concessions from Washington.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Washington Examiner · December 23, 2022
17. Game changing year of troubles, conflicts ends in Asia
Game changing year of troubles, conflicts ends in Asia - UCA News
Union of Catholic Asian News
ucanews.com
Game changing year of troubles, conflicts ends in Asia
Russian invasion of Ukraine added salt to wounds of war in West Asia and to flare-ups in East Asia
Ribbons wishing for peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula hang on a military fence at the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas in Paju on Jan. 1. (Photo: Jung Yeon-je / AFP)
Published: December 23, 2022 11:46 AM GMT
Updated: December 23, 2022 11:57 AM GMT
Asia, the world’s largest continent, became the hotbed of conflicts this year with questionable military and trade alliances among nations following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
The Russian invasion of the neighboring state added salt to the wounds of war in Syria, Yemen and Palestine in West Asia and to flare-ups in Taiwan and the Korean peninsula in the East.
Perhaps, the most direct fallout of this year’s Ukraine war in Asia is the sharp deterioration in Japan’s ties with its maritime neighbor. Japan now openly blames Russia for the “occupation” of the Kuril Islands – something it hasn’t done in the past. Moscow, in turn, has designated Japan as an “unfriendly” nation.
As of Dec. 19, North Korea conducted 65 ballistic missile tests, which also have something to do with the war in Ukraine. After the rare record this year, which proved the North is maturing as a nuclear state, a North Korean nuclear test is now more a matter of “when” than “if.”
This year was a game-changing year for South Korea as Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative leader, replaced Moon Jae-in who tried to mend ties with Pyongyang. Yoon, on the other, has prioritized strengthening the alliance with the US to take on the North.
Next year is important for the Korean peninsula, as it marks the 75th anniversary of North Korea’s founding and the 70th anniversary of the Korean War.
Regarding East Asia, the broad-based resistance to the February 2021 coup in Myanmar will continue to exact a terrible human toll next year as the crackdown by the country’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, has already turned the civil unrest into a bloody civil war.
Though violence in Afghanistan has sharply dropped since the Taliban seized power in August last year, starvation caused mostly by Western sanctions is leaving more Afghans dead – including millions of children – compared with the US occupation days. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for children and women in the landlocked Central Asian nation.
After a tumultuous year, nuclear-armed Pakistan is passing through a relative calm these days under a caretaker government. But that is the lull before the storm as everything is not fine in the Islamic country’s ties with India, with who it has fought two wars.
Adding to the Asian woes is the ongoing power rivalry between the US, the world’s largest arms spender, and China, Asia’s largest economy, which is now fought on the economic front, forcing many Asian nations to pick and choose their allies.
When US and Chinese planes collided in 2001, it took months of diplomacy to resolve the row despite a period of reasonable calm between the world’s two superpowers. Today, it would be harder as competition with China has become an ordering principle of US policy.
For the US, China has turned an existential threat so the parallels between Ukraine and Taiwan were always drawn not to negotiate with Russia and to keep China under check.
Though a China-US clash over Taiwan is unlikely in 2023, the military build-up is high around the island and in the South China Sea.
The US had enough reasons to increase its hostility towards China, starting with the Trump administration. The US is slipping in many ways when it comes to economics and finance, and diplomacy. But it does mean that the world’s biggest arms spender will leave the fray without fighting.
As the US wasted many decades fighting costly conflicts in the Middle East to secure fossil fuel which is currently destined to end up in the dustbin of history, China built industries and infrastructure that would make it the world’s workshop.
China today is not a US-compliant client state and can challenge US global power in Africa and South America. Forget about Asia.
With this larger aim in mind, the US has unveiled a whopping $858 billion defense budget for next year – $45 billion more than President Joe Biden asked for.
This will force some of Washington’s trusted allies in Asia like South Korea, Japan, Thailand and the Philippines to follow suit with their military budgets next year as the future of conflict is increasingly shaped by developments in cyberspace rather than on traditional battlefields.
The future of conflict will not be about oil but about microchips, a crucial component of the digital economy. Asian nations like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan excel in their production.
Together with the US, they account for 80 percent of global microchip production. These Asian nations will be brought under a common platform by the US to take on China, which is making efforts to increase its 15 percent global production share to gain greater control over this crucial commodity in the digital economy.
On his maiden trip to Asia in May this year, US president Joe Biden visited the semiconductor plant of Samsung, the Korean chaebol that is also the largest chipmaker in the world.
“These little chips, only a few nanometers thick, are the key to propelling us into the next era of humanity’s technological development,” Biden said during his Asian trip.
The Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), a US-led economic grouping started by Biden during his Asia visit, comprises 12 countries, including Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It is aimed at isolating China.
Washington has proposed a “Chip 4” pact with South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, all powerhouses in the semiconductor supply chain.
Semiconductors are a key part of cooperation among the QUAD nations, which include the US, India, Japan and Australia.
Thus, the war in Asia has taken the trade route to disrupt the pandemic-hit Asian economy further next year.
China, at the same time, has become a warring party in an armed conflict since May 2020 with Indian soldiers. A consensus for disengagement and dialogue has not emerged. Fighting took place this month also.
India and China fought a full-fledged war in 1962 over border disputes which have proved a Himalayan task for nuclear-powered Asian superpowers which at times cover a nuclear Pakistan.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
Lend your helping hand!
Unequal Christians of Asian Churches is a new series of features aimed to help us see prejudice and bias that are at work in our Church. They also help us see the struggles of Catholics to live out their faith.
Such features come to you for FREE, but it cost us to produce them.
Help UCA News publish such great stories.
Donate Now
Latest News
Terror attack at Kurdish center in Paris leaves three dead
'Bikini killer' Charles Sobhraj flies to France after release
UNSC trying to 'destabilize' Myanmar, junta says
Game changing year of troubles, conflicts ends in Asia
Christmas overshadowed by persecution, economic woes in Asia
Selling Christmas in Muslim-majority Bangladesh
ucanews.com
18. China is about to get tougher on deepfakes in an unprecedented way. Here's what the rules mean
China is about to get tougher on deepfakes in an unprecedented way. Here's what the rules mean
CNBC · by Arjun Kharpal · December 23, 2022
KEY POINTS
- In January, China will introduce first-of-its-kind regulation around “deepfakes” as Beijing ramps up its control over internet content.
- Some of China’s rules governing “deep synthesis technologies” include getting user consent to produce digitally altered images and prohibiting the dissemination of fake news.
- Analysts say the law tackles two goals — tighter online censorship and getting ahead of regulation around new technologies.
China will introduce rules governing the use of deep synthesis technology in January 2023. Deepfakes, where artificial intelligence is used to manipulate images and videos, are a concern for Beijing as it ramps up control over online content.
Fotografielink | Istock | Getty Images
In January, China will introduce first-of-its-kind regulation on "deepfakes," ramping up control over internet content.
Deepfakes are synthetically generated or altered images or videos that are made using a form of artificial intelligence. The tech can be used to alter an existing video, for example by putting the face of a politician over an existing video or even creating fake speech.
The result is fabricated media that appears to be real but isn't.
Beijing announced its rules governing "deep synthesis technologies" earlier this year, and finalized them in December. They will come into effect on Jan. 10.
Here are some of the key provisions:
- Users must give consent if their image is to be used in any deep synthesis technology.
- Deep synthesis services cannot use the technology to disseminate fake news.
- Deepfake services need to authenticate the real identity of users.
- Synthetic content must have a notification of some kind to inform users that the image or video has been altered with technology.
- Content that goes against existing laws is prohibited, as is content that endangers national security and interests, damages the national image or disrupts the economy.
The powerful Cyberspace Administration of China is the regulator behind these rules.
Since the end of 2020, China has sought to rein in the power of the country's technology giants and introduced sweeping regulation in areas ranging from antitrust to data protection. But it has also sought to regulate emerging technologies and gone further than any other country in its tech rules.
Earlier this year, China introduced a rule governing how technology firms can use recommendation algorithms, in another first-of-its-kind law.
Analysts say the law tackles two goals — tighter online censorship and getting ahead of regulation around new technologies.
"Chinese authorities are clearly eager to crackdown on the ability of anti-regime elements to use deepfakes of senior leaders, including Xi Jinping, to spread anti-regime statement," Paul Triolo, the technology policy lead at consulting firm Albright Stonebridge, told CNBC.
"But the rules also illustrate that Chinese authorities are attempting to tackle tough online content issues in ways few other countries are doing, seeking to get ahead of the curve as new technologies such as AI-generated content start to proliferate online."
Triolo added that the AI regulations that Beijing has introduced in recent years are "designed to keep content regulation and censorship efforts one step ahead of emerging technologies, ensuring that Beijing can continue to anticipate the emergence of technologies that could be used to circumvent the overall control system."
Deep synthesis technology isn't all bad. It can have some positive applications across areas such as education and health care.
But China is trying to tackle its negative role in producing fake information.
Kendra Schaefer, Beijing-based partner at Trivium China consultancy, pointed CNBC toward her note published in February when the draft rules were announced, in which she discussed the implications of the landmark regulation.
"The interesting bit is that China is taking aim at one of the critical threats to our society in the modern age: the erosion of trust in what we see and hear, and the increasing difficulty of separating truth from lies," the note said.
Through the introduction of regulation, China's various regulatory bodies have been building experience in enforcing tech rules. There are some parts of the deepfake regulation that are unclear, such as how to prove you have consent from another to use their image. But on the whole, Trivium said in its note, China's existing regulatory system will help it enforce the rules.
"China is able to institute these rules because it already has systems in place to control the transmission of content in online spaces, and regulatory bodies in place that enforce these rules," the note said.
CNBC · by Arjun Kharpal · December 23, 2022
19. Breaking China’s Hold
Excerpts:
How far and fast Xi’s new economic strategy will go is debatable, but some signs of coercive economics are already apparent. In 2017, China blocked consumer products, travel, and cultural trade with South Korea because it deployed a U.S. anti-missile system (aimed at North Korea). In 2020, Beijing restricted trade with Australia as punishment for Canberra’s desire to investigate COVID-19’s origins. In late 2021, China began boycotting Lithuanian goods in response to the Baltic nation’s establishing closer diplomatic ties with Taiwan. If unchallenged, China’s bid on supply chains will further shift patterns of production and trade in its favor.
China is creating more enterprises like Huawei in semiconductors, biotechnology, and other industries. At some point, if Washington does something Beijing dislikes, China may simply stop the supply of crucial goods in these sectors. The nature of China’s economic challenge has changed. America must adapt to meet it.
Breaking China’s Hold
As Beijing’s ambition of overtaking the American economy stalls, its strategy is shifting to economic coercion. The U.S. must be prepared.
By Dan Blumenthal and Derek Scissors
The Atlantic · by Dan Blumenthal, Derek Scissors · December 23, 2022
The United States is in danger of missing a profound change in the economic component of China’s geopolitical strategy. Chinese President Xi Jinping has downgraded the Communist Party’s ambition to overtake the U.S. in economic size (though that is still officially a goal). Instead, his priority is to minimize China’s dependence on other countries and maximize its ability to coerce them economically. This is an implicit acknowledgment that China can’t achieve the aim of being a truly rich nation anytime soon. But the U.S. cannot afford to be complacent: China can wield its very large economy as a strategic weapon.
Just as the U.S. previously needed to respond to a China that was bent on becoming the world’s foremost economy, Washington now needs to respond to a China bent on long-term economic coercion to secure the interests of the Communist party and the Chinese nation. Domestic action by the U.S. is important, and is easier to achieve, starting with better understanding Xi’s goals. Internationally, to persuade friends and allies to limit their reliance on China, the U.S. must revive a moribund trade policy.
Xi clarified China’s new approach in a series of speeches in 2020, claiming that the “powerful gravitational field” of the state-controlled Chinese market can be used to reshape supply chains in Beijing’s favor. In Xi’s view, this is essential in what he’s called the “great struggle” against Western efforts to limit China’s technological advancement and target its import vulnerabilities.
China has, of course, long engaged in industrial espionage and coercive technology transfer. And Xi’s “Made in China 2025” industrial plan has, since 2015, provided sweeping government assistance to such sectors as semiconductors and electric vehicles. Xi now seems to believe that China must redouble efforts to tilt economic leverage in its favor, as Beijing responds to what it views as an evolving American strategy of containment. Xi may see the decoupling of the two countries’ economies as ultimately inevitable—and may now be actively advancing it, on his preferred terms.
Read: Taiwan faces its Ukraine moment
At home, Xi evidently fears that a thriving private sector risks powerful constituencies developing outside party control—he has cracked down on activities perceived as threatening in this respect. With the party determined to retain control of the economy, potentially productive industries face many barriers to expansion. In their place are sectors that serve the party’s interests first. This is not conducive to innovation and scientific breakthrough and, along with deteriorating demographics and high debt, will continue to limit growth.
This hardly means that China has given up on competing with the U.S. and others, but it will do so through state-shaped technological development and, crucially, its preeminent position in global supply chains. China will be neither the world’s low-tech factory nor its leading tech pioneer, but will aim instead to make itself indispensable as a producer of high-value goods upon which even its adversaries depend. This is a perceptive and potentially fruitful alternative to rapid economic growth.
Regarding electric vehicles, for instance, China owns substantial overseas reserves of lithium and cobalt and is rushing to add more. It also seeks to become the premier processor for these minerals. Green-energy equipment may be made elsewhere, but it will rely on Chinese materials. In biopharma, China dominates the production and export of basic pharmaceutical ingredients and is looking to expand final manufacturing of pharmaceuticals.
Read: Why Biden’s block on chips to China is a big deal
In aerospace, Airbus, Boeing, and Bombardier will soon face a Chinese competitor, COMAC, whose planes look a lot like theirs. If the Chinese planes improve, the foreign firms will have more trouble selling theirs to China. Then COMAC will start exporting on a large scale, beginning with poorer countries. For semiconductors, the PRC has a strong position in testing and packaging at the end of the supply chain. It seeks to greatly expand the production of low-end chips. Without a better defense against Chinese oversupply, foreign competitors will be killed off, and China could dominate major parts of the industry.
If this proves to be the new order, the U.S. and a few other countries will remain richer than China, and their industries will make big breakthroughs, such as in mRNA vaccines and high-end microchips. Beijing will continue to largely absorb foreign innovation and then eventually drive foreign producers out of business. The dominant feature of the Sino-American commercial competition will not be a race based on economic growth or on technological advance, as many anticipate. Rather, through subsidies, coercive technology transfer, and unbalanced market access, inferior Chinese firms will win market share at the expense of more dynamic competitors.
China will still seek growth, just not as its main priority. It will spend heavily on science and technology. But its focus will be on strategic economic leverage. Beijing’s theory of victory in this clash is that its combination of strategic planning, manufacturing prowess, and a huge market will undermine foreign innovation, insulate the party from American pressure, and arm Beijing with more tools of economic coercion. This could also force more deindustrialization in the U.S.
If American policy makers and the private sector want to avoid this fate, considerable decoupling must occur. The U.S. will need to revise its economic strategy or it will continue on a course toward asymmetric dependence on China. This must start with changes to the world’s wealthiest national economy. The low-cost consumption that Americans enjoy through trade with China will have to give way so that more reliable production is a priority. This will cause some short-term economic pain, but it is protection against China’s inevitable disruptions of future American consumption.
The coronavirus pandemic has already pushed the private sector in this direction. Government policy must now codify and amplify the shift. These policies cannot be pushed through by executive fiat; they require a bipartisan consensus and new or modified law.
Some production will need to leave China so the U.S. can exchange cheap goods for greater economic resilience. A new economic strategy will mix producing more in North America with importing goods from trustworthy trading partners. There is already bipartisan support for boosting production at home—the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act is the best example to date.
Read: Where U.S.-China competition leaves climate change
The international component of American strategy is more difficult because there is bipartisan support for protectionism as well. To tackle this problem, Washington should consider updating free-trade agreements, complex as that will be, after exploring narrower, sector-specific agreements for crucial supply chains and creating bilateral technology agreements. All of these measures should get congressional approval.
Bilateral technology agreements are relatively simple: Only a handful of countries matter in technology development, and the American goal should be only to limit transfer to China. America’s partners will be activated by their own national-security concerns, as well as worry over China’s record of copying technology, then driving out the original developers. But some of them will also have to free themselves from entrenched dependence on China, which will require time and consistent American policy to overcome.
Agreements covering particular industrial sectors can be useful, involving not only tech but others, such as pharmaceuticals, as well. The approach involves strictly enforcing limits on Chinese participation in a supply chain serving the U.S. This same enforcement creates opportunities for firms to make gains in the American market as the subsidized Chinese competition is blocked. Some partners, with their own concerns about Chinese participation in supply chains, may not need much incentive.
An administration and Congress—both motivated by unfair Chinese competition—should be able to agree on pursuing such negotiations under the Trade Promotion Authority, through which Congress gives the president negotiation instructions in exchange for an up-or-down vote on any deal. If this occurs, the next step is to make the case to partners to partly replace the role played by China’s large labor force; South Asian and Southeast Asian countries such as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines are well positioned to benefit.
How far and fast Xi’s new economic strategy will go is debatable, but some signs of coercive economics are already apparent. In 2017, China blocked consumer products, travel, and cultural trade with South Korea because it deployed a U.S. anti-missile system (aimed at North Korea). In 2020, Beijing restricted trade with Australia as punishment for Canberra’s desire to investigate COVID-19’s origins. In late 2021, China began boycotting Lithuanian goods in response to the Baltic nation’s establishing closer diplomatic ties with Taiwan. If unchallenged, China’s bid on supply chains will further shift patterns of production and trade in its favor.
China is creating more enterprises like Huawei in semiconductors, biotechnology, and other industries. At some point, if Washington does something Beijing dislikes, China may simply stop the supply of crucial goods in these sectors. The nature of China’s economic challenge has changed. America must adapt to meet it.
The Atlantic · by Dan Blumenthal, Derek Scissors · December 23, 2022
20. How Twitter hid US-military info ops from the public - Responsible Statecraft
I wonder how the Quincy Institute (adn the Intercept) would feel about DOD conducting information operations over Weibo? It is not used in the US but is the "twitter" messaging system of China. What if the USG conducts information operations on social media systems no used in the US?
How Twitter hid US-military info ops from the public - Responsible Statecraft
responsiblestatecraft.org · by Eli Clifton · December 22, 2022
Media
How Twitter hid US-military info ops from the public
Recent ‘files’ released by the social media giant’s new CEO Elon Musk reveal double standards on outing covert gov’t-backed programs.
December 22, 2022
Written by
Eli Clifton
Print
How Twitter hid US-military info ops from the public
Emails from the so-called “Twitter Files” — internal communications shared with Lee Fang at The Intercept as well as other journalists following Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform — reveal that the company had knowledge of a U.S. military-linked information operation and did not publicly acknowledge the operation or provide transparency to the general public after the operation was discovered.
That appears to be a clear violation of Twitter’s principles about state-backed information operations as laid out by Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth in 2019. Indeed, Twitter made a point of disclosing the details of accounts, and the content of their tweets, when they were identified as part of government linked information operations, beginning in 2018.
Roth wrote, in a statement of principles that is still published on Twitter’s website:
We believe Twitter has a responsibility to protect the integrity of the public conversation — including through the timely disclosure of information about attempts to manipulate Twitter to influence elections and other civic conversations by foreign or domestic state-backed entities. We believe the public and research community are better informed by transparency.
Fang, in his article published on Tuesday, details how Twitter “whitelisted” — a function that provided accounts with invulnerability to Twitter’s detection mechanisms that might decrease visibility for accounts engaged in spam or abuse — a list of accounts provided by U.S. Central Command in 2017. The accounts engaged in activities including: touting the accuracy of drone strikes in Yemen, promoting U.S. backed militias in Syria, and spreading anti-Iran messages in Iraq.
An official working at CENTCOM promised that the accounts would be labeled as “USG-attributed, Arabic-language accounts tweeting on relevant security issues,” but many of the accounts subsequently deleted these disclosures and concealed their affiliation with the U.S. government after Twitter granted them the special status.
Over the years, some of these accounts have been deleted while others, such as this one, according to Fang, continue to operate without any disclosure of their U.S. government affiliation.
Fang, citing internal Twitter emails, found multiple instances in which Twitter senior executives appear to have been aware that the government linked accounts were still operational and, in at least some cases, acting in violation of the company’s rules on platform manipulation.
Any further uncertainty, as well as concerns about potential embarrassment from a U.S. government linked information operation on Twitter, should have come to a head last August when the Stanford Internet Observatory published a report showing strong evidence that CENTCOM was involved in the creation and operation of a series of undisclosed government-linked accounts. “…[E]mails obtained by The Intercept show that the creation of at least one of these accounts was directly affiliated with the Pentagon,” reports Fang.
But even after the SIO report made a splash in the media, Twitter never disclosed the CENTCOM-led information operation on its page dedicated to disclosing state-linked information operations on the social media platform. For that matter, while highlighting state-linked information operations from Russia, Iran, Bangladesh, Venezuela, Spain, China, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Ecuador, Ghana, Nigeria, Serbia, Honduras, Indonesia, Turkey, Thailand, Cuba, Armenia, and Tanzania, no U.S. government linked information operations have been publicly disclosed by Twitter.
Roth, the former head of trust and safety, did not respond to questions about why the U.S. government linked accounts were never publicly disclosed, even after researchers from Stanford appear to have outed at least one of the accounts that Twitter knew was an undisclosed CENTCOM linked account.
Ray Serrato, a former member of Twitter’s safety and integrity team, told Responsible Statecraft that “this activity was disclosed to research partners — such as SIO and Graphika, whose research was covered by the media, under the criteria set out in public blog post here,” providing a link to a blog post explaining how outside researchers were provided datasets including “platform manipulation campaigns originating from the Americas, Asia, Asia Pacific (APAC), Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EMEA), and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).”
Serrato did not respond to questions about why Twitter, despite disclosing data about “this activity” to research partners, did not add the CENTCOM linked accounts to Twitter’s list of disclosed state-linked information operations.
Twitter, under Musk’s new ownership, doesn’t seem to have taken any more meaningful steps to address the U.S. government linked platform manipulation. No U.S. government linked operation has been added to Twitter’s list of government sponsored influence operations and, as Fang noted, at least one of the accounts linked to CENTCOM, while providing no disclosure of its U.S. government ties, is still active. Oddly, the new management appears to be following the pattern set by previous executives: sharing information about the influence operation with outside sources but not officially acknowledging the U.S. government led influence operation, taking steps to shut it down, or disclosing the extent or substance of the platform manipulation.
Musk, for his part, is under pressure to generate profits from Twitter after buying the company for $44 billion and may be increasingly dependent on his more profitable ventures, such as SpaceX, in order to service the debt on his Twitter acquisition. That could put Musk in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to disclose U.S. government sponsored influence operations on Twitter when the U.S. government is one of the biggest clients for SpaceX. While the “Twitter Files” disclosed an uncomfortable chummy relationship between Twitter executives and CENTCOM officials, it remains unclear how Twitter’s new ownership intends to address ongoing U.S. government influence operations on the platform and how it will respond to Defense Department requests for special treatment going forward.
Twitter did not respond to questions about whether they will suspend accounts linked to the CENTCOM influence operation or publicly disclose the U.S. government’s role in platform manipulation in the same manner that foreign government-linked influence operations have been disclosed by the company.
Written by
Eli Clifton
responsiblestatecraft.org · by Eli Clifton · December 22, 2022
21.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
| 
