Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:

“How did our country go so quickly from unique global power to a country that is widely perceived as no longer willing to bear the costs or accept the responsibility of global leadership—or even capable of governing itself effectively?”
— Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post-Cold War World by Robert Michael Gates
https://a.co/fiNmAYk

"In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful."
- Leo Tolstoy

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
- Winston Churchill



1 Ukraine Threat Update - March 13, 2022 | SOF News
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 12
3. The Question the World Is Asking: Is Vladimir Putin Rational?
4. Pentagon push to send more trainers to Ukraine was scrapped in December amid White House fears of provoking Russia
5. Wang Jixian: A Voice from The Other China, but in Odessa
6. 100 women have now graduated US Army Ranger School
7. Philippines willing to open bases to US if Ukraine conflict spreads
8.  California’s National Guard Trained Ukraine’s Military for Decades—and Now It Helps From Afar
9. Harvard teens made a website matching Ukrainian refugees with people offering places to stay
10. Ukraine’s New Foreign Legion Takes the Fight to Russian Forces
11. U.S. Won’t Negotiate Ukraine-Related Sanctions with Russia to Save Iran Nuclear Deal
12. The West’s Economic War Plan Against Russia
13. Here’s What Putin Doesn’t Want You to Know About What’s Happening Inside Russia Right Now
14. BBC World Service resurrects shortwave broadcasts in war-torn Ukraine
15. The War in Ukraine Is Just Beginning
16. Shaky footage in Ukraine shows this is a tale of two ways of waging war: stealth versus brute force
17. Kyiv ‘ready to fight’ as Russian forces close in Ukraine capital
18. Why Russia's Brutal War in Ukraine Could Sink China
19. Just Stop: Russia’s Claim of Chemical, Bio Labs in Ukraine Is Garbage
20. US Fears Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Bioweapons Gaining Traction
21. How Russia Sowed A Conspiracy Theory About U.S. Bioweapons In Ukraine
22. This Global Resistance to Putin’s War Is Historic
23. Mind the escalation aversion: Managing risk without losing the initiative in the Russia-Ukraine war
24. Opinion | The Price of Putin’s Belligerence
25. What Will Putin Do If Russia Has No Chance at Victory in Ukraine?
26. Ukraine War Ushers In ‘New Era’ for U.S. Abroad
27. Uncomfortable lessons from a checkered irregular warfare legacy - Responsible Statecraft
28. Supplying Arms to Ukraine is Not an Act of War




1. Ukraine Threat Update - March 13, 2022 | SOF News


Ukraine Threat Update - March 13, 2022 | SOF News
sof.news · by SOF News · March 13, 2022

Curated news, analysis, and commentary about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tactical situation on the ground, Ukrainian defense, and NATO.
Do you receive our daily newsletter? If not, you can sign up here and enjoy it five (almost) days a week with your morning coffee (or afternoon tea depending on where in the world you are).
Russian Campaign Update. Russia continues to occupy three major Ukrainian cities – KhersonMelitopol, and Berdyansk located in southern Ukraine. Mariupol on the coast of the Sea of Azov is encircled. The Russians have made some limited progress advancing from the east to Kyiv. Some small gains were made moving north from Crimea along the western bank of the Dnieper River. The Ukrainian counterattacks and ambushes against the Russian lines of communication in northeast Ukraine is hindering the logistics effort. Some news reports indicate that Putin has fired some of his top generals and others say that high ranking members of the intelligence community have been arrested.
Russian Wounded. Many wounded Russian soldiers are being evacuated to Belarus. There has been a constant flow of convoys of ambulances in the border area heading north. They are being taken to a hospital in Mazyr, a city in southern Belarus. Read more in “Russia Evacuates Wounded Soldiers to Belarus as Its Casualties in Ukraine War Rise”, The Wall Street Journal.
Russian Dead. The bodies of dead Russian soldiers are being brought by truck to Mazyr, Belarus and then sent home to Russia by train or plane. The morgues in Homel and Naroulia are also filled up. U.S. officials have estimated that several thousand Russian soldiers have been killed so far in the weeks-long war. “Bodies of Russian Soldiers Filling Up Belarusian Morgues, Residents Say”, Radio Free Europe, March 13, 2022.
Advance From Brest? There are indications that the Russians and / or the Belarus might push southward into western Ukraine from Brest, Belarus to interrupt the lines of communications running east – west across Ukraine. This would cut off supplies of weapons from western nations transiting across the border toward the central part of Ukraine in the vicinity of Lviv.
Fight for the Skies. The Russians are flying a couple of hundred sorties a day. However, most of them are not over Ukrainian airspace and are lobbing long-range missiles from inside Russian airspace. This is due to the air defense capabilities of the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians are flying infrequently because of the the Russian surface-to-air missiles that are in many locations of Ukraine. (Defense One, Mar 11, 2022).
Maritime Activities. No significant maritime activities have taken place in the past few days.
Kyiv. The capital city of Ukraine is considered the primary objective of the Russians. The Capture of Kyiv would allow Russia to put in place its puppet government. The Russian army is in the northern outskirts of the city and control the Antonov / Hostomel airport located to the northwest of the Kyiv. The city currently has electricity, gas, food, and water. There is enough food for the 2 million residents who have stayed in the city to last two weeks. The situation on the ground around Kyiv remains somewhat static. (view SITMAP of Kyiv).
Kharkiv. The second largest city of Ukraine is Kharkiv located in the northeast of the country. It is not yet encircled and the Ukrainians are putting up a strong defense. There is the possibility that Kharkiv could be cut off from the center of Ukraine – losing the ability to be resupplied.
Mariupol. Located on the Sea of Azov, the coastal city of Mariupol is under siege by the Russians. This city is situated along the coastal road network that would provide Russia with a land bridge between Russia and the Crimea. The mayor of the city says it can hold out until May 17th. The Ukrainian military is in no position to relieve the city as it is committed to defending too many other areas. Russian forces advanced into the eastern outskirts of Mariupol on Saturday. Humanitarian corridors continue to be interdicted by Russian forces.
Mykolayiv. Located on the west bank of the Dnieper River close to the coast of the Black Sea, Mykolayiv is a strategic objective for the Russians that is on the road to Odessa located further west along the coast of the Black Sea. Odessa is secure for now and the risk of an amphibious assault seems to have subsided for the moment.
Western Ukraine. The Yavoriv Military Range near the western city of Lviv suffered up to 8 missile strikes in the early morning hours of Sunday (Mar 13). The attack on the International Peacekeeping and Security Center is 20 kilometers away from the Polish border and 30 kilometers northwest of Lviv. At least nine are dead and 57 more were injured. This is the most western attack since the Russians invaded Ukraine. Reports indicate that the missiles were launched from Saratov, Russia. (The New York Times, Mar 13, 2022). (subscription)
Refugees. Currently 2.5 Ukrainians have fled to neighboring countries to the west of Ukraine. There are about 1.8 internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have fled to western Ukraine. The evacuation route from the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine was open on March 12th, with about 8,000 people able to flee.
Situation Maps. The Institute for the Study of War provides a daily map and assessment update. The War Mapper has posted its SITMAP for March 13, 2022.
UNCN. The Ukraine NGO Coordination Network is an organization that ties together U.S.-based 501c3 organizations and non-profit humanitarian organizations that are working to evacuate and support those in need affected by the Ukraine crisis. https://uncn.one

General Information
Russian Intel Officers Arrested. After a dismal two week performance in Ukraine, Putin has suddenly launched another surprise attack. This time against the Fifth Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB). The leadership has been placed under house arrest for providing poor intelligence ahead of Russia’s non-stuttering invasion. The Service of Operative Information and International Relations Service has seemed to have told Putin what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear. “Putin Places Spies Under House Arrest”, Center for European Policy Analysis, March 11, 2022.
Russian Logistics. Alex Vershinin, a retired U.S. Army LtCol with time in armor units, describes some of the logistics challenges that Russia is experiencing at the moment. He says that the initial thrust into Ukraine sucked up the fuel and supplies that the invading forces had on hand. But he believes in time the logistics system will catch up . . . especially once the railheads are established within Ukraine. “Russia’s Logistical Problems May Slow Down Russia’s Advance – But They Are Unlikely To Stop It”, Modern War Institute at West Point, March 10, 2022.
Video – Learning to Use the NLAW. In Kyiv, instructors are giving last minute training to members of the 112th Territorial Defense Brigade in preparation for the defense of the capital city. Watch this video of the training on the NLAW. “Kyiv Volunteers Get Last-Minute Training on Powerful Anti-Tank Weapons”, Radio Free Europe, March 11, 2022, 5 minutes.
Javelin Anti-Tank Missile. One of the more potent anti-armor weapons is the Javelin anti-tank missile. The weapon locks onto the target’s thermal picture. It has a ‘fire and forget’ feature that improves the crew’s survivability. Read an excellent article that provides a detailed description and graphics on the Javelin. “What to know about the role Javelin antitank missiles could play in Ukraine’s fight against Russia”, The Washington Post, March 12, 2022.
Russian Cluster Bombs. Civilian deaths in the cities of Ukraine are climbing daily as a result of indiscriminate firing by the Russians of artillery, rockets, and missiles into residential areas. One of the more deadly weapons are the cluster munitions – a type of weapon that will deploy a large number of smaller sub-munitions over a target. More than 100 countries have banned their use and signed up to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. “These are the Cluster Munitions Documented by Ukrainian Civilians”, Bellingcat, March 11, 2022.
Serbia – Staying Friends. Russians wanting to travel can fly direct from Moscow to Belgrade. There are about 15 flights a week by Ari Serbia. Travelers can then travel onward to their final destination from Belgrade. Top destinations are France, Switzerland, Cyprus, and Italy.
Helping From Afar. California’s National Guard has been training the Ukrainian Army, Air Force, and other elements of its military since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. It has done this through the State Partnership Program. Now it is continuing to assist in a makeshift emergency operations center at the CA NG HQs in Sacramento. (Wall Street Journal, Mar 11, 2022) (subscription)
SF Trains for Big Fight in Arctic. Members of the 10th and 19th Special Forces Group are participating in Exercise ARCTIC EDGE 2022 in Alaska. The exercise is a train up for the Green Berets should they be employed in a winter or arctic environment . . . presumably against Russian forces. Read more in “US Military Arctic Training Sends Message to Russians”, Newsweek, March 11, 2022.
Cyber and Information Operations
Russia and China – Sharing Lies. The men who lead Russian and China have been spending some nurturing their relationship. This deepening friendship is driven in part by a perception that the United States is constraining their interests. So naturally they are collaborating on the narratives they supply to their domestic audiences and to the world at large. David Bandurski, the co-director of the China Media Project, provides the details in “China and Russia are joining forces to spread disinformation”, Tech Stream, Brookings Institute, March 11, 2022.
Ukrainian Journalists. Life has changed dramatically for the reporters in Ukraine. They have adapted their work practices and location. Read more in “What It’s Like for Ukrainian Journalists Reporting on the War in Their Country”, Time, March 6, 2022.
Commentary
From Cold War to Hot War. George Beebe, a former chief of CIA’s Russia’s analysis team, believes we could very well see ourselves in conflict with Russia. He believes that diplomacy is the only way to end the Ukraine crisis. Unless we follow that path he argues we are unlikely to find ourselves in a new Cold War. We may instead be in a very hot one. “Raging Toward the Abyss with Russia”, National Interest, March 11, 2022.
Supplying Weapons to Ukraine. There has been a lot of debate about the supplying of weapons to Ukraine by NATO and other countries of the world. Some critics worry that this support violates the law of neutrality – that it might be an act of war. A couple of law professors take a keen eye to this question and provide us with an answer in “Supplying Arms to Ukraine is Not an Act of War”, Just Security, March 12, 2022.
The Big Picture. Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at the nonprofit research organization – Center for Naval Analyses – is interviewed on the recent modernization of the Russian army, the false expectations of the Russian leadership, and the likely end result of the war. He says that a series of strategic missteps has hampered Putin’s campaign. “The Russian Military’s Debacle in Ukraine”, The New Yorker, March 11, 2022.
Keep the Weapons Flowing. Stephen Biddle, a professor at Columbia University, provides the argument for continuing the transfer of weapons to the Ukraine military. While it may not stop Russia from occupying Ukraine it will certain make it costly for them. And it will raise the cost of Russian aggression in other countries. “Arming Ukraine Is Worth the Risk”, Foreign Affairs, March 11, 2022.

SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, defense, or the current conflict in Ukraine then we are interested.
Maps and Other Resources
Maps of Ukraine
Ukraine Conflict Info. The Ukrainians have launched a new website that will provide information about the war. It is entitled Russia Invaded Ukraine and can be found at https://war.ukraine.ua/.
Ukrainian Think Tanks – Brussels. Consolidated information on how to help Ukraine from abroad and stay up to date on events.
Janes Equipment Profile – Ukraine Conflict. An 81-page PDF provides information on the military equipment of the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces. Covers naval, air, electronic warfare, C4ISR, communications, night vision, radar, and armored fighting vehicles, Ukraine Conflict Equipment Profile, February 28, 2022.
Russian EW Capabilities. “Rah, Rah, Rash Putin?”, Armada International, March 2, 2022.
Arms Transfers to Ukraine. Forum on the Arms Trade.
UNHCR Operational Data Portal – Ukraine Refugee Situation
**********
Photo: By Vitaly V. Kuzmin – http://vitalykuzmin.net/?q=node/410, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia. The TOS-1 MRLS Thermobaric weapon.
sof.news · by SOF News · March 13, 2022

2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 12


RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 12
Mar 12, 2022 - Press ISW
Mason Clark, George Barros, and Kateryna Stepanenko
March 12, 4:00 pm EST
Russian forces secured limited advances east of Kyiv and north from Crimea on March 12 but continue to face logistical challenges, mounting casualties, and sustained Ukrainian counterattacks. Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northwest of Kyiv in the past 24 hours. Russian forces made limited advances around Chernihiv and toward Kyiv’s eastern outskirts after pausing for several days. Continued Ukrainian counterattacks and successful operations by Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces continue to threaten Russia’s long line of communication in northeastern Ukraine. Russian forces captured unspecified “eastern outskirts” of Mariupol on March 12 and continue to shell the city in a likely effort to force it to capitulate.
Key Takeaways
  • Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northwest of Kyiv for the second day in a row.
  • Russian forces resumed limited attacks toward northeastern Kyiv and renewed efforts to fully encircle Chernihiv.
  • Ongoing Ukrainian counterattacks in northeastern Ukraine are likely forcing Russia to redeploy forces away from offensive operations toward Kyiv to consolidate its long line of communication.
  • Russian forces made limited territorial gains in eastern Mariupol and continued to shell the city.
  • The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian forces conducted a new advance northeast from Kherson along the western bank of the Dnipro.
  • The Ukrainian military claimed to have damaged or destroyed 31 Russian battalion tactical groups (BTGs) as of March 11.
  • The Kremlin likely seeks to deter continuing Western military aid shipments to Ukraine, threatening that Russia will view Western military aid shipments to Ukraine as legitimate military targets on March 12.

The Ukrainian military claimed to have damaged or destroyed 31 Russian BTGs as of March 11, its first numbered claim of damage to Russian forces of the war. Ukrainian military intelligence reported at 6:00 am local time on March 12 that Ukrainian forces have destroyed 13 Russian BTGs and rendered 18 BTGs combat ineffective as of March 11.[1] US intelligence estimated Russia deployed approximately 120 BTGs to Ukraine’s borders prior to February 24.[2] The Ukrainian military has not previously made any official statements on numbers of destroyed Russian BTGs. The Ukrainian General Staff continues to report widespread Russian logistics and morale issues, stating on March 12 that Russia “was forced to change tactics” due to unsuccessful attempts to conduct an offensive, that Russian units continue to abandon equipment, and that the rate of Russian desertions and surrenders to Ukrainian forces is increasing.[3] The General Staff additionally stated that Russia is calling up conscripts from the DNR and LNR, mercenaries from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Russian convicted prisoners to offset heavy combat losses and reserve problems.[4] The Ukrainian Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) reported on March 12 that Russian commanders authorized their soldiers to loot civilian businesses and households and move to ”self sufficiency” to offset continued supply problems.[5]
Ukraine updated its previous report that Russian aircraft bombed the Belarusian town of Kopani on March 11 in a likely false-flag attack, adding that Russian aircraft also bombed Bukhlichi and Verkhny Terebezh.[6] The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian and Belarusian forces have not conducted any military operations toward western Ukraine but that Minsk is “taking measures to strengthen the protection of the border with Ukraine” and Ukraine cannot rule out Belarus entering the war.[7]
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov claimed that Russia will view Western military aid shipments to Ukraine as legitimate military targets on March 12.[8] Ryabkov claimed Russia previously warned the United States that ”pumping Ukraine with weapons” is dangerous and makes the arms shipments military targets. Ryabkov reiterated Kremlin claims that the United States provoked the war in Ukraine by supplying Ukraine with weapons. The Kremlin likely seeks to deter continuing Western military aid to Ukraine by threatening to target arms shipments, though Russian forces have so far conducted relatively few air and missile strikes in western Ukraine to date and would likely face strong Ukrainian air defenses.
Russian forces are engaged in four primary efforts at this time:
  • Main effort—Kyiv (comprised of three subordinate supporting efforts);
  • Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv;
  • Supporting effort 1a—Luhansk Oblast;
  • Supporting effort 2—Mariupol and Donetsk Oblast; and
  • Supporting effort 3—Kherson and advances westward.
Main effort—Kyiv axis: Russian operations on the Kyiv axis are aimed at encircling the city from the northwest, west, and east.
Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northwest of Kyiv in the past 24 hours. Russian forces made limited advances around Chernihiv and toward Kyiv’s eastern outskirts after pausing for several days. Continued Ukrainian counterattacks and successful operations by Territorial Defense Forces continue to threaten Russia’s long line of communication in northeastern Ukraine.
Subordinate main effort along the west bank of the Dnipro
Russian forces did not conduct offensive operations northwest of Kyiv for the second day in a row.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian forces continued to regroup and replenish reserves. Russian forces continue to shell Kyiv’s northwestern suburbs but did not launch any ground attacks on March 11-12.[10] Ukrainian forces shot down a Russian loitering munitions-equipped unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) over downtown Kyiv on March 12, the first Russian use of armed UAVs in Ukraine that ISW has observed.[11] Russian forces are likely deploying new assets to the western Kyiv front as part of ongoing resupply and replenishment efforts.
Subordinate supporting effort—Chernihiv axis
Russian forces resumed limited attacks toward northeastern Kyiv on March 12. The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian forces attacked toward Zazymya (northwest of Brovary) and Vyshenky with unspecified “partial success.”[12] Russian forces attacked toward Mykhailo-Kotsyubynske and Shestovytsia, roughly 15km west and southwest of Chernihiv, in a likely effort to fully encircle the city.[13] The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported the deployment of Russian bridging equipment in Mykhailo-Kotsyubynske, Levkovychi, Zhukotka, and Hrodnya, around Chernihiv.[14] Russian forces may be preparing for an operation to cross the Desna River from west to east to further surround Chernihiv.
Subordinate supporting effort—Sumy axis
Russian forces continued to reinforce the Sumy axis on March 12 and did not launch new ground offensives.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff reported at midnight local time on March 11 that Russian forces are shifting reserves in Velyka Pysarivka, Moskovsky Bobryak, and Lebedyn – several towns along Russia’s exposed ground line of communication in northeastern Ukraine.[16] Ukrainian territorial defense forces additionally conducted at least two successful attacks near Sumy on March 11, destroying and capturing several Russian tanks and artillery vehicles.[17] ISW previously assessed that continuing Ukrainian counterattacks in northeastern Ukraine would force Russia to redeploy forces to consolidate this long line of communication.[18]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv:
Russian forces captured unspecified northern portions of Izyum, 110km southeast of Kharkiv, on March 12.[19] Russian forces additionally launched an unsuccessful attack on Rubizhne, south of Kharkiv.[20] Russian forces continued to shell Kharkiv but did not conduct any major ground attacks on March 12.[21] Russian forces likely seek to bypass Kharkiv from the southeast and advance toward Dnipro and Zaporizhya, but are unlikely to make substantial advances without committing further combat power.
Supporting Effort #1a—Luhansk Oblast:
The Ukrainian General Staff reported Russian forces concentrated additional reserves in Severodonetsk and Svatove but did not conduct any offensive operations in the past 24 hours.[22]
Supporting Effort #2—Mariupol and Donetsk Oblast:
The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed Russian forces captured the “eastern outskirts” of Mariupol on March 12 but did not provide further details.[23] Ukrainian forces reported repelling a Russian offensive toward Krasna Polyana and Olhynka – two towns north of Mariupol which Russian forces previously claimed to have already captured – as of noon local time on March 12.[24] Russian forces are unlikely to seize Mariupol through a direct assault without a greater concentration of forces (which they remain unlikely to have the ability to assemble). Russia will likely continue to shell the city and maintain gradual ground assaults to force the city to capitulate.
Supporting Effort #3—Kherson and west:
The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted a new advance northeast from Kherson along the western bank of the Dnipro on March 12, deploying artillery and air defense assets to Mylove.[25] Russian forces have not yet conducted attacks at strength along the west bank of the Dnipro on the southern axis of advance. Russian forces may intend to advance northeast to encircle Zaporizhya, but are unlikely to have the forces necessary to do so while Russian forces in the south remain committed to the encirclement of Mariupol. Russian forces directly south of Zaporizhya conducted limited advances on March 12, capturing Stepove and Shcherbaky (approximately 40km south of Zaporizhya).[26]
Russian forces did not conduct any new attacks toward Mykolayiv on March 12 and reinforced their existing positions.[27] Russian forces are unlikely to resume major offensive operations toward Odesa in the next 48-72 hours.
Immediate items to watch
  • The Kremlin likely seeks to pressure Belarus to join the war in Ukraine and will deploy Syrian fighters to Ukraine in the near future;
  • Ukrainian counterattacks and operations by Territorial Defense Forces in northeastern Ukraine threaten Russia’s exposed line of communication, requiring Russia to redeploy forces away from the offensive toward eastern Kyiv;
  • Russian forces are undertaking another operational pause to prepare for renewed efforts to encircle Kyiv from east and west and/or to seize the city center itself following their failures of March 8-9;
  • Russian troops may drive on Zaporizhya City itself within the next 48-72 hours, likely to try and block it on both banks of the Dnipro River and set conditions for subsequent operations after Russian forces take Mariupol, which they are currently besieging.
[8] https://tass dot ru/politika/14049899.

3. The Question the World Is Asking: Is Vladimir Putin Rational?

It depends on your definition of rational.

Lessons from Eric Hoffer and Carl von Clausewitz. You can't go wrong with those two philosophers.

Excerpts:
Which, again, is why the debate over the mental faculties of a nuclear-armed antagonist is both imperative and unfathomable. Is Vladimir Putin irrational? I think not. But this is cold comfort. He might be rational in a way that produces policies and strategies that no dispassionate observer could countenance.
Just ask an American philosopher and a long-dead Prussian soldier.



The Question the World Is Asking: Is Vladimir Putin Rational?
19fortyfive.com · by ByJames Holmes · March 12, 2022
The Russian onslaught in Ukraine set loose an important—but ultimately subjective and insoluble—debate about the mental state of one of the belligerents. Namely the aggressor, President Vladimir Putin. “Is Putin Irrational?” asks a typical entry in the genre. Or as strategic theorists would put it, do calculations of cost, benefit, and risk govern Putin’s decision-making, or do passions such as humiliation, hatred, and spite predominate?
The answer matters. A rational opponent can be deterred, or perhaps compromised with. An irrational one would be given to brinksmanship—or worse. The stakes could scarcely be higher when an opponent oversees a nuclear arsenal.
Rational or irrational? There are powerful arguments for both schools of thought. The despot in Moscow clearly longs to avenge the Soviet defeat in the Cold War, and to resurrect a Russian empire in some form or another. In part his aims are defensive in outlook, and thus rational—even though they goaded him into an unjust war against a sovereign neighbor. No great power relishes having a rival great power adjoining its frontiers. Putin believes, with some cause, that NATO might someday accept Ukraine as a member state—bringing the U.S.-led alliance to Russia’s door. Restoring some semblance of the geopolitical buffer the Soviet Union enjoyed thus commands high priority at the Kremlin.
And then there are more offensive aims, also rational if also morally objectionable. If Russia were to seize all of Ukraine, it would occupy all of the strategic Black Sea coast, the Russian Navy’s gateway to the Eastern Mediterranean (via the Bosporus and Dardanelles, controlled by NATO member Turkey). Adding Ukraine to a Greater Russia would forever prevent the Atlantic alliance from ensconcing itself along Russia’s borders. It would also give Moscow a forward platform for applying pressure on Romania and Bulgaria, erstwhile Soviet satellite states that now belong to NATO.
These aims may amount to mistakes or even self-defeating behavior—I believe they do—but that doesn’t make them irrational. Putin places inordinate weight on them, warranting heavy outlays of manpower and military resources for a significant amount of time. From his perspective, moreover, it’s worth running the significant risk to clutch at a pearl of great price.
But then there are indicators that lend support to the Putin-is-irrational thesis. Long ago he proclaimed the downfall of the Soviet Union the twentieth century’s greatest geopolitical calamity. Just before launching the February 24 invasion, he delivered a speech denying Ukraine’s nationhood, seeming to declare it integral to Russia on historical, cultural, and religious grounds. He vowed to “denazify” the democratic regime in Kyiv while accusing Kyiv of genocide against ethnic Russians. Such claims are reminiscent of Beijing’s constant seething over China’s “century of humiliation,” a painful interlude of subjection to seaborne empires that nonetheless ended seventy-three years ago, not to mention its claims to sovereignty over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the Senkaku Islands.
Dark passions impel revisionist leaders to try to turn back the clock to some golden age. But despite the tenor of Moscow’s pronouncements, it may be that upbeat passions are at work as well—however baleful their consequences might be. In fact, it may be that a variety of hope rules in Moscow. Decades ago, in his classic treatise The True Believer, the Bay Area longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer explored the motives of those who embark on inexplicably risky, and thus arguably irrational, actions in the service of some grand-seeming cause.
Hoffer breaks down the motives that drive mass movements—including nationalist movements such as the one Putin has tried to kindle—almost into a formula. First, followers of such a movement, Hoffer’s true believers, must be radically disenchanted with the status quo, and bent on sweeping it away to replace it with something better. This is Revolutionary Warfare 101. Second, true believers must feel a sense of power to bring about fundamental change. Hoffer adds that far from being a detriment, inexperience is an asset to the movement; true believers don’t know that what they’re attempting is impossible, so they plunge ahead irrespective of likely obstacles. Once in a while a flaky-seeming movement actually does the impossible, as in the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Civil War.
And third, there’s the leadership factor. Someone has to impart purpose and direction to passions, which otherwise might sputter and die. The leader of a successful mass movement opines Hoffer, is adept at merging these factors into an overpowering appeal. A V. I. Lenin or Mao Zedong—or potentially a Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping—ignites “extravagant hope” within the movement. Onrushing hope propels the faithful along to a bright destiny if successful. This is another way to appraise the leadership of contemporary authoritarian leaders: are they capable of inspiring extravagant hope among their citizens, or are they run-of-the-mill strongmen who impose their will with a kind—or not-so-kind—word and a gun?
Not-strictly-rational passions, then, animate Russia and China at least in part. Whether they overwhelm cost-benefit calculations is the crux of the debate. The answer is unknowable because no human being can finally know what takes place in another’s cranium. Even the occupant of that cranium may not know. Plus, strategic grandmaster Carl von Clausewitz hints at how a fully rational combatant could tote up costs, benefits, and risks and arrive at a course of action that seems foolhardy if not downright crazy. Writes Clausewitz, “since war is not an act of senseless passion”—it’s a rational act, or ought to be—“but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow.”
What he means by this is that how much the leadership wants some goal governs how much the leadership is prepared to spend on it. It can estimate how the rate at which it must spend militarily relevant resources and how long it must keep up the expenditure. Magnitude and duration, then, are at least somewhat quantifiable. But what about the value placed on the political object of a martial endeavor—on the goal? What are the objective units of measurement for how much someone covets something? There are none. Passions are an accelerant. They can inflate the value a competitor attaches to its goals, potentially without bounds—justifying an effort disproportionate to the strictly measurable, and rational, value these goals merit.
Which, again, is why the debate over the mental faculties of a nuclear-armed antagonist is both imperative and unfathomable. Is Vladimir Putin irrational? I think not. But this is cold comfort. He might be rational in a way that produces policies and strategies that no dispassionate observer could countenance.
Just ask an American philosopher and a long-dead Prussian soldier.
A 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. James Holmes holds the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and served on the faculty of the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. A former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer, he was the last gunnery officer in history to fire a battleship’s big guns in anger, during the first Gulf War in 1991. He earned the Naval War College Foundation Award in 1994, signifying the top graduate in his class. His books include Red Star over the Pacific, an Atlantic Monthly Best Book of 2010 and a fixture on the Navy Professional Reading List. General James Mattis deems him “troublesome.” The views voiced here are his alone”
19fortyfive.com · by ByJames Holmes · March 12, 2022

4. Pentagon push to send more trainers to Ukraine was scrapped in December amid White House fears of provoking Russia

Pleased to see the Pentagon advocacy for this but disappointed in the WHite House response. Another example of our "self deterrence."

Putin is following Lenin's dictum: 

“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”
― Vladimir Ilich Lenin

When will Putin hit steel in Putin's war? Certainly the Ukrainians are throwing up steel but it needs the help of the international community. But we have taken all the courses of action that involve steel off the table. Not that I want to put US boots on the ground or fighters in the air, but we should never remove those options as it only emboldens Putin 

We are so afraid of Putin's escalating "Putin's war," why don't we consider making Putin afraid. 



Pentagon push to send more trainers to Ukraine was scrapped in December amid White House fears of provoking Russia
Senior military officials told the Hill they wanted to train Ukrainians on unconventional warfare tactics. But the idea was stopped cold over the administration's worries about escalation.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin speaks during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Nov. 10, 2021. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
03/13/2022 07:02 AM EDT
In December 2021, senior U.S. military officials told lawmakers that they wanted to send a “few hundred” additional special operations personnel to Ukraine to provide military advice and training on unconventional warfare. At the time, Russia had amassed roughly 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine, and concerns were growing in Washington and Europe about a broadening invasion.
But White House officials had concerns about the deployment and the troops were never sent, according to two people familiar with the two December briefings with lawmakers and congressional aides. They also said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin planned to directly press President Joe Biden to approve the mission.
A senior military official told House lawmakers that the White House was concerned that sending the troops would escalate the already tense situation with Russia, according to the two people. A third congressional official told POLITICO that a Pentagon official briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee that plans had been scrapped due to those concerns. The Biden administration hoped diplomacy might still work, and feared an influx of U.S. troops could scuttle those efforts.


The deliberations came at an extraordinarily challenging moment for the U.S. and Ukraine, and as American officials began sharing detailed intelligence with NATO allies about Russia’s planned invasion.
A White House spokesperson said “no such plans” for additional training missions “were ever presented” to the White House or the National Security Council. A Defense Department official said Biden and the White House did not “cancel any planned training activities for Ukraine until U.S. forces were repositioned in February.” Neither official would comment on the Capitol Hill briefings themselves, or whether a mission was discussed with the White House informally that fell below the threshold of an official plan.
Neither European Command nor Special Operations Command responded to requests for comment.
Ilan Berman, a senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council who has consulted with the CIA and State Department, said the decision not to send in personnel was part of a pattern.
“This is part of a larger story in which the White House pulled its punches in the lead-up to the conflict, when we already saw that the Russians were amassing troops,” he said when presented with this reporting. “Based on either incorrect assumptions about what Vladimir Putin wanted to do or based upon worries about provoking Putin — he didn’t need any provoking! — it’s one example of these calculations leading to a more passive approach than we could have taken.”
The operators would have trained Ukrainian forces in guerrilla tactics and unconventional warfare methods, separate from the formal U.S. training mission based at the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part of the country, according to the three sources.
The U.S. has for years sent American weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, to Ukraine, and helped train its soldiers on how to use them. Since 2015, U.S. Green Berets and National Guard troops have been training Ukrainian forces at the Yavoriv center.
Ukrainian special operations forces have gone through years of intensive training alongside American and NATO special operations forces, including close partnerships with the U.K., Norway, and several Baltic states. They’ve also traveled throughout Europe to participate in NATO exercises, including the Combined Resolve exercise in Germany alongside American conventional and special operations forces in December.
These exercises are focused on fast-insertion of small units by helicopter and small vehicles — hit-and-run tactics that have been widespread since Russia broadened its invasion of Ukraine in late February.
In mid-February, the Pentagon revealed that Austin was “temporarily repositioning 160 Florida National Guard troops training Ukraine’s military out of the country.” Those troops had deployed to Ukraine in November 2021, according to a statement.
Both the National Guard and the Green Berets have since left the country, many as U.S. embassy staff evacuated in mid-February.
In the year before the invasion, congressional Republicans pushed the Biden team to send more military support to Ukraine. At the end of 2021, the administration greenlit deliveries of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and more Javelins. The U.S. has sent significantly more weapons since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, though the ongoing fighting has made deliveries much more challenging.
Concerns about escalation still shape the administration’s approach to the war. Last week, Washington chose not to back Poland’s plan to transfer its MiG fighter jets via the U.S. to the Ukrainians, due to concerns about how that would be received in Moscow. And Biden has been unbending in his opposition to setting up a no-fly zone over Ukraine — a position the vast majority of Republicans also share.
Reports from the Ukraine battlefield show that a key component of Ukraine’s defense strategy relies on small groups of irregular soldiers conducting guerrilla-style attacks against Russian forces — who vastly outnumber the Ukrainian fighters. Now, as the war enters its third week, Ukrainians seem poised for what may become a prolonged period of irregular warfare.
Berman said that given the fighting, Ukrainians are now unlikely to benefit from the type of training that the special operations personnel would have provided.
“They’re getting real-world battlefield experience in urban combat terrains in real time in their fight against the Russians, and they’re doing fairly well,” he said. “So to me this program, whether it’s valuable moving forward, is going to be balanced against whether or not the student has become the master.”



5. Wang Jixian: A Voice from The Other China, but in Odessa


Can this be exploited in a positive way by the GEC and PSYOP professionals?

Excerpts:
On March 1, Wang Jixian explained why he stayed in Odessa, a city he has been living in since July 2021 after his U.S.-based AI company transferred him there from Macedonia. Although Belarus on the northern border of Ukraine offered Chinese passport holders visa-free entry, its army had joined in the Russian invasion and Wang refused to contemplate going there. He also decided against Poland and Moldova under the mistaken impression that he might be forced to forfeit his passport and end up as a refugee. “Anyway,” he told Voice of America’s Chinese-language service, “I didn’t want to abandon my colleagues, damn it: I want to be a decent human being (我他妈的做个人). I’m a legal resident here; this is where I live and this is my home. . . I don’t want to see people sacrifice themselves or die. That’s why I stayed.”
Given China’s prevarications on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and its past declared recognition of the territorial integrity and sovereignty the country, Wang’s videos became an instant magnet for controversy, not least of all because he disputed claims made by China’s foreign ministry that its nationals had been seamlessly evacuated from the war zone. China’s online army of “hatriots” immediately denounced him as a traitor who was working for an alien power. Some were equally quick to claim he was an actor paid to disseminate anti-China misinformation. There were even calls for him to be repatriated, tried, and punished. Undaunted, Wang confronted the heated rhetoric in his daily postings, telling VOA that:
I’m dealing with a war on two fronts. The battlefield I’m faced with here is terrifying, but at least I can see the tanks; they are something that is tangible and I can avoid them. But the other battlefield lurking behind me is even scarier: damn it, although I know it’s there I can’t see it. I don’t know who’s in it, but they’re all telling me that they want me dead.
Wang Jixian: A Voice from The Other China, but in Odessa
chinafile.com · March 12, 2022
“Hello, everyone. This is Jixian in Odessa. Just checking in to let you know that I’m okay; I’m still alive.”
This is the way that Wang Jixian, a 37-year-old software engineer originally from Beijing, starts most of his daily vlog updates posted from Odessa, the third-largest city in Ukraine and a famous seaport located on the Black Sea. Wang started uploading short videos as the army of the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine on February 24. Among a flurry of posts to his WeChat social media account in China and to YouTube, he included his last will and testament, a tearful farewell to his parents that he hoped his friends would preserve for posterity.
“What good does it do you if all that is left is rubble and corpses. This will be my last will. Keep it on your phones. After all this is over it’ll be proof that people like me existed. Remember, we weren’t wimps.”
On March 1, Wang Jixian explained why he stayed in Odessa, a city he has been living in since July 2021 after his U.S.-based AI company transferred him there from Macedonia. Although Belarus on the northern border of Ukraine offered Chinese passport holders visa-free entry, its army had joined in the Russian invasion and Wang refused to contemplate going there. He also decided against Poland and Moldova under the mistaken impression that he might be forced to forfeit his passport and end up as a refugee. “Anyway,” he told Voice of America’s Chinese-language service, “I didn’t want to abandon my colleagues, damn it: I want to be a decent human being (我他妈的做个人). I’m a legal resident here; this is where I live and this is my home. . . I don’t want to see people sacrifice themselves or die. That’s why I stayed.”
Given China’s prevarications on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and its past declared recognition of the territorial integrity and sovereignty the country, Wang’s videos became an instant magnet for controversy, not least of all because he disputed claims made by China’s foreign ministry that its nationals had been seamlessly evacuated from the war zone. China’s online army of “hatriots” immediately denounced him as a traitor who was working for an alien power. Some were equally quick to claim he was an actor paid to disseminate anti-China misinformation. There were even calls for him to be repatriated, tried, and punished. Undaunted, Wang confronted the heated rhetoric in his daily postings, telling VOA that:
I’m dealing with a war on two fronts. The battlefield I’m faced with here is terrifying, but at least I can see the tanks; they are something that is tangible and I can avoid them. But the other battlefield lurking behind me is even scarier: damn it, although I know it’s there I can’t see it. I don’t know who’s in it, but they’re all telling me that they want me dead.
Reporting on his life in Odessa during the opening days of the war, Wang unwittingly became China’s newest citizen journalist. As Sebastian Veg, a scholar who has written on grassroots activism in China, has observed, “The public, losing trust in messages issued by the state, turned to sources of information that can be described as minjian, that is, unofficial, self-organised, originating within society rather than being generated by state institutions.”
During the first months of the COVID epidemic in China, through short video reports citizen journalists like Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin, Zhang Zhan, and Li Zehua helped the public understand what was really happening on the ground in Wuhan. They were all soon silenced.
When his WeChat account was canceled on March 8, Wang joked that overnight he had gone from being an “unremarkable person” with a normal name (有名的人) to become a “marked man” for being famous (名人). With nearly 40,000 subscribers, however, the daily posts on “Jixian in Ukraine” (吉贤在乌克兰) get anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000 views, and thousands of likes.
Shortly after the air raid sirens fell quiet on the evening of March 4, Wang told his viewers that:
It doesn’t matter where I come from; first and foremost I’m a person, someone who respects human life and the right of others to live peaceably. I’m not some coward, none of us are: We’re not afraid; we’re outraged.
There I was going to work every day, enjoying a normal life when, out of nowhere, damn it, missiles started raining down on us. One landed right next to my office building. . . Regardless of what side you support, I hope you’ll stand on the side of life. Everyday people don’t want war. One of my colleagues, a programmer just like me, my lawyer and teachers, have all gone off to join the Ukrainian defense forces. They have responded to the call to mobilize so they can protect their mothers and their children. With their guns, they are not only protecting this country, they are fighting for their homes, homes that they have bought with hard-earned money or that they’ve inherited. Why should they be bombed? It’s just that simple; it’s got nothing to do with NATO. People just want to be able to live their lives.
Wang Jixian’s posts soon brought to mind an essay by the noted writer Wang Xiaobo titled “The Silent Majority,” in which he wrote:
. . . people keep silent for any number of reasons, some because they lack the ability or the opportunity to speak, others because they are hiding something, and still others because they feel, for whatever reason, a certain distaste for the world of speech. I am one of these last groups and, as one of them, I have a duty to speak of what I have seen and heard.
For more than two weeks, Wang has in effect been recording an audio-visual conversation with China. In it, he describes his circumstances, his hopes and fears, the on-the-ground sense of what is happening in a fabled coastal city that is increasingly under military pressure from a pitiless invader. He talks about his work, his loves, his neighbors, and his colleagues. Wang’s posts are unaffected; he addresses his viewers directly, and he responds to online comments he has read and chats with his invisible audience. His monologues are factual—the weather, the atmosphere in the city, shopping—by turns phlegmatic, engaging, humorous, angry, sometimes tearful, always compelling.
Wang speaks in the mild cadences and with the understated demeanor of someone born and raised in Beijing. It is the kind of clear and unaffected voice with which anyone who has come to understand the hopes and fears of Chinese people, and empathized with the complex realities of that country, will be familiar. Although the vlog reports that Wang Jixian posts are recorded in Odessa, he is speaking from a place I call “The Other China.”
This is not the China of stentorian slogans, cutting barbs, sarcastic put-downs. It is not the China of clichéd patriotism and exaggerated public performance; nor is it the China of crude stereotypes and bottomless grievance. It is a China of humanity and decency, of quiet dignity and unflappable perseverance. It is a China that finds expression in myriad ways in a country dominated by a political party that would bend all to its will; it is a China that survived the depredations of the Mao era (1949-1978) and increasingly flourished during the decades of reform from 1978 to 2008.
The Other China is not limited to the People’s Republic of China, for it is part of a global culture unique to itself but also with universal aspirations and appeal. It resonates in Wang Jixian’s videos. The tenor of Wang’s posts, and that of his fellow vlogger Lao Zhao, who escaped from Kharkiv and billets with Wang, was not born of this war overnight. In his conversation with his homeland, Wang is not simply responding to his viewers (many of whom are in the People’s Republic and follow him using a VPN that allows them to straddle China’s Great Firewall); he is letting us join his private world, embracing us in the kind of intimate exchange shared among Chinese friends, often sotto voce and away from prying eyes and ears.
The art of the guarded conversation has flourished once more during the Xi Jinping decade, and people from Beijing, known as quick-witted raconteurs, are also masters of off-the-cuff analysis; many react to unfolding political events with rapid-fire repartee. Like Wang Jixian, they can readily turn tears of sorrow into sardonic observations on life. Every time Wang heaves a sigh, whether it be due to frustration with the situation in Ukraine or in response to the flood of online abuse and Chinese media inanity, viewers recognize the temper of what is often referred to as being that of “Old Peking,” a world-wise but not world-weary sensibility honed over decades, if not centuries.
On a number of occasions, Wang has quoted Zhang Hengqu, an 11th-century thinker famous for his “Teaching in Four Sentences”:
“Nurture a heart that can embrace both Heaven and Earth; devote yourself to the betterment of all; inherit the teachings of sages past lost to the present; contribute thereby to lasting peace.”
Zhang’s ancient dictum was revived in China in the late 1970s just as in Europe Václav Havel formulated a similar sentiment that he later summed up in his address to the United States Congress in 1990: “The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and human responsibility.”
Zhang Hengqu’s ancient teaching had resonated with people during an earlier conflict: the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). When the Japanese Empire invaded China in the late 1930s, Ma Yifu, a celebrated Confucian scholar, frequently quoted Zhang Hengqu’s lines in his public lectures. Ma told his acolyte, the artist Feng Zikai, who was fleeing the Japanese army with his family, that for China to survive in the long run, apart from armed resistance it was crucial to embrace the sentiment expressed by Zhang Hengqu. Ma said that, if China failed to survive the Japanese invasion with its cultural heart and spirit intact, militarism and hate would have won out, even though the enemy had been defeated. Feng Zikai praised Zhang Henqu’s teaching and echoed Ma’s sentiment when, at the height of the war, he wrote:
. . . warfare can never be more than a short-term remedy, and we should be wary of becoming addicted to it. As the virus is eliminated and we regain our health it is essential that we take proper nourishment. And what kind of nourishment is crucial to our long-term well-being? Peace, happiness, and universal love, and the basic ingredient for “preserving life” itself: art.
The essence and appeal of Wang Jixian’s online “wartime art” lies in softly spoken humanity and unabashed honesty.
Wang quotes Zhang Hengqu’s ancient dictum just as he repeats his modest ambition: to be a decent human being (做个人). It is an aspiration that has echoed throughout modern Chinese history; the desire to be a decent person who is treated with consideration and whose dignity is respected. This is the essential message of The Other China and one that, like a vast subterranean sea of human self-esteem, has long been a wellspring for a country that itself has been ravaged by war, rent by social conflict, and repeatedly suffocated by ideology. In March 2022, Wang Jixian shares his aspiration not only with the modern Confucian thinker Ma Yifu (persecuted to death by Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution), and the artist Feng Zikai (who died a broken man in 1975), but also with Lin Yutang, one of modern China’s greatest essayists and publishers who, in 1934, declared that:
“There are Proles to the East and Fascists to the West. None of that holds any appeal for me. If you really want me to champion a particular ‘ism,’ I can only say that I just want to be a decent human being.”
Wang Jixian often begins or ends his daily messages with the words: “We’ve made it through another day (又活过了一天).”
* * *
Postscript
As this essay was going to press, Wang Jixian posted a new video to his YouTube channel. The following is a translation of its opening minutes:
I’m Jixian and I live in Ukraine. Who are you? What are you afraid of? Why are you so scared of my being able to speak? I do not utter any threats; I don’t advocate murder. All I do is make a plea for people to respect life and end this war. Why are you so afraid of people knowing what’s really going on? We don’t have nuclear weapons; we don’t have any guns. Why do you only want the voices that advocate murder to be heard? Why is it that you only want me to say: “I’m here. I’m afraid. Save me, please!” Why do you only let voices that spread fear get posted? We here are determined, peace-loving, and on the side of justice.
People tell me this is a time when the weak simply have to submit to the strong, that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Who says so? What kind of logic is that? I’m not some sea creature, a small fish waiting to be devoured by a larger fish. I am a human being.
Let me respond to you with the kind of language you’ll understand: Would the things you’re telling me be acceptable to Mr. Chen Duxiu or Mr. Li Dazhao [early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party]? Is that what they taught you? Who were they? What Party did they belong to? Just take a look in the textbooks that we studied at school.
“Nurture a heart that can embrace both Heaven and Earth; devote yourself to the betterment of all.” Even if you don’t understand true Confucian thinking like this, then at least look at what Mr. Li Dazhao did back in the day. Was he scared when he was confronted with oppressors and killers? [Li was executed by a warlord aligned with the Nationalist government in 1927.] He was one of your leaders.
I have no party affiliation and I have no love for “that party.” Does that make me wrong? You love it with all your life; you think of it as your wife. Well, I don’t like your wife. Is that my fault? You want to kill me just because I don’t like your wife, your mother? Does that make your cause the righteous one? “Where are our dead heroes? When will justice prevail? The enemy’s time is up and we are at our glorious noon.” [The last lines of a famous Song dynasty era poem by Chen Liang, about resisting a foreign invader.] You would have me turn reality and falsehood on their heads—I’ll never do it. Just because you have your lousy guns, you think that I’ll submit to you. That will never happen.
chinafile.com · March 12, 2022


6. 100 women have now graduated US Army Ranger School

I had no idea the number was this high.

I noticed this milestone in the SECARMY's tweet:



In 1950, the @USArmy
established Ranger School—our premier small unit tactics & leadership school. In 2015, the Army opened the school’s prestigious doors to all qualified Soldiers. Today we celebrate the 100th female Soldier to earn the coveted Ranger tab! #RangersLeadTheWay

100 women have now graduated US Army Ranger School
taskandpurpose.com · by Haley Britzky · March 11, 2022
SHARE
One hundred women have graduated from the U.S. Army’s esteemed Ranger School as of Friday, Task & Purpose has learned.
“The Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade confirmed that the 100th woman graduated the course with Ranger Class 03-22,” said Col. Antwan L. Dunmyer, Commander of the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade at Fort Benning, Georgia. “She was the only woman to graduate with that class.”
Subscribe to Task & Purpose Today. Get the latest in military news, entertainment and gear in your inbox daily.
Ranger School at Fort Benning, Georgia, is one of the most grueling courses in the Army. The eight-week assessment and selection includes three phases that test soldiers physically and psychologically.
Three phases of U.S. Army Ranger School. (U.S. Army/Fort Benning public affairs)
During the first phase, called the Benning phase, soldiers are assessed on their “physical stamina and mental toughness,” according to the Army. The second phase, called Mountain phase, tests soldiers’ ability to “command and control platoon size patrols” through different combat patrol missions.
“The rugged terrain, severe weather, hunger, mental and physical fatigue, and the emotional stress that students encounter afford them the opportunity to gauge their capabilities and limitations as well as those of their ‘Ranger Buddies,’” the Fort Benning website says.
The third and final phase, Swamp phase, takes place in Florida where soldiers learn waterborne operations and “platoon level operations executed in the coastal swamp environment” — all meant to test the soldier’s ability to operate under “extreme mental and physical stress.”
The first women graduated Ranger School in August 2015, and since then women have continued breaking barriers. Capt. Kristen Griest, one of the very first women to earn the Ranger tab, became the first female infantry officer in the Army. Another one of the first 10 women to graduate Ranger School, Capt. Shaina Coss, became the first woman to lead Rangers in combat.
Staff Sgt. Amanda F. Kelley, assigned to the 1st Armored Division’s combat aviation brigade at Fort Bliss, Texas, right, stands in formation at parade rest during her Ranger School graduation at Fort Benning, Georgia, Aug. 31, 2018. Kelley is the first enlisted woman to earn the Ranger tab. (U.S. Army/Patrick A. Albright, Fort Benning Maneuver Center of Excellence photographer)
Sgt. Danielle Farber, one of the first two women from the National Guard to finish Ranger School, said in a 2020 press release that the school was the “hardest course I’ve done by far.”
“You’re cold, you’re wet, everything’s frozen, and you’re tired — you only had about 20 minutes of sleep — and then you get up and you have to do everything in the misery,” Farber said. “I was ready to be done because it was all of the things I hate, combined. All your squad-mates and the guys in your platoon, they get you through it. You 100 percent don’t get through Ranger School on your own.”
Farber’s motivation, she said, was all the people who “said I couldn’t do it.”
“I wanted to prove them wrong.”
What’s new on Task & Purpose
Want to write for Task & Purpose? Click here. Or check out the latest stories on our homepage.

Haley Britzky joined Task & Purpose as the Army reporter in January 2019. She previously worked at Axios covering breaking news. She reports on important developments within the service, from new uniforms to new policies; the realities of military life facing soldiers and their families; and broader cultural issues that expand outside of the Army, touching each of the military services. Contact the author here.

taskandpurpose.com · by Haley Britzky · March 11, 2022

7. Philippines willing to open bases to US if Ukraine conflict spreads
A small footnote in history. If I recall correctly, the Philippines was the first country to grant the US permission for military overflights after 9-11. 

I am not sure how helpful this would be (bring Ukrainians to Philippine bases for training? I am sure they would like the climate) but it is a show of solidarity. (of course it is easy to appear in solidarity when there is little likelihood that it will have to actually be demonstrated).


Philippines willing to open bases to US if Ukraine conflict spreads
President Rodrigo Duterte is willing to allow American forces to use Philippine bases and facilities if the crisis in Ukraine stemming from the Russian invasion spreads to Asia, the Filipino ambassador to Washington said Thursday.
The Philippines would honor the decades-old Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), which binds the two allies to aid each other in times if a foreign power attacks either country, and would allow the U.S. to use former American naval and air bases here, envoy Jose Manuel Romualdez said.
If the U.S. asks for support, Duterte “was very clear that – if push comes to shove – the Philippines will be ready to be part of the effort, especially if this Ukrainian crisis spills over to the Asian region,” Romualdez told reporters in Manila during an online forum.
“He offered that the Philippines will be ready to open its doors, especially to our ally the U.S. in using our facilities, any facilities they may need,” Romualdez said, speaking from Washington.
Officials at Malacañang, the presidential palace in Manila, did not respond immediately on Thursday to an inquiry from BenarNews for further comment on what Duterte told the Philippine ambassador.
Romualdez, who met recently with the president in Manila, said that Duterte indicated his approval to open former military bases in the event of an “emergency situation” and allow the U.S. forces to come back to the Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base if the Ukrainian conflict spills over in Asia.
The two bases were among United States military’s largest overseas installations but were shut down after the Philippine Congress voted to end their lease in the early 1990s, at the end of the Cold War. Since U.S. forces vacated both sites, they have been transformed into free ports and investment zones.
“I’m pretty sure that the president meant this to be in an emergency situation where – let’s pray it does not happen – but, if it spreads out in the Asian region for some reason or another, the President obviously sees that need for us to make a choice,” Romualdez said.
“And our choice is … since we have an MDT with the United States, we have this special relationship and military alliance, he [Duterte] said he is allowing the use of facilities,” the ambassador said.
Filipina activists protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, during an International Women’s Day march in Manila, Mar. 8, 2022. Credit: BenarNews
Since Duterte came to power in mid-2016, he has tried however to forge closer economic and bilateral relations with America’s rivals, China and Russia.Still, the U.S. has not wavered in the military alliance and has helped the Duterte administration defeat pro-Islamic State militants when they took over the southern city of Marawi for five months in 2017.
In February 2021, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty during his first official phone call with his Philippine counterpart, Delfin Lorenzana.
The VFA, which came into force in 1999, provides legal cover for large-scale joint military exercises and allows U.S. troops to operate in the Philippines on a rotational basis. It has remained in effect since Manila deferred its termination.
The comments by Romualdez to reporters came less than a week after Duterte said that the Philippine should remain “neutral” over the Ukraine crisis because it was too far from Russia geographically.
The ambassador made the comments hours after remarks during a congressional hearing in Washington by Adam Smith, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who called on the United States to strengthen its defense ties in the Indo-Pacific region in light of the Ukrainian crisis and a potential similar one involving China and Taiwan.
Russia started attacking Ukraine on Feb. 24, drawing international condemnations and strict economic sanctions, led by the U.S., in a bid to stop President Vladimir Putin’s punishing military offensive.
On Mar. 2, the Philippines joined 140 other U.N. member-states to vote in favor of a General Assembly resolution that condemned Russia’s military strike on Ukraine.
Romualdez said that while Duterte “values the friendship he made with President Putin and President Xi [Jinping of China], he knows that this thing happening right now in Ukraine is something that should not have happened because it was unprovoked.”
“The president was very concerned about it, and his major concern was how it will affect our economy, which already is,” Romualdez said, adding it was the top priority in their discussion.

8. California’s National Guard Trained Ukraine’s Military for Decades—and Now It Helps From Afar

In irregular and all warfare, relationships are important.

But wasn't the Florida National Guard the last National Guard unit deployed to Ukraine? Does Ukraine have multiple US state partners or was the demand and were the requirements greater than the California National Guard could satisfy?


California’s National Guard Trained Ukraine’s Military for Decades—and Now It Helps From Afar
Guard members staff a 24-7 operations center in Sacramento to help soldiers in Ukraine, while retired colleagues try to aid old friends
WSJ · by Dan Frosch
California’s National Guard has been training the Ukrainian Army, Air Force and other parts of its military since the breakup of the Soviet Union through a Defense Department partnership. Members have deployed dozens of times to Ukraine over the past 30 years, many becoming close with their military counterparts and their families. During a September trip to California, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spent a day with Guard leaders and soldiers.
About a dozen soldiers have been pulled from administrative duties to staff the center, which Maj. Gen. David Baldwin activated on Feb. 27, all day and night. Taking over an office that usually houses the Guard’s Ukrainian program, the soldiers relay requests for equipment and supplies to the U.S. military’s European Command and aid groups, and share information being passed on from Ukraine with military officials.
Ukrainians Seek Safety as Russia Presses Its Attack
The mass flight from the fighting in Ukraine continued as Russian forces launched strikes on cities and military targets

A Ukrainian serviceman taking a photograph of a damaged church after Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
1 of 7
•••••

1 of 7
Show Caption
A Ukrainian serviceman taking a photograph of a damaged church after Russian shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine.
Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press
“We have intimate knowledge and personal relationships with a lot of these guys who we worked with in Ukraine,” said Maj. Gen. Baldwin, the Guard’s top officer, who has traveled to Ukraine more than 30 times over the past 10 years. “They’re providing us with just a treasure trove of information about what’s going on in the battlefields over there, what the political situation is and what the humanitarian needs are.”
Since they are located halfway around the world, Maj. Gen. Baldwin said the most effective way for his soldiers to help is to route real-time information they are getting as quickly as possible to the specific U.S. military officials in the best position to support Ukrainians on the ground.
The relationship between the California Guard and the Ukrainian military began in 1993, when the Defense Department launched its program, pairing state national guards with the militaries of different countries in which the U.S. has a strategic interest. Many were newly formed countries after the end of the Cold War, including Slovenia, formerly part of Yugoslavia, and former Soviet republics such as Latvia.
The California Guard initially focused on teaching the military of the newly independent Ukraine how to support civilian authorities and respond to disasters—similar to the Guard’s role in the U.S.
After the overthrow of Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the Guard pivoted to training Ukrainian service members more for combat, including teaching anti-armor tactics and how to treat casualties.
Maj. Gen. Baldwin said he was hopeful that the Guard’s work with the Ukrainian Air Force on airfield operations, personnel recovery and fighter plane tactics, as well as training commanders on how to swiftly coordinate decisions on the battlefield, would help Ukrainians beat back Russian advances.
As the situation has grown more dire in Ukraine, current and former California Guard members are trying to keep tabs on colleagues they trained with and are now on the front lines. The media affairs chief said he texts about 10 Ukrainian military counterparts each day to make sure they are safe.
Joe Righello, who retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2017, met his Ukrainian wife in 2006 during one of his many training missions in Ukraine. His wife’s sister, husband and two daughters live in an apartment building in Kyiv and have refused to leave. Two of his wife’s friends have been killed.
“My wife has been bouncing back and forth between anger, grief and disbelief,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out what more I can do to help.”
Feeling helpless, Mr. Righello is spending time vetting nonprofits providing aid to Ukraine and then directing friends in the U.S. to them.
He said several Ukrainian friends he worked alongside during deployments who are now in their 50s have rejoined the military to fight. Two have been wounded.
Newsletter Sign-up
Notes on the News
Keep up with major developments in Ukraine, plus today’s headlines, news in context and good reads, free in your inbox every day.
SUBSCRIBE
Nancy Ignatow, a retired senior master sergeant, and her husband, Bill, a retired colonel, spent the past week trying to get their former interpreter and her three daughters to safety from Lviv.
The interpreter, Natalia, worked closely with Ms. Ignatow on numerous deployments in Ukraine since the early 1990s. The Wall Street Journal agreed to use only Natalia’s first name.
The Ignatows planned an escape route through Romania and arranged for the group to stay with a friend who used to work for a Catholic charity group near Amsterdam.
Initially reluctant to split up her family, Natalia finally loaded her Suzuki Swift with her children and their dog, while her aging parents stayed behind. After four days, Ms. Ignatow watched a Facebook video that Natalia posted of her arrival in the Netherlands over and over. The couple is now working to get the family into the U.S. and to Colorado where they live.
“I felt like I could breathe and I felt like I could sleep again,” Ms. Ignatow said. “She’s the daughter we never had.”

Members of the California National Guard welcomed Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a visit to the state in September in a Defense Department handout.
Photo: Senior Airman Duane Ramos/U.S. Air National Guard
Write to Dan Frosch at dan.frosch@wsj.com
WSJ · by Dan Frosch
9. Harvard teens made a website matching Ukrainian refugees with people offering places to stay
American ingenuity in times of crisis.

Harvard teens made a website matching Ukrainian refugees with people offering places to stay
“What we’ve done is put out a super fast, stripped-down version of Airbnb,” said Avi Schiffmann, noting that there are more than 4,000 hosts on the site
The Washington Post · by Cathy FreeMarch 10, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST · March 10, 2022
Avi Schiffmann climbed into bed after attending a demonstration in San Diego protesting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but sleep wouldn’t come.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about what I could do to help,” said Schiffmann, 19, a Harvard University student who was visiting San Diego while taking a semester off. “I wanted to do something that would have an instant impact.”
Two years earlier, when he was 17, he’d developed a website, ncov2019.live, to help track the spread of the coronavirus around the world. The site was so well received that Schiffmann was presented a Webby Person of the Year award online in 2020 by Anthony S. Fauci.
Schiffman suddenly sat up in bed with an idea: Make a website for Ukrainian refugees who needed places to stay in other countries. He put out a tweet.
“a cool idea would be to set up a website to match Ukrainian refugees to hosts in neighboring countries,” Schiffmann posted.
a cool idea would be to set up a website to match Ukrainian refugees to hosts in neighboring countries
— Avi Schiffmann (@AviSchiffmann) February 28, 2022
He followed up asking for help from people who spoke other languages to translate the website into Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Czech and Romanian.
Then he texted his Harvard University freshman classmate Marco Burstein, an 18-year-old computer coding whiz, to ask if he could help him quickly develop a website.
Burstein was 3,000 miles away in Cambridge, Mass., and had papers to write and classes to attend. Still, he was in, he told Schiffmann.
The pair worked almost nonstop texting and on FaceTime to create a website that would be easy to navigate for people offering help and those seeking it.
On March 3 — three days and only five hours of sleep later — they launched Ukraine Take Shelter, a site in 12 languages where Ukrainian refugees fleeing war can immediately find hosts with spare rooms, unused resort condos, mother-in-law apartments and school dormitories.
“If someone has a couch available, they can support a refugee,” said Schiffmann. “And if somebody has an entire house, they can put it on the site and support a whole family.”
“What we’ve done is put out a super fast, stripped-down version of Airbnb,” he said.
In the first week, more than 4,000 potential hosts around the world, including in the United States, have offered a place to stay through Ukraine Take Shelter, said Schiffmann, noting that the number of hosts grows each day.
One host from the United States commented: “I have to ask myself, ‘If not I, who? If not now, when?’ ” I cannot stop this invasion, but my faith tells me now is my time to help others find safety and shelter.”
While most of the hosts who sign up live in countries surrounding Ukraine, Schiffmann and Burstein have seen offers from as far away as Israel and Canada.
In some cases, the hosts are even springing for airline tickets to get families to safety, Burstein said.
“The number of new hosts we’re getting every day is mind-blowing, and we’re seeing immediate results in how the website is making a difference,” he said. “It’s literally saving lives for people in a terrifying situation.”
Both he and Schiffmann said they see their project as a public bulletin board offering something for everyone who is packing up whatever they can carry and fleeing Ukraine.
“We found that existing sites run by governments to help refugees were clumsy and full of complicated jargon,” Schiffmann said. “You submit something into a black box and just hope that somebody will read it and help you.”
“Somebody running away from explosions and gunfire is under stress and needs something that is more straightforward and easy to use,” he added.
On the Ukraine Take Shelter website, refugees type in their current locations and dozens of host offers pop up from the closest towns in neighboring countries, Burstein said. They can also specify the number of people who need shelter and whether they have pets or family members with special needs.
For example, on March 9, somebody fleeing Kyiv would have found listings from hosts offering accommodations ranging from a sofa in a one-bedroom apartment in Lithuania to a nine-bedroom chalet with eight bathrooms in Romania.
“I am a medical student, as is my boyfriend and we live in a one-bedroom apartment in the center of Kaunas, Lithuania,” wrote the volunteer host who had an available sofa.
“As of such we can only offer our couch in the living room with free food, supplies and anything else that is necessary,” she continued. “We don’t have any kids and could babysit as well.”
Some hosts don’t have room for more people, but they’re offering assistance for pets.
“We are offering a temporary place for one dog,” wrote a host from Latvia. “We are living in an apartment building, but with a lot of green areas and dog parks next to us. Your dog will have food, care, a bed and long walks!”
The key to the website’s design is its simplicity, said Schiffmann, noting that exact addresses aren’t provided for the hosts or the refugees for security reasons.
“Our goal was to get the site up as fast as possible to help as many people as possible, and that’s exactly what is happening,” he said.
Both he and Burstein were drawn to building webpages when they were young and learned how to tackle coding by watching YouTube videos, said Schiffmann, who grew up in the Seattle area.
Burstein, who grew up in Los Angeles, said he learned to program computers when he was in third grade.
“Avi and I met after we came to Harvard,” he said. “I made a website last summer so that Harvard students could see what classes all their friends were taking, and Avi reached out to me about it.”
The two ended up bonding over their common interest of using technology to solve problems, said Burstein.
“When Avi texted me about doing something for people in Ukraine, I had a sense that we could really make a difference with this,” he said.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to be going to Harvard and to have loving families and live in a safe environment,” he added. “We felt it was our turn to give back.”
Schiffmann said it’s a testament to the power of technology that two teens at opposite ends of the country could create an easy-to-use site to benefit people in need on the other side of the world.
He said he now hopes it will be possible to link efforts with agencies offering aid to Ukrainians.
“What’s happening in the world right now is really scary to watch,” he said. “People my age who were born after 9/11 have never witnessed anything like this.”
He said the scale of the crisis is daunting, and seemingly only becoming more dire.
“There have been more than 2 million refugees from Ukraine and it’s bound to get worse,” Schiffmann said. “They all deserve a safe place to stay.”
The Washington Post · by Cathy FreeMarch 10, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST · March 10, 2022

10. Ukraine’s New Foreign Legion Takes the Fight to Russian Forces
Marching to the sound of the guns.

Ukraine’s New Foreign Legion Takes the Fight to Russian Forces
President Volodymyr Zelensky appeals to battle-hardened veterans in race to augment its ranks
WSJ · by Brett Forrest
After several hours, Ukrainian planes bombed the Russian artillery positions, silencing them.
A combination of international arms and foreign volunteers has joined Ukraine’s efforts to impede the Russian advance in the third week of the conflict, and are now playing a growing role as the fighting spreads.
“We already passed this way in 2008 when we had a war with Russia,” Mr. Okruashvili said, referring to Moscow’s invasion of Georgia that year. “Ukraine is not fighting only for its own freedom, its own sovereignty, its own independence. This is not the war of Ukraine only.”

Former Georgian Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, third from left in the back row, with other former special forces soldiers from Georgia.
Photo: IRAKLI OKRUASHVILI
Kyiv is welcoming all outside assistance. The forces at its disposal are far smaller than those of Russia and are unable to fight on an equal footing. Russia’s armed forces count 900,000 personnel, compared with Ukraine’s 209,000 active troops, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank. The Ukrainian number doesn’t include recent mobilizations.
Addressing this imbalance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last month announced the formation of the International Legion of Defense of Ukraine, appealing to veteran soldiers outside the country who have specialized skills and experience in war to join the fight.
The international units are a component of the country’s regular armed forces and report to its general staff. Foreigners serve under Ukrainian officers. A spokesman for the group confirmed that some foreign units were already fighting on the front line.
Russia said it would consider these foreign fighters mercenaries. If captured, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said, they wouldn’t “enjoy the status of prisoners of war” under the Geneva Conventions.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appealing to veteran soldiers outside Ukraine to join the fight in the country.
Photo: Ukrinformukrinform/Zuma Press
The U.S., like many other countries, discourages its citizens from going to fight in Ukraine, as that could have legal and security ramifications. U.K. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss this week withdrew her support for British nationals going to Ukraine to fight after earlier saying she would back them if they wanted to join the struggle. Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly has said her government understood that people of Ukrainian descent would want to help defend their motherland and that doing so would be up to them.
Kyiv said 20,000 foreigners had enlisted in the International Legion and that there were nearly 13 million visits to the group’s website in its first 24 hours. The Wall Street Journal couldn’t independently verify these figures.
The group is seeking veterans with combat experience, and a number of Americans and British citizens who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have already registered, the spokesman said.
Ukrainian diplomatic missions abroad have been funneling recruits via Poland, and volunteers have been arriving there from Belarus, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and dozens of other countries, according to an official at the Ukrainian Embassy in Warsaw.

Bekim Zeqiri, a 27-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Westhampton, N.Y.
Photo: BRETT FORREST/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, (R) BEKIM ZEQIRI
On Friday, more foreign volunteers were at Premsyl train station on the Polish border, preparing to cross over to fight with Ukrainian forces, either with the International Legion or informal groups of fighters. Many carried camouflage backpacks and were speaking English rather than the mix of Slavic languages usually heard there.
A 30-year-old American veteran from Massachusetts said he wanted to help the Ukrainian cause however he could. “I served a tour in Afghanistan,” he said. “I feel like I have decent tools to help these people get out of harm’s way. I have medical skills as well. Anything I can do to help them.”
Matyas Kotyk, 32 years old, said he had served a year in the Czech Republic’s military in 2010. He was also heading into Ukraine, carrying with him only a small backpack. Now a private security guard, he hadn’t told his parents or 4-year-old daughter at home where he was headed.
“I couldn’t just stay home and watch it,” he said, adding that he had never been in a firefight and didn’t have any military gear except a tactical vest. “I’m nervous, a little bit.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba during a news conference after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Antalya, Turkey, on Thursday.
Photo: MURAD SEZER/REUTERS
Foreigners have been fighting in Donbas, in Ukraine’s east, during the eight years of war that preceded Russia’s wider invasion of the country last month, with mixed results. The Justice Department has probed the alleged role of several Americans in Donbas war crimes.
One of them, Craig Lang, has been charged with murder conspiracy in relation to a 2018 double homicide in Florida and is fighting extradition to the U.S. Mr. Lang has said he is innocent.
With the International Legion, Kyiv is attempting to get a stronger grip on the flow of volunteers who are typically drawn to war, formalizing the participation of foreign combatants and directing veterans with valued skills and battle experience to areas Ukraine most needs them.
For now, the legion is giving priority to the creation of infantry units, assigning foreign fighters based on their individual skills, the spokesman said.
Some foreigners have come to Ukraine and judged the International Legion to be more an exercise in publicity than an effective force and instead joined informal fighting brigades or the Ukrainian territorial defense, a formal citizen militia.

Ukrainian soldiers on an armored personnel carrier passed by people carrying their belongings as they fled the conflict near Kyiv.
Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/Associated Press
Volunteers who join the International Legion are required to sign a contract binding them to military service for the war’s duration, which can qualify them for Ukrainian citizenship, a senior Ukrainian official said Wednesday.
Matthew Parker, a U.S. Army veteran and private investigator in South Carolina, has been assisting the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., by vetting Americans who hoped to enlist.
He has cleared a group of 10 veterans, most of whom have more than a decade of military experience and were deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq, he said.
Mr. Parker said his group included drone operators, satellite-communication experts and men who knew how to use Javelin antitank weapons and Stinger ground-to-air missiles, arms that the U.S. and other Western countries have been delivering to Ukraine in great numbers recently.
Mr. Parker said his Ukrainian contacts hadn’t explained how they would utilize his group and that he feared the men would be sent with little forethought toward Russian guns or assigned menial tasks.
“We have specialties,” he said. “Don’t waste my people’s time by giving them a rifle and telling them to guard a bridge.”
Other volunteers have found their way to a prearranged collection point, a gas station one mile from the Polish border near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. One morning last week, Bekim Zeqiri, a 27-year-old U.S. Army veteran from Westhampton, N.Y., mixed there with other volunteers, wearing a New York Yankees ball cap and a shaggy dark beard.
Other foreigners arrived. A tall man in dark glasses said he was from Venezuela. Two other men had colorful neck and facial tattoos. Ukrainian soldiers in camouflage uniforms led the men toward a bus.
“This is my adrenaline,” Mr. Zeqiri said. “This is my chance to play high-school football again.”
It wasn’t quite what he expected.
At a nearby barracks, military evaluators placed Mr. Zeqiri in a group for rapid deployment, and he received a Ukrainian military uniform, a sleeping bag, a flak jacket and helmet, an AK-74 semiautomatic rifle and 120 rounds of ammunition, he said later in a text message.
The next day, already in Kyiv, he said he was disappointed not to receive advanced American weapons. He was also concerned about a convoy of Russian tanks and troops that he heard was advancing southward on the capital.
“Seriously, dude, it’s not what I thought it was,” Mr. Zeqiri said. “Where’s my M4? Where’s my Javelin?”
He said he missed rapping in nightclubs and that he would prefer to go back to doing that.
“Bro, they telling us, you know, that we got this s—,” he said. “Bro, I don’t think that we got this s—.”
A day later, as the sun rose, Mr. Zeqiri arrived in Lviv by bus and caught a cab toward the border. In a final text message, he wrote, “Poland.”
—Ian Lovett in Premsyl, Poland, contributed to this article.
Write to Brett Forrest at brett.forrest@wsj.com
WSJ · by Brett Forrest



11. U.S. Won’t Negotiate Ukraine-Related Sanctions with Russia to Save Iran Nuclear Deal


Excerpts:
Further complicating any attempt to re-craft a deal with Iran: Tehran has refused to let its negotiators talk directly to the U.S. until Washington lifts its sanctions. Regional tensions with Iran are growing again after a missile strike early Sunday which U.S. officials say originated from Iran and landed near an American consulate under construction in northern Iraq.
Any new deal would also trigger U.S. legislation giving Congress time for an in-depth review of the accord.
The negotiations in Vienna, which have dragged on for close to a year, aim to agree on the steps the U.S. and Iran would take to return into compliance with the nuclear deal. If Russia’s demands can be resolved, negotiators have said they could be back in Vienna within a few days to finish the talks.
Iran has avoided calling out Russia and has continued to blame the failure to complete the talks on Washington. However there have been hints of irritation from Iranian officials, who have said they wouldn’t let external factors get in the way of their interests.
The senior U.S. official declined to say whether an agreement would have been concluded by now without the Russian intervention. Among the issues still on the table is whether Iran’s Revolutionary Guards would have their Foreign Terrorist Organizations listing removed and what any conditions might be around that, Western diplomats say.

U.S. Won’t Negotiate Ukraine-Related Sanctions with Russia to Save Iran Nuclear Deal
Washington demands that Moscow withdraws its request in a week, or it will seek an alternative agreement with Tehran
WSJ · by Laurence Norman
“I don’t see the scope for going beyond what is within the confines of the JCPOA,” the senior U.S. official said, referring to the 2015 nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. ”I think it’s pretty safe to say that there is no room for making exemptions beyond those.”
Former President Donald Trump exited the accord in 2018 and reimposed broad sanctions, saying the deal failed to stop Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon. In response, Iran expanded its nuclear work, breaching most limits in the deal.
The official said an agreement between Iran and the U.S. was “within reach,” saying only a few issues were holding up a deal when talks in Vienna were broken off Friday because of Russia’s demand. The official called Russia’s demands “the most serious stumbling block and obstacle to reaching a deal.”
European officials say Russia had promised to respond with its precise demands for guarantees in the next few days. The U.S. official said if Russia presses its guarantee demands or doesn’t reply “in the coming week,” Washington would need to “very quickly consider an alternative path.”
Earlier this month, as Western diplomats were seeking to wrap up the talks, Russia requested guarantees that its work under the JCPOA would be exempted from western sanctions over Ukraine. The U.S. had given sanctions waivers for the 2015 deal.
However after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters Moscow wanted much broader guarantees, its chief negotiator in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, presented a second paper to European negotiators on Tuesday seeking to protect all future trade and investment against Ukraine-related sanctions.

Russia’s chief negotiator in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov, said his country’s demands weren’t the only reason an agreement hadn’t been reached.
Photo: christian bruna/Shutterstock
It couldn’t be determined whether Iran would be willing to negotiate an alternative deal without Russia, or whether China—which has grown closer to Russia—would participate. European officials also said Friday they would be open to exploring an alternative accord with Iran without Russia.
Mr. Ulyanov on Friday said his country’s demands weren’t the only reason an agreement on reviving the nuclear deal hadn’t been reached. Since negotiations hadn’t concluded, it was his country’s right to raise its concerns, he said.
Time is pressing. U.S. and European officials say that Iran’s nuclear work has expanded close to a point that the deal’s main benefit to the West—keeping Iran months away from amassing enough nuclear fuel for a nuclear weapon—would be impossible. Iran is currently just a few weeks from that so-called breakout point.
The U.S. is also on the hunt for new oil supplies during the war in Ukraine, as it seeks to contain surging energy prices. Iran could supply up to a million barrels a day of new crude supplies eventually if sanctions are lifted.
One option for the U.S. and its partners would be to create an interim deal that could freeze some of Iran’s activities and wind back aspects of its nuclear program in return for some level of sanctions relief from the U.S. Iran has always rejected the idea of an interim deal.
Another option would be to create what the senior U.S. official called a “replica of the JCPOA,” without Russia, which would assign Moscow’s tasks in the agreement elsewhere.
“I do think we would be open to various alternatives. We are beginning to think about what those might be,” the official said. “We...at this point wouldn’t rule anything out.”

Iran said it fired missiles near Erbil, Iraq, on Sunday, where the U.S. has a consulate.
Photo: AZAD LASHKARI/REUTERS
Further complicating any attempt to re-craft a deal with Iran: Tehran has refused to let its negotiators talk directly to the U.S. until Washington lifts its sanctions. Regional tensions with Iran are growing again after a missile strike early Sunday which U.S. officials say originated from Iran and landed near an American consulate under construction in northern Iraq.
Any new deal would also trigger U.S. legislation giving Congress time for an in-depth review of the accord.
The negotiations in Vienna, which have dragged on for close to a year, aim to agree on the steps the U.S. and Iran would take to return into compliance with the nuclear deal. If Russia’s demands can be resolved, negotiators have said they could be back in Vienna within a few days to finish the talks.
Iran has avoided calling out Russia and has continued to blame the failure to complete the talks on Washington. However there have been hints of irritation from Iranian officials, who have said they wouldn’t let external factors get in the way of their interests.
The senior U.S. official declined to say whether an agreement would have been concluded by now without the Russian intervention. Among the issues still on the table is whether Iran’s Revolutionary Guards would have their Foreign Terrorist Organizations listing removed and what any conditions might be around that, Western diplomats say.
Write to Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com
WSJ · by Laurence Norman

12. The West’s Economic War Plan Against Russia

Putin's War being launched from "north Korea on the Volga"to turn Ukraine into the “Syria on the Dnieper.”

Excerpts:

Mr. Fishman lists a range of other companies that could be fully blocked: Rosneft, the largest petroleum company; Rostec, the defense behemoth; Gazprom, the gas giant; Alrosa, the world’s leading diamond-mining company by volume; Russian Railways; Sovcomflot, the largest shipping company; and Rostelecom, the largest provider of digital services.
Russia is becoming “North Korea on the Volga,” Mr. Fishman says. It will be “a pariah state,” completely isolated from global economic and financial markets. “It’s not just the reality of economic isolation, it’s the shame of transacting with Russia.”
The danger—and the tragedy—is that Mr. Putin’s goal may be to turn Ukraine into “Syria on the Dnieper.”


The West’s Economic War Plan Against Russia
After invading Ukraine, Putin is now president of ‘North Korea on the Volga,’ says Edward Fishman, an expert on sanctions.
WSJ · by Tunku Varadarajan
The best evidence for this “key miscalculation” by the Russian strongman, Mr. Fishman says, is that two-thirds of the assets of the Central Bank of Russia were denominated in dollars, euros and yen: “If he’d thought that the U.S. and the West were actually going to impose sanctions on his central bank, he may have taken care of that sooner.” Instead, a relatively stable Russian economy was “pushed into a dramatic financial crisis in a matter of hours.”
Mr. Fishman, 33, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council and at the Center for New American Security—think tanks devoted to global strategic questions. From 2014 to 2017, he was the lead for Russia and Europe at the State Department’s sanctions office. He says that when Russia invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, “we didn’t have a Russia sanctions team. Iran was where the action was.” Mr. Fishman, then only 26—and holding a freshly minted master’s in business administration from Stanford—was part of a team focused on Tehran. When Mr. Putin annexed Crimea, Mr. Fishman volunteered for the brand-new Russia portfolio.

“The 2014 sanctions,” Mr. Fishman says, “may have made Putin complacent.” Imposed four months after Russia seized Crimea, they were “like a 2 out of 10 in intensity, whereas the ones that have been imposed in the last two weeks are more like an 8 out of 10.” Even the relatively mild 2014 sanctions “tanked the Russian economy. Although not as bad as it’s been in the last two weeks, the economy went into pretty steep recession.” Russia’s gross domestic product contracted by somewhere between 2.5% and 4% in 2015, and the ruble lost half its value.
Russia tried to sanction-proof itself in the years that followed. In Mr. Fishman’s telling, it built a sea wall to protect itself from the next punitive hurricane, only to get a tsunami after invading Ukraine on Feb. 24. Mr. Putin was unprepared for the enormity of the hit on his central bank, which Mr. Fishman puts into vivid perspective: “The Central Bank of Russia has about $640 billion worth of assets. At its peak, the Iranian economy had a GDP of about $550 billion. So if you compare the entire Iranian economy, it’s arguably less significant as an economic actor than the Central Bank of Russia.”
While the 2014 sanctions were largely restricted to blocking access to Western capital markets for Russia’s major banks and key state-owned enterprises, the present round of sanctions is much more severe. It includes full blocking sanctions—in effect, total pariah status—on major Russian banks (though not yet all of them).
Mr. Fishman is struck by the swiftness with which these sanctions were imposed and the striking unity of purpose in Europe, whose economy is closely intermingled with Russia’s. For this, Mr. Fishman gives credit to the Ukrainians, who’ve put up a much better fight against Russia than anyone expected. “Had Russia achieved some sort of swift victory, in the blitzkrieg style they did in 2014, you may not have seen the same outpouring of support for Ukraine, the same sort of political momentum for sanctions.” Western sanctions “got to that 8 out of 10 because the Ukrainians held off the Russian onslaught and won the hearts and minds of the world.”
Also critical was the clarity of purpose—and indignation—that the European Union brought to the table. “The fact that the Europeans went for the central-bank sanctions just demonstrates how much of a sea change there’s been in European opinion on Russia.” Europe’s people have been “mugged by reality.” Their perception of what was possible in terms of cooperation with Mr. Putin “has just been completely shattered.” Sanctions against Russia’s central bank are the “single most significant sanctions action in modern history, and it only happened because the EU was on board with it. The U.S. would not have done that unilaterally.”
Mr. Fishman concedes that he, too, might have misread the Europeans. Writing in Politico in January, he forecast that the EU would have “a lower appetite for high-impact sanctions than the United States, and will also move more slowly.” By contrast, when speaking to me—via Zoom from his Manhattan apartment—he emphasizes “the courage that the Europeans are showing, because it’s much more difficult for Europe to take these steps than it is for the U.S.” Some EU states have significant trade, financial and travel links with Russia. Sixty percent of Europe’s oil—some five million barrels a day—comes from Russia.
Another important difference between the sanctions in 2014 and 2022 is that this time the West was fully prepared to respond when Mr. Putin attacked Ukraine. “This crisis was a slow-moving train wreck,” Mr. Fishman says. The U.S. and Europe had months to put together their options, “so as soon as Putin ordered the tanks to roll, they had a fully vetted sanctions menu.” In 2014, “we only started talking about the sanctions after the bad behavior had taken place”—which is why they took four months to be imposed and were “sanctions lite.”
Mr. Fishman teaches a course on sanctions—“Economic and Financial Statecraft”—at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Sanctions, he says, are “first and foremost a tool of behavior change.
The aim of the current financial sanctions is to pressure Mr. Putin. “In 2014 the average Russian could sit on his couch, eat popcorn and applaud Putin as he courageously won back Crimea from the West.” That’s not possible now: “They’re not on their couches; they’re in ATM lines, racing to pull their money out of banks.” Imposing sanctions against a wide range of oligarchs, “not just the ones who have Putin on speed-dial,” is also a way to have “vectors of influence to Putin, trying to persuade him that the costs of continuing in Ukraine are not worth the benefits.”
That said, Mr. Fishman doesn’t believe the sanctions will force Mr. Putin to alter his behavior. It’s unlikely that “all of this economic pain will alter Putin’s calculus. I think it’s very hard for a dictator like Putin to pull back military forces once he’s ordered them in.” The best hope was to stop Mr. Putin before he made the decision to invade. Now it’s time to turn to the longer-term goal of sanctions—economic and technological attrition, which is also more practical than any attempt to reshape Mr. Putin into a more conciliatory invader.
Mr. Fishman therefore expects sanctions to be ratcheted up. The U.S. has already banned Russian oil and gas imports, a potentially major escalation. “Oil is the lifeblood of Russia’s economy,” Mr. Fishman says. “It accounts for half of all export revenues. By banning Russian oil imports, the Biden administration has taken the first step in what I anticipate will be a global campaign to curb Russia’s oil sales.” The U.S. imports modest amounts of oil from Russia, so the significance “is in the signal—that Russia’s oil sales, like its central-bank reserves, will be in the crosshairs of Western sanctions so long as Putin’s war against Ukraine continues.”
Europe imports far more Russian energy than the U.S. Its reductions, Mr. Fishman says, “will, by necessity, need to come in phases. But the final destination is clear: The West is determined to wean itself off Russian energy in the months and years to come.”
The Iran oil sanctions offer a model for how sanctions against Russia might work, with the U.S. imposing so-called secondary sanctions against states that step in to buy oil from the targeted country. Washington could also insist that money due Russia for its oil be kept in escrow accounts in the purchasing country, putting it beyond the reach of Mr. Putin and his war effort.
Mr. Fishman believes it will be easier to achieve a broad consensus against buying Russian oil than it was against Iran, which was largely a unilateral American effort. Could China come to Russia’s aid and buy all its oil, presumably at a significant discount? “This time, unlike with Iran—if it’s the U.S., Europe, Japan and other democratic powers jointly threatening consequences, I think the pressure would be pretty immense—even on China.”
It is “honestly shameful,” Mr. Fishman says, “to be seen to be paying Putin right now. There is the reputational cost to China. Does China want to be seen as bankrolling Russian imperialism in Ukraine? I think China is very cautious about being perceived as an imperialist power itself.”
But what if China and Russia collaborate to develop an alternative financial system that makes both countries sanctions-proof? Mr. Fishman thinks that’s unlikely. It would require a “dramatic reconfiguration” of the Chinese state and political economy, including the removal of capital controls. And China’s strengths already make it much less vulnerable to sanctions. With the world’s second-largest economy, Mr. Fishman says, “this type of economic and financial campaign is almost unthinkable against China.” Not only is China more “systemically significant” than Russia, it has ways to respond “symmetrically” to sanctions.
Russia, by contrast, has vulnerabilities the West has yet to exploit. Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank by far, the equivalent of “ Wells Fargo, Capital One, and Bank of America rolled into one.” Now it faces only the original debt sanctions from 2014, plus an additional transaction ban post-Feb. 24. Mr. Fishman foresees those being heightened to “full blocking sanctions in the weeks and months ahead.”
So far, the most significant Russian bank to be fully blocked is VTB, the country’s second-largest. But it’s only half the size of Sberbank. Blocking the latter would beggar the Russian people, which may be why full blocking sanctions haven’t been imposed. “It’s also an important escalation step, an arrow to keep in the West’s quiver to use later if necessary.” Sberbank has about a third of the banking sector’s assets in Russia and about 60% of all household deposits. Half of Russia’s wages are channeled through the bank. “There could be very broad-based, microlevel financial and economic dislocation” were Sberbank to be hit, Mr. Fishman says.
The bank, like VTB and others, is “majority state-owned, so there’s a Putin connection and Putin taint to all of them.” Mr. Putin views them as “parts of the commanding heights of the economy and as elements of the state that need to be kept under close Kremlin control.”
Mr. Fishman lists a range of other companies that could be fully blocked: Rosneft, the largest petroleum company; Rostec, the defense behemoth; Gazprom, the gas giant; Alrosa, the world’s leading diamond-mining company by volume; Russian Railways; Sovcomflot, the largest shipping company; and Rostelecom, the largest provider of digital services.
Russia is becoming “North Korea on the Volga,” Mr. Fishman says. It will be “a pariah state,” completely isolated from global economic and financial markets. “It’s not just the reality of economic isolation, it’s the shame of transacting with Russia.”
The danger—and the tragedy—is that Mr. Putin’s goal may be to turn Ukraine into “Syria on the Dnieper.”
Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at Columbia University’s Center on Capitalism and Society.
WSJ · by Tunku Varadarajan


13. Here’s What Putin Doesn’t Want You to Know About What’s Happening Inside Russia Right Now

Excerpts:

“What’s most horrifying,” Boris wrote in his last message from Moscow, “is the efficiency of Putin’s propaganda. We are caught in a shitload of fish.”
Russian culture is rich in off-color expressions and double entendres, this one makes it plain that the average Russian has been ensnared in Putin’s shit and there’s nothing anyone can do to escape.
Many of the expressions favored in these parts reflect the great gulf between dreams of what might be and the reality of what is.
Perhaps the illustration that best describes what Putin has created is a line taken from the film version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, the story of a professor who transplants the testicles of a freshly dead, drunken apparatchik into a spotted puppy named Sharik.
The result is Sharikov, an uncontrollable fascist whose lying and thievery makes everyday life in Russia unbearable. “What have I done?” the professor moans. “I’ve turned a perfectly nice little dog into a son of a bitch.”
The professor ultimately manages to neuter Sharikov, much in the same manner the West is using sanctions to spay Putin's totalitarian regime. For the moment, however, the economic surgery is in large part limited to removing imported Italian cheese from the pasta and Starbucks beans from the iced lattes. That will change soon enough.
Here’s What Putin Doesn’t Want You to Know About What’s Happening Inside Russia Right Now
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
President Putin has effectively banned foreign correspondents reporting on Russia during his war in Ukraine. This is what he doesn’t want you to know.

Published Mar. 12, 2022 8:19PM ET 
The Daily Beast · March 13, 2022
Photo Illustration by Kristen Hazzard/The Daily Beast/Getty
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done more than leave the ruble without a cause. “I don’t have enough to take a shit,” gripes Vadim fumbling for the 60 rubles, about 44 cents, needed to unlock the pay toilet at the Khoroshevo railway station.
Three weeks into the war, Russia’s financial constipation is unmistakable. The West first sanctioned the country’s banking sector. The global financial system then took command and gridlocked practically every money thoroughfare between Russia and the rest of the world. Visa and Mastercard evaporated. Google and Apple shut off their digital payment systems. Insurance policies vanished. The Big Mac is no more.
And now, in St. Petersburg, Sveta—whose name has been changed for her safety like everyone in this story—is seeking blossoms imported from the Netherlands.
“No Dutch flowers?” the 30-year-old woman asks Olga, the florist in the lobby of the Gostinyi Dvor Metro station, site of many of the anti-war demonstrations and where at least 1,000 protesters so far have been arrested. “How are you going to stay open without Dutch flowers?”
“Fuck them,” replies the seventy-something flower-seller. “I’ll head back to my village and grow the fucking flowers in the garden.”
Sveta, a lawyer who owns a business consultancy, laments that Putin’s ham-fisted control of Russian media has twisted a majority of the country’s 145 million people into generations of Olgas. “The number of young people who support Putin’s madness is terrifying,” she explains. “We’re all upset about the related bans, like Netflix and Spotify, which only reinforce the suppression of freedom of speech. With no information, Putin’s zombification of Russia will accelerate.”
Yet tapping into Russia’s fondness for dark humor, Sveta adds, “we cannot force McDonald’s to stay, and we may even emerge healthier for it.”
Nearby, outside the Cherneshevskaya Metro Station, a Molotov cocktail’s throw from Putin’s childhood neighborhood, two middle-aged women are having a conversation.
“If Putin didn’t go to the Ukraine they would be on our doorstep this year,” says the first woman. “America were going to send thousands of Nazis into Russia.”
“True,” her friend agrees. “Someone from the Ukraine was writing to me, terrorizing me on my phone. I erased all the messages. That’s how the Ukrainian secret police tracks us.”
“What’s the difference for us,” says the first. “We had kasha, potatoes and herring, and we will still have kasha, potatoes and herring. I don’t need parmesan cheese.”
“We live fine,” is the second woman’s verdict. “Let everyone in Russia live like us.”
Back in Moscow, there’s an argument going on between two old friends in an apartment. They’re reading an article on Russian military actions in Ukraine as described in the popular ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra, which is owned by the 84-year-old novelist and Putin pal Alexander Prokhanov.
The headline blares: Going Forward, the Town of Izyum is Liberated. Nazis are Killing the Un-Loyal. We Liquidate Military Criminals.
Putin’s propaganda has turned us into bastards, monsters,” says Boris, a 65-year-old translator.
“The President is protecting us from a Nazi invasion,” fires back his life-long friend Nikolai, a doctor and frequent visitor to Miami. “Why do you not support him? On every particular point, Putin’s position is concrete.”
Boris scoffs: “There’s no way to measure that under a totalitarian regime where all the polls are rigged.”
Across Moscow, at the hipster Dada Cafe, Volodya slides the right side of his palm across his throat, an old Russian sekir baska or “axe-head” gesture that signals: “I’m fed up with this” to his companion. Volodya lowers his voice to barely a whisper. “This scum, Putin, should be crushed,” he adds. Volodya then raises his voice for others in the café to hear. “I officially support the operation conducted by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.”
A woman at the adjoining table stiffly nods her head. “NATO is making dirty bombs in the Ukraine,” she says. “They’re all Nazis.”
“What’s most horrifying,” Boris wrote in his last message from Moscow, “is the efficiency of Putin’s propaganda. We are caught in a shitload of fish.”
Russian culture is rich in off-color expressions and double entendres, this one makes it plain that the average Russian has been ensnared in Putin’s shit and there’s nothing anyone can do to escape.
Many of the expressions favored in these parts reflect the great gulf between dreams of what might be and the reality of what is.
Perhaps the illustration that best describes what Putin has created is a line taken from the film version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, the story of a professor who transplants the testicles of a freshly dead, drunken apparatchik into a spotted puppy named Sharik.
The result is Sharikov, an uncontrollable fascist whose lying and thievery makes everyday life in Russia unbearable. “What have I done?” the professor moans. “I’ve turned a perfectly nice little dog into a son of a bitch.”
The professor ultimately manages to neuter Sharikov, much in the same manner the West is using sanctions to spay Putin's totalitarian regime. For the moment, however, the economic surgery is in large part limited to removing imported Italian cheese from the pasta and Starbucks beans from the iced lattes. That will change soon enough.
The Daily Beast · March 13, 2022



14. BBC World Service resurrects shortwave broadcasts in war-torn Ukraine
Sometimes it is necessary to go back to the old school ways. The underground in Ukraine may need to depend on this capability.

Some history of resistance:

“London calling with Frenchmen speaking to their countrymen… London calling with messages for our friends…” This is followed by a series of seemingly meaningless statements, repeated twice:
“Molasses tomorrow will bring forth cognac.”
“Jean a une longue moustache” translated as “John has a long mustache.”
“The long sobs of the violins… fill my heart with a monotonous languor.”
The letter “V” in Morse Code is “dot dot dot dash.” The opening of Beethoven’s Fifth? “Dun Dun Dun Dunnnn.” Virtually all overseas broadcasts began with these ominous notes.
“Courvoisier, we’re coming to visit you.” 
From: “Molasses tomorrow will bring forth cognac.” The BBC’s Fascinating Coded Messages to the French Resistance"  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/the-bbcs-messages.html?chrome=1



BBC World Service resurrects shortwave broadcasts in war-torn Ukraine
tpr.org · by Jerry Clayton · March 12, 2022
The BBC has resurrected an old school way of broadcasting in order to reach people in the crisis area of Ukraine: Shortwave radio. What is shortwave, and why has the BBC decided to begin using it again?
It's almost a forgotten technology in the United States, except for some Americans of a certain age, or maybe their parents or grandparents or even great grandparents.
Shortwave was used extensively during World War II and the Cold War. For many years, shortwave broadcasts were spread around the world over Voice of America. Russia had Radio Moscow and other countries had their own shortwave broadcasts.
What exactly is shortwave radio?
John Figliozzi is an expert and author of The Worldwide Listening Guide, now, in its tenth edition. He explained it like this: “Shortwave radio is a legacy technology using the ionosphere to bounce radio signals over a wide and long distances.”
That means it can be heard thousands of miles away.
Dusted off my first shortwave receiver from 2004.

BBC World Service at 15730 kHz. pic.twitter.com/ddyIPcaCLX
— Tarmo Tanilsoo (@es5nhc) March 12, 2022
“The sun charges the ionosphere with electrons. It creates almost like a mirror," Figliozzi said. "You project radio signals onto that ionosphere, and they travel great distances.”
Before modern communications, including the internet, shortwave was the way to go.
“In the days of shortwave, shortwave was the only way to communicate extremely long distances other than wire, which was very expensive,” he said.
Now, the old has become new again, in part due to Russian President Vladimir Putin's information lockdown and the destruction of transmission towers in Ukraine.
The BBC suspended its full time shortwave broadcasts in 2008. But it's been brought back for special situations. Recent developments between Russia and Ukraine convinced the BBC that shortwave was needed again.
Jamie Angus, the senior news controller of outputs and commissioning for the BBC, led the way. “We have resumed in the short term shortwave broadcasts in certain crisis situations, so we did it in Kashmir," he explained. "and we are doing it at the moment in Ukraine and parts of Russia so far.”
You can also find BBC World Service in English on shortwave radio at the following times, daily: (4/4)

15730 kHz 13:00-15:00 GMT (Kyiv is GMT+2)
5875 kHz 20:00-22:00 GMT (Kyiv is GMT+2) pic.twitter.com/Hh4xeJRcD0
— BBC World Service (@bbcworldservice) March 12, 2022
Angus said Russia has not yet interfered with the shortwave broadcasts.
“Shortwave can be blocked, but it's a labor intensive business to block them, and it takes time and experience. So for the time being, we think the shortwave broadcasts in Ukraine are not being blocked,” he said.
The BBC's very popular Russian language internet site has been mostly blocked by Putin's regime, along with other Western news organizations and Russian language content. So the BBC is trying to show Russians how they can access their content in other ways.
“There are ways — using the so-called dark web, the TOR router, and an app called Psiphon, and a number of other circumvention measures which we're trying — to draw the Russian audience's attention to in the hope they will continue to seek out our websites, even though it's been blocked on the main internet,” Angus added.
If you're interested in listening to the BBC shortwave broadcast, you'll need a radio that covers the shortwave band. The BBC maintains a list of times and frequencies on which they may be heard at BBC.com.

TPR was founded by and is supported by our community. If you value our commitment to the highest standards of responsible journalism and are able to do so, please consider making your gift of support today.
tpr.org · by Jerry Clayton · March 12, 2022



15. The War in Ukraine Is Just Beginning


I fear the headline is likely accurate.

Excerpts:

A more brutal military campaign doesn’t necessarily mean a shorter one, though. Even if Russian troops are able to seize control of Kyiv and other major cities, they will face the arguably greater challenge of occupying the country, not to mention suppressing a potentially violent insurgency. Although a Ukrainian resistance probably wouldn’t be able to deny Putin a military victory in the country, it could at the very least prevent him from declaring a political one. “A stalemate, for Ukraine, is probably more tolerable than it is for Putin,” Thomas Pepinsky, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively on insurgent warfare, told me. “Annually, it will cost [Russia] soldiers, and it will cost them equipment, which is expensive.”


All of this, of course, assumes that Russia’s war doesn’t escalate beyond Ukraine. One concern is it could yet extend to other post-Soviet countries such as Moldova and Georgia, both of which, like Ukraine, have Russian-backed breakaway regions within their respective territories. The other, perhaps greater, risk is that Russian aggression could spread even farther afield, to the Baltics, which would not only draw NATO into a potential conflict, but also fundamentally threaten the post–Cold War order.

“This story is as big [as], if not bigger, than 9/11 and the fall of the Soviet Union,” Katerji said, comments that have partially echoed those made by Britain’s foreign secretary. “We’re just at the start of it. We have no idea what the consequences of this will be long term or even in the near short term.” The biggest unknown is not when this war will end—because it won’t anytime soon—but where.



The War in Ukraine Is Just Beginning
Conflicts, though typically started easily, can be brutal, intractable, and difficult to end.
The Atlantic · by Yasmeen Serhan · March 12, 2022
If conflicts in places such as Ethiopia, Palestine, Kashmir, Syria, and Yemen have proved anything, it’s that wars are easy to start, but are also brutal, intractable, and difficult to end. The fickle nature of the international media means that protracted conflicts quickly lose the world’s attention, if they ever had it to begin with.
At the moment, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has riveted the world, drawing more attention than the ongoing slaughters in other nations—a double standard that has been widely noted. But that gap in coverage is likely to become even more striking the longer the conflict continues, because the factors that make a long war in Ukraine seemingly inevitable are the same ones that make it unlikely to slip from the world’s collective radar.
In some ways, Ukraine was already in the midst of a long-running crisis. The country has been engaged in armed conflict with Russia since Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, which even before Russia’s invasion last month had resulted in the deaths of more than 14,000 people, many of them civilians. That the war has now escalated beyond the two countries’ de facto border has raised the stakes of the conflict, threatening both Ukraine’s sovereignty and that of its neighbors, many of which are now justifiably asking whether they could be next.
While Ukraine’s location has afforded it outsize attention relative to other conflicts, it’s also what makes the prospect of a drawn-out war even more likely. Ukraine, after all, is situated at the doorstep of the European Union and NATO, both of which have a vested interest in ensuring that the country’s sovereignty is maintained and that Russia’s aggression is curtailed. The longer the Russian invasion continues, the greater the refugee crisis that Europe is likely to face, and the riskier the situation becomes for NATO, which has gone to great lengths to avoid being drawn into direct conflict with Russian troops.
This risk is compounded by the unpredictability of Vladimir Putin, who represents not only a permanent, veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council (a position that Moscow regularly uses to its advantage), but a nuclear-armed state. That the Russian president has already threatened to use his nuclear arsenal is just one concern; that he could deploy brutal military tactics similar to those used by Russia in Syria and Chechnya is another. Moscow’s shelling of Ukrainian cities and towns, as well as its targeting of civilians, has already drawn parallels to its previous bombardments of Aleppo at the height of the Syrian civil war and its destruction of Grozny, the Chechen capital, which at one point the UN considered “the most destroyed city on Earth.”
The brutality of Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine, even at this relatively early stage in the war, “has strong 1999–2000 Grozny vibes,” Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military at the Center for Naval Analyses, told me. Having failed to achieve its objectives in the early days of its invasion, Kofman said that the Russian military now appears to be settling in for a much longer war that would result in the attrition of forces and the destruction of cities. Putin showed his willingness to deploy scorched-earth tactics in Syria and Chechnya, where arguably far less was at stake. Anything but victory in Ukraine could be seen by Putin as an existential threat, not only to Russia, but to his own grasp on power. “He is not in a place politically where he can afford to accept a humiliating defeat,” Kofman said. “Just as Ukrainians are determined in their defense, Vladimir Putin is determined to win.”
Oz Katerji, a freelance conflict journalist based in Kyiv, who witnessed Russia’s besiegment of Syria firsthand during the civil war, told me that the targeting of hospitals and other civilian centers, which has already begun in Ukraine, is central to Russia’s military doctrine. “Russia doesn’t necessarily need to go into those areas and risk losing huge amounts of manpower and armor when it could just cut them off, besiege them, bomb them, [and] starve them into submission,” he said. “It’s a deliberate, cynical strategy.”
A more brutal military campaign doesn’t necessarily mean a shorter one, though. Even if Russian troops are able to seize control of Kyiv and other major cities, they will face the arguably greater challenge of occupying the country, not to mention suppressing a potentially violent insurgency. Although a Ukrainian resistance probably wouldn’t be able to deny Putin a military victory in the country, it could at the very least prevent him from declaring a political one. “A stalemate, for Ukraine, is probably more tolerable than it is for Putin,” Thomas Pepinsky, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution who has written extensively on insurgent warfare, told me. “Annually, it will cost [Russia] soldiers, and it will cost them equipment, which is expensive.”
All of this, of course, assumes that Russia’s war doesn’t escalate beyond Ukraine. One concern is it could yet extend to other post-Soviet countries such as Moldova and Georgia, both of which, like Ukraine, have Russian-backed breakaway regions within their respective territories. The other, perhaps greater, risk is that Russian aggression could spread even farther afield, to the Baltics, which would not only draw NATO into a potential conflict, but also fundamentally threaten the post–Cold War order.
“This story is as big [as], if not bigger, than 9/11 and the fall of the Soviet Union,” Katerji said, comments that have partially echoed those made by Britain’s foreign secretary. “We’re just at the start of it. We have no idea what the consequences of this will be long term or even in the near short term.” The biggest unknown is not when this war will end—because it won’t anytime soon—but where.
The Atlantic · by Yasmeen Serhan · March 12, 2022


16. Shaky footage in Ukraine shows this is a tale of two ways of waging war: stealth versus brute force

I am seeing a lot of interesting videos on Twitter and other social media.

Shaky footage in Ukraine shows this is a tale of two ways of waging war: stealth versus brute force
The Guardian · by Peter Beaumont · March 12, 2022
In the snow-dusted woods outside Kyiv a column of Ukrainian troops moves, identifiable by the soldiers’ yellow armbands.
In the rare footage, captured by Maryan Kushnir, a journalist with the Ukrainian service of Radio Free Europe, one of the soldiers says they are going to clear an unidentified village of “orcs”– slang for the Russian troops now rapidly encircling the Ukrainian capital – who have occupied it with armoured vehicles. A commander warns that two tanks are coming, and as the men appear to fall back to a better position, there is an exchange of heavy fire. The video’s ending is as sudden as it is inconclusive.
Other videos to have emerged in recent days show similar scenes. Soldiers in urban settings crunch through debris, or traverse the darkened countryside for a planned ambush that is viewed through night-vision goggles, their friendly-force beacons flashing ghostly green on their helmets.
The images are of a piece with many others circulating on social media and elsewhere, and important for what they depict.
They show Ukrainian troops in combat, usually on foot, exploiting tangled woods or streets to set their ambushes, armed inevitably with anti-tank weapons, including British-supplied NLAWS and German Panzerfausts.
And with Russian forces significantly tightening their siege of key Ukrainian cities in recent days, including concentrating about 21-22 battalion tactical groups around the capital Kyiv, it is footage that demonstrates how the conflict has rapidly become a tale of two very different ways of waging warfare.
On the Ukrainian side – in tactics reminiscent of the Finnish resistance during the Winter War of 1939, when the Soviet forces were fought to a standstill by largely outnumbered Finnish troops – Kyiv’s successes have relied on highly mobile hit-and-run attacks on the slow-moving and congested Russian military columns.
And as more anti-tank weapons have poured in from the west for Ukraine’s defence, Russia’s tactics have switched to a slow and brutal kind of siege warfare in response, designed to encircle and break Ukraine’s cities and to force Ukraine’s military into a more static defensive positions where they can more easily be overwhelmed.
In a warning of what Russia’s new military tactics might mean for Ukraine’s defenders, Andrzej Wilk and Piotr Żochowski of the Warsaw-based thinktank, the Centre for Eastern Studies, noted the emerging challenge to Ukraine’s defenders in their most recent daily update on the war. “In most directions, Russian offensive operations have turned into positional combat, in which the aggressor attempts to encircle Ukrainian forces in the main urban centres and displace them from the smaller towns.
“[The Russians] will strive to fully close the encirclements of towns and cities where this has not yet happened, and to push the Ukrainian troops all the way into the built-up areas, regardless of how many losses they [Russians] suffer.”
Whether that succeeds – and how Ukrainian forces adapt – may well be defining.
One already grimly familiar model of what the coming phase of the war predicted by Wilk and Żochowski will look like has already been provided by the almost two-week-long Russian siege of the southern port city of Mariupol where at least 1,500 people have died in a constant bombardment that has trapped defenders and civilians in basements. On Saturday, as Ukrainian officials reported that Russia had shelled a mosque where 80 people were sheltering, the UN humanitarian office offered its latest update on the status of the city. “There are reports of looting and violent confrontations among civilians over what little basic supplies remain in the city,” the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said. “Medicines for life-threatening illnesses are running out, hospitals are only partially functioning, and food and water are in short supply.”
As the UK’s Ministry of Defence warned on Friday that Russian forces could target Kyiv in a few days, evidence of the feared coming storm saw artillery pound the city’s northwestern outskirts on Saturday. as two columns of smoke – one black and one white – rose in the town of Vaslkyiv after a strike on an ammunition depot.
New commercial satellite images also appeared to capture artillery firing on residential areas that stood between the Russians and the capital. The images from Maxar Technologies showed muzzle flashes and smoke from big guns, as well as impact craters and burning homes in the town of Moschun, 20 miles from Kyiv, the company said.
The inequalities of the fight have also been underlined in different ways with American defence officials saying Russian pilots – despite well-documented losses – are averaging 200 sorties a day, compared with five to 10 for Ukrainian forces.
And there is growing evidence that the scope of the war is widening. Until recently, Russia’s troops had made their biggest advances on cities in the east and south, while struggling in the north and around Kyiv. Last week, however, Russian forces also started targeting areas in western Ukraine, where large numbers of refugees have fled, with Russia saying on Friday it used high-precision long-range weapons to put military airfields in the western cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk “out of action.”
Russian airstrikes also targeted Dnipro, a major industrial hub in the east and Ukraine’s fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. One person was killed, Ukrainian officials said.
Facing the challenges of the new Russian reliance on siege warfare, some analysts believe Ukraine’s defenders will have to adapt again to confront the new threat that poses, amid grim warnings that an already terrible conflict could yet turn darker.
“It’s ugly already, but it’s going to get worse,” said Nick Reynolds, a warfare analyst at Royal United Services Institute.
The Guardian · by Peter Beaumont · March 12, 2022


17. Kyiv ‘ready to fight’ as Russian forces close in Ukraine capital

Will the Russians experience losing at a Stalingrad-like battle?

I heard a report that the mayor of Kyiv says that if cut off they have about two weeks of food supplies. Are we preparing for this contingency? Can we plan a "Berlin Airlift" type operation to resupply the city? What are the contigency plans should the Russians lay siege to Kyiv?



Kyiv ‘ready to fight’ as Russian forces close in Ukraine capital
Ukrainian president warns of ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ as hundreds of thousands of civilians remain under fire across country
The Guardian · by Tess McClure · March 12, 2022
Ukrainian officials have said Kyiv is “ready to fight” as Russian forces renewed their bombardment on the capital and observers warned of “an unimaginable tragedy” unfolding after more than two weeks of war.
Air raid sirens and shelling rang out over Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities on Saturday morning amid warnings from western defence officials that the Russians were beginning to gain ground around the capital.
There were reports of loud explosions in Dnipro in the country’s east on Saturday, as well as Mykolaiv, Nikolaev and Kropyvnytskyi.
But Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the capital was “ready to fight”. He called it a “city under siege”, with checkpoints prepared and supply lines in place. “Kyiv will stand until the end.”
Satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies on Saturday has shown homes and buildings on fire and Russian artillery battalions appearing to fire on towns surrounding to the north-west of the Ukrainian capital as forces advance. The Guardian has not independently verified the images.
A senior US defence official said at a Pentagon briefing on Friday: “We do assess that the Russians are beginning to make more momentum on the ground towards Kyiv, particularly from the east.”
The UK Ministry of Defence said on Saturday morning that “the bulk of Russian ground forces” were around 25km from the centre of Kyiv, while the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled and continued to suffer heavy Russian shelling.

A satellite image made available by Maxar Technologies purports to show a closeup of burning homes in Moschun. Photograph: Maxar Technologies/EPA
However, the Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said that Russian operations around Kyiv “remained largely stalled over the past 24 hours” to “resupply and refit frontline units” – an assessment shared by Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych, who said on Friday that the Russian advance had been halted over the past day.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called on Ukrainians to continue fighting, but said living conditions in the Kyiv region had deteriorated into a “humanitarian catastrophe” with disrupted gas, heating and water. The Ukrainian president said his country had reached a “strategic turning point” in the conflict. “It is impossible to say how many days we still have [ahead of us] to free Ukrainian land. But we can say we will do it,” he said. “We are already moving towards our goal, our victory.”
About 2 million people – half the population of the metropolitan area – had left the capital, the Kyiv mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Friday, and those who remained continued to prepare for its defence.
“Every street, every house is being fortified,” he said. “Even people who in their lives never intended to change their clothes, now they are in uniform with machine guns in their hands.”
Ukrainian soldiers described fierce fighting for control of the main highway leading into the capital, while missile strikes were reported hitting just outside Kyiv’s city limits on Friday.
“It’s frightening, but what can you do?” said Vasil Popov, a 38-year-old who works in advertising sales. “There is nowhere to really run or hide. We live here.”
Continuing Russian bombardments and attacks on civilians in cities across Ukraine have prompted warnings of “an unimaginable tragedy” and a new flurry of alarm from the UN that Russia is committing war crimes.
“We are really heading towards an unimaginable tragedy,” Stephen Cornish of Doctors Without Borders told Agence France-Presse, insisting “there is still time to avoid it, and we must see it avoided”.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain trapped and under fire in Ukrainian cities, but the situation in Mariupol is especially dire. Ten days into Russia’s siege, its population has no access to electricity or mobile phone networks, and water and food are running out. On Friday 7,144 people were evacuated from four Ukrainian cities, Zelenskiy said in a televised address – a much lower number than managed to leave in each of the two previous days.
Zelenskiy accused Russia of refusing to allow people out of Mariupol and said Ukraine would try again to deliver food and medicines there on Saturday.
Ukraine has repeatedly raised concerns that Moscow’s ally Belarus, which has served as a staging point for Russian forces, will soon have its troops drawn into the invasion. Ukraine’s state centre for strategic communications said Belarus might launch an invasion of Ukraine today, after a meeting in Moscow between the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko. Ukraine accused Russia of staging “false flag” air attacks on Belarus from Ukraine to provide an excuse for an offensive.
Putin and Lukashenko agreed on Friday that Moscow would supply its smaller neighbour with military equipment and mutual support against western sanctions, including on energy prices, the official Belarus state news agency BelTA said.
Foreign combatants have already entered the Ukrainian conflict on both sides, but the Kremlin has ramped up efforts to bring in reinforcements from Syria. Syria’s military has begun recruiting troops from its own ranks to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, promising payments of $3,000 a month – a sum of up to 50 times more than a Syrian soldier’s monthly salary. A furious Zelenskiy accused Russia of hiring “murderers from Syria, a country where everything has been destroyed … like they are doing here to us”.
As the war continues, Russia faces an expanding net of sanctions. Western governments have announced plans to impose punitive tariffs on Russian trade to further isolate Moscow from the global economy. The G7 group of wealthy nations said it would strip Russia of “most favoured nation” status under World Trade Organization rules. The US president, Joe Biden, announced plans to ban the import of seafood, vodka and diamonds from Russia, and the UK government says it is planning to ban exports of luxury goods to Russia.
Deutsche Bank and Sony Pictures have joined the exodus of western businesses from Russia. In a statement posted on its website, Deutsche Bank said it was “in the process of winding down our remaining business in Russia” and that there “won’t be any new business in Russia”. Russia has moved to block Instagram after its parent company, Meta, said it would allow calls for violence against Putin and Russian soldiers involved in the invasion of Ukraine to appear on the social media platform. Russian prosecutors demanded that access to Instagram be blocked, and authorities moved to recognise Meta as an “extremist organisation”.
The US has also imposed sanctions on a group of Russia’s elite, including billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, three family members of Putin’s spokesman and members of parliament.
With Agence France-Presse
The Guardian · by Tess McClure · March 12, 2022


18. Why Russia's Brutal War in Ukraine Could Sink China

Excerpts:
Yet Beijing, burdened with massive Belt & Road and other commitments abroad, can ill afford another sinkhole obligation like Russia. At the moment, China, with a slow-moving debt crisis at home and a stagnant economy, looks overstretched. Russia then begins to resemble an albatross firmly tied to the neck of the Chinese state.
It is not clear that Xi Jinping, focused on geopolitics, is willing to cut Vladimir Putin loose, however. China’s leader sees great value in the Russian aggressor.
As the Economist writes, “In Beijing, scholars and high-ranking government advisers predict that today’s shows of Western unity will fade sooner or later, as sanctions fail to break Russia and instead send energy prices soaring.” The Chinese believe the invasion will “hasten America’s decline and slow retreat from the world.” The resulting “new global order” will allow China to establish its sphere of influence.
Xi looks like he believes now is the time to get rid of America. He’s willing to support a weak state to do so. He is betting on everything to win the world.
Yet the bold Chinese ruler is making a critical mistake. Russia is diminishing China.

Why Russia's Brutal War in Ukraine Could Sink China
19fortyfive.com · by ByGordon Chang · March 12, 2022
“I think it’s a disaster for China,” said J Capital Research’s Anne Stevenson-Yang, referring to Beijing’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Foreign policy elites have for years thought about how to break up the growing China-Russia partnership. Now, they should be cheering the tie-up and hope the two large states get even closer.
Why? Russia is fast diminishing China.
Most observers see China as the winner of the Ukraine war. “They’ll be the primary beneficiary of the sanctions against Russia, the yuan will benefit from the decline of the ruble, and they have been given a case study of what the world’s response would look like if they were to invade Taiwan,” said Steve Gray, a former FBI special agent working on China cases, to Fox News. “It would not be surprising at all to learn that this is shaping up exactly as China planned.”
China does have big plans, evident after Xi Jinping spoke for more than two-and-a-half hours with Vladimir Putin in Beijing on February 4. Beijing and Moscow “reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era,” their 5,000-word joint statement announced. “Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
This extraordinary document, released February 4, was drafted at a time Chinese leaders knew Moscow would invade. The New York Times reports that the Chinese got Moscow to postpone the war until the Beijing Winter Olympics concluded. The Games ended on February 20; Russia invaded four days later.
Starting February 4, Russia announced large commodity sales of energy—oil, gas, and coal—to China and Beijing removed restrictions on the importation of Russian wheat. Beijing is, in addition, making its financial system available to Russian institutions as the U.S. and Europe cut them off from theirs. Beijing is supporting Russia in U.N. councils and using state media to propagate absurd Russian narratives. China, in sum, is a combatant.
In the short term, Beijing, as Steve Gray suggests, reaps big advantages. “China will take advantage of Russia’s pariah status, as it always does,” Stevenson-Yang said in comments to me. “In fact, China loves to take advantage of crises: It’s gotten very chummy with Iran since the 2012 sanctions, it became Iraq’s biggest telecom supplier after the U.S. invasion, and there’s North Korea, in a whole separate class. They’ve already hammered Russia on oil and gas prices, and they will undoubtedly get a good deal on grains and trace minerals.”
The reckoning, however, will come soon. As she says, these immediate gains are “all small stuff.”
“What really matters is that China has destroyed two decades of efforts trying to play with the Big Boys in international organizations,” Stevenson-Yang points out. “Now China will find it harder to raise money, will have to pay more for its bonds, and those efforts to internationalize the renminbi or act as a counterbalance to U.S. power? Say goodbye.”
The big downside for China is that its association with such a bad actor affects its standing with the countries it really needs. “China needs Western trade and has to follow the rules-based order to keep the machinery of economic growth on track,” Andrew Collier of Hong Kong-based Orient Capital Research wrote to me.
Don’t let anyone tell you China isn’t reliant on the American market. Last year, the country’s merchandise trade surplus with the U.S. accounted for 58.6% of its overall surplus. And this calculation assumes the accuracy of Beijing’s numbers, which have traditionally understated exports to America.
China is risking its access to America and Europe as well. Without them, the Chinese economy, increasingly export-dependent, would crumble.
Beijing is hitching itself to an imploding power. Even if Moscow eventually annexes all of Ukraine—Russia’s battlefield advances are gaining momentum according to the Pentagon—the effort will weaken the Russian state. The cost of this gigantic misadventure is estimated to be $20 billion a day, and Russia’s economy, according to recent estimates, will shrink between 15% to 20% this year.
“If it hasn’t already, Beijing will discover soon that an alliance of two between China and a shriveling power with an economy one-thirtieth the size of its own and incomparably less dynamic—even one propped by a surfeit of nuclear weapons—isn’t much of an alliance,” writes journalist Howard French. Russia, he believes, “will emerge as a shriveled version of its recent self: a weak, isolated, and increasingly dysfunctional state.”
True, China could let Russia wither, but that would be a waste of a valuable asset. The Russian Federation is valuable to the People’s Republic of China only if it’s a strong state, French argues, because that will prevent the world paying too much attention to Beijing. The risk for China, therefore, is that it will be tempted to bail out Moscow so that Russia can perform this distract-others function.
Yet Beijing, burdened with massive Belt & Road and other commitments abroad, can ill afford another sinkhole obligation like Russia. At the moment, China, with a slow-moving debt crisis at home and a stagnant economy, looks overstretched. Russia then begins to resemble an albatross firmly tied to the neck of the Chinese state.
It is not clear that Xi Jinping, focused on geopolitics, is willing to cut Vladimir Putin loose, however. China’s leader sees great value in the Russian aggressor.
As the Economist writes, “In Beijing, scholars and high-ranking government advisers predict that today’s shows of Western unity will fade sooner or later, as sanctions fail to break Russia and instead send energy prices soaring.” The Chinese believe the invasion will “hasten America’s decline and slow retreat from the world.” The resulting “new global order” will allow China to establish its sphere of influence.
Xi looks like he believes now is the time to get rid of America. He’s willing to support a weak state to do so. He is betting on everything to win the world.
Yet the bold Chinese ruler is making a critical mistake. Russia is diminishing China.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and The Great U.S.-China Tech War. Follow him on Twitter @GordonGChang.
19fortyfive.com · by ByGordon Chang · March 12, 2022


19. Just Stop: Russia’s Claim of Chemical, Bio Labs in Ukraine Is Garbage


Just Stop: Russia’s Claim of Chemical, Bio Labs in Ukraine Is Garbage
19fortyfive.com · by ByPeter Brookes · March 12, 2022
We need to look at all of the facts. In the latest in a series of specious and outlandish justifications for its illegal, immoral, and brutal invasion of sovereign Ukraine, Russia is claiming that Washington and Kyiv are working together to develop chemical and biological weapons.
Pure Putin propaganda.
Indeed, according to the U.S. State Department this week:
The United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine, it is in full compliance with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention, and it does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere.
On the other hand, the State Department notes:
It is Russia that has active chemical and biological weapons programs and is in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention and Biological Weapons Convention.
No surprises in that State Department claim, considering that Russian operatives have used the Novichok nerve agent to attack former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and Russian political dissident Alexei Navalny in recent years.
Russia has also shamelessly supported the regime of Syria’s Bashar Assad, which has used a variety of chemical weapons against Syrian civilians in the brutal civil war there.
With the war in Ukraine in a stalemate that includes significant losses for the Russian forces in the face of stiff Ukrainian political and military resistance, Russia is looking for ways to reenergize its political and military campaign to subjugate Ukraine.
To do this, Moscow might develop a “false flag” operation, involving the use of chemical (or less likely biological) weapons in Ukraine against Russian forces, ethnic Russians in Ukraine, or even Ukrainian civilians.
The attack could possibly be choreographed to look like it was supposedly executed by Ukrainian forces.
An even more elaborate Russian operation might try to finger U.S. or NATO forces, rather than Ukrainian forces, as being the perpetrators of such a heinous act, which would almost assuredly include examples of those supposedly killed by the weapons.
Such a contrived act would likely take place on Ukrainian territory currently controlled by Russian forces, such as the eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas.
The false flag operation could be used to “change the channel” on Russian brutality in Ukraine in the international information space. Indeed, the Chinese are reportedly parroting this Russian propaganda about weapons labs.
A false flag operation could also be used to burnish the image of the Russian armed forces at home, where the Russian people are being fed a steady diet of propaganda about the Ukraine invasion.
Even more troubling, the false flag operation could be used to justify an escalation in the use of force and violence in Ukraine.
Based on Biden administration statements, likely supported by the U.S. and other intelligence, the Kremlin would use any trick in the book to justify its unjustifiable war in Ukraine—including the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Peter Brookes is a senior research fellow, focusing on weapons of mass destruction and counter-proliferation, in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
19fortyfive.com · by ByPeter Brookes · March 12, 2022


20. US Fears Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Bioweapons Gaining Traction


US Fears Russian Disinformation About Ukraine Bioweapons Gaining Traction
March 10, 2022 7:00 PM
Washington —
Praise for the way U.S. agencies secured and shared intelligence on Russia's plans to invade Ukraine are being tempered by growing concern that one of the Kremlin's disinformation campaigns is starting to take hold in the United States and the West.
For days, officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon have been pushing back against Moscow's claims — increasingly repeated by far-right and far-left social media channels, as well as by some mainstream media in the United States — that Russian forces have found, and in some cases destroyed, Ukrainian biological weapons labs funded by the U.S.
"I'm fearful that this could be the new direction of a Russian false flag operation," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, a Democrat, told top U.S. intelligence officials at a hearing Thursday.
The committee's ranking Republican, Senator Marco Rubio, said the Russian accusation, combined with recent comments by some U.S. officials, have "got some people fired up."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., left, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the ranking member, hold a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, March 10, 2022.
U.S. intelligence officials echoed their concerns, noting that while there are more than a dozen so-called biolabs in Ukraine, their work is focused on understanding and preventing pandemics and the spread of infectious disease, and nothing more.
"Let me be clear. We do not assess that Ukraine is pursuing either biological weapons or nuclear weapons ... the propaganda that Russia is putting out," Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told the lawmakers.
Haines said that while Washington has in the past provided some assistance, it has been in the context of biosafety, and mirrors U.S. outreach to other countries that have similar medical research facilities.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee at the Capitol in Washington, March 10, 2022.
"This influence campaign is completely consistent with long-standing Russian efforts to accuse the United States of sponsoring bioweapons work in the former Soviet Union," Haines added.
The U.S. spy chief was equally blunt.
"Unlike Russia, which does have chemical weapons and has used them and has done biological research and has for years, Ukraine has neither," Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns told the Senate panel.
The threat from biological research facilities, like the ones in Ukraine, "is in no way akin to the kind of threats that would be posed by weapons research and development," Burns said.
Instead, Burns raised concern that Russia might be telegraphing one of its next moves in its now two-week-old invasion of Ukraine.

FILE - Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, center, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 8, 2022.
"This is something ... that's very much a part of Russia's playbook," he said. "They've used those weapons against their own citizens. They've at least encouraged the use in Syria and elsewhere, so it's something that we take very seriously."
Rumors about supposed U.S.-backed Ukrainian bioweapons facilities first began popping up months ago but appear to have started to gain traction among some U.S. and Western audiences in late February.
"You're asking me about bioweapons sites in labs in Ukraine, and by my count there are more than 20," Joe Oltmann, the co-host the Conservative Daily Podcast, told VOA this past Monday, after having debated the charge on his show the previous week.
"I promise you that the U.S. Department of Defense did not give somebody money for drywall to renovate it or couches," he said.
Talk about such facilities seemed to gain additional momentum on Tuesday, after Rubio asked about the labs during a hearing by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
"Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of," replied Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland.
"We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach," she added.
Russian accounts and Russian-affiliated media seized on the comments, taking to social media to reinforce the narrative.

"The information received from various sources confirms the leading role of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency in financing and conducting military biological research on the territory of Ukraine," Russia's Ministry of Defense posted on its English-language Telegram channel Thursday.
"It is highly likely that one of the objectives of the U.S. and its allies is to create bioagents capable of selectively targeting different ethnic populations," the Russian ministry added.
The Pentagon on Wednesday rejected the allegations by Russia and others, calling them "absurd."
"In the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, it's a bunch of malarkey," Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters. "We are not, not developing biological or chemical weapons inside Ukraine."

U.S. intelligence officials Thursday told lawmakers that contrary to the Kremlin's accusations, the real danger from the labs comes if or when Russian troops capture the facilities.
The medical research labs "all have equipment or pathogens or other things that you have to have restrictions around because you want to make sure that they're being treated and handled appropriately," Haines said. "We have to be concerned the same way we have to be concerned about a nuclear power plant."


21. How Russia Sowed A Conspiracy Theory About U.S. Bioweapons In Ukraine

We have met the enemy and he is our won citizen:

The narrative began circulating weeks ago on Twitter and on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ platform Infowars, which suggested without evidence that Russia had targeted U.S.-run bioweapons labs “in many cities” in Ukraine shortly after Russia’s invasion began.

How Russia Sowed A Conspiracy Theory About U.S. Bioweapons In Ukraine
Forbes · by Zachary Snowdon Smith · March 10, 2022
Topline
Russia claimed to discover U.S.-funded biological weapon facilities in Ukraine this week, an evidence-free allegation the United States quickly denied and cast as another Kremlin attempt to weaponize conspiracy theories to justify its invasion of Ukraine—and a possible precursor to a Russian-sponsored biological or chemical attack.
... [+]getty
Key Facts
On Tuesday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry announced—without providing any independently verified evidence—it had discovered traces of a bioweapons program operated by the Ukrainian government and funded by the U.S. masquerading as a civilian scientific research program, a claim immediately dismissed as misinformation by both Ukraine and the United States.
Unsubstantiated claims of “U.S. biolabs in Ukraine” were also boosted this week by Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian, as well as by Russian and Chinese state-run media outlets.
The narrative began circulating weeks ago on Twitter and on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ platform Infowars, which suggested without evidence that Russia had targeted U.S.-run bioweapons labs “in many cities” in Ukraine shortly after Russia’s invasion began.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday called the Kremlin’s claims of a bioweapons lab “preposterous” and an “obvious ploy” to justify Russian aggression in Ukraine, while Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby dismissed the claims as “a bunch of malarkey.”
The United States does not develop chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine or elsewhere, Psaki said in a tweet, as doing so would violate the international Chemical Weapons Convention, in effect since 1993, and Biological Weapons Convention, in effect since 1972—though the U.S. had decided unilaterally to end its biological weapons programs in 1969.
In 1991, the U.S.’s Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program converted former Soviet bioweapons labs in Ukraine and elsewhere into U.S.-funded facilities to decommission weapons of mass destruction that might otherwise have been up for grabs following the dissolution of the Soviet Union—though the Russian Federation has, since at least 2017, promoted conspiracy theories that these labs are secret U.S. bioweapons factories.
Big Number
3,568. That’s how many mentions of “U.S. bioweapons in Ukraine” media intelligence service Zignal detected on online platforms like alternative social networking service Gab, right-wing conspiracy media website Big League Politics and Russian social networking service VK from February 24 to March 2, up from just one mention from February 17-23. This dramatic leap in mentions reflects the emergence of a narrative that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is aimed at destroying secret U.S. bioweapons labs.
... [+]Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images
Chief Critic
Russia’s endorsement of “bioterror lab” conspiracy theories could signal Russia intends to launch a false-flag attack in Ukraine using bioweapons, Psaki warned. However, Kirby cautioned Wednesday there is no direct evidence that Russia is moving chemical or biological weapons into Ukraine or is currently planning to use them, though he said launching such an operation would be part of the “Russian playbook.”
Surprising Fact
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of assassinations and false-flag attacks since he first rose to power. When he was Russia’s prime minister in 1999, a series of apartment bombings rocked Moscow and other Russian cities, killing hundreds. Though the bombings were supposedly the work of Chechen separatists, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) agents were identified planting a bomb-like device in an apartment building in the city of Ryazan, which the FSB afterward claimed was an exercise testing public vigilance. Former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko alleged that the bombings were false-flag operations intended to drum up support for a renewed war in Chechnya. Litvinenko was killed in 2006 in what the European Court of Human Rights determined was a poisoning plot by Russia, and the FSB was also linked to the nonfatal 2020 poisoning of anti-corruption firebrand Alexei Navalny. The Kremlin has denied involvement with the apartment bombings, the assassination of Litvinenko or the poisoning of Navalny.
... [+]AFP/AFP via Getty Images
Key Background
Conspiracy narratives have also been used to justify Russia’s current invasion of Ukraine: Putin has variously claimed that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people” separated by outside plotters, that Ukrainians are carrying out a genocide against Russians and that Russia’s invasion is either a decommunization or denazification project. In the weeks preceding the invasion, the White House warned Russian intelligence might stage a video depicting a fictional attack by Ukraine on Russian civilians—something that has not yet come to pass. The Kremlin has also pushed dubious narratives in Syria, where it claimed chemical weapons attacks widely attributed to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime were actually staged by anti-Assad rebels. The U.S.-supported public health labs cast as “bioterror labs” by Russian state-backed media have in fact been instrumental in fighting Covid in some former Soviet states.
Tangent
As well as “bioterror labs,” conspiratorial narratives on Russian state-backed media sites and on platforms like Twitter and Reddit have recently focused on an alleged U.S.-backed coup attempt in Ukraine, alleged “deep state”-linked sex trafficking rings in Ukraine and a supposed conspiracy to cover up Russia’s humanitarian aid in Ukraine, Zignal Labs said.
Further Reading
Forbes · by Zachary Snowdon Smith · March 10, 2022


22. This Global Resistance to Putin’s War Is Historic

Yes, resistance on a global scale. We will need to harness this resistance against the other revisionist power (China) and the rogue powers as well.

"Putin's War." We need to use this naming convention in every statement.  We need to personalize it. And this will be important for life after Putin when we will reconcile with Russia. The fault really does lie with him and we need to make sure he blame falls on his soulders and not on Russia.



This Global Resistance to Putin’s War Is Historic
Democracies are rallying to restore peace and the rule of law. Now, we must stay the course.

Thursday, March 10, 2022/ BY: Ambassador William B. Taylor; James Rupert
The speed of events makes it difficult even to track the full breadth of the world’s remarkable response — but pausing for a moment to take its measure is instructive. Even a partial summary illustrates the historic depth of the Kremlin’s isolation:
  • The United Nations’ denunciation is overwhelming. After Russia alone vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution, the U.N. General Assembly convened an emergency session, only its 11th since 1956, to demand Russia’s reversal of its actions. One hundred forty-one countries voted in favor, including governments that in recent years have been aligned with Putin, such as Serbia and Hungary.
  • Popular protest has erupted worldwide, including in Russia. In the first nine days of Russia’s new war, more than 1,800 public demonstrations protested its unprovoked aggression, according to the independent research organization ACLED. The protests, across at least 93 countries and territories, included at least 150 demonstrations in Russia, “95 percent of which were met with state intervention,” including thousands of arrests, according to reports gathered and published by Russian citizens. Only the United States, Italy and France saw more protests than Russia itself, ACLED’s data showed. While such demonstrations will have no quick effect on Putin’s rule, Russians’ opposition to his war will only grow as their young soldiers, many of them conscripts, return home from Ukraine for burial.
  • Escalated sanctions now include painful cuts to Russia’s trade. President Biden’s ban on U.S. imports of Russian oil was followed quickly by the European Union’s difficult decision to slash its purchases of Russian gas, upon which it relies heavily, by two-thirds within 10 months. Britain vowed to end all oil imports from Russia in the same time span. Energy exports are Russia’s economic aorta; these steps will multiply the pressures on Putin. The pullout from Russia of major corporations — from BP and Shell to McDonald’s and Starbucks — not only squeezes the economy but underscores to ordinary Russians the world’s revulsion at Putin’s brutality.
  • Eastern Europe, once Soviet Russia’s satellite, is rushing to save Ukraine’s refugees. Ordinary citizens of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania are responding with compassion to the 2 million Ukrainians, mostly women and children, who have fled their homeland so far. In just days, Poland has absorbed 1.3 million refugees, many of them welcomed into Polish families’ homes. The embrace of Ukrainian refugees by Hungarians and the rest of Europe has forced Hungary’s prime minister to step back, at least partially, from his years-long embrace of Putin. The shared human experiences of just the past few days will shape new bonds between Europe and Ukraine for a generation to come.
  • Governments and organizations are investigating war crimes for prosecution. The International Criminal Court announced that, at the request of 39 member states, it is investigating potential “war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine” since before Russia’s first attack on the country in 2014. Judicial authorities in in Germany and Spain have launched their own investigations with an eye to prosecute war crimes. The U.N. Human Rights Council overwhelmingly condemned Russia’s attack and launched the highest-level investigation it can conduct into war crimes — and the International Court of Justice at The Hague is fast-tracking a separate case raised by Ukraine.
  • Democracies are sustaining military supplies to Ukraine. The United States and at least two dozen other nations are still sending arms and materiel to Ukraine’s armed forces, replacing prewar air shipments with trucks now hauling supplies by road across Ukraine’s western borders. Ukrainian officials have stressed their need for more, and more advanced, air defenses and antitank systems. Britain said yesterday it is increasing its supply of NLAW anti-tank missiles and will add short-range Starstreak air-defense missiles.
  • Nations are increasing financial support for Ukraine. As of yesterday, Congress has included $14 billion in military, humanitarian and economic help for Ukraine in its current budget bill. The International Monetary Fund last night approved $1.4 billion in emergency funding, and the World Bank this week added $723 million in loans and grants.
The main driver of this historic movement is simple: the tsunami of repugnant facts. Journalists and ordinary Ukrainians have flooded news and social media with the most basic documentation — photos and videos of an unprovoked Russian assault that has crushed homeshospitals and schools. Courageous Russian citizens have documented their own government’s suppression of news from Ukraine, independent media and public debate. The Russian human rights monitoring group OVD-Info has tracked what it says is Russia’s arrest of some 13,000 protesters so far. Still, leadership and coordination among the world’s democracies also has been vital to the response — and will remain so.
The Challenges to Come
We cannot know how long the Ukrainians will need to fight for their survival — nor how long our support must be sustained. But we must consciously think ahead, ready to maintain this historic, global isolation of Putin and his war machine for years. This will be neither easy nor cost-free.
In many Zoom calls and other meetings over recent days, Ukrainians have expressed to us their recognition of the world’s historic response to the assault on them — and their deep appreciation for this global empathy and support. In summation this week, one Ukrainian humanitarian worker now displaced from her home by the violence said, “I don’t know how this war will end, but we will win.” We must do everything in our power to prove her right.


23. Mind the escalation aversion: Managing risk without losing the initiative in the Russia-Ukraine war


Again we are self deterring.

Conclusion:
While we certainly do not advocate an escalatory response to Russia’s attacks, escalation aversion — at least publicly — signals the kind of restraint Putin can exploit by continuing to attack civilians and work his way up the escalatory ladder. There are a number of options available that offer a substantially lower risk of escalation than a no-fly zone while offering substantial military effectiveness that also signal meaningful support to Ukraine and, critically, aim to save civilian lives.

Mind the escalation aversion: Managing risk without losing the initiative in the Russia-Ukraine war
The Brookings Institution · by Amy J. Nelson and Alexander H. Montgomery · March 11, 2022
Since Russia began amassing troops on Ukraine’s border last fall and through the full-scale invasion of its neighbor launched two weeks ago, carefully coordinated responses from NATO allies have succeeded in preventing violent conflict between NATO and Russia. However, these actions have also created the perception that NATO policy is driven by “escalation aversion,” a bias in which careful weighing of multiple risks has been abandoned in favor of avoidance of a single worst-case outcome: nuclear war. While this is a crucial goal, this exclusive focus gives the impression of paralysis and cedes the initiative to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The West may have lost an opportunity to attempt to minimize civilian suffering in Ukraine, potentially neglecting its responsibility to protect, lending the appearance that the West has no more moves. While solutions that consist of providing military aid to the Ukrainians are fraught with the potential for escalation, a better understanding of escalation aversion, what it leaves to chance, and how it, in turn, influences the adversary, is required.
In particular, public statements and demonstrable actions, including ruling out sending U.S. troops to fight Russian forcesopen discussion of a no-fly zone (NFZ), and disputes over the provision of aircraft, have been shrouded in language that speaks to a fear of escalation. Escalation aversion is a kind of consistency bias — a heuristic that generally manifests itself as an insensitivity to tradeoffs, potentially leading decisionmakers to disregard evidence that might indicate disadvantages due to an exclusive focus on (in this case) a single priority. Consequently, the enduring problem with escalation aversion is that, by substituting a focus on the risk of a single outcome (escalation) for consideration of a broader set of outcomes, the risk of inaction is overlooked.
Additionally, in part because international law is “fuzzy” on degrees of escalation, U.S. statements that rule out the use of armed conflict have sought to eliminate anything that might be construed as escalatory — period. In part, this is because the West seeks to hold Putin solely accountable for the conflict: By issuing such statements, the West avoids sharing the responsibility for the scope and scale of the war — not that this will actually stop Putin from blaming the West. Moreover, while NATO policy is clear that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all, policy is less prescribed for an attack by one, further contributing to fear of escalation.
Escalation aversion losing the initiative
The West has managed to do some things in the current crisis (now conflict) without escalating or losing the initiative. Prior to the (further) invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the West attempted to deter Russia through threatening severe sanctions. Once even more punitive sanctions than originally anticipated were imposed, Putin argued that these measures were equivalent to war. Due to making the deterrent threat prior to the invasion, the West made Putin’s attempt to reframe ineffective.
Moreover, the West has made some prudent moves to decouple nuclear weapons from the conflict without undermining its own leverage. When Putin announced Russia was putting its “defensive” nuclear forces on alert, the United States resolved to maintain its current nuclear posture, and even canceled a long-planned intercontinental ballistic missile test.
Other Western moves were probably necessary, but could have been handled better. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s request for the announcement and implementation of an NFZ was met with far too much media enthusiasm, which could have been better tempered by incorporating expert understanding of the combat required to make an NFZ useful to the Ukrainians. Ukraine is being brutally attacked and can ask for whatever it likes. But the response to this proposal unnecessarily required the West to respond due to support among pundits and politicians who entirely overlooked the fact that a no-fly zone directed against Russia is a euphemism for war.
However, the West has unnecessarily ceded the initiative in other ways. Prior to Russian forces launching their latest invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden ruled out sending U.S. troops to fight Russian forces — even to evacuate U.S. citizens. While this played well to a domestic audience, it also demonstrated an apparent escalation aversion. As NATO countries offered lethal military assistance, great pains were made to avoid the transfer of any hardware that could give the impression that NATO had joined the fight. Once early-stage transfers of weapons to Ukraine were announced and sanctions began to be implemented, the West gave the impression that it had no moves left other than additional sanctions.
Similarly, the botched announcement by Poland that it would be transferring MiG fighter jets to Ukraine via the United States was met with an unequivocal U.S. rejection for reasons of escalation aversion. Poland’s attempt to pass the buck to the United States also demonstrated the same aversion, since it would have made it the responsibility of a nuclear power to deliver the planes, a step Warsaw was unwilling to take on its own.
Recovering the initiative
Certainly, the risks of escalation, which could occur in multiple different ways, should not be minimized. But there are actions that the West could take to recover the initiative and substantially reduce the exploitable perception that it is driven by escalation aversion.
  • Prevent factionalization. We should expect factionalization across NATO states. For example, states which are more directly in Putin’s line of fire in eastern Europe may be more willing to enter the conflict before more distant NATO allies such as Spain or Luxembourg if those eastern states anticipate that doing so would improve their chances for survival (or vice versa). In anticipation, NATO needs to double down on allied consultations and preserve the outward appearance of NATO as a unitary actor to avoid more amateur hour performances that seek to pass the buck to the U.S.
  • Speak softly… While public opinion on foreign policy matters in a democracy, public discussion of potential Western moves to support Ukraine is no longer a useful messaging tool. While the support Zelenskyy garnered from many countries, as indicated via social media, reportedly bolstered Ukrainian morale and sent Putin the message that public opinion was on Ukraine’s side, continued public discussion of policy options allows Putin an opportunity to make deterrent threats of escalation in advance. NATO messaging unity is important and can continue to be very effective in shifting blame to Putin. As this proceeds, we should be more tight-lipped about which Western countries are donating what material and support to Ukraine so that deterrent threats by Russia may be avoided. While it is difficult to avoid social media amplification of simplistic solutions such as an NFZ, the mainstream media should consult with actual experts rather than talking heads.
  • …and give Ukraine a big stick. Instead of ideas about flying fighter jets into Ukraine, we should direct our attention to creative transfers or more useful weapons. It is far from clear that MiGs would be the most effective addition to Ukraine’s arsenal. In the short term, more effective weapons transfers could improve Ukraine’s air defenses, like more capable man-portable systems that are less vulnerable and have fewer infrastructure requirements. (In the longer term, the MiGs could eventually prove both a smart and useful move.) Similarly, the additional provision of low-tech drones would bolster intelligence and anti-armor missions.
  • Setting red lines. Russia is following the same playbook that it did in Syria: attacking hospitals, dropping butterfly mines into cease-fire corridors, using cluster bombs, agreeing to meaningless cease-fires, and opening corridors to nowhere. These are clear violations of the laws of war as well as human decency. Escalation aversion dictates that the West should not respond proportionally — or at all — for fear of raising the stakes. The West could, however, vow to respond to shelling of civilian targets by taking steps that offer a low risk of escalation such as providing counter-fire systems to Ukraine, placing additional Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers on the ground in Ukraine, aiding evacuation of refugees, or even organizing evacuation by sea in Mariupol. We should be inspired by international humanitarian law rather than constrained by narrow interpretations of war participation, which remains “fuzzy” in this area anyway. This is the hardest recommendation to implement, as it would likely require putting Western personnel at risk, but it is a moral imperative.
While we certainly do not advocate an escalatory response to Russia’s attacks, escalation aversion — at least publicly — signals the kind of restraint Putin can exploit by continuing to attack civilians and work his way up the escalatory ladder. There are a number of options available that offer a substantially lower risk of escalation than a no-fly zone while offering substantial military effectiveness that also signal meaningful support to Ukraine and, critically, aim to save civilian lives.
The Brookings Institution · by Amy J. Nelson and Alexander H. Montgomery · March 11, 2022

24. Opinion | The Price of Putin’s Belligerence

Excerpts:
Immediate steps to reduce dependence on Russia are likely to rest heavily on other sources of carbon-based fuel. But nations regretting their reliance on Putin’s Russia can simultaneously pursue a shift away from dependence on any petrostates by accelerating the development of renewable energy sources. The Washington Post reports that White House officials have explored a plan to manufacture energy-efficient heat pumps for European households, which could help reduce Europe’s use of Russian natural gas by about 2 billion cubic meters over the next year. Even if the impact is relatively small, about 4 percent of a goal set by the International Energy Agency, that kind of idea is worth pursuing as a meaningful contribution to the security of European nations and the United States.
At the same time, Western nations should carefully consider the value of policies that restrict ordinary Russians’ access to the opportunities available to those who participate in an interconnected global economy.
Mr. Putin’s savage invasion of Ukraine has shattered the post-Cold War project of interlacing Russia with the democratic nations of Europe. As the West once again finds itself pitted against Russia, it is worth remembering that the Cold War was won by those who took better care of their own people and held out the prospect of a better life to those on the other side of the divide.

Opinion | The Price of Putin’s Belligerence
The New York Times · by The Editorial Board · March 11, 2022
The Editorial Board
The Price of Putin’s Belligerence
March 11, 2022, 3:51 p.m. ET

By
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
As his ruthless invasion continues, Vladimir Putin is trying to break Ukraine by demolishing its cities and brutalizing its people. Each day brings fresh horrors. A family killed while crossing a bridge to safety. Fathers and children touching hands and parting. A maternity hospital blasted into pieces in Mariupol, where roughly half a million people are under siege.
The United States, the European Union and other countries, including Australia and Switzerland, have responded by imposing economic sanctions on Russia with a severity that has few parallels among nations not at war. On Friday the Biden administration added to those sanctions by announcing that the United States would join the European Union and other allies in moving to suspend permanent normal trade relations with Russia, which would put it in the company of Cuba and North Korea. Corporations are fleeing, too. McDonald’s first Moscow restaurant, opened in 1990, was a powerful symbol of Russia’s openness to the West. On Tuesday, McDonald’s temporarily closed all of its nearly 850 restaurants in the country.
The sanctions are raising the price of Russia’s belligerence and can degrade its capacity to pursue this campaign of terror, or others, by cutting off access to raw materials and supplies.
But there is danger in relying on sanctions to satiate public fury. While symbolic gestures like impounding yachts have their place, Western nations must be careful not to punish individuals who have nothing to do with Mr. Putin’s war, as in Lithuania’s decision last week to cancel a donation of Covid-19 vaccines to Bangladesh after that nation abstained from a United Nations vote on a resolution to condemn Russia. There is also good reason to wait and see the effect of measures imposed so far before going further. Russia is already facing a devastating economic crisis from the sanctions in place now.
Policymakers are wrestling with two questions that don’t necessarily have the same answer: What can be done to help Ukraine? And what kind of relationship should Western nations maintain with an increasingly belligerent Russia?
To help Ukraine, the United States has provided weapons and economic assistance, and Congress on Thursday approved $13.6 billion in additional aid. Despite Russia’s horrific targeting of civilians, the Biden administration has wisely emphasized the need for military restraint, rejecting calls to enforce a no-fly zone above Ukraine. Such a policy would be tantamount to a declaration of war against another nuclear power, because it could require the United States to shoot down Russian planes over Ukraine. America can best avoid worsening this terrible conflict by making clear that it will honor commitments to its NATO allies but refrain from direct military engagement in Ukraine.
Similar care is needed in the realm of economic policy. Sanctions are most likely to help Ukraine if demands and terms for lifting those sanctions are clearly communicated to Russia. Mr. Putin has portrayed Western sanctions as an unprovoked move to destroy the Russian economy; there is little benefit to feeding the view that he is being unfairly persecuted. Clear goals can also help Western governments maintain public support for policies that are likely to impose economic pain on their own citizens. And clarity will help to maintain a coordinated international response, which is likely to become more challenging the longer the conflict continues.
Beyond the imperative to respond to Mr. Putin’s aggression, this conflict has also clarified the need for America and Europe to loosen the economic ties with Russia that were so carefully built over the past three decades. Economic relationships should fall more closely in line with other national priorities. Europe, in particular, is confronting the grim reality that its dependence on Russian gas means that it is funding Mr. Putin’s war.
Immediate steps to reduce dependence on Russia are likely to rest heavily on other sources of carbon-based fuel. But nations regretting their reliance on Putin’s Russia can simultaneously pursue a shift away from dependence on any petrostates by accelerating the development of renewable energy sources. The Washington Post reports that White House officials have explored a plan to manufacture energy-efficient heat pumps for European households, which could help reduce Europe’s use of Russian natural gas by about 2 billion cubic meters over the next year. Even if the impact is relatively small, about 4 percent of a goal set by the International Energy Agency, that kind of idea is worth pursuing as a meaningful contribution to the security of European nations and the United States.
At the same time, Western nations should carefully consider the value of policies that restrict ordinary Russians’ access to the opportunities available to those who participate in an interconnected global economy.
Mr. Putin’s savage invasion of Ukraine has shattered the post-Cold War project of interlacing Russia with the democratic nations of Europe. As the West once again finds itself pitted against Russia, it is worth remembering that the Cold War was won by those who took better care of their own people and held out the prospect of a better life to those on the other side of the divide.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on FacebookTwitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
The New York Times · by The Editorial Board · March 11, 2022


25. What Will Putin Do If Russia Has No Chance at Victory in Ukraine?

Self deterrence (I know I keep beating that dead horse).

Conclusion: 

All this is likely why NATO governments have laid down no redlines in the war. They are genuinely frightened Putin will cross them with WMD, forcing a NATO response. But at this point, given Ukraine’s continued battlefield success, the West needs to seriously debate what to do if a frustrated, desperate Putin, who has already proven to be a gambler, raises the stakes even higher.

What Will Putin Do If Russia Has No Chance at Victory in Ukraine?
19fortyfive.com · by ByRobert Kelly · March 13, 2022
The war in Ukraine is devolving into a grind of limited, costly Russian advances and ferocious Ukrainian counterattacks. It still looks as if Russia will win – if only because it will relentlessly pound Ukrainian cities with artillery – but there is now a reasonable chance Ukraine will fight Russia to a stalemate.
It is now painfully clear that Russia expected a blitzkrieg victory, a quick, in-and-out invasion similar to its ten-day war in Georgia in 2008. A modernized, high-tech Russian military was to roll over a poorly-armed and -trained Ukrainian army fighting for a weak state with low public legitimacy. The plan was, apparently, to impose a Russian stooge in the place of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and then go home before the West could organize a response.
This highly optimistic war plan almost certainly explains the poor logistics which have badly hampered the Russians. The lack of food, fuel, and ammunition so apparent on the Russian side strongly signals that the Kremlin did not expect the operation to last long. Similarly, the Russians have now committed their entire scheduled combat power for the operation and are recruiting mercenaries to avoid putting more of the home army into Ukraine. This again signals that Putin did not anticipate anything like the major ground war which this conflict has become.
Putin Needs to Win Soon
The next few weeks are Putin’s best chance to win. Right now, Russian forces are still somewhat fresh and equipped. This has already been a problem – with conscripts who did not even know they were going to fight a war and widespread shortages – but it will get worse. Putin’s best units will need rest soon, and the shortage of munitions, fuel, and so on will worsen.
Also, in a month or so, the NATO operation to supply Ukraine will have worked out most of its political and logistical kinks. It will evolve into a pipeline that equips, feeds, and cares for Ukraine as its soldiers fight. The war, for Russia, will increasingly become a race of attrition with the West’s ability to sustain Ukraine. And Russia simply does not have the economic capacity to outstrip a major Western supply operation. Indeed, this same ‘pipeline’ is what helped Afghanistan’s Islamist insurgents beat the Soviet army in the 1980s.
Finally, in a month or so, the sanctions on Russia will have sunk deep into the crevices of its economy. For now, Russian firms, banks, and industries have the local reserves to continue functioning. Repair shops will still have enough spare parts to fix foreign products for a few more weeks. Banks and others will have some dollars and euros in cash on hand. But soon these short-term reserves and extras for normal operations will be used up. Any piece of equipment which requires foreign parts or service will start to break down. As the economy locks up across the country, its ability to support the war effort will falter, and disgruntled people will complain or protest
If Putin Does Not Win, Will He Escalate?
Time is on Ukraine’s side. If Kyiv can hold out for the next few weeks, a conventional stalemate will increasingly be the probable outcome. By April, the sanctions will be biting deeply at home. Putin’s best units will be stuck in the mud and tired. Ukraine will be awash in NATO weapons (indeed, it already is), so even if the Russians take Ukraine’s cities, they will likely face a well-armed, indefinitely-supported insurgency. Foreign fighters for Ukraine will start to match the mercenaries Putin is hiring.
At that point, Putin would face a quagmire, a grinding, likely unwinnable, conflict, dragging on for years which would sap Russian strength, akin to the Soviet-Afghan War, or the US wars in Vietnam or Iraq. Alternatively, Putin could withdraw and admit defeat, but that seems very unlikely. This war is now Putin’s defining legacy, and there is much speculation that Putin sees himself as a grand redeemer figure in Russian history, or that he is mentally ill.
Escalation, then, is Putin’s remaining option to slugging it out indefinitely or retreating. He has already hinted at escalation in his willingness to indiscriminately shell Ukrainian cities in order to kill defenders any way he can. But escalation to break a stalemate of the entire war would likely mean the use of weapons of mass destruction.
What would the West do?
The Biden administration is already considering this. If Russia’s current conventional advantages do not win the war soon, a stalemate is likely. The tactical use of WMD might break stalemated lines around Ukrainian cities. WMD might also scare the Ukrainian leadership so much that it sues for peace to prevent the extermination of its people.
On the other hand, Russian WMD use would enormously raise the pressure on NATO to intervene. NATO governments have successfully fended off pressure to institute a no-fly zone. Many analysts have pointed out that its implementation would mean Russia and NATO airpower firing at each other, which risks Russia-NATO escalation.
A WMD strike would almost certainly force NATO’s hand on an NFZ though. Worse, there would be calls to hit back at Russia in kind. These actions would risk a general war between NATO and Russia.
All this is likely why NATO governments have laid down no redlines in the war. They are genuinely frightened Putin will cross them with WMD, forcing a NATO response. But at this point, given Ukraine’s continued battlefield success, the West needs to seriously debate what to do if a frustrated, desperate Putin, who has already proven to be a gambler, raises the stakes even higher.
Robert Kelly is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University in South Korea and a 1945 Contributing Editor. Follow his work on his website or on Twitter.
19fortyfive.com · by ByRobert Kelly · March 13, 2022



26. Ukraine War Ushers In ‘New Era’ for U.S. Abroad
Excerpts:
In Asia-Pacific region, several important U.S. partners and allies are working with Washington on sanctions and export controls on technology against Russia. These include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia. Some Asian nations have agreed to long-term gas swaps with Europe to help relieve a potential Russian shut-off of energy exports. And Australia has committed to spending $50 million to send weapons to Ukraine, including missiles and ammunition.
However, India — the most populous U.S. ally in the so-called Quad coalition of democracies in Asia — has refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion because of decades-old security ties with Moscow. That stance undermines Mr. Biden’s insistence that democratic nations band together against autocracies.
But it is the other Asian behemoth, China, that presents the biggest diplomatic challenge for the United States. China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and their bond has strengthened in recent years.
Even as the Russian military decimates Ukrainian cities and kills hundreds or thousands of civilians, China has signaled that it stands by Moscow by issuing anti-U.S. declarations and amplifying the Kremlin’s propaganda and conspiracy theories.
Mr. Xi’s persistent support of Mr. Putin, with whom he shares a drive to dilute American power, has made administration officials wonder whether there is any way to pull them apart on Ukraine.
On Thursday, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, told U.S. senators he believed that Mr. Xi was “unsettled” by the war. Some China analysts say that if Beijing wants to salvage its reputation with Western nations, particularly in Europe, it might agree to take steps to help Ukraine without directly breaking from Russia.
Ryan Hass, a China director on the National Security Council in the Obama White House, proposed testing Beijing with specific requests, such as asking them to provide more humanitarian aid and refrain from recognizing Russian-installed governments in Ukraine or shielding Russia from war crimes investigations.
“If China’s leaders take concrete actions to relieve suffering,” he said, “then lives would be saved and there would be less centrifugal pressure toward cleaving the world into rival blocs.”
Ukraine War Ushers In ‘New Era’ for U.S. Abroad

March 12, 2022
The New York Times · by Edward Wong · March 12, 2022
President Biden is rethinking relationships with allies as well as rivals — including China, Iran and Venezuela — to counter President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The aftermath of a cruise missile strike this week in Mykolaiv, Ukraine. Experts say Russia’s attack will color most U.S. foreign policy decisions for the foreseeable future.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

By Michael Crowley and
March 12, 2022, 11:28 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The war in Ukraine has prompted the biggest rethinking of American foreign policy since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, infusing the United States with a new sense of mission and changing its strategic calculus with allies and adversaries alike.
The Russian invasion has bonded America to Europe more tightly than at any time since the Cold War and deepened U.S. ties with Asian allies, while forcing a reassessment of rivals like China, Iran and Venezuela.
And it has re-energized Washington’s leadership role in the democratic world just months after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan ended 20 years of conflict on a dismal note.
But the new focus on Russia will come with hard choices and internal contradictions, similar to ones that defined U.S. diplomacy during the Cold War, when America sometimes overlooked human rights abuses and propped up dictators in the name of the struggle against communism.
“It feels like we’re definitively in a new era,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House. “The post-9/11 war on terror period of American hubris, and decline, is now behind us. And we’re not sure what’s next.”
The attack by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on his neighbor has become a prism through which nearly all American foreign policy decisions will be cast for the foreseeable future, experts and officials said.
In recent weeks, Western officials have spoken in terms that often echo the grand declarations that followed the 2001 terrorist attacks. On Friday, President Biden said that “the free world is coming together” to stand up to Mr. Putin — a phrase reminiscent of President George W. Bush’s talk of how “the entire free world” was at war against terrorism.
In the near term, Russia’s aggression is sure to invigorate Mr. Biden’s global fight for democracy against autocracies like Moscow, making vivid the threats to fledgling democracies like Ukraine. Yet three increasingly authoritarian NATO nations — Poland, Hungary and Turkey — play key roles in the coalition aiding Kyiv. And the United States is grappling with internal assaults to its own democracy.
President Biden said on Friday that the United States would join the European Union and other allies in stripping Russia of normal trade relations.Credit...Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times
The war lends urgency to Mr. Biden’s climate change agenda, reinforcing the need for more reliance on renewable clean energy over the fossil fuels that fill Russian coffers. Yet it has already generated new pressure to increase the short-term supply of oil from the likes of Venezuela’s isolated dictatorship and Saudi Arabia’s authoritarian monarchy.
And it creates a powerful new incentive for the United States to find ways of prying President Xi Jinping of China away from Mr. Putin, who is likely counting on diplomatic and economic lifelines from Mr. Xi amid crushing Western sanctions. But some administration officials see China as a lost cause and prefer to treat China and Russia as committed partners, hoping that might galvanize policies among Asian and European allies to contain them both.
While some experts warn that a renewed focus on Europe will inevitably divert attention from Asia, several top White House officials say the United States can capitalize on how the war has convinced some Asian governments that they need to work more closely with the West to build up a global ideological front to defend democracy.
“What we are seeing now is an unprecedented level of Asian interest and focus,” Kurt M. Campbell, the top White House official on Asia policy, said at a talk hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“And I believe one of the outcomes of this tragedy will be a kind of new thinking around how to solidify institutional connections beyond what we’ve already seen between Europe and the Pacific,” he said.
America’s approach to the world was already undergoing a major shift, with the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq concluded, and conversations over Islamist terrorism no longer at the fore. Many war-weary Americans welcomed calls for a reduced military footprint overseas by President Donald J. Trump, who questioned NATO’s relevance and even flirted with withdrawing from the alliance.
Mr. Biden sought to rebuild American alliances, but did so largely in the name of confronting China. The Russian invasion has expanded his mission dramatically and urgently, setting the stage for a seismic geopolitical shift that would pit the United States and its allies against China and Russia at once if they form an entrenched anti-Western bloc.
But it also gives Washington a new and nobler sense of purpose, Mr. Rhodes said. “We’ve been trying to get to a new era for a long time,” he said. “And now I think Putin’s invasion has necessitated an American return to the moral high ground.”
Refugees from Ukraine waiting to board a train in Zahony, Hungary, on Friday. Russia’s aggression is sure to invigorate Mr. Biden’s global fight for democracy against autocracies like Moscow.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Playing Hardball Over Energy
Early signs of how the new American priorities are creating diplomatic quakes have already emerged.
On Friday, the United States and its European allies agreed to pause talks with Iran that just days earlier seemed on the verge of clinching a return to the 2015 deal that limited Iran’s nuclear program. Western nations are refusing a demand by Moscow, which is a party to the Obama-era agreement from which Mr. Trump withdrew, for guarantees that its future transactions with Iran be exempted from the sanctions imposed on Russia in recent weeks.
“It’s been clear since last weekend that negotiations to revive the Iran deal could not be walled off from the Ukraine war,” Dalia Dassa Kaye, an Iran expert at the RAND Corporation, said on Friday.
Last year, Mr. Biden made a new agreement a core goal of his foreign policy. It is unclear whether one can be struck without Russia, which is a member of the commission that both supervises compliance with the deal and would take control of Iran’s excess enriched uranium.
The United States is also looking at Venezuela from a new angle. Senior Biden administration officials traveled to Venezuela two weeks after the Russian invasion, becoming the first to visit the country in years. Venezuela, a partner of Russia, is under heavy U.S. sanctions imposed years ago to weaken the repressive government of President Nicolás Maduro. In 2019, the Trump administration imposed additional sanctions on the state oil company, central bank and senior officials to pressure Mr. Maduro to step down.
Now, with Mr. Biden looking to increase global oil supplies to bring down prices, U.S. officials are talking to Mr. Maduro’s government about buying his oil again. The idea has drawn some sharp criticism in Congress, however, where Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, fumed that “efforts to unify the entire world against a murderous tyrant in Moscow should not be undercut by propping up a dictator under investigation for crimes against humanity in Caracas.”
The same imperative on oil is reshaping U.S. diplomacy with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two Persian Gulf nations that some Biden administration officials view with suspicion or hostility because of their autocratic systems and leading roles in a war in Yemen that has resulted in a humanitarian catastrophe. Brett McGurk and Amos J. Hochstein, two senior administration officials, traveled to the Gulf days before the Russian invasion to discuss security and energy issues.
However, Saudi Arabia has declined so far to increase oil production, while the United Arab Emirates waited until Wednesday to ask the OPEC nations to do so. American officials were also furious with the U.A.E. for declining to vote on a United Nations Security Council resolution to condemn Russia, though it did support a similar resolution later in the U.N. General Assembly.
Russia-Ukraine War: Key Things to Know
Card 1 of 4
On the ground. Russian forces, battered by the local resistance, have stepped up their bombardment across Ukraine. In Kyiv, artillery battles in the suburbs remained intense, though the Russian advance toward the capital seemed to be on pause.
Punishing measures. President Biden and other Western leaders moved to further isolate Russia from the global trading system, saying they would strip the country of normal trade relations and take other steps to sever its links to the world economy.
Iran nuclear deal. A European Union official said that talks on reviving the 2015 deal were put on pause following the invasion. Russia, a signatory to the accord, has tried to use final approval of the deal as leverage to soften sanctions imposed because of the war.
The coronavirus threat. With millions of Ukrainians on the move fleeing the invasion, health systems disrupted, and testing and vaccination programs suspended in many places, health officials warned that conditions could fuel a new Covid surge across Ukraine.
The unreliability of the two nations and Russia’s place in the oil economy have increased momentum within the Biden administration to enact policies that would help the United States more quickly wean itself off fossil fuels and confront the climate crisis. This could lead future administrations to devote fewer diplomatic and military resources to the Gulf nations in the long term, even if U.S. officials want them to help on oil now.
“We may see more fundamental questioning about the value of these partnerships,” Ms. Kaye said. “These states already believe the U.S. has checked out of the region, but their stance on Russia may only strengthen voices calling for a further reduction of U.S. forces in the region.”
Israel, the closest U.S. ally in the Middle East, has also staked out a neutral position on the Ukraine war, largely because of Russia’s presence in the region. But American officials have been more forgiving of Israel’s stance as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett conducts shuttle diplomacy. He met with Mr. Putin for three hours in Moscow on March 5 and then spoke with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, by phone before returning home. U.S. officials say Mr. Bennett consulted with them about the talks, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said this past week that they “appreciate the efforts.”
Juggling Allies in Europe and Asia
In Europe, Russia’s invasion has supercharged the Biden administration’s efforts to restore the morale of a NATO alliance that Mr. Trump undermined.
Supporters of Ukraine gathered in London on Wednesday. In Europe, Russia’s invasion has supercharged the Biden administration’s efforts to restore the morale of the NATO alliance.Credit...Andy Rain/EPA, via Shutterstock
But the alliance includes three nations — Poland, Hungary and Turkey — whose democratic backsliding has troubled the Biden administration. Hungary and Turkey were pointedly excluded from Mr. Biden’s global democracy summit in December, and the European Union has cut billions of euros of funding to Poland and Hungary for what it sees as erosions of legal and democratic principles. Now all three countries are participating in the coalition against Russia.
“In times of crisis, there is sometimes a tension between our values and our interests,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “In the short term, we’re going to have to prioritize pushing back against Russia, at the risk of taking our foot off the gas on the democracy and human rights concerns that had been at the front and center of the Biden administration’s agenda.”
In Asia-Pacific region, several important U.S. partners and allies are working with Washington on sanctions and export controls on technology against Russia. These include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Australia. Some Asian nations have agreed to long-term gas swaps with Europe to help relieve a potential Russian shut-off of energy exports. And Australia has committed to spending $50 million to send weapons to Ukraine, including missiles and ammunition.
However, India — the most populous U.S. ally in the so-called Quad coalition of democracies in Asia — has refrained from condemning Russia’s invasion because of decades-old security ties with Moscow. That stance undermines Mr. Biden’s insistence that democratic nations band together against autocracies.
But it is the other Asian behemoth, China, that presents the biggest diplomatic challenge for the United States. China is Russia’s most powerful partner, and their bond has strengthened in recent years.
Even as the Russian military decimates Ukrainian cities and kills hundreds or thousands of civilians, China has signaled that it stands by Moscow by issuing anti-U.S. declarations and amplifying the Kremlin’s propaganda and conspiracy theories.
Mr. Xi’s persistent support of Mr. Putin, with whom he shares a drive to dilute American power, has made administration officials wonder whether there is any way to pull them apart on Ukraine.
On Thursday, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, told U.S. senators he believed that Mr. Xi was “unsettled” by the war. Some China analysts say that if Beijing wants to salvage its reputation with Western nations, particularly in Europe, it might agree to take steps to help Ukraine without directly breaking from Russia.
Ryan Hass, a China director on the National Security Council in the Obama White House, proposed testing Beijing with specific requests, such as asking them to provide more humanitarian aid and refrain from recognizing Russian-installed governments in Ukraine or shielding Russia from war crimes investigations.
“If China’s leaders take concrete actions to relieve suffering,” he said, “then lives would be saved and there would be less centrifugal pressure toward cleaving the world into rival blocs.”
The New York Times · by Edward Wong · March 12, 2022
27. Uncomfortable lessons from a checkered irregular warfare legacy - Responsible Statecraft

While the authors are accurate that many events do not unfold the way they were expected to. That can be true for every policy Responsible Statecraft makes. The question is how do strategists and policy makers adapt to the changing conditions?

But the authors have done a good job of cherry picking events to support their argument.

But this conclusion makes some good points.

Conclusion:

In considering these mistakes and the dire situation in Ukraine, the United States should carefully develop plans to support a government in exile and game out the next stages of guerrilla operations. President Zelensky is an inspirational leader, but what if the worse befalls him or his coalition falters —who will Washington support and how will that change the battlespace? Planners should think through long-term risks and mitigation efforts, and how their strategies will survive changes of U.S. administrations. Ultimately, such planning may save Europe from a long war, affirm the international order, and showcase the legitimacy of U.S. global leadership.


Uncomfortable lessons from a checkered irregular warfare legacy - Responsible Statecraft
During the Cold War, events didn’t unfold the way U.S. policy makers expected. They never do.
MARCH 11, 2022
Written by
responsiblestatecraft.org · by Rameez Abbas · March 11, 2022
The United States’ refusal to enter a direct military confrontation with a nuclear-armed adversary raises the question of what actions short of conventional war should be considered to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian domination. We are increasingly hearing calls for the United States to step up its irregular warfare efforts: train and arm Ukrainian guerrillas, increase aid and political support to pro-democracy groups in exile or underground, and sabotage Russia’s post-war plans in Ukraine.
Russia’s reemergence as an American adversary makes it nearly automatic to consider such strategies, which we also relied on during the Cold War. But we should not let the fact that we “won” the Cold War doom us to repeat some of its costliest mistakes. The United States should support Ukrainians and others in their effort to remain independent. But Washington should offer this support with more care, conditions, and long-term commitment. Here, we highlight four mistakes and pitfalls to avoid.
Arming new insurgents at the expense of existing governance
The long-term results of U.S. support for the Afghan Mujahideen are well-known, but the lessons from this period are more nuanced than many assume. In the first stages of the war, after the Soviets invaded in 1979 to prop up the fragile communist government, the United States funded and armed the resistance, which made the Soviet war far longer than it would otherwise have been. The length of this war eroded traditional local governance and social institutions. Prewar elites — like Afghan intellectuals and khans — disappeared or fled; and U.S. military aid created a new class of militarized regional power brokers.
Would aiding Ukrainian and other resistance fighters to Russian occupation produce similar results? The short answer is no. Ukraine’s political institutions and popular support for the existing government are very different from those of Afghanistan in the late 1970s. But the lesson that prolonged war erodes governance capacity and that an influx of aid — military and otherwise — gives rise to new, less predictable warriors and power brokers still holds. For example, while Russia has vastly exaggerated the influence of right-wing extremists in Ukraine’s politics, these groups are now more empowered because of their unity with other Ukrainian nationalists as they defend against Russian control. Ukraine’s challenges with corruption and the role of oligarchs in Ukrainian politics also make unmonitored infusions of money and arms potentially harmful in the long term.
Inflating adversary intentions
It is difficult to judge how Afghanistan might have fared without the U.S. decision to counter the Soviet invasion in the first place. But there was initially a debate within the Carter administration on the intent behind it. Ultimately, Washington acted on the fear that the invasion of Afghanistan was a first step in taking control of Persian Gulf oil. Soviet expansionism was a key concern of cold warriors watching the fall of the Shah’s regime in Iran; and also seeing Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua come under Soviet influence.
Soviet goals, as we came to understand, were less grandiose. After the Iranian revolution, they sought to keep Afghanistan from becoming Islamist (and therefore anti-communist), fearing repercussions for Muslim Soviet Republics. They also thought the new leader of Afghanistan’s communist government was going too fast in reforms, losing control, causing instability, and working for the CIA.
In hindsight, it’s clearer that the Soviets were motivated more by their internal security problems rather than expansionism. Diplomatic intervention or neglect, rather than armed opposition, may have been better courses of action for U.S. security in the long run — but were impossible once President Reagan’s re-commitment to confronting Soviet expansionism came to dominate U.S. decision-making.
Are we currently misunderstanding Putin’s intention to violently assert Russian control over nations that have now charted an independent course for decades? Probably not. But his motivations do matter. Today too, some Russia experts emphasize the internal rather than expansionist motivations of Russia’s invasion, but as the war deepens, their perspectives will become less popular. We should take care that our resolve to help the Ukrainian government and people does not cloud our judgment on Russian motivations. Previous eras have shown that voices for restraint or patience get drowned out when threats and perceptions of threat increase.
The unintended consequences of our political support
Politics is unpredictable and there is no way to anticipate every effect of our actions. One important question to consider, however, is about political backlash. U.S. involvement during the Salvadoran civil war is often remembered for its enormous human costs, but we should also recall the backlash created by U.S. political support for El Salvador’s moderates. Toward the beginning of the war, the United States tried to consolidate the power of the moderate ruling faction at the expense of extremists on both the far-right and left wings of Salvadoran politics.
Despite robust resourcing and a ground-level understanding of the various actors, the effort failed because Washington did not anticipate that U.S. interference would produce a political backlash. U.S. involvement and advocacy for economic reforms led to the formation of a far right-wing political faction. Its leadership was ultimately responsible for the grisly way in which the Salvadoran military carried out the war against the left-wing insurgency. The Salvadoran civil war highlights that even when resources and expertise were in place, and even when the United States supported actors with governing capacity and moderate approaches, the U.S. effort to help one faction galvanized the opposition.
A second important question in trying to anticipate consequences is about the motivations of U.S. allies. In Afghanistan, the depth of U.S. reliance on Pakistan to manage the factions within the Mujahideen created harmful consequences. Pakistan’s investment in Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s faction not only undermined the influence of arguably better post-conflict clients, but injected a spoiler effect into the peace accords and formation of a new government. The results may have been in line with Pakistan’s quest for greater strategic depth against India, but they did not support U.S. interests.
Betraying our values and long-term governance goals
Several Western commentaries have rightly identified the inconsistent logic in China’s quiet support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine: it betrays China’s values of noninterference and territorial integrity. The Biden administration’s actions so far, by contrast, have been consistent with the best of U.S. values. The administration demonstrated the value of transparency by declassifying evidence of Russian military build-up at Ukraine’s borders and exposing Russia’s fabricated pretexts for war. It also demonstrated the value of U.S. allied relationships by waiting for European partners to sign on to the more far-reaching sanctions on Russia’s financial system.
But if Ukrainians continue a longer-term fight for their independence, operations that may have a strategic payoff but are misaligned with U.S. values will look tempting. In this context, the Cold War is useful for remembering some of the darker history of U.S. statecraft. U.S. clandestine operations during the Cold War were notorious for providing target lists that facilitated regime purges. The lesson sent to friendly regimes was that their U.S. patrons will look the other way at their crimes.
While cold warriors may look back at such actions as regrettable but necessary, the residents of these lands have found them catastrophic. Strategic competition today is in part a contest for legitimacy — the moral right to lead in the international system. The United States cannot afford to squander this legitimacy — already eroded through its Cold War excesses and post-Cold War disasters.
One of the most infamous examples of a moral failure in U.S. foreign policy is the decision to illegally arm the Contras in Nicaragua through covert weapons sales to Iran. The Iran Contra affair shows the perverse incentives of covert operations in democratic societies — secrecy is prioritized even at the expense of checks and balances so that irregular warfare becomes a private enterprise. It showcased to the world that the United States has both a secret and a public foreign policy, challenging our efforts to build trust and confidence with our allies.
Implications
Cold War efforts of bolstering friendly political actors and furnishing military aid to insurgents sometimes failed but many were short-term successes. In the longer run, however, they often harmed national and global security. Events did not unfold the way U.S. policy makers expected because wartime politics in particular are difficult to predict. What we can predict is that war changes existing power and governance structures. Distributing arms and interfering deeply in others’ politics creates backlash, and engenders more intractable security problems in the future.
In considering these mistakes and the dire situation in Ukraine, the United States should carefully develop plans to support a government in exile and game out the next stages of guerrilla operations. President Zelensky is an inspirational leader, but what if the worse befalls him or his coalition falters —who will Washington support and how will that change the battlespace? Planners should think through long-term risks and mitigation efforts, and how their strategies will survive changes of U.S. administrations. Ultimately, such planning may save Europe from a long war, affirm the international order, and showcase the legitimacy of U.S. global leadership.
responsiblestatecraft.org · by Rameez Abbas · March 11, 2022

28. Supplying Arms to Ukraine is Not an Act of War


Supplying Arms to Ukraine is Not an Act of War
By Oona HathawayScott Shapiro Saturday, March 12, 2022, 2:00 PM
lawfareblog.com · by scottjshapiro · March 12, 2022
Editor's Note: This post also appears on Just Security.
Debate has been swirling in Washington and among NATO allies about whether states can legally provide Ukraine military assistance in its ongoing armed conflict with Russia. Several NATO members have sent or promised lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian government. The United States alone has promised a billion dollars of security assistance. Germany broke its long-standing policy of banning all exports of lethal weapons to a conflict zone when it agreed to deliver 1,000 rocket launchers and 500 Singer surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine. France, Belgium, the Netherlands and many other states have joined the effort, providing weapons and protective equipment to the Ukrainian government.
But some have begun to worry that this support violates the law of neutrality–that supplying arms might be an act of war by the United States. The Biden Administration reportedly debated the legality of arming the Ukrainians. Some officials warned that arming the Ukrainians could make the United States a “co-combatant” or party to the conflict. More recently the Biden Administration refused a Polish offer to transfer MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine via a U.S. airbase in Germany. While there were practical and political concerns, some also worried that supplying the jets would cross a legal line into direct participation in the war.
These fears have been stoked by Russia. Vladimir Putin has tried, in all sorts of contexts, to fudge the legal line of participation in war. He declared, for example, that Russia would treat economic sanctions against Russia “akin to an act of war.” The Russian ministry of defense issued a statement warning that if countries allowed their bases to be used as a safe haven for Ukrainian planes, “subsequent use against the Russian armed forces can be regarded as the involvement of these states in an armed conflict.” The Russian legal argument, however, is based on laws of neutrality that no longer hold. The United States and other states supporting Ukraine should refuse to accept these outdated arguments.
The Law of Neutrality
The law of neutrality has a long history. Scholars have debated, for example, whether classical Greece and Rome recognized neutrality in war. Whether or not ancient international law recognized neutrality, the legal regime that dominated in Europe beginning in the seventeenth century—which, in other writing, we have labeled the “Old World Order”—certainly did. Indeed, by the eighteenth century, states had developed a rich and detailed set of rules to regulate states that wished to stay out of hostilities.
This law of neutrality granted several important rights to states that were not involved in a war. The most important right was that no belligerent state could force a neutral one to fight alongside it, unless the two states had agreed to the alliance beforehand. The territory of a neutral state was also inviolable. Thus, international law prohibited fighting and recruiting soldiers on neutral ground. Neutrals also had the right to conduct business with belligerents. For example, during the wars of the French Revolution, the United States traded with France. Great Britain, however, did not complain that the United States was supplying its enemy, even though France and its colonies would have starved without American produce. By ensuring the right of neutrals to trade with belligerents, the Old World Order minimized the economic disruption of war. Even when hostilities broke out, the world would still remain open for business.
With rights, however, came responsibilities. Neutral states were expected to be strictly impartial: They were prohibited from discriminating between warring sides unless there was an explicit agreement otherwise. As Vattel stated:
As long as a neutral nation wishes securely to enjoy the advantages of her neutrality, she must in all things show a strict impartiality towards the belligerent powers: for, should she favor one of the parties to the prejudice of the other, she cannot complain of being treated by him as an adherent and confederate of his enemy.
Jefferson quoted this precise passage in a letter (June 17, 1793) to Ambassador Genêt of France to rebuff his attempts to get the United States to favor his country over Great Britain in their war.
The duty of impartiality was not an isolated legal rule. It was a consequence of states having the right to wage war to repair wrongs done to them. Trading with one side to the exclusion of the other transformed a neutral—“a common friend of both parties”—into a co-belligerent, an ally of the trading partner, because partial treatment interfered with the disfavored party’s right of war. Vattel was explicit about the forfeiture of neutrality. “But to refuse any of those things to one of the parties purely because he is at war with the other, and because she wishes to favor the latter, would be departing from the line of strict neutrality.” Discrimination in trade was an act of war that licensed the other side to attack the discriminator even though it had fired no shots.
The Hague Convention of 1907 included the strict duty of impartiality in its formulation of the laws of neutrality. Article 9 states: “Every measure of restriction or prohibition taken by a neutral Power in regard to the matters referred to in Articles 7 and 8 must be impartially applied by it to both belligerents.”
The End of Impartiality
But the law of neutrality changed dramatically in the early Twentieth Century. As we explain in our book, The Internationalists, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, which was at the time the most ratified treaty in the world, outlawed war. That treaty is commonly treated as a laughing stock, but we argue in our book that, by eliminating a state’s right of war, it set in motion a legal transformation that gave us our modern legal order. What’s more, the Kellogg-Briand Pact led directly to the UN Charter’s prohibition on wars of aggression and recognition of the right of self-defense. The modern system of international law, accordingly, affirms the transformation of neutrality initiated by the Pact.
The transformation in the law of neutrality can be seen in then-Attorney General Jackson’s speech at the First Conference of the Inter-American Bar Association in 1941, where he defended President Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend Lease Program under which the United States would provide significant weapons and other equipment to assist in the fight against Germany. The United States had not yet entered the war, and some critics of the plan worried that providing arms to the allies would violate the United States’ duty of neutrality and make the United States a co-belligerent. The American public was at the time opposed to entry into the war and hence if the plan was tantamount to entering the war, it would have been dead in the water.
Jackson explained: “The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, in which Germany, Italy, and Japan covenanted with us, as well as with other nations, to renounce war as an instrument of policy, made definite the outlawry of war and of necessity altered the dependent concept of neutral obligations.” He went on to explain that
[i]in the light of the flagrancy of current aggressions…the United States and other states are entitled to assert a right of discriminatory action by reason of the fact that, since 1928 so far as it is concerned, the place of war and with it the place of neutrality in the international legal system have no longer been the same as they were prior to that date.
The decision to outlaw war does not impose on states a duty to discriminate against the aggressor, he argued, but “it conferred upon them the right to act in that manner.” He concluded:
These events have ushered into international law a basis upon which the United States, may legally give aid to the Allies in the present situation. No longer can it be argued that the civilized world must behave with rigid impartiality toward both an aggressor in violation of the Treaty and the victims of unprovoked attack. . . such an interpretation of international law is not only proper but necessary if it is not to be a boon to the lawless and the aggressive.
Jackson’s position wasn’t a rogue one. As we document in our book, Jackson had met with the premiere international lawyer of his generation, the Lviv-born Hersch Lauterpacht. Lauterpacht had already noted the change in the law of neutrality in 1935 when revising the premiere international law treatise of its day, Lassa Oppenheim’s International Law (1935, 5th edition). In a memo he wrote for Jackson, Lauterpacht explained that the Kellogg-Briand Pact, by outlawing war, had changed the fundamental presupposition of the classical law of neutrality.
Discriminating against aggressors, either through economic sanctions or by transferring arms to their opponent, did not violate their right of war, because belligerents no longer had that right.
Lauterpacht’s view has become state practice. Take, for example, economic relations. Financial sanctions, and more generally what we have called “outcasting,” has become the standard tool for enforcing international law in the postwar world. Instead of responding with war, states now enforce international law, including against states waging illegal wars, by withdrawing the benefits of cooperation. Outcasting has become so unremarkable that legal challenges to them are themselves remarkable.
What this Means for Ukraine
If this war were taking place in 1922 rather than 2022, Putin would have a good legal argument and a basis for claiming that the United States and others can become parties to the conflict by supplying arms to Ukraine. In the Old World Order that existed before 1928, economic sanctions against a belligerent and supplying arms to one side and not another were violations of the duty of neutrality. But when the states joined together to outlaw war in 1928 and reaffirm that commitment in the UN Charter in 1945, they created a New World Order in which might is no longer right and in which states can provide weapons and other support to a state unjustly attacked so that it can defend itself.
The end of impartiality means that states are permitted to supply weapons or other support to Ukraine. Doing so violates no legal duty of neutrality. States would become parties to the international armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine if, and only if, they resort to armed force against Russia. Indeed, if anything, providing assistance to Ukraine supports the international legal order by allowing Ukraine to defend itself against a war of aggression.
lawfareblog.com · by scottjshapiro · March 12, 2022










V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Personal Email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
Web Site: www.fdd.org
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Subscribe to FDD’s new podcastForeign Podicy
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."
Company Name | Website
basicImage