Quotes of the Day:

“Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.” 

- Robert L. Stevenson

“Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.”

-Mark Twain

"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns." 

- John Clarke

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 28 (Putin's War)

2.  Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (28.09.22) CDS comments on key events

3. After months of waiting, Biden's National Security Strategy is 'coming soon'

4. US touts $810M for Pacific islands to help fend off China, some for Solomons

5. Green Berets honor JFK in ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery

6. Pentagon will double powerful HIMARS artillery for Ukraine

7. Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.

8. What are tactical nuclear weapons? An international security expert explains and assesses what they mean for the war in Ukraine

9. China’s Road Not Taken

10. Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the damage to gas pipelines

11. Americans Split on Increasing Defense Spending

12. EXCLUSIVE Afghan Taliban sign deal for Russian oil products, gas and wheat

13. Australian, US allies hold closed- door meetings with Westmincom

14.  Sophisticated Covert Cyberattack Campaign Targets Military Contractors

15. Meta ordered to pay $175M for copying Green Beret veteran’s app

16. Why the West is trumpeting its Ukraine war intel

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 28 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-28

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 28

Sep 28, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Katherine Lawlor, Grace Mappes, Riley Bailey, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 28, 7:30pm 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.

Russian milbloggers discussed Ukrainian gains around Lyman with increased concern on September 28, suggesting that Russian forces in this area may face imminent defeat.[1] Several Russian milbloggers and prominent military correspondents claimed that Ukrainian troops advanced west, north, and northeast of Lyman and are working to complete the envelopment of Russian troops in Lyman and along the northern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River in this area.[2] Russian mibloggers stated that Ukrainian troops are threatening Russian positions and lines of communication that support the Lyman grouping. The collapse of the Lyman pocket will likely be highly consequential to the Russian grouping in northern Donetsk and western Luhansk oblasts and may allow Ukrainian troops to threaten Russian positions along the western Luhansk Oblast border and in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area.

Russian military leadership has failed to set information conditions for potentially imminent Russian defeat in Lyman. The Russian Ministry of Defense has not addressed current Russian losses around Lyman or prepared for the collapse of this sector of the frontline, which will likely further reduce already-low Russian morale. Russian military authorities previously failed to set sufficient information conditions for Russian losses following the first stages of the Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv Oblast, devastating morale and leading to panic among Russian forces across the Eastern axis. The subsequent ire of the Russian nationalist information space likely played a role in driving the Kremlin to order partial mobilization in the days following Ukraine’s initial sweeping counteroffensive in a haphazard attempt to reinforce Russian lines. Future Ukrainian gains around critical areas in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast may drive additional wedges between Russian nationalists and military leadership, and between Russian forces and their superiors.

The Kremlin could temporarily postpone announcing the annexation of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory to better prepare the Russian information space and administrative organization, although September 30 remains the most likely date for some kind of annexation announcement. ISW forecasted on September 27 that Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely announce the Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory on September 30 in his planned address to both houses of the Russian parliament.[3] The Russian Ministry of Defense announced on September 28 that Russia will “fulfill the aspirations of the residents of the LNR, DNR, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts to be together with Russia” in the “near future.”[4] However, Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin announced on September 28 that the State Duma should hold its accession sessions to approve the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory on October 3 and 4.[5] Latvian-based Russian-language opposition outlet Meduza quoted Kremlin sources on September 28 who claimed that the Kremlin decided ”not to rush things.” Those sources told Meduza that ”the PR effect from [annexation] will be almost zero” due to broad dissatisfaction with partial mobilization in Russia.[6] Meduza reported that the Kremlin conducted a dissatisfactory closed public opinion poll that demonstrated broad Russian discontent and may be attempting to rectify public unhappiness with mobilization before announcing annexation.

Russian-appointed occupation administration leaders of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts each shared an appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin by September 28, asking Putin to recognize their sham referenda and welcome them to Russia.[7] The Russian occupation leaders of each oblast will likely meet with Putin in the coming days to present their requests. Putin could announce those performative accession negotiations, rather than final annexation, in his September 30 speech.

Russian authorities continue to send newly-mobilized and undertrained recruits to directly reinforce severely degraded remnants of various units, including units that were previously considered to be Russia’s premier conventional fighting forces. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that newly-mobilized Russian men arrived to reinforce elements of the 1st Tank Regiment of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division of the 1st Guards Tank Army in unspecified areas of Ukraine with no training at all.[8] Social media footage from September 27 shows a Russian soldier mobilized into the 1st Tank Regiment explaining that he will be sent to fight in Kherson Oblast within two days without any basic training, as ISW reported yesterday.[9] The 1st Guards Tank Army was considered Russia’s premier mechanized force prior to February 24, and that fact that its elements are being reinforced with poorly disciplined, untrained men is consistent with ISW’s previous assessments that even Russia’s most elite units have sustained substantial losses in Ukraine and are therefore increasingly degraded.[10] The addition of newly mobilized forces to elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army is unlikely to lend these units any decisive combat power.

Key Takeaways

• Russian military leadership has likely failed to set information conditions for the potential defeat of the Russian grouping in Lyman, despite increasingly concerned discourse among Russian milbloggers regarding the potential for a Ukrainian envelopment of Lyman.
• The Kremlin could temporarily postpone announcing the annexation of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory to better prepare the Russian information space and administrative organization, although September 30 remains the most likely date for some kind of annexation announcement.
• Russian authorities continue to send newly-mobilized and undertrained recruits to directly reinforce severely degraded remnants of various units, including units that were previously considered to be Russia’s premier conventional fighting forces.
• Ukrainian forces likely continued to make significant gains around Lyman on September 28, advancing from the north along the Zelena Dolyna-Kolodiazi arc and from the southeast around Yampil.
• Ukrainian military officials largely maintained operational silence regarding specific Ukrainian actions in Kherson Oblast on September 28 but stated that Ukrainian troops are continuing positional battles in unspecified locations to consolidate and improve their positions along the Southern Axis.
• Russian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian military recruitment officials are openly contradicting the Kremlin’s publicly-stated guidelines for mobilization to meet quota requirements even as Kremlin propaganda is attempting to change the public perception of partial mobilization.
• Russian authorities are beginning to restrict movement of Russian citizens into Russian border regions to cope with hundreds of thousands of Russian men attempting to flee the country.

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—Southern and Eastern Ukraine
• Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• 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: (Vovchansk-Kupyansk-Izyum-Lyman Line)

Ukrainian forces likely continued to make significant gains around Lyman on September 28, advancing from the north along the Zelena Dolyna-Kolodiazi arc and from the southeast around Yampil. Geolocated combat footage corroborates claims made by Russian milbloggers that Ukrainians took control of Zelena Dolyna (15km north of Lyman) and pushed east to take control of Kolodiazi (11km northeast of Lyman).[11] Several Russian sources indicated that Ukrainian troops pushed southeast of Kolodiazi and are fighting on the outskirts of Torske, just 12km northeast of Lyman.[12] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Ukrainian troops accumulated near Yampil (13km southeast of Lyman) and broke through Russian defensive lines there to push towards Torske from the southwest.[13] Russian sources additionally discussed Ukrainian gains northwest of Lyman and claimed that Ukrainian troops are attacking Shandryholove, about 10km northwest of Lyman.[14] Geolocated footage shows that Ukrainian troops have liberated Novoselivka, just south of Shandryholove and 10km northwest of Lyman.[15] Several Russian milbloggers voiced escalated concern that Ukrainian forces are seeking to take control of the Svatove-Lyman road that is currently a critical ground line of communication (GLOC) for the Russian grouping in Lyman.[16]

Ukrainian troops also continued offensive operations around Kupyansk on September 28. Geolocated footage shows Ukrainian troops raising Ukrainian flags over Kivsharivka, about 10km southeast of Kupyansk.[17] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian troops took control of the Kupyansk-Uzlovaya station, 8km southeast of Kupyansk on the outskirts of Kivsharivka.[18] Russian sources suggested that Ukrainian troops are attempting advances to the northeast of Kupyansk along the Pervshyi Lyman-Tavilzhanka line.[19] A prominent Russian military correspondent claimed that all Russian units entirely withdrew from Kupyansk on September 28, although it is unclear where those units are redeploying to.[20]

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian military officials largely maintained operational silence regarding specific Ukrainian actions in Kherson Oblast on September 28 but stated that Ukrainian troops are continuing positional battles in unspecified locations to consolidate and improve their positions along the Southern Axis.[21] Ukrainian military officials also reiterated that Ukrainian troops are continuing an interdiction campaign to target Russian logistics, military, and transportation assets, as well as concentration areas, in Kherson Oblast.[22] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that Russian forces are pulling reserves from the Crimean direction to reinforce the current southern frontline against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations.[23]

Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian forces hit two main areas in Kherson Oblast as part of Ukraine’s continuing interdiction campaign on September 27 and 28: around Kherson City and near Beryslav, about 70km east of Kherson City. Geolocated footage shows the aftermath of a reported Ukrainian HIMARS strike on Oleshky, 8km southeast of Kherson City.[24] Russian sources also posted imagery of the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on Kherson Polytechnical College in Kherson City, where Russian troops reportedly were residing.[25] Ukrainian sources also stated that Ukrainian forces hit Russian concentration areas near Beryslav.[26]

Ukrainian sources reported that Ukrainian troops conducted limited ground maneuvers in western Kherson Oblast on September 27 and 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian attack on Bezimenne, 15km southwest of Davydiv Brid and near the Inhulets River that runs along the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border.[27] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command additionally noted that Russian troops attempted to attack Bezimenne from positions in Chkalove, 7km southeast of Bezimenne.[28] Russian sources discussed various Ukrainian troop rotations northwest of Kherson City near Posad-Pokrovske and in western Kherson Oblast near Andriivka.[29]

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)

Russian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on September 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks south of Bakhmut near Zaitseve, Mayorsk, Mykolaivka Druha, Odradivka, and Zalizne (all within 15km of Bakhmut), and west of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske.[30] A Russian source claimed that Wagner Group forces fought in Odradivka and advanced on Ukrainian positions in Zaitseve.[31] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov claimed that Chechen “Akhmat” special forces and other Russian and proxy forces control Spirne (25km northeast of Bakhmut) and repelled a Ukrainian ground attack on the settlement on September 28.[32] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces conducted failed ground assaults southwest of Donetsk City near Pobieda, Novomykhailivka, and Pavlivka.[33] A Russian source expressed continued concern that Ukrainian forces may launch ground attacks towards Vuhledar in the coming days.[34]

Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces continued routine artillery, air, and missile strikes west of Hulyaipole and in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts on September 28.[35] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Mykolaiv City and Zaporizhzhia City.[36] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian heavy artillery and Grad rocket strikes damaged critical infrastructure in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[37] Ukrainian sources also claimed that Ukrainian air defense systems shot down Russian Kh-59 cruise missiles over Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and Odesa on September 28.[38]

Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian military recruitment officials are openly contradicting the Kremlin’s publicly-stated guidelines for mobilization to meet quota requirements. Novosibirsk Oblast Military Commissar Yevgeny Kudryavtsev told a Siberian news outlet on September 28 that Russian officials will “naturally” mobilize men who are not reservists in order to meet military requirements.[39] Kudryavtsev said that commissars will start by mobilizing people with certain experience and within a certain age range, but that when that round of mobilization does not meet all of their requirements (likely referencing Kremlin-dictated quotas), commissars will then mobilize men with no military experience or who would violate other restrictions on mobilization. Those restrictions include current students, parents of four or more young children, retirees, and people with disabilities.

The Kremlin is likely ordering its officials to change the public perception of mass mobilization, however. The Russian governor of occupied Sevastopol, Mikhail Razvozhaev, announced on September 27 that he is taking personal interest in cases of mistakenly-mobilized men in Sevastopol and asserted that his administration will return mistakenly mobilized men to their homes.[40] The Kremlin’s media outlets and voices are increasingly sharing individual stories in which military recruitment centers released some men who were unfit for service following the involvement of local officials or with the help of Kremlin state media to suggest that errors are being corrected when called to the Kremlin’s attention, as ISW reported on September 26.[41] To that end, Kremlin propaganda outlet RT announced that its charity ”We Will Continue to Act” will cover the stories of and support men who believe they have been wrongfully mobilized, an initial attempt at government accountability that the Kremlin will likely use to further accuse bureaucrats of incompetence for meeting quotas dictated by the Kremlin.[42]

Russian authorities are beginning to restrict the movement of Russian citizens into Russian border regions to cope with hundreds of thousands of Russian men attempting to flee the country. The Associated Press reported that over 197,000 Russians have already fled through land borders to Georgia, Finland, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia between September 21 and 28, causing miles-long traffic jams at border crossings.[43] The governor of the Russian Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, Sergey Menyailo, declared a “high alert regime” on September 28 that restricted the entry of cars into North Ossetia, which borders Georgia. Menyailo also ordered the establishment of food, shelter, and hygiene facilities for citizens waiting in miles-long traffic jams at the Russian-Georgian border.[44] Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin addressed rumors that unspecified entities required Russians who made it across the Georgian border to sign a document recognizing Russian aggression and occupation of Georgian territories. Volodin threatened all Russians who sign such documents with punishment if they ever return to Russia.[45]

Russian occupation officials continued to set conditions to forcibly mobilize or conscript Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. The People's Militias of the Russian proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) shared information about stricter Russian penalties for desertion, insubordination, surrender, and avoiding mobilization on September 28.[46] The DNR militia called on its followers to “make up your minds—are you a defender of the motherland, or a deserter?” and warned that the penalties for desertion will be “significantly tightened” in line with Russian law as soon as the DNR joins Russia.[47] The DNR and LNR have forcibly mobilized their populations to varying degrees since 2014 and have not commented on whether their populations will be subject to Russian mobilization.

Ukraine’s National Resistance Center reported on September 28 that the heads of Kherson’s and Zaporizhia’s occupation administrations are planning the partial mobilization of Ukrainian civilians as soon as Russia annexes those oblasts.[48] However, Kherson Occupation Administration Head Vladimir Saldo alleged that no Kherson Oblast residents will be mobilized when Kherson Oblast joins Russia and that the oblast would provide only volunteer battalions to fight against Ukraine.[49] It remains unclear whether Saldo will remain in charge of Russia’s occupation of Kherson Oblast after the Kremlin annexes Kherson Oblast. The Ukrainian advisor to Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast Military Administration, Serhiy Klan, reported that Russian forces unexpectedly began allowing men between the ages of 18 and 35 to leave Kherson again on September 28 after closing the border to men of fighting age on September 25.[50] ISW had previously assessed that Russian forces may have prevented men of fighting age from fleeing occupied Ukraine to preserve forces for forced mobilization or conscription after the Kremlin formalizes its annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories.[51]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

See the topline text.

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.

[6] https://meduza dot io/feature/2022/09/28/kreml-reshil-ne-toropitsya-s-ofitsialnym-prisoedineniem-ukrainskih-territoriy-i-polnym-zakrytiem-granits-chtoby-ne-zlit-rossiyan-nedovolnyh-mobilizatsiey

[39] https://tayga dot info/179280

[48] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/09/28/rosiyany-nezabarom-ogolosyat-chastkovu-mobilizacziyu-na-okupovanomu-pivdni/

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (28.09.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (28.09.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

During a meeting with representatives of the [POW] families, Major General Kyrylo Budanov assured that work is currently underway to exchange prisoners according to the "all for all" formula, reported by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

To date, Ukraine conducted around two dozen exchanges with the Russian Federation and returned more than 800 soldiers and civilians from captivity. However, the exchange, conducted on September 21, was unprecedented. The representative of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense, Andriy Yusov, told during a briefing at the Media Center Ukraine that this exchange was a big, serious operation. Currently, after the completion of this exchange, the next ones are being prepared in parallel.

He said that the conditions of detention of Ukrainian prisoners of war are unsatisfactory, and in many cases, they do not comply with the Geneva Conventions. At the same time, Ukraine provides access to places of detention of Russian POWs to international structures, the Red Cross, and treats POWs following international norms and the Geneva Conventions — this applies to food, medical care, conditions of detention, and more. He noted that this is one of the reasons why Ukrainian call on Russian soldiers to surrender and not be afraid.

The SBU identified the Russian servicemen who shot a humanitarian convoy of civilian cars trying to evacuate from Gostomel. According to the head of the National Police of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko, they killed 11 civilians trying to evacuate from the occupied city and wounded 15. The crime was committed by the occupiers from the unit of the Russian Guard from the cities of Kemerovo and Novokuznetsk, as well as the mobile unit of special purpose (better known as OMON) from the Krasnoyarsk Krai.

According to the morning round-up of the regional military administrations, six Oblasts of Ukraine were under shelling by Russian troops during the past day.

In Kharkiv, the enemy shelled the Kholodnohirsky district at night. According to the preliminary information, with S-300 air defense missiles. Objects of critical and transport infrastructure were damaged. No casualties were reported. In Kharkiv Oblast, the populated areas of the Kupyansk district suffer the most from shelling. According to the Regional Center of Emergency Medical Assistance information, five people were hospitalized with injuries during the day. One person was injured in the Bohoduhiv district.

In Kharkiv Oblast, explosives technicians of the National Police are demining 49 towns and villages liberated from the Russians.

The authorities urge residents of Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast, to evacuate to other districts or Oblasts. Maksym Strelnyk, a member of the Izyum City Council, announced this on Facebook. "On the eve

of the cold weather, a large part of the residents of the Izyum community were left without a roof over their heads. Most houses are so destroyed that it is impossible to prepare them for the heating season." Free evacuation of all those who wish is organized with further resettlement in Kharkiv, Poltava, and other Oblasts of Ukraine. He noted that the evacuation is a temporary measure until the city's critical infrastructure is restored.

Russians shelled Dnepropetrovsk Oblast all night. According to the head of the Oblast Military Administration (OMA), Valentyn Reznichenko, the Russian invaders fired at the region with Grads and heavy artillery. Nikopol was hit three times. Over ten residential multi-story and private houses, a lyceum, a transport stop, a gas pipeline, and six power lines were damaged. In the Marganets community, the consequences of the attack are being clarified. In the Kryvy Rih region during the night, Ukrainian air defense shot down a Russian Kh-59 missile.

On September 27, the Russian occupiers shelled Zaporizhzhya and the Vasyliv and Pologiv districts of the Oblast. Twenty objects of civil infrastructure were damaged. In the morning, the Russians fired three S-300 missiles at the center of Huliay Pole. According to the head of the Zaporizhzhya Military Administration, Oleksandr Starukh, as a result of the strike, a historic building was destroyed, and the railway road was damaged. The number of victims is being specified. Today, Ukrainian air defense neutralized missiles launched in the direction of Zaporizhzhya and two neighboring large cities.

On September 27, in Donets Oblast, enemy shelling killed 4 people in Kurakhivka and 1 in Bakhmut. Another 10 people were injured. Around 05:00, the Russians shelled a school in Mykolaivka, where the shelter for civilians was set up. There were 12 people in the building. According to the head of the Donetsk OMA, Pavlo Kyrylenko, after the shelling, the school building walls collapsed; fortunately, the shelter survived. Most civilians hiding from enemy shells were not injured. Under the rubble of the building, rescuers removed the body of a woman.

At night, the Russians struck the industrial zone of Mykolaiv. No victims were reported. During September 27-28, Russians shelled the Mykolaiv and Bashtan districts of the region. They hit open areas, roads, and agricultural enterprises.

Occupied territories

The Russian occupiers in the temporarily occupied territories put pressure on doctors and their relatives, and loot medical facilities, said Nataliya Husak, head of the National Health Service (NHS). According to her, there are cases when [occupiers] keep chief doctors in basements for months, demanding access to hospital accounts. According to her, there are 659 medical facilities left in the temporarily occupied territories and places of hostilities. NHS continues to pay for their services within the signed contracts since Ukrainian citizens in these territories need medical care and doctors who provide it.

The SBU opened criminal cases on collaborationism against 16 traitors who helped organize illegal "referenda."

In Ukraine, Criminal proceedings have been initiated on the fact of violation of the laws and customs of war in connection with the criminal mobilization carried out by the occupying authorities of Crimea. The [Ukraine's] prosecutor's office of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol announced this, Ukrinform reports. The head of the prosecutor's office emphasized that since 2015, the Russian authorities have been illegally forcing Crimeans to serve in its armed forces; thus, at least 34,000 residents of the peninsula have been mobilized into the Russian Army. This happens contrary to Art. 51 of the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Protection of the Civilian Population in Time of War. The prosecutor's office advises residents of the peninsula to leave the territory of Crimea in any way possible to avoid receiving summonses and going to conscription offices.

Operational situation

It is the 217th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas").

The enemy continues to focus on attempts to fully occupy Donetsk Oblast, maintain control over the captured territories, and disrupt the Ukrainian Defense Forces' intensive actions in some directions. Russian forces try to restore lost positions in certain directions and conduct aerial reconnaissance.

In the Zaporizhzhya direction, the Russian occupiers are strengthening the first and second defensive lines in order to hold the captured territories.

Over the past day, the enemy has launched 10 missile strikes and 17 air strikes and carried out more than 105 MLRS attacks. The Russian occupiers also attack civilian objects, violating the norms of international humanitarian law and the laws and customs of war.

More than 40 Ukrainian towns and villages were affected by enemy fire. In particular, Kharkiv, Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Mykolaiv, Avdiivka and Maryinka. The enemy shelled the positions of Ukrainian troops with mortars, rocket and barrel artillery in the areas of Huta-Studenetsk (Chernihiv Oblast), Sosnivka, Starosillya, Prohody, Nova Huta, Vovkivka, Khodyne (Sumy Oblast). In addition, Russian forces carried out an airstrike on the positions of Ukrainian troops in Sosnivka. They activated aerial reconnaissance, using four UAVs in the Slavhorod, Velyka Pysarivka, Dmytrivka, and Shevchenkove districts (Sumy Oblast) to clarify the position of Ukrainian troops.

The enemy concentrated in Tolmachiovo (Kursk Region, 90 km from the Ukrainian border) up to an anti-aircraft missile battalion S-300PMU-2 (six launchers) to cover the areas of its troops' concentration, as well as the air defense of operational-tactical aviation airfields bases. In particular, the 14th fighter aviation regiment (Kursk) of the 105th mixed aviation division.

The Ukrainian Defense Forces Aviation made 17 strikes, destroying 14 enemy manpower and military equipment concentration areas, 3 strongholds, and 7 positions of anti-aircraft missile systems. Ukrainian air defense units destroyed an aircraft, 6 UAVs, and 1 Kh-59 cruise missile.

Ukrainian missile troops and artillery struck 12 areas of concentration of enemy manpower and equipment, 4 warehouses with ammunition, positions of anti-aircraft defense and EW equipment, in particular, the R-330zh "Zhitel" automated jamming station.

Until the end of September, the arrival of "volunteer" battalions from the Chechen Republic to the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya directions is expected. In particular, "Ahmad-West" and "Ahmad- South" (560 people each), which are under the operational command of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Army.

While planning combat operations, the enemy is searching for routes of movement and areas for the concentration of its troops on the captured territory and future areas of combat operations. On September 26, the Russians uploaded satellite images from the open online Google mapping services of areas in the Donetsk Oblast (Bakhmut, Kostyantynivka, Illinivka, Odradivka, Kodema, Opytne areas) and Luhansk Oblast (Hirske and Popasna area)

The morale and psychological state of the personnel of the invasion forces remain low. Kharkiv direction

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the

RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments, 245th motorized rifle regiment of the 47th tank division, 6th and 239th tank regiments, 228th motorized rifle regiment of the 90th tank division, 1st motorized rifle regiment, 1st tank regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 6th Combined Arms Army, 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Tank Army, 275th and 280th motorized rifle regiments, 11th tank regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division of the 11 Army Corps, 7th motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps, 80th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 14th Army Corps, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 1st Army Corps of so-called DPR, PMCs.

The enemy shelled with tanks, mortars, and artillery of various types the areas of Strilecha, Sosnivka, Krasne, and Hrushivka.

The Ukrainian Defense Forces thwarted enemy counterattacks in the Kupyansk area; the enemy was forced to leave Kucherivka and Podoly, and units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces broke through and captured the Kupyansk-Vuzlovy station. The tactical position of the enemy units is deteriorating in the Tavilzhanka area. Ukrainian Defense Forces are expanding their bridgehead near Dvorichne.

In the border areas of Ustinka, Valuyki, and Shebekino of the Belgorod region (Russia), the enemy has deployed six BTGs from the 6th Army, 11th Army Corps of Baltic Fleet of the Western Military District, and Nothern Fleet (61st separate marines brigade, 138th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 6th Army, 11th tank regiment, 9th motorized rifle regiment of the 18th motorized rifle division, 7th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 11th Army Corps).

Kramatorsk direction

● Balakleya - Siversk section: approximate length of the combat line - 184 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17-20, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;

●  252nd and 752nd motorized rifle regiments of the 3rd motorized rifle division, 1st, 13th, and 12th tank regiments, 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 4th tank division, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Combined Arms Army, 35th, 55th and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

The enemy fired at the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the Ridkodub, Katerynivka, and Stary Karavan areas. In addition, the Russian military used UAVs in the areas of Drobysheve, Novoselivka, Lyman, and Berestove to clarify the position of Ukrainian troops and adjust artillery fire.

Ukrainian Defense Forces units have advanced to the southern outskirts of Borova and are threatening to break through to Svatove.

Donetsk direction

● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 235 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 17 km;

●  Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments, 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th tank regiment of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces near Spirne, Siversk, Serebrianka, New York, Andriivka, Soledar, Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Odradivka, Zaitseve, Vesela Dolyna, Opytne, Yakovlivka, Mayorsk, Yuryivka, Bilohorivka, Vesele, Rozdolivka. In addition, they inflicted an air strike on the positions of Ukrainian troops near Spirne (with a pair of Su-25s).

Enemy 131st rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps advanced in the direction of Zaitseve (lower), Mayorsk; Horlivka, Zalizne; PMC "Wagner" - in the direction of Kodema, Odradivka; Kodema, Mykolaivka Druga; Kodema, Zaitseve. They were stopped by the Ukrainian Defense Forces and pushed back to their original position.

The enemy attacked:

•       in the direction of Pisky, Pervomaiske with the 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps;

•       in the direction of Luhanske, Pobyeda with the 71st motorized rifle regiment of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Army of Southern Military District;

•       in the direction of Solodke, Novomykhailivka with the 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps of the Eastern Military District.

The Ukrainian Defense Forces stopped them in all directions; the enemy suffered losses and retreated.

"Wagner" PMC units in the direction of Pokrovske, Bakhmut wedged into the defense of Ukrainian units to the depth of the platoon strongholds; the battle continues.

During the past day, units of the Defense Forces of Ukraine repelled attacks in the areas of Zaytseve, Mayorsk, Zalizne, Mykolaivka Druga, Pervomaiske, Pobieda, Novomykhailivka, and Bezimenne.

Zaporizhzhya direction

●  Maryinka – Vasylivka section: approximate length of the line of combat - 200 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 17, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 11.7 km;

●  Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

More than 25 towns and villages were shelled by tanks, mortars, and barrel artillery, including Mykilske, Vuhledar, Prechystivka, Neskuchne, Novomykolaivka, Vremivka, Temyrivka, and Olhivske.

The enemy is moving the S-300 anti-aircraft missile in the Orihiv direction to launch missile strikes on Zaporizhzhya and populated areas of the Zaporizhzhya Oblast.

Kherson direction

● Vasylivka–Nova Zburyivka and Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line - 252 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 27, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.3 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 114th, 143rd, and 394th motorized rifle regiments, 218th tank regiment of the 127th motorized rifle division of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 57th and 60th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 5th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle division, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiments of the 106th parachute airborne division, 7th military base of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 16th and 346th separate SOF brigades.

The operational situation is unchanged. As part of strengthening the enemy grouping of troops, there are 10 tanks, more than 30 BMPs, and trucks in the Nova Kakhovka area in anticipation of crossing to the right bank of the Dnipro River.

The enemy continues to use the "Shahed-136" UAV to launch strikes on civilian and military infrastructure. On September 27, three UAVs were fired at objects in Ochakiv, but all were shot down.

In the Voloshyno area, the aggressor concentrated 53 heavy mechanized bridges and 19 ponton- bridge machines.

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

●  Velyka Lepetikha – Oleksandrivka section: approximate length of the battle line – 250 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces – 22, the average width of the combat area of one BTG –

11.8 km;

● Deployed BTGs: 108th Air assault regiment, 171st separate airborne assault brigade of the 7th Air assault division, 4th military base of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 429th motorized rifle regiment of the 19th motorized rifle division, 33rd and 255th motorized rifle regiments of the 20th motorized rifle division, 34th, and 205th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 49th Combined Arms Army, 224th, 237th and 239th Air assault regiments of the 76th Air assault division, 217th and 331 Air assault regiments of the 98th Air assault division, 126th separate coastal defense brigade, 127th separate ranger brigade, 11th separate airborne assault brigade, 10th separate SOF brigade, PMC.

The enemy fired at the positions of Ukrainian troops using tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery in the areas of Osokorivka, Myrolyubivka, Arkhangelske, Visokopillya, Ivanivka, Olhyne, Bila Krynytsia, Andriivka, Bezimenne, Sukhy Stavok, Biloghirka, Novohredneve, Blahodativka, Kyselivka, Ternivka, Nova Zorya, Stepova Dolyna, Blagodatne, Partyzanske, Ternovi Pody, Novohryhorivka, Myrne, Pravdyne, Lymany, Oleksandrivka, Maisky Island. To clarify the position of Ukrainian troops and adjust the artillery fire, the enemy used UAVs (up to 22 sorties) on the tactical depth of the defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Units of the 217th parachute airborne regiment of the 98th airborne division of the Russian Airborne Forces stormed in the direction of Chkalove, Bezimenne, but suffered losses and retreated.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the sea and connect unrecognized Transnistria with the Russian Federation by land through the coast of the Black and Azov seas.

The enemy reduced the number of ships in the sea by half. Currently, there are 6 warships on a mission in the Black Sea, conducting reconnaissance and control of navigation in the Azov-Black Sea waters.

Up to 24 Kalibr missiles on three carriers, namely one 1135.6 frigate and two Buyan-M missile corvettes, are ready for a salvo.

All four project 636.3 submarines in the Black Sea are located in the port of Novorossiysk.

The enemy's aviation increased the number of flights from the Crimean Belbek and Gvardiyske airfields over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 12 Su-27, Su-30, and Su- 24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

No signs of the formation of amphibious groups for marine landings were detected. Landing ships are located at the Novorossiysk and Sevastopol bases; 3 of them are still under repair.

The enemy continues missile attacks on places and ports in the maritime zone of Ukraine. On the night of September 28, the enemy attacked Odesa and Mykolaiv with Kh-59 missiles from Su-35 aircraft from the sea. The air defense systems of Ukraine shot down 3 missiles.

As part of the "partial mobilization" in Crimea, up to 2,000 people who previously served in the ranks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were drafted. They took the Russian oath on the territory of the educational and training center of the 810th separate marine infantry brigade of the Black Sea Fleet in Cossack Bay in Sevastopol, where their further retraining will take place.

According to information from the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, the occupation administration of Crimea mobilized 60,000 Crimeans. Summonses were distributed en masse in places where Crimean Tatars live compactly.

"Grain Initiative": 4 ships left the ports of Chornomorsk and Pivdenny on September 28. They have 115,000 tons of agricultural products on board for the countries of Africa, Asia, and Europe. Among them are MAGNUM FORTUNE, which transports 51 thousand tons of Ukrainian wheat for Bangladesh, and ALMERAY, with 32.4 thousand tons of corn for Libya. In almost two months of operation of the "grain corridor," 235 ships with 5.4 million tons of agricultural products destined for the countries of Asia, Europe, and Africa left Ukrainian ports.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 28.09

Personnel - almost 58,150 people (+400);

Tanks – 2,312 (+6);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,889 (+8);

Artillery systems – 1,381 (+3);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 331 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 175 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,742 (+12); Aircraft - 262 (+1);

Helicopters – 224 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level - 989 (+12); Intercepted cruise missiles - 242 (+1);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

After the war, the impunity of Russia for crimes committed will disappoint Ukrainians more than the high level of corruption and low standard of living. Such data from a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology is provided by the CASE Ukraine Center for Socio- Economic Research, Ukrinform reports. "To the question, "What would be the biggest disappointment for you after the end of the war," most Ukrainian residents answered: "Russia's impunity for crimes committed" (65.8%). The second and third places were taken by "High level of corruption" (36.3%) and "Low standard of living, poverty" (34.6%)," the report says.

The EBRD sharply lowered the forecast for the growth of the Ukrainian economy in 2023. The bank's forecast that Ukraine's GDP will fall by 30% this year has not changed compared to May. The EBRD cut its economic recovery estimates to 8% in 2023 from a previous high of 25%, which implied substantial recovery work to have already started.

The damage caused to Ukraine by the war waged by the Russian Federation already exceeds Ukraine's GDP by 1.6 times, said

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal at a conference call with the heads of Oblasts Military Administration, Ukrinform reports. "Of course, we understand that, first of all, financial resources are needed for rapid reconstruction, rapid recovery, social infrastructure, critical infrastructure, and preparation for winter," Shmyhal said. According to him, the report was prepared in close cooperation with experts from the World Bank, the European Commission, and the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine's State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation and the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland (STUK) signed a memorandum on cooperation and information exchange in nuclear and radiation safety.

International diplomatic aspect

"The results are clear. Welcome home to Russia!" Dmitry Medvedev, a former president, reacted to the completion of illegal actions, which in the Russian mind legitimized further annexations of Ukrainian lands. "Russia's recognition of these sham referenda as normal, the implementation of the so-called Crimean scenario and another attempt to annex Ukrainian territory, will mean that there is nothing to talk about with this president of Russia," the Ukrainian President declared.

"This farce in the occupied territories cannot even be called an imitation of a referendum," stated Volodymyr Zelensky. "Unilateral actions aimed to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the attempted acquisition by force by one state of another state's territory, while claiming to represent the will of the people, cannot be regarded as legal under international law," said UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo.

The leaders of the Free World warned Russia that they don't recognize the so-called referenda and Russia would pay for that. But there're three issues with that.

Firstly, even though the international leaders have rejected the very idea that Russian actions on the occupied territories could be referred to as "referenda," they still use this term. Timothy Snyder is right, saying that "it is best to regard what is happening as a media event. There isn't only no legal basis for speaking of a "referendum," but not even much factual basis for speaking of a "sham referendum." A sham is shambolic, but it does actually exist. What Russia is undertaking is nothing more than a media exercise designed to shape how people think about Russian-occupied Ukraine". Nevertheless, Russia will use the term in its propaganda messaging at home and abroad. The Kremlin doesn't care that it's unable to sell the current show even with some "success" of a Crimean one.

Secondly, Putin's rush to carry on legitimizing the annexation of new Ukrainian territories is aimed either at freezing the situation on the ground or escalating it further. So far, he has been conducting the so-called special military operation on the Ukrainian territory [in his words] to stop "genocide," preventing Ukraine's "attack" on Russia, and enforcing security "guarantees" by stopping NATO "encroachment." After the illegal annexation, he might paint the war as Ukraine's attack on "legitimate" Russian territory, motivating Russians to "defend" their homeland. He might also try to create a new reality Ukraine and its partners should agree upon by facing the nuclear threat. The newly mobilized and poorly trained soldiers would be at hand to secure freshly conquered lands. In that case, Moscow might hope to have a pause to regain the means and capabilities to relaunch the conquest in short to midterm future.

Thirdly, Putin is watching the reaction and testing the integrity of the West. With mounting problems in Europe and the growing number of "friends" (Hungary and possibly Italy), he might expect the European stance on Ukraine to erode. However, it remains to be seen how robust the European response is and how resilient European leaders are under the growing pressure of their societies.

"We intend to make the Kremlin pay" for this further escalation, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, announcing the eighth package of sanctions that will target Russia over its annexation actions. The package would provide the "legal basis" for an oil price cap to reduce Russian revenues and stabilize the global oil market. It is also thought to restrain further Russian exports (up to €7 billion in revenues) and tighten export controls on key technology used for the military, such as aviation items, electronic components, and specific chemical substances. And traditionally, some more Russians will be blacklisted.

The US will impose sanctions on financial institutions of critical importance to the Russian economy, like the Deposit Insurance Agency, the National Clearing Centre, the National Settlement Depository, and Russia's Mir payments system. More Russian banks will be cut off the SWIFT. Turkish state banks Ziraat Bank, Vakifbank, and Halkbank have already stooped operating Russia's Mir payments system, and the private banks will follow.

The US announced a new security assistance package to Ukraine worth approximately $1.1 billion. It includes eighteen HIMARS, one hundred and fifty HMMWVs, one hundred and fifty tactical towing vehicles, counter-UAV systems, radars for UAVs, twenty multi-mission radars, etc.

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3.  After months of waiting, Biden's National Security Strategy is 'coming soon'

Excerpts:

Both the NSS and National Defense Strategy were anticipated to come out early this year, with the NSS published first and the NDS following shortly after — and both before the release of the president’s fiscal 2023 budget request.

But only the classified version of the NDS has been released so far. The Defense Department delivered it to Capitol Hill in conjunction with the FY23 budget request in March in an apparent effort to prove to lawmakers that the request was guided by the administration’s defense strategy and not the other way around.

A two page interim NDS factsheet released in March labeled China as the “pacing challenge” for the Pentagon, with Russia representing an “acute threat” that is both immediate and but potentially less dangerous than the rising threat of China.

However, lawmakers have repeatedly criticized the Pentagon for not making a full unclassified NDS available to the public.

After months of waiting, Biden's National Security Strategy is 'coming soon' - Breaking Defense

"I think you will see the themes largely unchanged [from the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance released in March 2021],” said Cara Abercrombie, deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for defense policy and arms control for the White House.

breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · September 28, 2022

The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) transits the South China Sea. Abraham Lincoln Strike Group is on a scheduled deployment in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication 3rd Class Thaddeus Berry)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s long-awaited National Security Strategy is “coming soon” and despite an ever-evolving security landscape, won’t contain any major surprises, according to a White House official.

“I think you will see the themes largely unchanged [from the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance released in March 2021],” Cara Abercrombie, deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for defense policy and arms control for the White House, said during the ComDef conference on Tuesday. “I don’t think you’ll see any big surprises but rather a sharper articulation of those things.”

Abercrombie did not provide further details about the timing of the rollout. In a later speech at ComDef, German Brig. Gen. Fritz Urbach, the defense attaché for the European Union in Washington, said he believes the document will be released in “a matter of weeks.”

Both the NSS and National Defense Strategy were anticipated to come out early this year, with the NSS published first and the NDS following shortly after — and both before the release of the president’s fiscal 2023 budget request.

But only the classified version of the NDS has been released so far. The Defense Department delivered it to Capitol Hill in conjunction with the FY23 budget request in March in an apparent effort to prove to lawmakers that the request was guided by the administration’s defense strategy and not the other way around.

A two page interim NDS factsheet released in March labeled China as the “pacing challenge” for the Pentagon, with Russia representing an “acute threat” that is both immediate and but potentially less dangerous than the rising threat of China.

However, lawmakers have repeatedly criticized the Pentagon for not making a full unclassified NDS available to the public.

“I think having this hearing without any detailed information about the budget and when we are unable to openly discuss any of the administration’s strategy documents directly undermines the committee’s ability to conduct its oversight work,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said in April. “And it is contrary to the spirit of transparent government that these public hearings are intended to support.”

On Tuesday, Abercrombie said the full unclassified version of the NDS “will be coming out shortly as well,” but did not stipulate when.

Although Abercrombie downplayed the idea that the White House has made major edits to the NSS over the past few months, Defense News reported in August that the Biden administration had rewritten the strategy to have a larger focus on Russia due to the ongoing war with Ukraine. At the time the White House was considering a September release for the document, but with only two days left in the month, it seems unlikely to meet that timeframe.

breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · September 28, 2022

4. US touts $810M for Pacific islands to help fend off China, some for Solomons

You would think they could have rounded up to make $1 billion.

US touts $810M for Pacific islands to help fend off China, some for Solomons - Breaking Defense

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a bold promise to the Pacific island leaders: “You can count on the United States partnering with you.”

breakingdefense.com · by Colin Clark · September 29, 2022

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts a working lunch with Pacific Island Countries on the margins of the US-Pacific Island Country Summit in Washington, DC, September 28, 2022. (Photo by KEVIN WOLF/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

SYDNEY — In its most high-profile effort yet to woo Pacific island nations away from the pull of Beijing, the US treated island leaders to red carpet treatment at the White House — including a dinner with President Joe Biden — and they will be on the receiving end of some $810 million in funding as part of a newly announced “Pacific Partnership Strategy.”

The largest pledge to any one country is going to the Solomon Islands, which had been reticent to agree to the proposed plan for the Pacific, according to several news reports. The Solomons, in particular, became a flashpoint for the concern over Beijing’s Pacific strategy after it was revealed those two nations had signed a secret security pact. The new US funding to the Solomons is in the form of a grant program worth $20 million “to spur tourism investments and jobs in the Solomon Islands.”

Much of the rest of the money announced today appears to be a $600 million program spread over 10 years that the administration first announced in July. Most of it will be associated, a White House Fact Sheet released today says, with the South Pacific Tuna Treaty.

Fourteen Pacific nations sent leaders to Washington, with representatives from Nauru and Vanuatu. New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands Forum are observers. The high profile summit, which includes a dinner at the White House with Biden, was kicked off by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Wednesday, who made a bold promise: “You can count on the United States partnering with you.” You can be sure the leaders involved will watch America closely after more than 20 years of being largely ignored.

The new “Pacific Partnership Strategy” released by the White House points at “pressure and economic coercion by the People’s Republic of China, which risks undermining the peace, prosperity, and security of the region, and by extension, of the United States” as a key factor driving American policy in the region.

“These challenges demand renewed U.S. engagement across the full Pacific Islands region. To that end, President Biden is elevating broader and deeper engagement with the Pacific Islands as a priority of U.S. foreign policy. This national strategy – the first-ever from the U.S. government dedicated to the Pacific Islands – both reflects and advances that commitment,” it says.

It also makes clear how important climate change is to the Pacific islands, who believe they face an existential threat from the increasingly severe storms and the rising sea levels in the region.

“In this decisive decade, we will draw ourselves closer to the Pacific Islands, individually and regionally; coordinate more efficiently with our allies and partners; and create opportunities and work together to address threats to the region—the climate crisis most of all,” the strategy says.

The document states the basic American approach to the Pacific islands this way:

“The foundation of our engagement in the Pacific Islands must be strong ties between the United States and the Pacific Islands, individually and collectively. We recognize that, as a committed partner to the Pacific, we must enhance our enduring relationships, especially with the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia, with which we have Compacts of Free Association. Doing so requires a substantial increase in the overall U.S. diplomatic presence and engagement in the region through new embassies, additional personnel from across the U.S. government, and enhanced U.S. Coast Guard and defense engagements.”

Since money is a key expression of strategy the United States noted it “has directly provided over $1.5 billion to support the Pacific Islands over the past decade and today has announced over $810 million in additional expanded programs.”

On top of that, the US committed to recognize Cook Islands, a group of 15 small islands whose residents are all citizens of New Zealand, and Niue, a coral island with about 1,600 residents, who are also citizens of New Zealand. The strategy reiterated the US commitment to reopen an embassy in the Solomon Islands, and begin discussions with Kiribati and Tonga about developing embassies there. That would expand the number of Pacific Island embassies from six to nine. “Where gaps in permanent presence remain, we will pursue additional facilities and creative solutions to provide the Pacific Islands with the diplomatic attention they deserve,” the strategy declares.

The US will also appoint Frankie Reed, former ambassador to Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga, Nauru and Tonga as, effectively, the point person for the Pacific islands. She will be the first envoy to the Pacific Islands Forum. And the new group, “Partners in the Blue Pacific” — the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom — will be joined by Canada and Germany.

The Fact Sheet also outlines these commitments:

• Maritime Security and Marine Protection: The State Department is partnering with the U.S. Coast Guard to provide over $3 million to enhance U.S. Coast Guard training and capacity-building in the Pacific Islands for maritime security and marine protection.
• Law-Enforcement Training: The State Department is partnering with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to provide $2.8 million for FBI-led law enforcement training to Pacific Island countries. Launched to enhance the capacity of the law-enforcement community in the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau, this program will expand in 2022 to include Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and Solomon Islands.
• Bilateral Security Negotiations: The United States is currently engaged in bilateral security negotiations with Fiji for a new Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and will soon begin negotiations with Papua New Guinea on a Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA). The United States will pursue other opportunities to negotiate agreements that support Pacific objectives to respond to humanitarian disasters and protect their maritime domains.
• Global Defense Reform Program: The State Department will deliver $2 million in new assistance to improve security-sector governance and institutional capacity of select U.S. partners through advisory support efforts.

breakingdefense.com · by Colin Clark · September 29, 2022

5. Green Berets honor JFK in ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery

Green Berets honor JFK in ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery

armytimes.com · by Jonathan Lehrfeld · September 28, 2022

With a bagpiper warming up and the memorial’s eternal flame dancing in the sun, a handful of Green Berets assumed position around John F. Kennedy’s gravesite.

The Army’s 1st Special Forces Command was in attendance Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery for the unit’s annual wreath-laying ceremony to honor the former president’s unwavering support for the Green Berets, Master Sgt. Eric Delph announced to a crowd of lawmakers, Gold Star families, members of the Kennedy family and military leaders, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Today we acknowledge the enduring significance of President Kennedy’s vision to select the United States Army Special Forces as the premiere unit with which to meet the global security challenges of his presidency and of the present,” Delph said.

Although Special Forces traces its roots back before Kennedy’s ascension into the presidential office, the special bond that the youngest elected president built with the Green Berets, which celebrated its 70th anniversary this year, remains strong to this day.

In October 1961, after a visit to Fort Bragg, North Carolina — still the home of Army Special Forces — Kennedy wrote a letter of support to then-Brig. Gen. William P. Yarborough, commander of the Army’s Special Warfare Center. Soon after, the president authorized the green beret as the official headgear for all Army Special Forces.

The next April, Kennedy penned a White House memo, stating, “the ‘green beret’ is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.”

Members of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment — The Old Guard — joined the Green Berets at the event, which included a performance by the U.S. Army Band and a rendition of “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes.

In a mark of tradition, Command Sgt. Maj. Ted Munter knelt before Kennedy’s grave during the ceremony and carefully placed his green beret on the flat headstone. The custom began in 1963 after Kennedy’s assassination, when Command Sgt. Maj. Francis J. Ruddy, one of the original Green Berets assigned to guard the president’s gravesite, set his own cap down in a gesture of respect, Delph said.

CW5 Scott Gronowski, Sgt. Maj. Ted Munter, Vickie Lawford, a niece of President Kennedy, Maj. Gen. Richard Angle, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Congressman Richard Hudson pose for a photo during the ceremony. (Jonathan Lehrfeld)

“Since their establishment in 1952, Green Berets at Fort Bragg and across the globe have gone above and beyond the call of duty to defend the United States in combat theaters worldwide,” Congressman Richard Hudson (R-NC), who attended the ceremony, said in June on the command’s 70th anniversary.

There are approximately 6,775 active-duty Green Berets and more than 1,300 in the National Guard, according to a pamphlet distributed during the event.

About Jonathan Lehrfeld

Jonathan is a staff writer and editor of the Early Bird Brief newsletter for Military Times. Follow him on Twitter @

6. Pentagon will double powerful HIMARS artillery for Ukraine

Excerpt:

The $1.1 billion package will include 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, the weapons that have wreaked havoc on command posts and logistical hubs behind Russian lines. The United States already has delivered 16 of the systems, capable of delivering precision munitions from up to 50 miles away, from existing stocks.

Pentagon will double powerful HIMARS artillery for Ukraine

The United States and nearly two dozen partner nations said they would accelerate weapons production, expecting a sustained conflict with Russia

By Alex Horton

September 28, 2022 at 5:53 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Alex Horton · September 28, 2022

The United States will more than double its commitment of long-range rocket artillery systems for Ukraine, the Pentagon said Wednesday, part of a long-term strategy by the United States and its partners to ramp up weapons production in response to Russia’s invasion.

The $1.1 billion package will include 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, the weapons that have wreaked havoc on command posts and logistical hubs behind Russian lines. The United States already has delivered 16 of the systems, capable of delivering precision munitions from up to 50 miles away, from existing stocks.

This new tranche will take a “few years” to build and deliver, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters, underscoring efforts to provide for Ukraine’s long-term defense infrastructure while allies and partners speed tailored packages of equipment and ammunition for the most urgent needs. The HIMARS represents a “core component of Ukraine’s fighting force in the future,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon.

Separately, the Pentagon said Wednesday that the United States intends to increase production of “ground-based long range fires, air defense systems, air-to-ground munitions, and other capabilities” needed to sustain Ukraine’s military for the long haul. In a statement, defense officials said that nearly 20 other nations also agreed to expand their industrial base and accelerate the production of arms that can replace Ukraine’s Russian and Soviet-era equipment with modern systems used by NATO.

The announcements come as Russia presses as many as 300,000 conscripts into service to replace and reinforce beleaguered troops driven back by Ukrainian offensives in the east and south. Readying those new troops will be challenging for the Kremlin, a second U.S. official told reporters, given the logistics necessary to supply and train them. Many of the Russian troops who would train conscripts already “are in Ukraine,” the official said.

The most recent arms package includes weapons and equipment that will take between six months and two years to deliver and require defense contractors to restart or intensify manufacturing, the first defense official said.

Ukraine also will receive 150 additional armored Humvees, which will allow troops to transport foot soldiers and maneuver around the battlefield during offensive operations, and more than 200 vehicles that will help them haul heavy equipment, a logistical challenge that comes with supplying large amounts of heavy weapons.

The package also includes systems designed to mitigate weapons the Russians have used effectively, including radars that can detect incoming artillery and drones.

The Washington Post · by Alex Horton · September 28, 2022

7. Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.

Or we could follow in the footsteps of north Korea and just lower the standards. When the nKPA found that too many Koreans in the north could not meet the minimum height standard they simply lowered the minimum height standard to 4 feet 6 inches.

Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why.

military.com · by Thomas Novelly · September 28, 2022

A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.

A slide detailing the findings from the Pentagon's 2020 Qualified Military Available Study shared with Military.com shows a 6% increase from the latest 2017 Department of Defense research that showed 71% of Americans would be ineligible for service.

"When considering youth disqualified for one reason alone, the most prevalent disqualification rates are overweight (11%), drug and alcohol abuse (8%), and medical/physical health (7%)," the study, which examined Americans between the ages of 17 and 24, read. The study was conducted by the Pentagon's office of personnel and readiness.

Mental health accounted for 4% of disqualifications, while aptitude, conduct or being a dependent accounted for 1% each. Most youth, 44%, were disqualified for multiple reasons.

The updated figures paint a picture of what is currently plaguing military recruiters in many of the service branches, with a shrinking pool of potential service members available to them.

Maj. Charlie Dietz, a Department of Defense spokesman, confirmed that the study shared with Military.com was accurate and said all the services are being challenged by the current recruiting environment.

"There are many factors that we are navigating through, such as the fact that youth are more disconnected and disinterested compared to previous generations," Dietz said. "The declining veteran population and shrinking military footprint has contributed to a market that is unfamiliar with military service resulting in an overreliance of military stereotypes."

Lawmakers have been raising the alarm over the recruiting environment throughout the year. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee personnel panel, said during an April 27 hearing that he was worried the widespread ineligibility of many Americans will contribute to readiness problems.

"To put it bluntly, I am worried we are now in the early days of a long-term threat to the all-volunteer force. [There is] a small and declining number of Americans who are eligible and interested in military service," Tillis said. He added that "every single metric tracking the military recruiting environment is going in the wrong direction."

The Council for a Strong America, a nonprofit organization made up of retired military officers, law enforcement and business leaders that advocates for better nutrition and healthy lifestyles among kids, issued a press release expressing alarm at the findings.

The group called on lawmakers in Washington to take action so that younger generations would qualify for military service.

"The retired admirals and generals of Mission: Readiness recognize that the underlying causes of obesity cannot be solved by the efforts of the military alone," the Council for a Strong America said in a statement. "With an increase in youth being ineligible for military service, it is more important than ever for policymakers, including state and local school boards, to promote healthy eating, increased access to fresh and nutritious foods, and physical activity for children from an early age."

Dietz told Military.com that the Army and most of the service's reserve components are in jeopardy of missing their FY2022 recruiting goals.

-- Thomas Novelly can be reached at thomas.novelly@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @TomNovelly.

military.com · by Thomas Novelly · September 28, 2022

8. What are tactical nuclear weapons? An international security expert explains and assesses what they mean for the war in Ukraine

Excerpts;

I believe Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would not achieve any military goal. It would contaminate the territory that Russia claims as part of its historic empire and possibly drift into Russia itself. It would increase the likelihood of direct NATO intervention and destroy Russia’s image in the world.

Putin aims to deter Ukraine’s continued successes in regaining territory by preemptively annexing regions in the east of the country after holding staged referendums. He could then declare that Russia would use nuclear weapons to defend the new territory as though the existence of the Russian state were threatened. But I believe this claim stretches Russia’s nuclear strategy beyond belief.

Putin has explicitly claimed that his threat to use tactical nuclear weapons is not a bluff precisely because, from a strategic standpoint, using them is not credible. In other words, under any reasonable strategy, using the weapons is unthinkable and so threatening their use is by definition a bluff.

What are tactical nuclear weapons? An international security expert explains and assesses what they mean for the war in Ukraine

theconversation.com · by Nina Srinivasan Rathbun

Tactical nuclear weapons have burst onto the international stage as Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing battlefield losses in eastern Ukraine, has threatened that Russia will “make use of all weapon systems available to us” if Russia’s territorial integrity is threatened. Putin has characterized the war in Ukraine as an existential battle against the West, which he said wants to weaken, divide and destroy Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden criticized Putin’s overt nuclear threats against Europe. Meanwhile, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg downplayed the threat, saying Putin “knows very well that a nuclear war should never be fought and cannot be won.” This is not the first time Putin has invoked nuclear weapons in an attempt to deter NATO.

I am an international security scholar who has worked on and researched nuclear restraint, nonproliferation and costly signaling theory applied to international relations for two decades. Russia’s large arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, which are not governed by international treaties, and Putin’s doctrine of threatening their use have raised tensions, but tactical nuclear weapons are not simply another type of battlefield weapon.

Tactical by the numbers

Tactical nuclear weapons, sometimes called battlefield or nonstrategic nuclear weapons, were designed to be used on the battlefield – for example, to counter overwhelming conventional forces like large formations of infantry and armor. They are smaller than strategic nuclear weapons like the warheads carried on intercontinental ballistic missiles.

While experts disagree about precise definitions of tactical nuclear weapons, lower explosive yields, measured in kilotons, and shorter-range delivery vehicles are commonly identified characteristics. Tactical nuclear weapons vary in yields from fractions of 1 kiloton to about 50 kilotons, compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which have yields that range from about 100 kilotons to over a megaton, though much more powerful warheads were developed during the Cold War.

For reference, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, so some tactical nuclear weapons are capable of causing widespread destruction. The largest conventional bomb, the Mother of All Bombs or MOAB, that the U.S. has dropped has a 0.011-kiloton yield.

Delivery systems for tactical nuclear weapons also tend to have shorter ranges, typically under 310 miles (500 kilometers) compared with strategic nuclear weapons, which are typically designed to cross continents.

Because low-yield nuclear weapons’ explosive force is not much greater than that of increasingly powerful conventional weapons, the U.S. military has reduced its reliance on them. Most of its remaining stockpile, about 150 B61 gravity bombs, is deployed in Europe. The U.K. and France have completely eliminated their tactical stockpiles. Pakistan, China, India, Israel and North Korea all have several types of tactical nuclear weaponry.

Russia has retained more tactical nuclear weapons, estimated to be around 2,000, and relied more heavily on them in its nuclear strategy than the U.S. has, mostly due to Russia’s less advanced conventional weaponry and capabilities.

Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons can be deployed by ships, planes and ground forces. Most are deployed on air-to-surface missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, gravity bombs and depth charges delivered by medium-range and tactical bombers, or naval anti-ship and anti-submarine torpedoes. These missiles are mostly held in reserve in central depots in Russia.

Russia has updated its delivery systems to be able to carry either nuclear or conventional bombs. There is heightened concern over these dual capability delivery systems because Russia has used many of these short-range missile systems, particularly the Iskander-M, to bombard Ukraine.

Russia’s Iskander-M mobile short-range ballistic missile can carry conventional or nuclear warheads. Russia has used the missile with conventional warheads in the war in Ukraine.

Tactical nuclear weapons are substantially more destructive than their conventional counterparts even at the same explosive energy. Nuclear explosions are more powerful by factors of 10 million to 100 million than chemical explosions, and leave deadly radiation fallout that would contaminate air, soil, water and food supplies, similar to the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986. The interactive simulation site NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein depicts the multiple effects of nuclear explosions at various yields.

Can any nuke be tactical?

Unlike strategic nuclear weapons, tactical weapons are not focused on mutually assured destruction through overwhelming retaliation or nuclear umbrella deterrence to protect allies. While tactical nuclear weapons have not been included in arms control agreements, medium-range weapons were included in the now-defunct Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty (1987-2018), which reduced nuclear weapons in Europe.

Both the U.S. and Russia reduced their total nuclear arsenals from about 19,000 and 35,000 respectively at the end of the Cold War to about 3,700 and 4,480 as of January 2022. Russia’s reluctance to negotiate over its nonstrategic nuclear weapons has stymied further nuclear arms control efforts.

The fundamental question is whether tactical nuclear weapons are more “useable” and therefore could potentially trigger a full-scale nuclear war. Their development was part of an effort to overcome concerns that because large-scale nuclear attacks were widely seen as unthinkable, strategic nuclear weapons were losing their value as a deterrent to war between the superpowers. The nuclear powers would be more likely to use tactical nuclear weapons, in theory, and so the weapons would bolster a nation’s nuclear deterrence.

Yet, any use of tactical nuclear weapons would invoke defensive nuclear strategies. In fact, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis notably stated in 2018: “I do not think there is any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Any nuclear weapon use any time is a strategic game changer.”

This documentary explores how the risk of nuclear war has changed – and possibly increased – since the end of the Cold War.

The U.S. has criticized Russia’s nuclear strategy of escalate to de-escalate, in which tactical nuclear weapons could be used to deter a widening of the war to include NATO.

While there is disagreement among experts, Russian and U.S. nuclear strategies focus on deterrence, and so involve large-scale retaliatory nuclear attacks in the face of any first-nuclear weapon use. This means that Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent to conventional war is threatening an action that would, under nuclear warfare doctrine, invite a retaliatory nuclear strike if aimed at the U.S. or NATO.

Nukes and Ukraine

I believe Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine would not achieve any military goal. It would contaminate the territory that Russia claims as part of its historic empire and possibly drift into Russia itself. It would increase the likelihood of direct NATO intervention and destroy Russia’s image in the world.

Putin aims to deter Ukraine’s continued successes in regaining territory by preemptively annexing regions in the east of the country after holding staged referendums. He could then declare that Russia would use nuclear weapons to defend the new territory as though the existence of the Russian state were threatened. But I believe this claim stretches Russia’s nuclear strategy beyond belief.

Putin has explicitly claimed that his threat to use tactical nuclear weapons is not a bluff precisely because, from a strategic standpoint, using them is not credible. In other words, under any reasonable strategy, using the weapons is unthinkable and so threatening their use is by definition a bluff.

theconversation.com · by Nina Srinivasan Rathbun

9. China’s Road Not Taken

Excerpts:

As China’s economic growth once again took off, its success seemed so staggering that the commentariat increasingly treated China’s bifurcation of political and economic liberalization as inevitable and natural. Images ran rife of China as a model “better than democracy” and “a rich, super-large Singapore”—the fruits of a system that American journalist Nicholas Kristof acerbically termed “Market-Leninism” in 1993.

In practice, however, the CCP remained haunted by the Soviet collapse, seeing economic development and continued CCP dominance of society, the military, and historical narrative as the keys to success. The CCP has remained adaptive and at times experimental in its strategies of governance, but these adaptations are overwhelmingly refinements to autocracy.

What of the forbidden history of China’s 1980s? Despite the many challenges, some Chinese writers have not stopped trying to record the past. They use strategic circumlocutions to refer to purged figures, such as calling Zhao “a leading comrade in the central government at that time.” They push boundaries and test the limits of acceptable discourse—even though the limits are firm. “I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place,” Chinese novelist Yan Lianke has written. “It now appears the opposite is true. . . . You will be awarded power, fame, and money as long as you are willing to see what is allowed to be seen, and look away from what is not allowed to be looked at; as long as you are willing to sing the praises of what needs to be praised and ignore what needs to be blanked out.”

At least for now, as Yan writes, the safest bet within China often is simply to pretend that this history never existed. Sometimes this causes unexpected moments of candor—such as, several years ago, when the scriptwriter of a propaganda television series on Deng was asked at a news conference why he had decided to stop the show abruptly in the early 1980s, though Deng had remained powerful for years thereafter. The writer’s answer was memorably frank: “Because after 1984 would be too difficult to write,” he said. “It would be too hard to handle.” Yet even if this history can be repressed, it cannot be entirely erased. It could one day become what the American cultural critic Van Wyck Brooks called “a usable past”—salvaged to help shape China’s future, uncertain though it may be.

China’s Road Not Taken

How the Chinese Communist Party Rewrites History

By Julian Gewirtz

September 29, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Julian Gewirtz · September 29, 2022

On January 18, 2005, tucked away just above a weather report on page four of People’s Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was a three-line notice reporting on the death of an elderly man: “Comrade Zhao Ziyang suffered from long-term diseases of the respiratory system and the cardiovascular system and had been hospitalized multiple times, and following the recent deterioration of his condition, he was unable to be rescued and died on January 17 in Beijing at the age of 85.”

A casual reader of the newspaper would certainly be forgiven for not noticing the item. The brief obituary was notable mainly for what it left out. It did not mention that Zhao had held China’s top two leadership posts, first as premier of the State Council and then as general secretary of the CCP. Nor did it acknowledge that he had made any contributions to China’s “reform and opening,” the agenda of economic development and openness to the world China pursued soon after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976. The slogan “reform and opening” was still a centerpiece of official policy in 2005, mentioned nearly a dozen times in that day’s newspaper, but Zhao’s central role in shaping it had already been erased from official accounts of this period. Indeed, well before Zhao’s death, the CCP had rewritten the entire history of China’s 1980s—a tumultuous, transformational decade—and subjected it to far-reaching distortion, even though it was one of the most consequential periods in the country’s history.

This historical revision went beyond well-known official spin, such as denying the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. China’s rulers systematically blotted out many of the most important parts of the 1980s: that major political reforms were openly considered, alternative economic paths were debated, foreign influences were welcomed, and policy contestation itself was encouraged to produce better results.

Instead, the CCP told a triumphant story of wise, resolute decisions propelling China’s rise on the single correct path taken, bolstering its legitimacy. But party leaders did not censor history only to protect themselves. By writing out any forces pushing for alternative paths, they also shaped China’s future after the 1980s—dramatically limiting the range of possible paths that the country could take and seeking to end any uncertainty about how China ought to modernize. As George Orwell wrote in 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

Today, China stringently polices any versions of its history that run counter to the official narrative. The government has introduced new punishments for the crime of so-called “historical nihilism.” Laws have criminalized the “slander” of officially designated CCP heroes and martyrs, and openly writing about past liberalizing political reforms is forbidden. Chinese regulators even banned a gaming app for “distorting history.” The fuller history of the 1980s is a prime example of what the party refuses to tolerate. And the CCP left no doubt that it sees history as the essential material of Chinese politics when it issued a major resolution on party history for its hundredth anniversary, in 2021.

Of course, other governments rewrite history and always have—whether the damnatio memoriae of ancient Rome, where elites and emperors had their names and images desecrated after death, or the Soviet Union’s airbrushing of purged officials from photographs. National myths, and the brutalities of imperialism, racism, and authoritarianism they elide, are central to public life from the United States to South Africa to eastern Europe. China’s rulers themselves have been rewriting history for centuries, with great political effort devoted to crafting the annals of dynasties and suppressing alternative narratives. But to make sense of China today, it is more important than ever to understand how control over history shapes its politics.

What is today called the “China model”—rapid economic growth paired with authoritarian political control—was not the only vision of the future that China’s leaders pursued after Mao died. They imagined and experimented with many possible China models in the 1980s. Yet China’s rulers have worked hard to conceal this fuller story. One of the most momentous transformations of the twentieth century has been distorted to bolster the legitimacy of the CCP’s chosen path.

AN ERA OF OPENNESS

In popular accounts around the world—as well as in the official state narrative—the 1980s in China are typically treated as a time of linear change, moving from Deng Xiaoping’s rise to power in 1978 and the start of “reform and opening” to new heights of wealth and modernization. In this telling, the crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen protests is at most a harsh interruption before the linear narrative resumes in 1992, with Deng pushing for faster economic reform on his famous “southern tour” of the country—setting the country on the path to becoming the world’s second-largest economy. This makes the 1980s sound like a tedious march up the mountain of GDP, beneath Deng’s benevolently outstretched hand.

But that story is a myth. The path that China took was not preordained. The 1980s in China were a period of extraordinary open-ended contestation and imagination. Chinese elites argued fiercely about the future. Official ideology, economic policy, technological transformation, and political reforms all expanded in many bold new directions. There was no grand plan or blueprint, as veteran party elders Deng, Chen Yun, and Li Xiannian and younger frontline leaders, such as Zhao Ziyang and Hu Yaobang, debated ideas and policies. Modes of economic and social organization changed underfoot. By the time student protesters filled Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989, the leadership had not reached a consensus.

Senior leaders’ views were only one among many sources of ferment during the 1980s. Millions of people whose lives and educations had been disrupted by the Cultural Revolution returned to work and school in the late 1970s and sought to participate in China’s freewheeling modernization. GNP grew at dizzying rates, often over ten percent annually. The number of rural people below the official poverty line fell from 250 million at the beginning of the decade to 96 million by 1988.

Every step of the way was marked by policy debate and hard tradeoffs. Intellectual life proceeded at a feverish pace as controversial ideas and trends swept across Beijing and around the country. For example, Zhao became enamored in 1983 with Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave and the idea of a global New Technological Revolution, and futurists’ books became bestsellers. Less than a decade after Mao’s death, periodicals filled with dueling essays on contentious questions such as the relevance of Karl Marx’s theory of alienation and whether traditional Confucianism impeded China’s modernization.

China’s rulers systematically blotted out many of the most important parts of the 1980s.

Perhaps no subject attracted greater interest—and debate—than reforms to China’s political system. Although Deng had set out his “four cardinal principles,” the political issues that would not be permitted to change, he also described the Chinese political system as backward, burdened by “feudal” and “bureaucratic” influences—which opened the door for further debate.

For many senior officials, political reforms were ineluctably connected to China’s economic reform agenda. Initially, Hu and Zhao experimented with limited and largely administrative reforms; they prioritized streamlining government organs and improving efficiency while tackling graft. But as Zhao gained experience in the central leadership, his ambitions grew. His top priority became separating the party and the government, to increase accountability, transparency, and efficiency. But he was not alone in exploring these reforms. “Whenever we move a step forward in economic reform, we are made keenly aware of the need to change the political structure,” Deng said in 1986. “If we fail to do that, we shall be unable to preserve the gains we have made in the economic reform and to build on them, the growth of the productive forces will be stunted and our drive for modernization will be impeded.”

These arguments presented economic and political liberalization as deeply intertwined, even mutually reinforcing. Many officials and intellectuals saw these shifts as connected to political reforms underway elsewhere in the socialist world, including Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union. On October 14, 1987, Zhao said, “It seems that in socialist countries, the separation of party and government is a big trend.” Some CCP officials, however, were horrified at the idea of imposing new constraints on their own power. And Deng was emphatic that a “tripartite separation of powers” was completely unacceptable.

Bold political thinking came from both independent intellectuals and senior party officials. Vice Premier Wan Li, for example, delivered a speech in July 1986 that called for CCP leaders to “make close friends with some dissidents.” He declared, “I think we should remove the ban on free expression and encourage the free airing of views. We should let people really exercise their constitutional right of free expression. . . . This large socialist country of one billion people won’t be brought down by a few unpleasant words or inciting remarks.” Some senior officials praised this speech, and it was published on the front page of the People’s Daily, taking up the entirety of the front page above the fold. This message was not that of a radical outsider to the system. It was a message from a vice premier, broadcast to the public through the party’s mouthpiece. Zhao even discussed reforms in 1987 that included “opening up all kinds of permissible democratic consultation and lively social dialogue,” as well as “electoral issues” including county-level elections. This was not a liberal democracy in the making but an authoritarian state experimenting with meaningful reforms to its political system.

Plates featuring portraits of current and late Chinese leaders in Beijing, March 2018

Jason Lee / Reuters

This intensive period of official debate about political system reform culminated at the 13th Party Congress of 1987, which endorsed such reforms as essential to the future of China’s modernization. After the meeting, the leadership took measures to separate party and government decision-making, including eliminating the concurrent holding of senior-level party and government positions, ending the practice of party organs intervening in government work, separating the party organization and government personnel systems, removing or marginalizing party cells in many organizations, and taking initial steps to create a civil service system. The government also launched several high-profile initiatives to increase transparency and accountability, including pilot projects in Beijing and Shanghai, and sought to bolster the still limited freedom of the press. New ideas about democracy, authoritarianism, and modernization were the subject of significant discussion. At the beginning of 1989, the potential pathways for China’s political reform were numerous and hotly contested.

All this changed on April 15, 1989, when the liberal-minded Hu Yaobang died unexpectedly, just two years after being removed from his position as CCP general secretary. Students marched to Tiananmen Square in Beijing to mourn him—and this soon developed into a mass movement calling for democracy, accountability, and faster reform. The protesters occupied the square for weeks; the situation escalated after an editorial in the People’s Daily labeled the movement a “planned conspiracy” and a “disturbance.” Some senior leaders called for the imposition of martial law. Others, Zhao most prominent among them, pushed back strongly. As the protesters unveiled a statue that they called “The Goddess of Democracy” in the square, Zhao lost the power struggle at the top. He walked out to the square and apologized to the protesters: “Students, we came too late. Sorry, students. Whatever you say and criticize about us is deserved.”

China’s rulers imposed martial law, placed Zhao under house arrest, and promised “resolute and decisive measures to put an end to the turmoil.” They authorized troops to use force to clear Tiananmen Square and “restore order” in Beijing, leading to a massacre. Sitting in the courtyard of his home turned prison, Zhao could hear gunfire ringing out in the streets.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

As they cracked down, China’s remaining leaders also pushed out a new narrative about the events of the 1980s and their meaning for China’s future. For the CCP, this period in 1989 compressed into a few months, as one propaganda document phrased it, “an important historical period—reflecting on many problems and experiencing rapid changes in our understanding to an unimaginable degree.”

This telling of events was designed to serve China’s post-Tiananmen agenda. CCP leaders erased Zhao, argued for the absolute necessity of fusing the party and the state, and abandoned many of the political reforms pursued during the 1980s, among other changes. This process went well beyond the disciplining of cadres who had been too sympathetic to the protesters and the economic “retrenchment” that had begun in late 1988 due to high inflation and a failed attempt at price reform. Before even replacing the tank-scarred stones of Tiananmen Square, they had pushed out their new version of China’s past and, in doing so, recast its future.

The most fundamental aspect of their rewriting of history centered on systematically splitting political reform from economic reform. The CCP reinterpreted the 1980s as a decadelong struggle between Deng’s authoritarian four cardinal principles and the bogeyman of “bourgeois liberalization,” which for Deng meant all intolerable forms of political, social, and ideological liberalization. Market-fueled growth was the correct goal for the economy, Deng stated, but the open consideration of broader liberalization in society, among intellectuals, and even among senior officials during the 1980s was a serious error. The party now flatly rejected the experimentation, open-endedness, and uncertainty that it had embraced in the preceding years.

At a conclave held June 19–21, 1989, to discuss the “turmoil” and Zhao’s fate, Zhao was given the opportunity to speak in his own defense. He insisted that it would be a grave error to bifurcate political and economic liberalization. “Reform includes reform of the economic system and reform of the political system,” he said. “These two aspects affect one another . . . If [reform of the political system] lags too far behind, continuing with the reform of the economic system will be very difficult and various social and political contradictions will ensue.”

China stringently polices any versions of its history that run counter to the official narrative.

But Zhao’s comments went unheeded. The new official narrative introduced after the “turmoil” left no room for such open-endedness about China’s political system or for policies designed to significantly limit party power. A directive circulated on September 13, 1989, laid out the new line: “Political system reform must be conducive to strengthening and improving the party’s leadership. It by no means may downplay or weaken the party’s leadership, let alone abolish the party’s leadership.”

Soon thereafter, the propaganda apparatus began to erase Zhao from the record. This was more than just downplaying his role or criticizing some of his policies. It even went beyond the punishment of keeping him under house arrest. It was a totalizing effort to ensure that the history of China’s 1980s could be told without reference to a man who had led the country for the entirety of the decade. A propaganda directive sent to publishers across the country on August 7, 1989, provided detailed instructions on how to erase Zhao: banning new books on him, requiring the destruction of existing biographies of him, and ordering that publishers excise his quotations from documents when possible and, if not possible, “the quoted material may be retained but should not include his personal name.” In addition, books and magazines “would no longer publish photographs of Comrade Zhao Ziyang . . . and reprinted or republished books will remove photographs of him.”

Watching from within his walled garden, Zhao saw himself become a historical nonperson, invisible in official accounts of the era that he had shaped and cast as irrelevant to China’s future. Whereas during the 1980s China’s rulers had considered many forms of liberalization and modernization, now they recommitted themselves to a new, narrower, and more authoritarian path. Political reforms could be allowed only if they served the goal of strengthening the CCP. And no matter how official or authoritative they had once been, alternative voices—and alternative histories—were silenced. “Some matters should be limited to only a portion of people to know and master,” Jiang Zemin, Zhao’s successor as CCP general secretary, said in late 1989. “What can be transparent and what can’t be transparent [all] depends on whether it is conducive to social stability, political stability, economic stability, and stability in the people’s hearts.”

This rectification continued and broadened in the autumn of 1989 and the following years. For the CCP leadership, the stakes only grew as the Berlin Wall fell and political changes swept across eastern Europe. Deng said, “So long as socialism does not collapse in China, it will always hold its ground in the world.” Especially after the Soviet Union’s collapse, China’s rulers saw their country as a socialist survivor in a dangerous capitalist world.

The path that China took was not preordained.

Their new enemies were both domestic and foreign. Among the perceived villains was the Hungarian American financier George Soros, who was accused of plotting with Zhao’s advisers to promote the “peaceful evolution” of China from socialism to capitalist democracy. Domestically, broader purges of wrong-thinking intellectuals, officials, and workers were widespread, brutal, and conducted largely in secret.

In 1992, after these changes took hold, Deng went on his famed southern tour, visiting the special economic zones on China’s southern coast to revive and accelerate economic reform, but he evinced no interest in shifting away from the new official narrative of China’s modernization. To succeed on this path, the CCP would continue to pursue rapid economic growth without significant political liberalization, promoting the idea that this configuration was the only viable path for China—and rewriting history to occlude the fact that it had pursued alternatives.

A FORBIDDEN LEGACY

As China’s economic growth once again took off, its success seemed so staggering that the commentariat increasingly treated China’s bifurcation of political and economic liberalization as inevitable and natural. Images ran rife of China as a model “better than democracy” and “a rich, super-large Singapore”—the fruits of a system that American journalist Nicholas Kristof acerbically termed “Market-Leninism” in 1993.

In practice, however, the CCP remained haunted by the Soviet collapse, seeing economic development and continued CCP dominance of society, the military, and historical narrative as the keys to success. The CCP has remained adaptive and at times experimental in its strategies of governance, but these adaptations are overwhelmingly refinements to autocracy.

What of the forbidden history of China’s 1980s? Despite the many challenges, some Chinese writers have not stopped trying to record the past. They use strategic circumlocutions to refer to purged figures, such as calling Zhao “a leading comrade in the central government at that time.” They push boundaries and test the limits of acceptable discourse—even though the limits are firm. “I used to assume history and memory would always triumph over temporary aberrations and return to their rightful place,” Chinese novelist Yan Lianke has written. “It now appears the opposite is true. . . . You will be awarded power, fame, and money as long as you are willing to see what is allowed to be seen, and look away from what is not allowed to be looked at; as long as you are willing to sing the praises of what needs to be praised and ignore what needs to be blanked out.”

At least for now, as Yan writes, the safest bet within China often is simply to pretend that this history never existed. Sometimes this causes unexpected moments of candor—such as, several years ago, when the scriptwriter of a propaganda television series on Deng was asked at a news conference why he had decided to stop the show abruptly in the early 1980s, though Deng had remained powerful for years thereafter. The writer’s answer was memorably frank: “Because after 1984 would be too difficult to write,” he said. “It would be too hard to handle.” Yet even if this history can be repressed, it cannot be entirely erased. It could one day become what the American cultural critic Van Wyck Brooks called “a usable past”—salvaged to help shape China’s future, uncertain though it may be.

• JULIAN GEWIRTZ is the author of Never Turn Back: China and the Forbidden History of the 1980s (Belknap Press, 2022), from which this essay is adapted. He is currently serving in the U.S. government. Never Turn Back was written before he entered government, and the book and this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government.

Foreign Affairs · by Julian Gewirtz · September 29, 2022

10. Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the damage to gas pipelines

Statement by the North Atlantic Council on the damage to gas pipelines

nato.int · by NATO

The NATO Invitees associate themselves with this Statement.

1. The damage to the Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 pipelines in international waters in the Baltic Sea is of deep concern. All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage. These leaks are causing risks to shipping and substantial environmental damage. We support the investigations underway to determine the origin of the damage.
2. We, as Allies, have committed to prepare for, deter and defend against the coercive use of energy and other hybrid tactics by state and non-state actors. Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response.

nato.int · by NATO

11. Americans Split on Increasing Defense Spending

Charts and data at the link: https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/public-opinion-survey/americans-split-increasing-defense-spending

Americans Split on Increasing Defense Spending

https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/research/public-opinion-survey/americans-split-increasing-defense-spending

thechicagocouncil.org · by Public Opinion Survey · September 28, 2022

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September 28, 2022

RESEARCH by Karl Friedhoff

US Department of Defense

But large majorities support sending additional arms and military supplies to Ukraine, and if needed, Taiwan, Council polling shows.

In his 2023 budget, US President Joe Biden sought a record $813 billion for national defense. The House of Representatives then piled another $45 billion on top of that. The American public, however, is split on increasing defense spending. And there are deep divides between Republicans and Democrats.

Key Findings

• A plurality of Americans (38%) want to keep defense spending about the same with nearly equal numbers wanting to either expand (29%) or cut back (26%).
• A majority of Americans (51%) say that maintaining US military superiority is a very effective way to achieve US foreign policy goals. Only maintaining existing alliances (54%) is higher.
• Just 16 percent say military aid to other countries is a very effective way to achieve US foreign policy goals. Another 59 percent say it is somewhat effective.
• Even so, large majorities support sending additional arms and military supplies to Ukraine (72%) and if needed, to Taiwan (65%).

Three in 10 (30%) say ensuring the physical defense of our country is the most important priority for making US foreign policy today. This was the top priority included in the list, and by far the most important priority for self-described Republicans.

And while 54 percent of Americans say maintaining existing alliances is a very effective foreign policy approach, just 16 percent identify providing military aid to other countries as very effective.

Asked in separate questions, however, nearly three out of every four Americans favor the US sending additional military supplies to Ukraine to help defend itself against Russia (72%). And if China invades Taiwan, two in three Americans favor providing additional military transfers to Taipei (65%).

About the Author

Karl Friedhoff

Marshall M. Bouton Fellow for Asia Studies

Karl Friedhoff was a Korea Foundation-Mansfield Foundation US-Korea Nexus Scholar and a member of the Mansfield Foundation’s Trilateral Working Group prior to joining the Council. Previously, he was a program officer in the Public Opinion Studies Program at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies based in Seoul, South Korea.

@KarlFriedhoff

Methodology

This analysis is based on data from the 2022 Chicago Council Survey of the American public on foreign policy, a project of the Lester Crown Center on US Foreign Policy. The 2022 Chicago Council Survey was conducted July 15–August 1, 2022, by Ipsos using its large-scale nationwide online research panel, KnowledgePanel, in both English and Spanish among a weighted national sample of 3,106 adults 18 or older living in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is +/- 1.8 percentage points. The margin of error is higher for partisan subgroups or for partial-sample items.

Partisan identification is based on how respondents answered a standard partisan self-identification question: “Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or what?”

The 2022 Chicago Council Survey is made possible by the generous support of the Crown family and the Korea Foundation.

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12. EXCLUSIVE Afghan Taliban sign deal for Russian oil products, gas and wheat

EXCLUSIVE Afghan Taliban sign deal for Russian oil products, gas and wheat

Reuters · by Mohammad Yunus Yawar

KABUL, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The Taliban have signed a provisional deal with Russia to supply gasoline, diesel, gas and wheat to Afghanistan, Acting Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi told Reuters.

Azizi said his ministry was working to diversify its trading partners and that Russia had offered the Taliban administration a discount to average global commodity prices.

The move, the first known major international economic deal struck by the Taliban since they returned to power more than a year ago, could help to ease the Islamist movement's isolation that has effectively cut it off from the global banking system.

No country formally recognises the group, which fought a 20-year insurgency against Western forces and their local Afghan allies before sweeping into Kabul as U.S. troops withdrew.

Western diplomats have said the group needs to change its course on human rights, particularly those of women, and prove it has cut ties with international militant groups in order to gain formal recognition.

Russia does not officially recognise the Taliban's government, but Moscow hosted leaders of the movement in the run-up to the fall of Kabul and its embassy is one of only a handful to remain open in the Afghan capital.

Azizi said the deal would involve Russia supplying around one million tonnes of gasoline, one million tonnes of diesel, 500,000 tonnes of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and two million tonnes of wheat annually.

On Wednesday, Russia's state-owned TASS news agency quoted Moscow's special representative for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, as confirming that "preliminary agreements" had been reached on fuel and food supplies to Kabul.

Russia's energy and agriculture ministries did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the agreement. The office of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is in charge of oil and gas, also did not immediately respond.

Azizi said the agreement would run for an unspecified trial period, after which both sides were expected to sign a longer term deal if they were content with the arrangement.

He declined to give details on pricing or payment methods, but said Russia had agreed to a discount to global markets on goods that would be delivered to Afghanistan by road and rail.

The deal was finalised after an Afghan technical team spent several weeks in discussions in Moscow, having stayed on after Azizi visited there last month.

ECONOMY IN CRISIS

Since the Taliban regained power, Afghanistan has been plunged into economic crisis after development aid upon which the country relied was cut and amid sanctions that have largely frozen the banking sector.

The trade deal is likely to be watched closely in the United States, whose officials have held regular talks with the Taliban on plans for the country's banking system.

Washington has announced the creation of a Swiss trust fund for some of the Afghan central bank reserves held in the United States. The Taliban have demanded the release of the entire amount of around $7 billion and said the funds should be used for central bank operations.

Azizi said international data showed most Afghans were living below the poverty line, and his office was working to support trade and the economy through international outreach.

"Afghans are in great need," he said. "Whatever we do, we do it based on national interest and the people's benefit."

He said Afghanistan also received some gas and oil from Iran and Turkmenistan and had strong trade ties with Pakistan, but also wanted to diversify.

"A country ... shouldn't be dependent on just one country, we should have alternative ways," he said.

The Group of Seven (G7) nations are trying to find ways to limit Russia's oil export earnings in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine in February.

Moscow has managed to maintain revenues through increased crude sales to Asia, particularly China and India. The European Union will ban Russian crude imports by Dec. 5 and Russian oil products by Feb. 5.

Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield and Mohammad Yunus Yawar; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Jane Merriman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Mohammad Yunus Yawar

13.  Australian, US allies hold closed- door meetings with Westmincom

Australian, US allies hold closed- door meetings with Westmincom

newsinfo.inquirer.net · by Julie S. Alipala · September 28, 2022

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Zamboanga del Sur — The Australian Ambassador for counter terrorism had a closed door meeting with top military officials of the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) to discuss mutual defense engagement in this city and the neighboring province of Basilan.

Lieutenant General Alfredo Rosario Jr, Westmincom chief, said Robert John Noble, Australian Ambassador for counter-terrorism, Colonel Paul Barta, Defense Attache on Counter Terrorism in Manila of the Australian Defence Force, and Renee McGregor, an envoy’s staff, were in this city on Monday, Sept. 26.

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They discussed Australia’s defense engagement, areas of cooperation, and a better understanding of the security situation in Zamboanga City and Basilan province alongside Australia’s development programs and activities.

During the meeting that was off-limits to the media, Rosario briefed Ambassador Noble on the Command’s security campaign even as he expressed his gratitude to his visitors for taking the time to visit the Command and strengthen the relationship between the two countries.

As a long-time ally of the Philippines, Australia has established a good relationship with the country. “The relationship between the two countries is robust and enduring,” Rosario said in a statement.

The Australian Ambassador’s visit came a day after Rear Admiral Jeromy Williams, commander of the US Special Operations Command in the Pacific met with Brigadier General Arturo Rojas, Westmincom’s deputy commander for External Defense Operations came here on a visit.

Williams said Sunday that the purpose of his visit was to sustain the relationship between the US and Philippine forces.

He said he was “honored” to visit one of the great allies of the USA, referring to the Philippines.

Williams took over the helm of the Special Operations Command in the Pacific based at Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii in March 2022.

Before this post, he was the deputy director for Special Operations and Counter Terrorism, based in Washington, District of Columbia.

All the vital visits and meetings with the Wesmincom top brass of Westmincom were kept confidential and off limits to the media.

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14. Sophisticated Covert Cyberattack Campaign Targets Military Contractors

Sophisticated Covert Cyberattack Campaign Targets Military Contractors

Malware used in the STEEP#MAVERICK campaign features rarely seen obfuscation, anti-analysis, and evasion capabilities.

Jai Vijayan

Contributing Writer, Dark Reading

darkreading.com · September 28, 2022

A cyberattack campaign, potentially bent on cyber espionage, is highlighting the increasingly sophisticated nature of cyberthreats targeting defense contractors in the US and elsewhere.

The covert campaign, which researchers at Securonix detected and are tracking as STEEP#MAVERICK, has hit multiple weapons contractors in Europe in recent months, including potentially a supplier to the US F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft program.

What makes the campaign noteworthy according to the security vendor is the overall attention the attacker has paid to operations security (OpSec) and to ensuring their malware is hard to detect, difficult to remove, and challenging to analyze.

The PowerShell-based malware stager used in the attacks have "featured an array of interesting tactics, persistence methodology, counter-forensics and layers upon layers of obfuscation to hide its code," Securonix said in a report this week.

Uncommon Malware Capabilities

The STEEP#MAVERICK campaign appears to have launched in late summer with attacks on two high-profile defense contractors in Europe. Like many campaigns, the attack chain began with a spear-phishing email that contained a compressed (.zip) fie with a shortcut (.lnk) file to a PDF document purportedly describing company benefits. Securonix described the phishing email as being similar to one it had encountered in a campaign earlier this year involving North Korea's APT37 (aka Konni) threat group.

When the .lnk file is executed, it triggers what Securonix described as a "rather large and robust chain of stagers," each written in PowerShell and featuring as many as eight obfuscation layers. The malware also features extensive anti-forensic and counter-debugging capabilities which include monitoring a long list of processes that could be uses to look for malicious behavior. The malware is designed to disable logging and bypass Windows Defender. It uses several techniques to persist on a system, including by embedding itself in the system registry, by embedding itself as a scheduled task and by creating a startup shortcut on the system.

A spokesperson with Securonix's Threat Research Team says the number and variety of anti-analysis and anti-monitoring checks the malware has is unusual. So, too, is the large number of obfuscation layers for payloads and the malware's attempts to substitute or generate new custom command-and-control (C2) stager payloads in response to analysis attempts: "Some obfuscation techniques, such as using PowerShell get-alias to perform [the invoke-expression cmdlet] are very rarely seen."

The malicious activities were performed in an OpSec-aware manner with different types of anti-analysis checks and evasion attempts throughout the attack, at a relatively high operational tempo with custom payloads injected.

"Based on the details of the attack, one takeaway for other organizations is paying extra attention to monitoring your security tools," the spokesperson says. "Organizations should ensure security tools work as expected and avoid relying on a single security tool or technology to detect threats."

A Growing Cyber Threat

The STEEP#MAVERICK campaign is only the latest in a growing number that have targeted defense contractors and suppliers in recent years. Many of these campaigns have involved state-backed actors operating out of China, Russia, North Korea, and other countries.

In January, for instance, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an alert warning of Russian state-sponsored actors targeting so-called cleared defense contractors (CDCs) in attacks designed to steal sensitive US defense information and technology. The CISA alert described the attacks as targeting a wide swath of CDCs, including those involved in developing combat systems, intelligence and surveillance technologies, weapons and missile development, and combat vehicle and aircraft design.

In February, researchers at Palo Alto Networks reported on at least four US defense contractors being targeted in a campaign to distribute a fileless, socketless backdoor called SockDetour. The attacks were part of a broader campaign that the security vendor had investigated along with the National Security Agency in 2021 involving a Chinese advanced persistent group that targeted defense contractors and organizations in multiple other sectors.

Defense Contractors: A Vulnerable Segment

Adding to the concerns over the rising volume of cyberattacks is the relative vulnerability of many defense contractors, despite having secrets that should be closely guarded.

Recent research that Black Kite conducted into the security practices of the top 100 US defense contractors showed that nearly a third (32%) are vulnerable to ransomware attacks. This is because of factors like leaked or compromised credentials, and weak practices in areas such as credential management, application security and Security Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security.

Seventy-two percent of the respondents in the Black Kite report have experienced at least one incident involving a leaked credential.

There could be light at the end of the tunnel: The US Department of Defense, in conjunction with industry stakeholders, has developed a set of cybersecurity best practices for military contractors to use to protect sensitive data. Under the DoD's Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, defense contractors are required to implement these practices — and get certified as having them — to be able to sell to government. The bad news? The rollout of the program has been delayed.

darkreading.com · September 28, 2022

15. Meta ordered to pay $175M for copying Green Beret veteran’s app

Meta ordered to pay $175M for copying Green Beret veteran’s app

militarytimes.com · by Zamone Perez · September 28, 2022

Meta Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, was found by a federal jury in Austin, Texas, to have infringed on two patents held by Voxer Inc., a walkie talkie messaging app founded by a former Army Green Beret.

The social media giant was ordered to pay nearly $175 million in damages.

Voxer launched the app in 2011, which was named Best Overall App in the First Annual Silicon Valley Business App Awards in 2013. In 2012, Facebook approached Voxer about a potential collaboration that led to Voxer sharing its patents and proprietary information with the company.

“When early meetings did not result in an agreement, Facebook identified Voxer as a competitor although Facebook had no live video or voice product at the time,” court filings read. “Facebook revoked Voxer’s access to key components of the Facebook platform and launched Facebook Live in 2015 followed by Instagram Live in 2016. Both products incorporate Voxer’s technologies and infringe its patents.”

A Meta spokesperson challenged the ruling in a statement sent to technology publication TechCrunch, saying the social media giant will continue to press the issue through the courts.

“We believe the evidence at trial demonstrated that Meta did not infringe Voxer’s patents,” Meta’s spokesperson said in the statement. “We intend to seek further relief, including filing an appeal.”

Tom Katis, founder and former Voxer executive, started the company due to what he called a “frustration with military communications” in an interview with Bloomberg.

Enlisting after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Katis served as communications sergeant with U.S. Army Special Forces.

In 2003, his unit was ambushed, and he said he felt the pressing need for better communication capabilities while he was trying to coordinate medivacs and reinforcements, according to Katis’ introduction in the initial complaint.

“The military radios we had were the best in the world, but trying to communicate effectively was always a challenge,” Katis said. “For years after coming back...I kept trying to figure out how you could build something better, how you could use software to solve some of these problems.”

The Texas jury found that Facebook Live and Instagram Live incorporated two pieces of Voxer’s technologies that involve streaming media over networks.

Meta countered in court filings that “Facebook has prioritized live video messaging since the launch of Facebook Live and Instagram Live, with one report identifying Facebook Live as Facebook’s ‘top priority.’”

About Zamone Perez

Zamone “Z” Perez is an editorial fellow at Defense News and Military Times. He previously worked at Foreign Policy and Ufahamu Africa, where he helped produce podcasts. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he researched humanitarian intervention and atrocity prevention in his thesis.

16. Why the West is trumpeting its Ukraine war intel

Why the West is trumpeting its Ukraine war intel

Scale, frequency and preemptive nature of intelligence disclosures mark a new kind of information warfare

By HUW DYLAN And THOMAS MAGUIRE

asiatimes.com · by Huw Dylan · September 27, 2022

Intelligence agencies are secretive organizations that generate secret products. Their reports come adorned with reminders to maintain discretion: “Top Secret” this, “Sensitive Compartmented Information” that.

Those following former US president Donald Trump’s curious filing practices in Mar-a-Lago will appreciate the significance governments attach to protecting their classified materials and the damage revelations can do.

Yet, over the past eight months, the US, British and Ukrainian governments and NATO partners have been regularly briefing global audiences on their intelligence concerning Russia and its war against Ukraine.

Our study, in the journal Survival, examines this seemingly paradoxical behavior, asking questions about how and why governments communicate intelligence – and with what risks.

I’ll show you mine

Before and during the war in Ukraine, intelligence disclosures have been intended to bolster Ukrainian and European resilience against Russia’s invasion, to undermine Russia’s attempts to justify their actions and expose their wartime atrocities and failings.

These disclosures have also sought to justify NATO and EU member economic sanctions and security assistance to Ukraine and to enhance cohesion with more reluctant allies to isolate Russia diplomatically and economically.

The methods of and motives for these disclosures are not unprecedented. In the past, states have communicated intelligence for the same underlying reasons: to justify actions or policies and to persuade partners or adversaries to their cause and build their resilience. It’s also used for incriminating adversaries.

Russia-Ukraine war has had a heavy counterintelligence component. Image: Facebook

Yet the scale, frequency and initially preemptive nature of intelligence disclosures concerning Russia and Ukraine are new. Given the acute pressure Ukraine is under, Kiev is disclosing especially granular intelligence on alleged Russian operations to kill Ukrainian prisoners of war and Russian security service war planning.

In a more sanitized manner, UK Defense Intelligence continues its daily “intelligence briefings” on social media about Russian military progress and internal tensions. The US is using satellite imagery to expose Russian efforts to source Iranian drones and disclosing assessments to spotlight global Russian influence operations.

As Anna Horrigan, the US National Security Agency’s senior executive, explains: “We can’t just watch our adversaries, we have to do something about it, whether sharing timely information, or taking action against that actor.”

With both former intelligence officers and those responsible for these influence campaigns championing their benefits, the war in Ukraine has probably set a precedent for – and an expectation of – this more open approach to communicating secrets, at least for its main proponents the US, UK and Ukraine.

Rewards and risks

Recent public reflections about using intelligence this way by leading British stakeholders, such as the chief of Defense Intelligence, General Sir Jim Hockenhull, and GCHQ director, Jeremy Fleming, have not, however, addressed the associated risks.

The dissemination of intelligence is generally limited because access to secrets is vulnerable: hard to gain and easy to lose. Once a target suspects what a state knows, and how, it might adapt to secure information and deny future access.

In this case, Russia can take steps to guard against further leakage, for example, by improving communication security – or it could manipulate the sources of leaks, using them as channels of deception.

Ukraine’s willingness to publicly disclose intercepted communications of senior Russian policymakers and intelligence officers for short-term exposure gains, for instance, may carry long-term access costs. As CIA director William Burns has publicly acknowledged, considering when and how to play one’s hand – in what level of detail and through what channels – will be important in future calculations.

Besides these operational concerns, future planning must consider a further strategic risk: the escalation costs of potentially hamstringing one’s own or adversaries’ decision-making.

An international environment in which states can signal intent, pursue core interests and even wage shadow wars can, under certain circumstances, reduce decision-makers’ exposure to elite political pressures and domestic public approval ratings, permitting greater flexibility.

Removing this ambiguous “grey zone” to expose adversaries’ covert activities, while attractive, risks entrenching or exacerbating positions rather than encouraging moderation, deterrence, or de-escalation. The administration of former US president Harry Truman understood this point clearly when it chose not to publicly expose the Kremlin’s covert deployment of Soviet pilots during the Korean War.

A man crosses the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) seal in the lobby of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Photo: AFP / Saul Loeb

Similarly, Singapore’s government is avoiding naming and shaming China’s covert influence operations within its politics and society. To act differently risks potentially worse outcomes: escalation or direct nuclear confrontation or economic punishment.

Finally, long-term considerations of disclosing for influence must consider the audience costs of losing trust through politicized intelligence. Using intelligence to forewarn of an enemy’s planned action runs the self-negating risk of successfully deterring the very act that is predicted.

Also, publicly deployed intelligence often lacks the nuance of internal and classified assessments. It is consumed by a public generally unfamiliar with the limits of intelligence and contextual considerations.

In both cases, when disclosed assessments on complex phenomena are perceived as partially or wholly “wrong”, the credibility of the responsible agencies and policymakers can be tarnished. Intelligence can appear not only incompetent, but even craven or corrupt. The legacy of the “dodgy dossier” on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues to cast a long shadow in the UK in this way.

As the 2004 UK Butler Report concluded in reflecting on the public use of intelligence on Iraqi WMD, both careful explanations of intelligence uses and limitations and clear dividing lines between intelligence assessment and policy advocacy are needed.

Conclusions reached publicly and privately must also align. This may not sit well with policymakers hoping to use intelligence to incriminate enemies, justify their actions, and persuade partners to go along with them in future crises.

Intelligence agencies should be careful to protect their credibility with the public. Likewise, media intermediaries and public consumers alike need to approach such intelligence-led communications with a careful, critical eye.

Huw Dylan is Reader in Intelligence Studies and International Security, King’s College London and Thomas Maguire is Assistant Professor of Intelligence and Security, Leiden University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

asiatimes.com · by Huw Dylan · September 27, 2022

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