Quotes of the Day:

"Since we cannot know what knowledge will be most needed in the future, it is senseless to try to teach it in advance. Instead, we should try to turn out people who love learning so much and learn so well that they will be able to learn what needs to be learned."

- John Holt

"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us. . . . The lives that you admire, the attitudes that seem noble to you are not the result of training at home, by a father, or by masters at school, they have sprung from beginnings of a very different order, by reaction from the influence of everything evil or commonplace that prevailed round about them. They represent a struggle and a victory.” 

- Marcel Proust

"One day, my grandson asked me, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' I replied, 'No, I'm not a hero, but I have served in a company full of them.'

- Major Dick Winters

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 17, 2023

2.Irregular Warfare Education “A Lifelong Process”

3. How Russia’s Hybrid Warfare is Changing

4. The Newest Weapon in Irregular Warfare – Artificial Intelligence

5. An Arctic ‘Great Game’ as NATO allies and Russia face off in far north

6. A Current War Collides With the Past: How World War II Endures in Ukraine

7. Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’

8. Ukraine aims to sap Russia’s defenses, as U.S. urges a decisive breakthrough

9. NATO Can Help Create a Global Security Architecture

10. Maintaining the U.S. Defense Sector’s Competitive Edge

11. The West Cannot Cure Russia’s Nuclear Fever

12. Army Shift from Brigades Back to Divisions Raises Concerns Among Retired Generals

13. Putin’s Deadly Blow to Grain Deal Will Hurt Ukraine - and World’s Poorest

14. Ukraine’s Attack on Crimea Bridge Sheds Light on ‘Sea Drones’ in War

15. One Hundred Dead Choppers: Russia’s Helicopter Losses

16. I’ve seen firsthand what land mines do by Robert Bruce Adolph

17. Ukrainians training on Abrams tanks at US base in Germany look to be battle-ready in weeks

18. Tell Russians Putin Has to Go

19. Taiwan Situation Going From Bad To Worse As China Preps For War

20. Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War

21. MARSOC Raiders to deploy in smaller, tech-loaded teams as conflict gets more complex

22. U.S. Falling Behind China in Critical Tech Race, Report Finds

23. How to cut the Pentagon budget without gutting defense

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 17, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-17-2023

Key Takeaways:

• The July 17 attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge will likely have significant and sustained impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from tourism to occupied Crimea jams Russian logistics to southern Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south.
• Russian and occupation authorities appear to be consumed with mitigating the consequences of the attack rather than leveraging the incident to levy heavy informational attacks with rhetorical inflections.
• The Russian milblogger response to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack largely criticized Russian authorities for failing to secure the bridge.
• The Wagner Group continues to prepare to establish a permanent presence in Belarus.
• Russia continues efforts to reorganize its domestic security apparatus in the wake of the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front over the backdrop of increased Russian offensive operations along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border on July 17.
• Russian forces conducted active offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line and have likely made marginal tactical gains in this direction.
• Russian forces continued limited ground attacks southwest and south of Kreminna, around Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut area and advanced near the Donetsk-Zaporizhia administrative border.
• Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported that Russian authorities have removed at least eight Russian military commanders without reappointing them to new positions since the start of the war, which is largely consistent with ISW’s previous assessments.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to artificially increase the number of Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine ahead of the September regional elections.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 17, 2023

Jul 17, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, July 17, 2023

Grace Mappes, Karolina Hird, Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, and Frederick W. Kagan

July 17, 2023, 8:30pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 2:30pm ET on July 17. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the July 18 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

The July 17 attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge will likely have continuing ramifications on Russian logistics in southern Ukraine. Russian authorities accused Ukrainian special services of conducting an unmanned surface vehicle strike against the Kerch Strait Bridge between Russia and occupied Crimea on the morning of July 17.[1] Footage of the aftermath shows that one Kerch Strait Bridge road span had collapsed and another span suffered damage but remains intact.[2] The Russian Ministry of Transport claimed that the strikes did not damage the rail bridge or supports of the road bridge, and rail traffic across the Kerch Strait Bridge resumed several hours after the strike.[3] Russian occupation authorities rerouted heavy civilian traffic from occupied Crimea to Russia through occupied southern Ukraine, and Russian sources reported extensive traffic jams in Crimea’s Dzhankoy Raion and occupied Kherson Oblast towards Melitopol.[4] Russian tourists fleeing occupied Crimea likely exacerbated traffic and likely impeded Russian logistics from Crimea to rear areas in Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts. Occupation authorities asked civilians to consider alternate evacuation routes to mitigate the immediate traffic issues.[5] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Spokesperson Andrii Yusov declined to comment on Ukrainian involvement in the incident.[6] The Kerch Strait Bridge and military areas in occupied Crimea are legitimate military targets for Ukrainian forces in their defense against the full-scale Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine, as ISW and Ukrainian officials have previously reported.[7]

The Russian government’s continued failure to put Russian society on a war-time footing will have significant impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from Russian tourism to occupied Crimea jams Russian logistics to southern Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south. The Kerch Strait Bridge is along one of two ground lines of communication (GLOCs) supporting Russia’s southern force grouping, with the other route passing through occupied Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson Oblasts. This sole remaining logistics route is now a single point of failure for the supply of the large numbers of mechanized Russian forces in southern Ukraine needed to resist Ukrainian counteroffensives. Russian and occupation officials have nevertheless continued to promote occupied Crimea as a tourist destination, however, urging Russian civilians to drive through and to a warzone rather than advising them to avoid it as a responsible government would.[8] Russian occupation authorities recently struggled to mitigate traffic issues just from increased Russian tourism across the Kerch Strait Bridge, as ISW has previously reported.[9] Russian President Vladimir Putin even ordered the use of Russian military assets to ferry tourists across the Kerch Strait.[10] Some Russian milbloggers also suggested that the attack against the Kerch Strait Bridge should not reduce continued tourist flows.[11]

Russian logistics to southern Ukraine will likely suffer in the short and medium-term, likely exacerbating recent and significant complaints about inadequate Russian supplies in southern Ukraine. Former Russian 58th Combined Arms Army (Southern Military District) Commander Major General Ivan Popov’s recent complaints about the Russian military command’s mistreatment of Russian forces defending against the Ukrainian counteroffensive in southern Ukraine sparked great ire in the Russian information space.[12] Many of Popov’s complaints indicated that the 58th Combined Arms Army, and likely other Russian formations deployed in Zaporizhia Oblast, suffer from supply shortages that will further worsen if tourist and other civilian traffic slow down logistics routes supporting Russian forces in southern Ukraine.[13] Further issues with support for this grouping, and further resulting complaints that emerge in the Russian information space, are likely to draw further outrage from the Russian ultranationalist community and undermine confidence in the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD).[14]

Russian and occupation authorities appear to be consumed with mitigating the consequences of the attack rather than leveraging the incident to levy heavy informational attacks with rhetorical inflections. Russian President Vladimir Putin held a meeting instructing Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin to lead a headquarters and develop solutions to mitigate traffic issues across the bridge.[15] Khusnullin and other occupation authorities decided to lift curfews and passport checks along major highways to Russia in occupied territories, which are under Russian martial law, in order to mitigate some of these traffic issues.[16] Putin’s and other senior Russian officials’ statements were largely straightforward; the officials accused Ukraine of conducting a “terrorist attack” and promised retaliation, which is consistent with prior official reactions to claimed Ukrainian provocations.[17] The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of conducting the strike in conjunction with American and British intelligence, forwarding a consistent Russian narrative aimed at falsely portraying Russia as at war with the West rather than Ukraine.[18] Some Russian officials connected the Kerch Strait Bridge attack to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which expired today.[19] Senior Russian officials, including Putin, had signaled before the bridge was attacked that Russia was unwilling to renew the grain deal without significant additional concessions, however.[20] Russia was very unlikely to have engaged in negotiations around the continuation of the grain deal or any other negotiations with Ukraine in good faith, as ISW has previously assessed.[21]

The Russian milblogger response to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack largely criticized Russian authorities for failing to secure the bridge. Some milbloggers, including former Russian officer and critical pro-war nationalist Igor Girkin, offered the critique that Russian authorities have focused too heavily on road security and not enough on maritime security, thereby allowing the most recent attack on the bridge to occur.[22] Girkin complained that the Russian border officials have devoted too much time to checking civilian cars entering the bridge and not enough time investing in infrastructure that could protect against attacks launched by sea.[23] Another prominent milblogger and Kremlin-appointed member of the Russian Human Rights Council blamed Russian authorities for focusing too much on security on the land bridge and neglecting to take into account any maritime threats.[24] One milblogger emphasized that the strike was caused by poor internal Russian decision making and posed a threat to the stability of Russian domestic peace.[25] Many Russian sources erroneously claimed that the strike will not impact Russian logistics in occupied Ukraine and called the attack a “terrorist act” to minimize the fact that the Kerch Strait Bridge is a legitimate military target in the rear of an active war zone.[26] Some Russian sources additionally advocated for retributive and retaliatory actions against Ukraine in the wake of the attack, but this brand of milblogger response closely resembles outcry following previous such events.

The Wagner Group continues to prepare to establish a permanent presence in Belarus. Independent Belarusian monitoring group “The Hajun Project” reported on July 17 that another Wagner vehicle convoy traveled towards the Tsel village tent camp near Asipovichy, Mogilev Oblast, Belarus, and that two other Wagner columns had traveled along this same route between July 11 and July 17.[27] Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels relatedly posted footage on July 17 of a Wagner column moving between Voronezh and Oryel oblasts before arriving at the training ground near Asipovichy.[28] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that over 700 Wagner fighters have recently settled in the Tsel-Asipovichy area and that Belarusian authorities have formed three Belarusian special-purpose units to train under Wagner leadership in these training areas.[29] Several Wagner-affiliated milbloggers additionally claimed that Wagner’s training ground in Molkino, Krasnodar Krai, will cease operations by July 30 and that Wagner will deploy elsewhere and they posted footage of Wagner fighters ceremoniously lowering Russian and Wagner flags at Molkino.[30] Wagner fighters will likely continue to redeploy to Belarus from training areas in Molkino and staging grounds elsewhere in Russia over the coming month.

Russia continues efforts to reorganize its domestic security apparatus in the wake of the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion. Russian State Duma Deputy Alexander Khinshtein stated on July 17 that the “Grom” special units of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service (of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs) were officially transferred to the control of the Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard).[31] Khinshtein emphasized that the decision was made to capitalize on Rosgvadia’s key role in protecting Russia’s internal security.[32] ISW previously reported on July 4 that the decision to transfer “Grom” to Rosgvardia emphasizes the Kremlin’s desire to consolidate an effective anti-rebellion force under Rosgvardia command.[33] The Russian Duma additionally announced on July 17 that it is considering a bill to allow Rosgvardia to field heavy weapons by amending the federal law “On the National Guard Troops of the Russian Federation,” which will allow the Rosgvardia to be armed with transport aircraft, combat, transport, and multi-purpose helicopters, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, communications complexes, boats, engineering equipment, and other military and paramilitary kit.[34] The transfer of “Grom” units to Rosgvardia, as well as the decision to provide Rosgvardia with heavy combat equipment, supports ISW’s previous assessment that the Kremlin is continuing efforts to consolidate its internal security apparatus around Rosgvardia’s structures. However, several actors within the Russian internal security sphere have voiced their concern and dissatisfaction over the “Grom” transfer, and the reorganization of domestic security organs may cause more tension within Russia.[35]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front over the backdrop of increased Russian offensive operations along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border on July 17. Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces have launched active offensive operations and advanced in the Kupyansk area (between northeastern Kharkiv Oblast and northwestern Luhansk Oblast) in the past several days.[36] Russian forces likely are engaging in offensive operations in this area of the front in an effort to exploit Ukrainian operational focus on other sectors of the front and draw Ukrainian reserves away from critical areas of the theater, namely the Bakhmut and western Donetsk, and western Zaporizhia Oblast areas, where Ukrainian forces are pursuing counteroffensive operations. The poor quality and composition of Russian troops currently deployed on this line, however, will likely hinder Russia’s ability to achieve more than tactically significant gains or make an operationally significant breakthrough. Ukrainian and Russian sources have both reported the deployment of convict-formed “Storm-Z” assault units to the Kupyansk direction, and ISW has previously assessed that “Storm-Z” units have low operational effectiveness due to poor morale and discipline.[37] Ukrainian forces also continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut, south of Velyka Novosilka, and near Orikhiv in western Zaporizhia Oblast throughout July 17.[38]

Key Takeaways:

• The July 17 attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge will likely have significant and sustained impacts on Russian logistics as traffic from tourism to occupied Crimea jams Russian logistics to southern Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south.
• Russian and occupation authorities appear to be consumed with mitigating the consequences of the attack rather than leveraging the incident to levy heavy informational attacks with rhetorical inflections.
• The Russian milblogger response to the Kerch Strait Bridge attack largely criticized Russian authorities for failing to secure the bridge.
• The Wagner Group continues to prepare to establish a permanent presence in Belarus.
• Russia continues efforts to reorganize its domestic security apparatus in the wake of the Wagner Group’s armed rebellion.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least three sectors of the front over the backdrop of increased Russian offensive operations along the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border on July 17.
• Russian forces conducted active offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line and have likely made marginal tactical gains in this direction.
• Russian forces continued limited ground attacks southwest and south of Kreminna, around Bakhmut, and along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut area and advanced near the Donetsk-Zaporizhia administrative border.
• Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks in western Donetsk Oblast.
• Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast.
• Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported that Russian authorities have removed at least eight Russian military commanders without reappointing them to new positions since the start of the war, which is largely consistent with ISW’s previous assessments.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to artificially increase the number of Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine ahead of the September regional elections.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted active offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove line and have likely made marginal tactical gains in this direction as of July 17. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Russian forces have been advancing in the Kupyansk direction since the end of last week and are attacking Ukrainian positions near Masyutivka (13km northeast of Kupyansk) and Novoselivske (14km northwest of Svatove) in order to push Ukrainian forces across the Oskil River.[39] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations south of Masyutivka, and a Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces have advanced up to one to two kilometers in the Kupyansk direction.[40] Another Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the 21st Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Combined Arms Army, Central Military District) and “Storm-Z” assault units attacked Ukrainian positions near Karmazynivka (13km southwest of Svatove) and took control of two Ukrainian strongholds northwest of Novovodyane (15km southwest of Svatove).[41] ISW previously observed that Russian forces were drawing “Storm-Z” assault units to the Kharkiv-Luhansk Oblast border area over the past month, and it appears as though Russian forces have launched small-scale localized offensives in this sector using “Storm-Z” elements in order to try and take advantage of Ukraine’s operational focus elsewhere along the front.[42] ISW previously assessed that “Storm-Z” units are largely ineffective in pursuing more than small-scale, tactical breakthroughs, and the launch of Russian offensive operations on this front is unlikely to capture significant territory due to the force composition and capacity of the Russian grouping in this area.[43]

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks southwest and south of Kreminna on July 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops conducted unsuccessful offensive actions west of Dibrova (6km southwest of Kreminna) and east of Vesele (30km due south of Kreminna), and Malyar also noted that Russian forces continued unsuccessful attacks in the Serebrianske forest area (about 10km southwest of Kreminna).[44] Russian milbloggers emphasized that Ukrainian troops are trying to defend against Russian attacks near Torske (15km west of Kreminna), and one milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are conducting reconnaissance in small groups in the forest areas west of Kreminna.[45]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian Objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces continued ground attacks around Bakhmut but did not make any confirmed gains in the area on July 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Hryhorivka (8km northwest of Bakhmut), Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut), Kurdiumivka (12km southwest of Bakhmut), and Bohdanivka (5km northwest of Bakhmut).[46] Russian sources also claimed that Russian forces are drawing reserves to Bakhmut and counterattacking on the flanks in order to restore lost positions. A Russian milblogger claimed on July 16 that Russian forces have been attacking Ukrainian forces on the northern flank of Bakhmut from the Berkhivka direction for the last five days and that Russian forces, including the 200th Motorized Rifle Brigade (14th Army Corps, Northern Fleet) and unspecified BARS (Russian Combat Reserves) and airborne (VDV) units, engaged with Ukrainian forces in the direction of Yahidne (2km north of Bakhmut).[47] Footage published by the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) on July 17 purportedly shows unspecified VDV units using flamethrowers to repel Ukrainian forces attempting to enter the outskirts of Bakhmut.[48] A Russian milblogger claimed that elements of the Russian 106th Guards VDV Division counterattacked Ukrainian forces attempting to storm a stronghold west of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and claimed the Ukrainian forces were taking advantage of the command-and-control repercussions resulting from recent command changes in the Russian 106th Guards VDV Division.[49] The milblogger claimed elements of the 72nd Motorized Rifle Brigade (3rd Army Corps) and the 57th Motorized Rifle Brigade (5th Combined Arms Army, Eastern Military District) have prevented Ukrainian forces from occupying the higher ground near Klishchiivka and that Russian BARS units from Kreminna have arrived as reinforcements.[50] Another milblogger claimed that Chechen “Akhmat” forces are also fighting near Klishchiivka.[51]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut area on July 17 and have likely made limited gains. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Ukrainian forces have advanced in unspecified locations on the southern flank of Bakhmut.[52] Wagner commander “Lotos” stated in an interview with a Wagner-affiliated milblogger that Ukrainian forces captured a stronghold north of Klishchiivka and have established fire control over the settlement.[53] Lotos claimed Ukrainian forces also control areas north of Bakhmut near Zaliznianske (9km northwest of Bakhmut), the Berkhivske reservoir (4km northwest of Bakhmut), an unspecified section of the railway north of Bakhmut, ground lines of communication (GLOCs) along the Chasiv-Yar Khromove route, and the heights around Klishchiivka.[54] Lotos reported that Ukrainian forces are trying to capture Yakovlivka (14km northeast of Bakhmut) in order to interdict Russian lines of communication to Soledar (12km northeast of Bakhmut), where heavy fighting is ongoing.[55] Another milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attempted to break into Klishchiivka from the west and northwest but that Ukrainian forces regained lost positions in the Orikhovo-Vasylivka area near the E40 (Bakhmut-Slovyansk) highway.[56] [57]

Russian forces continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on July 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian forces near Avdiivka (north of Donetsk City) and Krasnohorivka (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[58] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked Ukrainian forces near Novomykhailivka (just southwest of Donetsk city), Marinka, and Pervomaiske (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk city).[59] The Donetsk People’s Republic’s (DNR) People’s Militia posted footage purportedly showing units of the 9th Brigade (1st DNR Army Corps) operating in the Avdiivka direction.[60]

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

Ukrainian forces continued ground attacks and advanced near the Donetsk-Zaporizhia administrative border on July 17. Geolocated footage posted on July 17 shows Ukrainian forces reaching the outskirts of Staromayorske (about 8km south of Velyka Novosilka), before Russian active elastic defensive maneuvers pushed them back to previous lines.[61] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian troops captured positions on the outskirts of Staromayorske, and another Russian source reported that heavy fighting is ongoing in the vicinity of Staromayorske but that Russian forces control the settlement itself.[62] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Ukrainian troops continue successful counteroffensive operations in the Berdyansk (western Donetsk-eastern Zaporizhia oblast) direction, specifically south of Velyka Novosilka near Makarivka, Staromayorske, and Novodarivka.[63]

Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks in western Donetsk Oblast on July 17. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces attacked towards northern Staromayorske.[64] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces managed to successfully regain lost positions near Pryyutne (14km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[65]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in the Orikhiv area in western Zaporizhia Oblast on July 17. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked towards Robotyne (15km south of Orikhiv), and another milblogger noted that the pace of hostilities in this sector of the front has generally decreased and that Ukrainian troops are increasingly operating in small sabotage and reconnaissance groups.[66] Russian milbloggers additionally claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Pyatykhatky (25km southwest of Orikhiv).[67]

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

Russian opposition outlet Verstka reported that Russian authorities have removed at least eight Russian military commanders without reappointing them to new positions since the start of the war, which is largely consistent with ISW’s previous assessments. Verstka reported that Russian authorities likely dismissed 1st Guards Tank Army (of the Western Military District) Commander Lieutenant General Sergei Kisel in March 2022, Black Sea Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Igor Osipov in May 2022, Southern Military District Commander General Alexander Dvornikov in summer of 2022, Western Military District Commander Colonel General Alexander Zhuravlyov in October 2022, Eastern Military District Commander Lieutenant General Rustam Muradov in April 2023, and Russian Deputy Minister of Defense for Logistics Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev in April 2023.[68] Verstka reported that speculation arose regarding Russian Aerospace Forces Commander and former Deputy Commander for the Russian grouping in Ukraine Army General Sergei Surovikin’s removal after the Wagner rebellion on June 24 and that Russian pro-war Telegram channels started speculating about 106th Guards Airborne Division Commander Major General Vladimir Seliverstov’s removal in mid-July.[69] Verstka also reported that the Russian command reportedly reassigned Major General Ivan Popov to an unspecified position in Syria after removing him as 58th Combined Arms Army Commander.[70] ISW previously noted that Muradov may similarly be serving in an advisory role for the Russian peacekeeping contingent in Nagorno-Karabakh.[71]

The Republic of Tatarstan reportedly formed three new volunteer battalions to fight in Ukraine. A Russian branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported that the Republic of Tatarstan’s Operational Headquarters for Mobilization announced that it created the “Hero of Russia Damir Islamov” Battalion, “Hero of the Soviet Union Boris Kuznetsov” Battalion, and a third unnamed battalion that will only consist of contract soldiers.[72] Russian opposition outlet Mobilization News reported that Tatarstan will recruit a minimum of 700 personnel to staff the new battalions.[73] The Republic of Tatarstan previously formed the “Alga” and “Timer” volunteer battalions in the summer of 2022.[74] ISW previously reported that the “Alga” Battalion suffered heavy losses near Vuhledar in March and April 2023.[75]

Russian officials reportedly intend to create another territorial defense unit. Russian outlet Kommersant reported that Oryol Oblast officials announced the creation of a territorial defense unit.[76] Kommersant noted that Oryol Oblast is the first oblast to announce the creation of a territorial defense unit that does not border Ukraine or a NATO member. Belgorod, Kursk, and Pskov oblasts previously announced the establishment of territorial defense units.[77]

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities continue to artificially increase the number of Russian citizens in occupied Ukraine ahead of the September regional elections. Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast Head Artem Lysohor reported that Russian occupation authorities are transporting Russian citizens from the north Caucasus and the Republic of Buryatia to Rubizhne in Luhansk Oblast.[78]

Russian authorities continue efforts to consolidate social control over youth in occupied Ukraine through pro-Russian youth programs. The Kherson Oblast occupation administration claimed that personnel of the Kherson “Vasily Margelov” volunteer battalion are teaching Ukrainian children in occupied Kherson Oblast to use weapons as part of the Russian Young Army Cadets National Movement (Yunarmiya) program.[79] The Kherson Oblast occupation administration reported that children will also meet with veterans who fought in Ukraine and learn about Russian traditions.[80] Russian occupation officials have continually leveraged the Yunarmiya military-patriotic movement to instill pro-Russian and militarized ideals in youth in occupied Ukraine.[81]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks).

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

See topline text.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Irregular Warfare Education “A Lifelong Process”

We need to get IW PME right across the PME institutions. 

Mon, 07/17/2023 - 10:55pm

Irregular Warfare Education “A Lifelong Process”

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/irregular-warfare-education-lifelong-process

By Paul Burton

“If traditional Warfare is checkers with violence, Irregular Warfare is not just chess, it is nine simultaneous chess games where pawn to queen four in one game affects the other eight games, every move has a symbiotic relationship with each other”. Author Afghanistan 2004

Checker games are short, and although they do require a strategy the complexity in contrast with chess is incomparable. The complication of nine games of chess is significant, but if your peer competitor plays “Go” (Henry Kissinger), we now have game board disconnect. How does the Department of Defense prepare strategic and operational level thinkers to link these board games and win? Can policy makers even define what winning is? The education process to enable successful Irregular Warfare (IW) campaigning is lengthy and does not fit into the traditional professional military education model, it is an iterative lifelong learning process that combines several pillars: a unique pedagogy, didactic, methodology, a form of classical liberal arts education, self-study, and experience. Those fundamental foundations provide the skills to think, plan, and execute in the realm of IW campaigning.

    The Department of Defense has educational infrastructure, the comparison of educational budget to training budget is clearly disproportionate. Additionally, decades of focus on Violent Extremist Organizations have created a dearth in intellectual thought with regards to IW. Many of our interagency counterparts lack the capability and capacity to advance IW education which inhibits the execution of IW campaigns against peer’s because they are integral to the execution in protracted struggles. This is particularly concerning since many of these agencies' policy makers should help define the political objectives that the military will help accomplish. I will delimit this article to a discussion primarily focused on Army Special Operations Forces (SOF) education not training.                      

     Where many of the recently published Department of Defense documents fall short is they do not discuss self-study and experience. I have been asked many times, what IW course should I attend? My response is any of them, the course will help frame some thoughts and hopefully provide some examples of successes and failures, but you won’t walk away from any two-week course saying now I understand IW. Pedagogy, the method, and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept is important in the IW learning process and helps develop a way to think and access problems in IW, especially at the operational and strategic level. Pedagogy generally focuses on the why whereas didactic focuses on the how, which more broadly fits in the U.S. Army construct of task, condition, and standard. Programs like the National Defense University’s College of International Security Affairs at Fort Liberty, NC and Naval PostGraduate School at Monterey are wonderful programs that provide students an opportunity to link theoretical concepts to operational realities, but unfortunately their student throughput is limited. That is why courses like the Irregular Warfare Planners Course, Fort Liberty, NC and courses at the Joint Special Operations University, MacDill AFB filled and fill different voids for different audiences in the education process for the community. Most Army courses are didactic with structured lesson plans, outline learning objectives, evaluations and tests, instructor presented lectures, limited group discussion, and structured schedules and this can provide a foundation, but can inhibit creative thinking. As a Captain during the Cold War a commander accusatorily said to me, “you color outside the lines” to which I responded “Sir, why are there lines?” To be sure there must be boundaries in IW, but most Army courses inspire the check list or school solution mentality, in IW there are only ways to approach the continuous cycle of challenges, you must think and reason. If you have not read several dozen books about your profession and the way the world interconnects, you are functional illiterate at the operational level in IW.

What are the subjects and approach to becoming “functional literate” in IW? First a broad understanding of history and events helps provide context, second an understanding of world and domestic economics including transportation and distribution networks and vulnerabilities, third sociology and cultural, fourth political science, especially the failures of totalitarian regimes, fifth logic, and critical thinking. Finally, IW case studies as a tool to project the film of the past to the screen of the future (Neustadt and May). The case studies should not just focus on the warfare aspect of the incident, but instead should also look at the geopolitical, economic, and sociological context that it took place across a broad spectrum of time. This is not an exhaustive list, but if the goal; is Irregular or Political Warfare understanding, what is important in the human domain of the country or region you are focusing on, a broad classical liberal arts education is advantageous.

     Experience developed through multiple different types of deployments helps build a repository that can be used to problem solve and coupled with IW education produces a SOF soldier that can make prudent well thought out plans or decisions. The different types of deployments add context to the decision-making process and progression for example, you could look at a slide on what a U.S. Embassy line and block chart and the different agencies that are represented in the chart are, but until you have been in a U.S. Embassy it is truly hard to understand the capability, capacity or lack of capacity compared to the Department of Defense. You learn the different equities of those different represented agencies by working with and talking to them in the country team environment. Additionally, you learn the abilities and limitations of your allies, partner nations and host nations by working with them. Taking theater headquarters assignments as well as inter-agency deployment and assignment opportunities is another. In the Army, they call them orders for a reason, and you go to serve where assigned; however, shaping an assignment to a Theater Special Operations Command, U.S. MILGROUP, or even a Combined Training Center can be a very beneficial experience that helps develop IW education. These experiences to name a few, help frame IW plans that are grounded in practice as well as the theory behind them.

Since most SOF soldiers will not have the privilege benefit of a 10–18-month education opportunity, at Naval Post Graduate School or the National Defense University at Fort Liberty, NC that leaves most of the task of education to be conducted through self-study. Trying to balance family, tactical proficiency, the day-to-day business of the Army and other demands makes the self-study pillar a daunting task. I would encourage the student of IW to go deeper than the 15-minute podcast and 15 second sound bite. Developing a private focused deep reading list is one portion of this program that is focused on the skill set needed for the pay grade and assignment.

IW education is a holistic iterative lifelong process that has different knowledge base requirements at certain points of an Army SOF career. I certainly framed problems differently in a country where I deployed as a Captain compared to my framing when deployed as a Colonel. As the community shifts to IW campaigning there is no short course that makes you an IW thinker, they merely assist in the sequence of study and experiences. These IW educational experiences cost treasure, but the exponential increase in campaigning effectiveness will ultimately save both blood and treasure. The Cold War plans and campaigns were developmental and adjusted through nine administrations. Mistakes in this present peer competition will be made, but IW education will help mitigate the number we make and will ultimately assist the United States in gaining the strategic initiative. There is no one or perfect course that can fix the shortfall in the SOF community's lack of educational opportunities where our soldiers and leaders are given the opportunity to think about this type of warfare, which is the backbone of their profession. The greatest shortfall in the IW education are courses that link operational level planning to courses of conceptual theory. The goal of Irregular Warfare education should be to produce practitioners that can think at the master’s degree level and apply that thinking in the trade school of IW practicum.

This is the second in a series of articles on Irregular warfare.

The opinions expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not reflect any organizations viewpoint.

About the Author(s)

Paul Burton

Paul Burton is a retired Special Forces Colonel and is still active in the community.

3. How Russia’s Hybrid Warfare is Changing

Mon, 07/17/2023 - 5:19pm

How Russia’s Hybrid Warfare is Changing

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/how-russias-hybrid-warfare-changing

Larry Goodson and Marzena Żakowska

Abstract: This article argues that Russia's approach to hybrid warfare has undergone a shift, moving away from primarily relying on nonconventional measures and tactics towards a greater emphasis on conventional methods. The framework of the argument is constructed through an analysis of Russia's experiences in hybrid warfare across various conflicts such as the Afghan War, Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine. Methodologically, the analysis is based on the non-linear concept of hybrid warfare, commonly referred to as the “Gerasimov doctrine.” This concept acknowledges the utilization of both conventional military tactics and nonconventional tactics, emphasizing the use of nonconventional as primary measures. The evidence suggests that (i) the Georgia War of 2008 and the Ukraine War of 2014-2021 serve as the most prominent examples of Russia's approach to hybrid warfare; (ii) the comparison with the Ukraine War since February 2022 indicates that certain hybrid warfare measures may be transitioning towards a greater reliance on conventional means. This shift raises doubts about the effectiveness of implementing the hybrid warfare concept by Russia. It provides an opportunity to identify the determinants that may play a crucial role in this transformation. Consequently, the article highlights problems for further discussion to explore the evolving nature of Russia's approach to hybrid warfare and measures used for achieving national interests to preserve state security.

Keywords: hybrid warfare, Russia, state security, national interest

Introduction

Russia's approach to hybrid warfare is characterized by a combination of military and nonmilitary measures aimed at achieving strategic objectives while maintaining operations below the threshold of war to undermine the sovereignty of target countries and influence their domestic politics. This concept, developed by General Valery Gerasimov, is referred to as non-linear warfare and serves as the methodological framework for this study. Russia used hybrid measures in a series of small wars during the 1990s and the first fifteen years of the 2000s—Afghan War (1979-1992), the First (1994-1996) and Second (1999-2000, insurgency during 2000-2009) Chechen Wars; the Georgian War in 2008; the Syrian War from 2011 or 2015-Present (depending on the level of involvement). The evidence suggests that the earlier wars, prior to 2021, best demonstrate the reality of Russia’s approach to hybrid warfare. However, a comparison with the Ukraine War since February 2022 is noticeable that Russia's approach to hybrid warfare is changing toward prioritizing the use of conventional tactics and measures as the primary ones. Therefore, we argue that Russia's engagement in wars prior to 2014 primarily served as a testing ground for non-conventional measures. The war in Ukraine provided evidence that during the pre-full-scale invasion period of 2014-2021 (referred to as Ukraine 1), Russia employed a combination of conventional and non-conventional tactics. However, the subsequent full-scale invasion period from 2022 to the present (known as Ukraine 2) has predominantly witnessed the heavy utilization of conventional tactics. This shift highlights a noticeable change in Russia's approach to hybrid warfare, and it raises legitimate doubts regarding the continued utilization of the concept of hybrid warfare, particularly in the still ongoing war in Ukraine. Therefore, in this article, the following problems will be discussed (i) Russia’s approach to hybrid warfare; (ii) how Russia’s hybrid warfare appears to be changing; (iii) the factors that influenced the hybrid measures Russia uses.

1. Russia’s Approach to Hybrid Warfare

Hybrid warfare is understood as the effort to use all instruments, elements, and determinants of power in a coordinated, comprehensive, and holistic way (including violence or the threat of violence) to achieve political end.[1]

This reflects the 21st-century approach to war, especially among the major powers. Russia devised its hybrid warfare approach a bit later, and it came to be known as “new generation” war, although it did not appear in print until 2013.[2] As the ideas set forth were articulated by General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, they became erroneously called the “Gerasimov Doctrine.[3] Gerasimov said:

“In the 21st century, we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template….The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, has exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness….All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open use of forces — often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation — is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict.”[4]

Besides this, Gerasimov outlines the importance of non-military measures, he also emphasizes that military actions/warfare has a role in hybrid warfare, which the empirical tests by Russia in earlier conflicts had indicated. This approach raises some questions: When do we switch from nonmilitary measures to emphasizing military measures? And if military measures are taken as the primary stage in waging the war, do we still have hybrid warfare or conventional war?

Several key events significantly influenced the development of Russia's approach to hybrid warfare. Following World War II, the Soviet Union entered the Cold War, during which it became involved in numerous conflicts primarily in the Second and Third World. The Soviet Union and its opponent the USA relied heavily on their intelligence services, leading to engagement in covert operations and unconventional warfare, now referred to as a component of hybrid warfare. It is worth noting that the precise nature of these operations varied, but they often combined military force, political subversion, and propaganda. Then, the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, including the Berlin Wall, paved the way for the Eastern Bloc countries to consider turning more in the direction of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),[5] beginning with the initial question of what would happen to NATO once East and West Germany were reunified. In consequence, Russia began to focus on its “Near Abroad” (meaning the former Soviet Socialist republics and former Eastern Bloc countries) and view this area as Russia’s sphere of influence, due in part to its predominantly Slavic population. Not surprisingly, since 1991 Russia has fought several wars, all of which were either internal conflicts within Russia or wars in the Second or Third World (only two wars).[6] Most of the wars during this period were focused on keeping Russia intact or exerting pressure on former Eastern Bloc countries to remain aligned with Moscow. In small conflicts, Russia engaged its military after initiating hostilities with cyber and information attacks. Moreover, when Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, the role of Russia’s intelligence agencies and efforts to use a “borderization” policy (claiming the border area of the attacked country/district, usually based on language or ethnicity of the people living there) to pull Russian-speaking or Russian-leaning populations closer to Russia became crucial tools in Russia’s security approach, as Russia embraced its hybrid warfare strategy. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union had a profound impact on the Russian Federation’s approach to war. It led to a shift towards a more defensive military posture and a greater reliance on asymmetric warfare strategies.[7] With limited resources and a weaker military, Russia began to rely more heavily on unconventional warfare tactics such as information warfare and proxy warfare. This approach allowed Moscow to leverage its strengths in areas such as intelligence gathering and covert operations while avoiding direct confrontation with stronger opponents. Additionally, Russia realized that it could no longer rely solely on military power to achieve its strategic objectives. Consequently, it implemented a renewed focus on diplomacy and international cooperation to pursue a more diplomatic course in foreign policy. Russia saw the fall of the Soviet Union as a great catastrophe and wished to have the USSR back.[8] Since Russia cannot quite rebuild a Communist empire ruling over Eastern Europe, it oriented its policy toward building a Russkiy mir (“Russian world”), which is sort of a Slavic Union, thus pulling together the Slavs that are found in Russia’s “Near Abroad.”[9] These terms are often used by Russian elites to refer to policy and the strategies designed to execute that policy. Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the USSR forced Russia to adapt its military doctrine to address the post-Soviet geopolitical landscape. During the Soviet era, the overarching policy and strategy focused on combating capitalist democracy prevalent in Europe and North America, defending the socialist state, promoting communist ideology, and deterring potential aggressors by threatening with or employing a combination of conventional forces and nuclear weapons. Following the change in the security environment, Russia faced challenges—the loss of its superpower status, greatly reduced military funding resulting from ongoing economic problems during the country's transition period, and lessons learned from the Kosovo and Chechnya wars, particularly in terms of cooperation with NATO.[10] Primarily, the NATO enlargement process in the 1990s played a pivotal role in shaping the military doctrine, as it raised Russia's concerns about the potential threat to national security. Between 1999 and 2004, ten Central and Eastern European countries joined NATO. In 2009, Albania and Croatia were incorporated as part of the next phase of the 'open door' approach, continued by the inclusion of Montenegro in 2017, the Republic of North Macedonia in 2020, and Finland in 2023.[11]

Furthermore, the dialogue and cooperation initiated by NATO with Ukraine and Georgia in the early 1990s were perceived by the Kremlin as efforts to undermine its sphere of influence, encircle Russia, and weaken Russia's position as a regional and global power. Moscow considered both Georgia and Ukraine to be within the natural sphere of Russia's influence. Those states depend largely on Russia for energy and commerce and are crucial transit countries for the transportation of Russian oil and gas.[12] Consequently, Russia employed a strategy using hybrid measures that hindered NATO's willingness to include these states, ultimately resulting in armed conflicts with Georgia and Ukraine. These actions allowed Russia to exert influence and advance its interests without necessarily provoking a full-scale military response from its adversaries, thus avoiding direct conflict with NATO. In 2019, Russia's Chief of General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, described this strategy as 'active defense,' emphasizing the importance of anticipatory actions during periods of military threat or crisis. This approach encompasses preemptive strikes and the direct use of force against opponents. The primary goal is to preemptively neutralize threats to national security by achieving surprise, decisiveness, and continuity in strategic action. Rapid action is necessary to preempt adversaries through preventive measures, timely identification of vulnerabilities, and the creation of threats that cause unacceptable damage.[13] This strategy enables Russia to seize and maintain and maintaining the initiative.

1. How Russia’s Hybrid Warfare Appears to be Changing

As has already been discussed, Russia’s approach to hybrid warfare has been based on using a number of non-traditional or statecraft-oriented approaches to war, testing those during the 1990s and the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and finding ways to use non-military measures to set up conditions enabling military measures. The wars and military operations undertaken by Russia during its post-USSR era serve as empirical evidence of a shift in its military approach. These endeavors involved the repeated implementation of hybrid actions that incorporate non-military or less overtly military measures while still exerting or threatening the use of force. Thus far, Russia has utilized empirical tests of its hybrid warfare approach developed following the collapse of the Soviet Union to leverage its desire to regain its Near Abroad (or Russkiy Mir) or at least deny NATO control of this region.[14] It has used hybrid warfare military and nonmilitary tactics, techniques, and procedures in conflicts in or near Russia, including the latter stages of the Afghan War (1979-1992); the First (1994-1996) and the Second (1999-2000, insurgency during 2000-2009) Chechen Wars; the Georgian War in 2008; the Syrian War from 2011 or 2015-Present (depending on the level of involvement) as well as the war in Ukraine. The latter stages of the Afghan War (1979-1992), following the Geneva Accords that formally ended direct Soviet military involvement in 1989, saw the use of mercenaries and “rented” Afghan proxies to fight the mujahideen, as well as the widespread use of intelligence assets, weapons deliveries, and cash.[15] The two Chechen Wars (1994-1996 and 1998-2000) also witnessed the use of cyber, including both distributed denial of service (DDOS) and information campaigns (this largely failed in Afghanistan) and finding ways to obfuscate the identity of various participants in the war including separatists, mercenaries, criminal networks, and classified operators (“Little Green Men”).[16] Ultimately, despite demilitarization, Chechnya, Ingushtia, North Ossetia, and Dagestan remained problematic areas within Russia, with terrorism and insurgency still providing the use of various forms of attack in the years following the formal wars.[17] The Georgia War of 2008 saw a wider and more coherent use of early-stage hybrid methods, suggesting that perhaps this might be the approach Russia would use in future conflicts. Cyberwar (both DOS and DDOS) was used prior to and during the conventional military attacks,[18] along with information warfare centered in part on borderization, disinformation and propaganda, diplomatic efforts, and full use of the Russian military both in combat and in support of proxies and separatists.[19] The Syrian War that began as part of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 provided Russia with a chance to use hybrid warfare in a different way and outside its Near Abroad. Russian troops were not deployed in Syria until 2015. However, starting in 2011, Russia sent Islamists (mostly Chechens) to Turkey from Dagestan and other areas where they had been prior to the war. These individuals then crossed into Syria to fight against the Russian-supported Assad regime. This strategy allowed Russia to target domestic Islamists, remove them from the country, and reduce the risk of insurgencies and terrorist attacks on its own soil by involving them in the conflict in Syria. Many of them joined the rebel group called Sabri Jamaat or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).[20] Eventually, once the Russians formally entered the war in 2015 in support of the Damascus regime, Russia used its navy and air forces for air attacks, as well as ground troops and contractors (mercenaries). The mercenaries, particularly the Wagner Group, have been frequently employed by Russia in various conflicts over the past 30 years, especially in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia.[21]

In 2014, Russia initiated an intervention in Ukraine (started so-called phase Ukraine I), utilizing a range of hybrid measures to invade and seize control of Crimea. This intervention was later expanded into the Donbas region. The prelude to those events can be observed in the implementation of hybrid measures by Russia, notably including interference in Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution (which Russia perceived as American-led)[22] and the 2014 Euromaidan Protests.[23] Connected to the revolutions and protests, as well as to the early struggles for fair elections in a deeply corrupt society, controlled by oligarchs, Russia also attempted to discredit the West in the Ukrainian public's opinion, reverse the European and Euro-Atlantic agenda, and use radical nationalist and pro-Kremlin groups to weaken state security and create societal polarization.[24] Some of the latter activity was by supporting pro-Russian groups that orchestrated protests and violent incidents. Russian disinformation and propaganda, aimed at creating societal divisions in Ukraine, came from multiple sources, including repeated speeches and comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin. These information campaigns helped pave the way for a “borderization policy,” similar to what was seen in Georgia in 2008. Russia’s use of military and para-military (both the “little green men” of Crimea and overt Russian troops, mercenaries, criminal groups, and separatists) centered on Russian-speaking and Russian-oriented areas Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. Most notably, as mentioned above, Russia deployed criminal gangs, mercenaries (not only the Wagner Group), Special Forces, and others as “little green men” in Crimea, as a measure of “proxifying” the attack on a non-contiguous territory, as well as their own troops on both sides of the border in Donbas. Finally, Russia also used other hybrid methods, including DDOS attacks, and financial efforts to close off Ukrainian grain exports. Moreover, the Kremlin made extensive efforts to rally diplomatic support from other countries and built the Crimean Bridge, linking Crimea to major Russian military bases in the Southern Military District of Russia.[25]

It should be noted that the so-called Ukraine 2 phase, which encompasses the full-scale invasion period from 2022 to the present, differed significantly from Ukraine 1. During Ukraine 2, Russia placed a much stronger emphasis on conventional military operations, shifting away from its primary reliance on nonconventional measures in Ukraine 1. Moreover, in addition to deploying increasing numbers of military forces on the Ukrainian border a year ahead of Ukraine 2 (called by Russia’s government a “special military operation”),[26] with an ultimate troop buildup prior to the 22 February 2022 invasion of 300,000 military and para-military forces.[27] Efforts were also made to assassinate the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.[28] Relatively early in the war it became apparent that Russian forces were committing war crimes and atrocities against civilians.[29] The unexpected challenge for Russia was its struggle to maintain the number of troops throughout the conflict. Initially, Russia attempted a multiple-pronged operation targeting Ukraine's major cities. However, as the conflict progressed, Russia faced casualties and burnout, leading to the mobilization of additional troops, changes in command, and increased reliance on mercenaries.[30] The next challenge the Kremlin faced was the quantitative and qualitative shortages of military equipment. Much of the equipment owned by the Russian army was technologically outdated and obsolescent. However, despite these limitations, Russia still deploys various advanced weapons, such as hypersonic weapons and thermobaric bombs, as well as phosphorus bombs, drones, and a range of non-precision weapons targeting civilian areas. Additionally, Putin's regime employed a variety of aircraft using both dumb bombs and cruise missiles.[31] The West alerted the world that Russia has considered the use of biological and/or chemical weapons, and Putin has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons to compel Ukraine to surrender, and Western countries to halt their assistance.[32] These threats of force fall clearly in the military area, even if they may be frequently announced politically or diplomatically.

During the Ukraine war, Russia has employed a range of hybrid approaches blended with conventional military means. This includes the use of proxy forces such as the separatist forces in Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as various irregular fighters. These measures collectively served to militarize the eastern territories, making them more vulnerable to borderization, thus undermining state sovereignty and territorial integrity by establishing “proxy occupation.”[33] Consequently, the Kremlin was able to “annex” Crimea in 2014 and later, in 2022, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk. This annexation can be seen as a point of culmination and the desired end-state of the borderization policy, even if it means gobbling up Ukraine a piece at a time rather than the clear intent of Russian strategy in late February 2022. Furthermore, Russia has tried to use (i) economic pressure, initially through its gas weapon in Europe[34] and then through efforts to close off Ukraine’s grain shipments which threaten to destabilize the global food market;[35] (ii) diplomacy—trying to line up other countries to support its 2022 invasion of Ukraine and circumvent the diplomatic pressure imposed by the United States, NATO, and most of the world’s countries, as well as the numerous sanctions imposed by many of those countries and multiple international organizations;[36] (iii) widespread information campaigns, both within Russia and aimed at Ukraine, especially using the Russian Orthodox Church and undermining the recent Orthodox Church of Ukraine;[37] (iv) and critical infrastructure destruction, e.g., to strike the electrical supplies during the winter of 2022-2023, and multiple attacks on other critical infrastructure, to include dams like the destruction of Kokhavka Dam in June 2023.[38] These are only a sample of the hybrid weapons used; although they did fade into the background somewhat due to the strong preliminary activities of NATO to identify and pre-empt Russian false flag operations and use hybrid weapons better than Russia had done.[39] Also, as these approaches were aimed at the Ukrainian population, after more than eight years of war the Ukrainian population was unlikely to be easily convinced of Russian overtures.

During Ukraine 1, many Russian experts forecasted that Russia would not and could not follow a purely hybrid approach, and indeed Russia changed for Ukraine 2 and went heavy from the very beginning with military threats and attacks, with limited hybrid approaches being used successfully.[40] There are several factors that could have potentially accelerated the military attacks, these include (i) Vladimir Putin's health condition and concerns about his age, (ii) the risk of turning numerous Russian supporters against the war, (iii) the risk of facing assassinations. Alternatively, Russia might have perceived a “special military operation” as the appropriate approach to take at this stage of the ongoing Ukraine War, combining the conflicts of Ukraine 1 and 2 together. Another noteworthy aspect is the inclusion of a new objective in Ukraine 2 pursued by the Kremlin—to 'save the face' of the Putin regime, in addition to the objective of safeguarding Russia’s sphere of influence and preventing NATO’s eastward expansion visible in Ukraine 1 and Ukraine 2. This might also explain Russia's utilization of substantial military forces and transition towards a broader, more conventional style of warfare. Ultimately, Russia's military aggression against Ukraine flagrantly violates fundamental norms and principles of international law, as well as bilateral and multilateral agreements, which raises additional questions about why Russia chose to go with a heavy conventional approach so vigorously when a more nuanced hybrid approach would have kept the Western response more uncertain and muted.[41]

The factors that influenced the hybrid measures Russia used

Clausewitz’s chance played a critical role early in the war (and will undoubtedly play a role again). Failed assassinations have left the Ukrainian leadership largely in place since the start of the war; this has helped the leadership build civil resistance in Ukraine.[42] Moreover, since 2014 the war in Ukraine had settled into low-intensity trench warfare, so when in 2021 Russia began to build up and maintain larger numbers of forces just beyond Ukraine’s borders, almost everyone in Ukraine and the West knew that a major war was likely to come. What was not so clear to the world was the extent to which Russia’s conscripted and inadequately-equipped military would perform poorly in Ukraine.[43]

The longer arc of the Ukraine war with Russia also played a key role in several ways, both for Russia and Ukraine. Russia’s primary hybrid tools were longer-term approaches that did not bear much fruit given what had already occurred from 2014 (and before)-onward. For example, using radical nationalist and pro-Kremlin groups to weaken state security and create societal polarization had less effect outside of eastern oblasts as time went on. Discrediting the West in Ukrainian public opinion and trying to reverse the European and Euro-Atlantic agenda also failed with most Ukrainians. One of us saw first-hand in Kiev in 2019 how the long Ukrainian fight had changed Ukraine into a country that wanted to turn toward Europe and away from Russia.[44] Of course, Russia’s desire to portray Ukraine as firmly in its camp and unable to rise above its socio-political and economic problems (e.g., corruption and disunity) that could not bring any value to the West probably undercut its efforts to get Ukrainians to turn away from an European future. Meanwhile, as already suggested, Ukraine realized from 2014-on that it was in an existential war and it took steps through that period to prepare for the next big round of the war. In particular, the United States, along with other NATO countries like Canada, the United Kingdom, and Poland, had been training the Ukrainian military since 2015, and the United States began to provide assistance to Ukraine throughout this period, first with non-lethal aid and then lethal aid in 2017.[45]

However, the pivotal aspect is that the West has demonstrated a superior ability to employ hybrid measures compared to Russia in the period leading up to, at the onset of, and during the first year of Ukraine 2. Leveraging intelligence assessments shared across NATO and USA intelligence agencies, Western countries were aware of Russia's impending attack on Ukraine before it even commenced. By preemptively exposing false flag Russian operations, the West effectively neutralized their operational success. Furthermore, the West provided Ukrainian officials with early and invaluable intelligence, enabling them to prepare for Russia's initial assaults.[46] Governments and companies from the West also shielded Ukraine from Russia's cyberattack attempts[47] and disseminated warnings to both Russian citizens and those from pro-Russian countries, using both government and private channels. The United States, European Union, and NATO led the world in widespread sanctions on Russian leaders, companies, the government, and through targeted secondary sanctions forced Western and other major countries to pull out of Russia. The West also implemented significant cultural sanctions on Russia, forcing Russia out of the G-8, the World Cup, numerous other sporting events, and "econo-cultural" events (the ballet, orchestras, movies, etc.), limiting Russia’s religious and academic influence abroad and in other Slavic countries, and prohibited the Kremlin from the implementation of projects for integration of the annexed territory of Ukraine with Russia.[48]

Western support to Ukraine, such as financial, humanitarian, and military aid, have significantly influenced the establishment of a better position for Ukrainians on the battlefield. During the first year of the Russian invasion, Western countries committed to providing Ukraine with significant financial, military, and humanitarian aid and support, along with assistance in hosting refugees (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Total bilateral commitments plus refugee costs (billion Euros) from January 24, 2022 to January 15, 2023. Source: Christoph Trebesch, Arianna Antezza, Katelyn Bushnell, André Frank, Pascal Frank, Lukas Franz, Ivan Kharitonov, Bharath Kumar, Ekaterina Rebinskaya and Stefan Schramm, The Ukraine support tracker: which countries help Ukraine and how?, Working Paper no. 2218, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, February 2023, 30.

The military assistance provided by the largest group of NATO countries, in the form of small arms and equipment, deserves special mention for its crucial role in enhancing preparedness, strengthening capabilities, and improving the overall readiness of Ukrainian forces on the battlefield. Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion, this support included supplying weaponry such as hand grenades, pistols, submachine guns, assault and sniper rifles, light and automatic grenade launchers, anti-tank grenade launchers, anti-tank guided missiles, point air defense systems, mortars, mines, sapper equipment, MRAP-class vehicles, off-road vehicles, trucks, ammunition, and other essential equipment needed by the military (Table 1).

Table 1. Assistance in small arms and equipment for Ukraine until June 2022Source: Maciej Andrzej Piotrowski, Militrary-Technical Assistance to Ukraine. An Assessment of its Short – And Medium-Term Needs, PISM Report, December 2022, 66.

One notable advantage of this military assistance is that it did not necessitate special training for Ukrainian forces. The small arms and equipment provided were already familiar to the Ukrainian military, making it easier for them to incorporate these resources into their existing operations. This aspect saved valuable time and resources that would otherwise have been required for extensive training programs. Moreover, this assistance did not pose any risks of escalation for Ukraine's partners. It was aimed at supporting Ukraine's defense capabilities and was not intended to provoke further aggression or escalate the conflict. The aid was provided within the framework of international cooperation and support for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. This support persisted throughout the invasion, encompassing the provision of heavy weaponry such as tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery (howitzers), anti-aircraft missiles, ammunition, grenades, mortars, and reconnaissance drones.[49] The United States has far and away dominated the provision of military aid to Ukraine, although a number of NATO countries have contributed an equal or greater amount in terms of percentage of the budget. According to the Congressional Research Service on 26 January 2023, “U.S. security assistance committed to Ukraine as of January 25, 2023, has included the following:

• 8 National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS);
• 1 Patriot air defense battery and munitions;
• 38 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and ammunition;
• 1 M1 Abrams tanks, 45 T-72B tanks and 109 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles;
• 300 M113 and 90 Stryker Armored Personnel Carriers;
• 1,600+ Stinger anti-aircraft systems;
• 8,500+ Javelin anti-armor systems and 50,000+ other anti-armor systems;
• 1,800+ Phoenix Ghost Tactical UAS, 700+ Switchblade Tactical UAS, and other UAS;
• 160 155 mm and 72 105 mm Howitzers with more than 1.5 million artillery rounds; · 30 120 mm mortar systems and 166,000 mortar rounds;
• Remote Anti-Armor Mine (RAAM) Systems;
• 2,590 Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles, high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs), and laser-guided rocket systems;
• 13,000+ grenade launchers and small arms; and
• communications, radar, and intelligence equipment.”[50]

Based on the Western country's decision reached in February 2022 Ukraine will receive 300 tanks. These tanks were sourced primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Germany.[51] Fast forward to May 2023, and the latest information confirms the specifics of the tank deployment: The United States has committed to sending 31 Abrams tanks, demonstrating its continued support for Ukraine's defense needs; the United Kingdom is equally committed to aiding Ukraine and has contributed 14 Challenger 2 tanks; Germany, recognizing the importance of bolstering Ukraine's defense, has also stepped up by providing 14 Leopard 2 tanks; Poland initially dispatched four Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and it is further committed to sending an additional ten tanks in ongoing support. This collective effort from the Western countries highlights their commitment to Ukraine's security and their recognition of the significance of providing armored support. The provision of these tanks represents a tangible show of solidarity, with each nation contributing their expertise and resources to assist Ukraine in enhancing its defensive capabilities during this critical period.[52] Some Western countries have additionally supplied fighter aircraft, including the delivery of MIG-29s to Ukraine. The United States, in particular, has made commitments to provide F-16s and has initiated training programs for Ukrainian pilots.[53] Moreover, in October 2022 the EU launched the Military Assistance Mission in Support of Ukraine (EUMAM Ukraine). The mission is a direct response to Ukraine's request for support addressed to the High Representative. Its main objective is to provide individual, collective, and specialized training to Ukraine's Armed Forces. Moreover, the mission seeks to coordinate and harmonize the training activities of member states participating in EUAMA.[54] Another notable achievement of the West was its successful management of the refugee crisis in Ukraine. By various dates in January some eight million refugees had fled into various European countries, with Russia at nearly 2.9 million, Poland at nearly 1.6 million, and Germany with just over 1.0 million leading the way.[55] An additional 5.194 million internally displaced persons are scattered around Ukraine, as updated on 20 December 2022.[56] In just under one year of the war, over 17.92 million border crossings of refugees from and returnees to Ukraine, with most of the refugees going from Ukraine to Poland, but many of those coming back to Ukraine again.[57]

Future discussion – key points

For a broader understanding of the evolving changes in Russia's concept of hybrid warfare, it is necessary to focus further discussion on the following issues:

1. Using conventional and non-conventional measures in a hybrid warfare concept. Russia's involvement in conflicts has exhibited adjustment/shift in the application of various measures. Initially described in the concept of non-linear war, where non-conventional methods predominated, there has been a discernible transition towards a greater emphasis on conventional approaches. Understanding this evolution and the character of the factors causing this change is pivotal in evaluating and effectively responding to hybrid conflicts, including developing “counter-hybrid warfare” strategies. A closer examination necessitates the consideration of information operations, cyber operations, and the state's military potential, capabilities, and modernization (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Non-conventional and conventional measures used by Russia in Ukraine 1 and Ukraine 2

Source: Authors' elaboration.

1. Gray zone tactics. Russia has extensively employed tactics that operate in the gray zone between war and peace. These actions encompass covert operations, economic coercion, political manipulation, and subversion. Investigating such activities is crucial for regional security and stability.
2. Use of proxy forces, mercenaries, and criminal gangs as a “parallel army” formula. Russia's utilization of proxy forces, mercenaries, and criminal gangs as a 'parallel army' strategy is notable. It is important to assess the extent of Russia's involvement, including its training and support for such groups in conflicts, in order to forecast the dynamics and termination of the conflict.
3. This exploration focuses on Russia's approach to pursuing its national interests by analyzing its actions and measures employed in conflicts, particularly organized civil unrest and separatist movements, referendums, military operations, and annexations. The conceptual framework developed (Figure 3) serves as a basis for facilitating discussions on utilizing measures and mechanisms to achieve national interests.

Figure 3. Russia's modus operandi for achieving national interests

Source: Authors' elaboration.

Conclusions

The study of Russia's approach to hybrid warfare, based on empirical evidence from its engagement in conflicts during the 1990s and the first two decades of the 21st century, clearly demonstrates that the approach has evolved over time. It has transitioned from primarily relying on nonconventional measures to adopting a more conventional approach. While Gerasimov's concept of non-linear warfare acknowledges the use of conventional means, but the war in Ukraine since February 2022 suggests that the previous hybrid warfare strategies did not achieve Russian objectives in a timely manner, unless the attacked entity is quite small or remote to Europe. Consequently, Russia has resorted to employing traditional conventional means, raising questions about the effectiveness of hybrid warfare. In Ukraine 1 (period 2014-2021), Russia employed nonconventional measures, including deploying criminal gangs, mercenaries (including the Wagner Group), Special Forces, and “little green men” in Crimea, alongside their own troops from both sides of the border in Donbas. However, in Ukraine 2 (2022-present), the situation radically shifted towards a primarily conventional style of operation, utilizing the regular army supported by proxy forces and mercenaries.

Several factors contributed to this shift, including the failed assassination attempt on the Ukrainian president, escalating civil unrest within Ukrainian society, the outdated equipment of the Russian army, a shortage of soldiers, limited positive response to mobilization calls, inconsistency in strategy and tactics, as well as mediocre command. Another crucial factor was the strong and united response from the West to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, observed particularly in Ukraine 2. The West imposed a wide range of sanctions on Russia and provided comprehensive support to Ukraine, including intelligence information, military assistance, humanitarian aid, financial support, and assistance for Ukrainian refugees. Those actions present well used by the West's strategy to counter Russia's hybrid measures.

The careful analysis of Russia's style of current operations leads us to believe that Russia is likely to lose this war, regardless of the outcome, and we think its mistake was that it designed an approach to war that we call hybrid warfare and then abandoned it for their second attempt at Ukraine (namely Ukraine 2). It is possible that approach could never have worked in Ukraine, given that it was the eighth-largest country in Europe, prior to the Russian invasion that forced out so many people. Thus, it is a far larger country than the other empirical tests of the Russian hybrid war in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, or other smaller or non-European countries. Furthermore, the ongoing operations in Ukraine from 2015-2022 alerted Europe, the United States, and Ukraine itself that another full-scale war was eventually coming. Russia overestimated its ability to win the war in Ukraine and probably underestimated the Western countries and particularly the United States after its withdrawal from Afghanistan. However, it should be noted that Russia was already planning to attack Ukraine at that point, so perhaps the USA withdrawal was just in time.

It is worth mentioning that Russia is still using its hybrid approach in various regions in Africa, but it is doubtful that it can continue that approach to regain much of its Near Abroad, although some of the Slavic peoples might still align with Russia. Winning with a poor autocratic government, a poor economy, a contracting population, but a massive land area with great resources that ultimately China and Europe want, provides Russia with few options for achieving its policies or strategies in the years ahead, regardless of the theory of war it adopts. Perhaps the biggest lesson of this war is that a declining Russia must change its ways if it wishes to bring its neighbors back to a 21st-century version of the USSR.

On the other hand, Russia’s best theory of war for much of its history was to use terrain and fight defensively. That is still available, assuming Russia can develop leaders that can motivate the people with nationalism rather than Russkiy Mir (Slavic Union) concepts, which perhaps reach too far and require offensive capability. And yet, it still has a massive nuclear arsenal, meant as a deterrent but in the current environment with the current leadership often referred to in offensive terms. Russia needs to step away from this methodology and return to its hybrid warfare approach, where its military capability is primarily focused on defensive measures. Under the current government, this seems unlikely, and avoiding a wider-scale European war is becoming a significant challenge.

The change in Russia's approach to waging the war in Ukraine may only happen when significant shifts in state authority are established, either through civil unrest or a military coup. History has demonstrated that Russia has experienced such changes on numerous occasions. We can only hope that if such a situation arises now, the new ruling elites will possess the means and strategies to put an end to this bloody and endless war.

Endnotes

This article article does not necessarily reflect the views of the US Army War College, Department of Defense, or the US government.

[1] Based on the analysis the concepts of hybrid warfare presented by Frank Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, Arlington: Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, 2007; William J. Nemeth, Future war and Chechnya: A case for hybrid warfare, Monterey, CA 2002; John J. McCuen, “Hybrid Wars,” Military Review 2 (2008); Robert G. Walker, SPEC FI: The United States Marine Corps and Special Operations, Monterey, California: Naval Postgraduate School 1998.

[2] Valery V. Gerasimov, “The Value of Science is Foresight,” Military-Industrial Kurier, 26 February 2013, https://vpk.name/news/85159_cennost_nauki_v_predvidenii.html. Note that Gerasimov is describing the Russian view of what happened in the Arab Spring and Western intervention in Libya and how to defend Russia and its interests against it. Mark Galeotti’s comment: “The essence of this non-linear war is, as Gerasimov says, that the war is everywhere.”; Mark Galeotti, “The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War,” Moscow’s Shadows, 6 July 2014, https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/.

[3] Mark Galeotti, Ibid.

[4] Valery V. Gerasimov, Ibid.

[5] NATO, Enlargement and Article 10, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_49212.htm.

[6] Note: Georgian Civil War (1991–1993); South Ossetian War (1991–1992), War in Abkhazia (1992–1993), Transnistria War (1992), East Prigorodny Conflict (1992), Tajikistani Civil War (1992–1997), First Chechen War (1994–1996), War of Dagestan (1999), Second Chechen War (1999–2009), Russo-Georgian War (2008), Insurgency in the North Caucasus (2009–2017), Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present), Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War (2015–present), Central African Republic Civil War (2018–present).

[7] Michael Kofman, Anya Fink, Dmitry Gorenburg, Mary Chesnut, Jeffrey Edmonds, and Julian Waller, “Russian Military Strategy: Core Tenets and Operational Concepts,” Center for Naval Analyses, 2021, DRM-2021-U-029755-Final,18-21, 26-29.

[8] Vladimir Putin, Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Speech, 25 April 2005, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22931

[9] Stefan Meister, Russkiy Mir: "Russian World," German Council on Foreign Relations, 3 May 2016, https://dgap.org/en/events/russkiy-mir-russian-world. For broader explanation of the concept Russkiy Mir (“Russian World”) see Mikhail Suslov, “Russian World” Concept: Post-Soviet Geopolitical Ideology and the Logic of “Spheres of Influence,” Geopolitics 23, no. 2 (2018), DOI:10.1080/14650045.2017.1407921.

[10] Michael Mandelbaum, The New Russian Foreign Policy, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1998; Alexei G. Arbatov, “The Transformation of Russian Military Doctrine: Lessons Learned from Kosovo and Chechnya,” The Marshall Center Paper, no 2, July 2000, https://www.marshallcenter.org/en/publications/marshall-center-papers/transformation-russian-military-doctrine-lessons-learned-kosovo-and-chechnya/transformation-russian-military.

[11] NATO, Enlargement and Article 10, April 2023, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49212.htm

[12] Dušica Lazarević, NATO Enlargement to Ukraine and Georgia: Old Wine in New Bottles?, Partnership for Peace Consortium of Defense Academies and Security Studies Institutes,  Connections 9, no. 1 (2009): 47, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26326193; John Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault,” Foreign Affairs 93, no 5 (2014):78-80.

[13] Michael Kofman, Anya Fink, Dimitry Gorenburg, Mary Chesnut, Jeffrey Edmonds and Julian Waller, “Russian Military Strategy: Core Tenets and Operational Concepts,” CAN, DRM-2021-U-029755-Final, August 2021, 5-9.

[14] China and Iran have also tested, but in different ways focused on their regional goals and environments.

[15] Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan's Endless War. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2001, 70-73; Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, 2nd ed.  New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, 148-149; Ralph H. Magnus and Eden Naby, Afghanistan: Mullah, Marx, and Mujahid. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998, 133-134.

[16] Roland Heickerö, Emerging Cyber Threats and Russian Views on Information Warfare and Information Operations, FOI, Swedish Defence Research Agency, March 2010, 15-16, 

https://foi.se/rest-api/report/FOI-R--2970--SE; Diana Roy, “Russian Propagandistic Rhetoric during the Chechen Wars,” International Policy Digest, 28 October 2019, https://intpolicydigest.org/russian-propagandistic-rhetoric-during-the-chechen-wars/. Organizing information campaigns and operations in Chechnya was possible due to Russia's control over the majority of the mass media, see Ali Askerov, “The Chechen wars, media, and democracy in Russia,” Innovative Issues and Approaches in Social Sciences 8, no. 2 (2015): 8-24.

[17] For information regarding North Caucasian terrorists see Vassily A. Klimentov, “Bringing the War Home: The Strategic Logic of “North Caucasian Terrorism” in Russia,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 32, no. 2 (2021), 379-408; Emil Aslan Souleimanov, The North Caucasus Insurgency: Dead or Alive?,

Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2017.

[18] Roland Heickerö, Emerging Cyber Threats and Russian Views on Information Warfare and Information Operations, FOI, Swedish Defence Research Agency, March 2010, 43-46, 

https://foi.se/rest-api/report/FOI-R--2970--SE; David Hollis, “Cyberwar Case Study: Georgia 2008,” Small Wars Journal, 6 January 2011, 2, https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/639-hollis.pdf.

[19] Natia Seskuria, Russia’s “Hybrid Aggression” against Georgia: The Use of Local and External Tools,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-hybrid-aggression-against-georgia-use-local-and-external-tools; Jadwiga Rogoża, Agata Dubas, “Russian propaganda war: media as a long- and short-range weapon,” OSW/Centre for Eastern Studies, no. 9 (2008), 

https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/91705/commentary_09.pdf; Ariel Cohen and Robert E. Hamilton, The Russian Military and the Georgia War: Lessons and Implications, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2011, 35-49, https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep11808.

[20] Maria Tsvetkova, “How Russia allowed homegrown radicals to go and fight in Syria,” Reuters, 13 May 2016, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/russia-militants/; Michael Weiss, “Russia's Double Game with Islamic Terror,” The Daily Beast, 12 July 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-double-game-with-islamic-terror; Neil Hauer, “Chechen and North Caucasian militants in Syria,” Atlantic Council, 18 January 2018, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/syriasource/chechen-and-north-caucasian-militants-in-syria/; Murad Batal al-Shishani, “Chechens drawn south to fight against Syria's Assad,” BBC News, 20 November 2013, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24999697.  

[21] Andreas Heinemann-Grüder, “Russia’s State-Sponsored Killers: The Wagner Group,” Russian Analytical Digest no. 290 (2022): 2-4; Alan Boswell interview with Julia Steers, Russia’s Wagner in Africa, International Crisis Group Podcast, 23 March 2023, 

https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/russias-wagner-africa; Dominika Kulig, “The Russian Way of “Diplomacy” – the Wagner Group in Africa,” Pulaski Policy Papers, https://pulaski.pl/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pulaski_Policy_Paper_No_20_2023_EN.pdf; Simone Schlindwein, Are white mercenaries fighting in the DRC conflict?, DW, 17 January 2023, https://www.dw.com/en/are-white-mercenaries-fighting-in-the-drc-conflict/a-64407711; Maxim Samorukov, “What’s Behind the Posturing of Russian Mercenaries in the Balkans?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 6 April 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89463; Kseniya Kirillova, “Wagner and the Serbs,” The Center for European Policy Analysis, 25 January 2023, https://cepa.org/article/wagner-and-the-serbs/; Nick Squires, “Wagner mercenaries helping Serbia prepare a potential attack on our nation, Kosovan president warns,” The Telegraph, 11 February 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/02/11/wagner-mercenaries-helping-serbia-prepare-potential-attack-nation/.

[22] Hans van Zon, “Why the Orange Revolution succeeded”, Perspectives on European Policy and Society 6, no. 3 (2005): 382-383, 388.

[23] Ellen Nakashima, “Inside a Russian disinformation campaign in Ukraine in 2014,” Washington Post, 25 December 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside-a-russian-disinformation-campaign-in-ukraine-in-2014/2017/12/25/f55b0408-e71d-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html; Christopher M. Smith, “Russian Disinformation During Euromaidan,” International Policy Digest, 4 March 2022, https://intpolicydigest.org/russian-disinformation-during-euromaidan/.

[24] Regarding Russia discrediting the West see: Stephen Hutchings and Joanna Szostek, Dominant Narratives in Russian Political and Media Discourse during the Ukraine Crisis in Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives, ed. Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Richard Sakwa, Bristol, England: E-International Relations, 2016, 184-188.

[25] Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine Conflict Updates, https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates.

[26] Mykola Bielieskov, The Russian and Ukrainian Spring 2021 War Scare, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 21 September 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/russian-and-ukrainian-spring-2021-war-scare.

[27] David Brown, “Ukraine conflict: Where are Russia's troops?,” BBC News, 23 February 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60158694; Robin Emmott and Sabine Siebold, “Russian military build-up near Ukraine numbers more than 100000 troops, EU says,” Reuters, 19 April 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-military-build-up-near-ukraine-numbers-more-than-150000-troops-eus-2021-04-19/; Gustav Gressel, “Waves of ambition: Russia’s military build-up in Crimea and the Black Sea,” European Council on Foreign Relations - Policy Brief, 21 September 2021, https://ecfr.eu/publication/waves-of-ambition-russias-military-build-up-in-crimea-and-the-black-sea/. Shane Harris and Paul Sonne, “Russia planning massive military offensive against Ukraine involving 175,000 troops, U.S. intelligence warns,” Washington Post, 3 December 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/russia-ukraine-invasion/2021/12/03/98a3760e-546b-11ec-8769-2f4ecdf7a2ad_story.html.

[28] Namita Singh, “Ukraine’s Zelensky has survived more than a dozen assassination attempts, adviser claims,” Independent, 10 March 2022, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-zelensky-assassination-attempts-russia-b2032759.html; Gerrard Kaonga, “Volodymyr Zelensky Survives Three Assassination Attempts in One Week”, Newsweek, 3 April 2022, https://www.newsweek.com/volodymyr-zelensky-assassination-ukraine-russia-invasion-survive-war-1684801.

[29] “Ukraine: Apparent War Crimes in Russia - Controlled Areas,” Human Rights Watch, 3 April 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas; Christopher Martz et al., Russian War Crimes Against Ukraine: The Breach of International Humanitarian Law by the Russian Federation, Global Accountability Network, 11 May 2022, 33-38.

[30] David Axe, “It’s Possible 270,000 Russians Have Been Killed Or Wounded In Ukraine,” Forbes, 7 February 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/02/07/its-possible-270000-russians-have-been-killed-or-wounded-in-ukraine/?sh=19c6b1ce2eec.

[31] Donatas Palavenis, The Use of Emerging Disruptive Technologies by the Russian Armed Forces in the Ukrainian War, Air Land Sea Application Center, 1 October 2022, https://www.alsa.mil/News/Article/3170285/the-use-of-emerging-disruptive-technologies-by-the-russian-armed-forces-in-the/; Mark Hiznay interview with Amy Braunschweiger, Weapons of War in Ukraine, Human Rights Watch, 24 March 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/24/interview-weapons-war-ukraine; James Beardsworth, “Explainer: What is White Phosphorus and Is Russia Using it in Ukraine?,” The Moscow Times/ Independent News from Russia, 5 July 2022, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/07/02/explainer-what-is-white-phosphorus-and-is-russia-using-it-in-ukraine-a78168; Nick Macfie, “Russia says it has deployed Kinzhal hypersonic missile three times in Ukraine,” Reuters, 21 August 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-it-has-deployed-kinzhal-hypersonic-missile-three-times-ukraine-2022-08-21/; Matt Murphy, “Ukraine war: Russia accused of using phosphorus bombs in Bakhmut,” BBC News, 6 May 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65506993; Pavel Polityuk and Tom Balmforth, “Explainer: What are the 'kamikaze drones' Russia is using in Ukraine?,” Reuters, 18 October 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kamikaze-drones-what-are-weapons-russia-is-using-ukraine-2022-10-18/; “Ukraine: Russian ‘dumb bomb’ air strike killed civilians in Chernihiv – new investigation and testimony,” Amnesty International, 9 March 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/03/ukraine-russian-dumb-bomb-air-strike-kills-civilians-in-chernihiv-new-investigation-and-testimony/; Ellen Mitchelle, “Pentagon sees indications Russia using ‘dumb’ bombs in Ukraine,” The Hill, 9 March 2022, https://thehill.com/policy/defense/597524-pentagon-indications-russia-using-dumb-bombs-in-ukraine/.

[32] Carol E. Lee and Teaganne Finn, “U.S. warns Russia could use chemical weapons in false-flag operation in Ukraine,” NBC News, 9 March 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-warns-russia-use-chemical-weapons-false-flag-operation-ukraine-rcna19391#; Benjamin Wakefield and Patricia Lewis, “Ukraine: Is a chemical or biological attack likely?,” 30 March 2022, https://www.chathamhouse.org/2022/03/ukraine-chemical-or-biological-attack-likely; W.J. Hennigan, “’This Is Not a Bluff.’ Putin Raises Specter of Nuclear Weapons Following Battlefield Losses,” Time, 21 September 2022, https://time.com/6215610/putin-nuclear-weapons-threat/; Guy Faulconbridge, “Factbox: Has Putin threatened to use nuclear weapons?,” Reuters, 22 October 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/has-putin-threatened-use-nuclear-weapons-2022-10-27/; Pierre de Dreuzy, Andrea Gilli, “Russia’s nuclear coercion in Ukraine,” NATO Review, 29 November 2022, https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2022/11/29/russias-nuclear-coercion-in-ukraine/index.html; Jon Jackson, “Russia Starts Moving Nuclear Weapons to Ukrainian Neighbor,” Newsweek, 25 May 2023, https://www.newsweek.com/russia-starts-moving-nuclear-weapons-ukrainian-neighbor-1802721; United Nations, “Risk of Nuclear Weapons Use Higher Than at Any Time Since Cold War, Disarmament Affairs Chief Warns Security Council, Meetings Coverage of Security Council,” Press Release SC/15250, 31 March 2023, https://press.un.org/en/2023/sc15250.doc.htm.

[33] Vladimir Rauta, “Proxy agents, auxiliary forces, and sovereign defection: assessing the outcomes of using nonstate actors in civil conflicts,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16, no.1 (2016): 91-111; Filip Bryjka, “The Involvement of Irregular Armed Groups in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine,” Polish Institute of International Affairs Bulletin, no. 59 (1976), 11 April 2022; “Russia’s ‘Occupation by Proxy’ of Eastern Ukraine – Implications Under the Geneva Conventions,” Just Security, 22 February 2022, https://www.justsecurity.org/80314/russias-occupation-by-proxy-of-eastern-ukraine-implications-under-the-geneva-conventions/.

[34] Adam N. Stulberg, Out of Gas?: Russia, Ukraine, Europe, and the Changing Geopolitics of Natural Gas, Problems of Post-Communism 62, no 2 (2015): 112-130, https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2015.1010914; Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “Europe must make this the last winter of weaponized Russian energy exports,” Atlantic Council, 25 October 2022,    https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/putin-weaponizes-winter-europe-must-end-its-dependency-on-russian-energy/.

[35] Nik Martin, “ DW, 17 March 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-war-russia-blocks-ships-carrying-grain-exports/a-61165985; Andrew Meldrum,  “Russia suspends Ukraine grain export deal over claims of Crimea ship attack,” PBS News Hour, 29 October 2022, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/russia-suspends-ukraine-grain-export-deal-over-claims-of-crimea-ship-attack.

[36] Elliot Smith, “It’s not a pretty picture’: Russia’s support is growing in the developing world,” CNBC News, 30 March 2023, https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/ukraine-war-how-russias-support-is-growing-in-the-developing-world.html.

[37] Alar Kilp and Jerry G. Pankhurst, “Soft, Sharp, and Evil Power: The Russian Orthodox Church in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 42, no. 5 (2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2148.2361; Janine di Giovanni, “The Real Reason the Russian Orthodox Church’s Leader Supports Putin’s War,” Foreign Policy, 26 April 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/26/ukraine-war-russian-orthodox-church-support-patriarch-kirill-homophobia/; Andriy Olenin, Religious deception: what Russian propaganda portrays as ‘satanic rites’ by Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Ukrinform/Ukrainian multimedia platform for broadcasting, 21 April 2023, https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-factcheck/3698750-religious-deception-what-russian-propaganda-portrays-as-satanic-rites-by-orthodox-church-of-ukraine.html.

[38] Sławomir Matuszak, “On the verge of blackout: Ukraine facing attacks on its electricity generation system,” OSW Commentary, No. 482, OSW/Centre for Eastern Studies, 18 January 2023, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2023-01-18/verge-blackout-ukraine-facing-attacks-its-electricity; James Glanz, Marc Santora, Pablo Robles, Haley Willis, Lauren Leatherby, Christoph Koettl and Dmitriy Khavin, “Why the Evidence Suggests Russia Blew Up the Kakhovka Dam,” New York Times, 16 June 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/06/16/world/europe/ukraine-kakhovka-dam-collapse.html.

[39] Victor Jack, “NATO has ‘seen’ Russian false-flag attempts in Ukraine, Stoltenberg says,” Politico Europe, 17 February 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-has-seen-attempts-at-russian-false-flag-operation-ukraine-says-alliance-chief/.

[40] Private communications, 2018-Present.

[41] Violations of the international law, bilateral and multilateral agreements committed by Russia concern following: UN Charter (1945); Helsinki Final Act (1975); Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the UN Charter (1970); UN GA Resolution 3314 “Definition of Aggression” (1974); Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty (1965); Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States (1981); Declaration on the Enhancement of the Effectiveness of the Principle of Refraining from the Threat or Use of Force in International Relations (1987); Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances related to the Ukraine’s accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1994); Agreement on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation (1997); Agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the Ukrainian-Russian state border (2003); Agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on cooperation in use of the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait (2003); Agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the status and conditions of Russian Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine (1999).

[42] Regarding civil resistance in Ukraine see Julia Rushchenko and Igor Rushchenko, “Hybrid aggression and civil resistance in Kharkiv in 2014: lessons from the first phase of the Russia-Ukraine war,” Ukrainian Society 3 (2016): 88-99; Felip Daza Sierra, Ukrainian Nonviolent Civil Resistance in the face of war: Analysis of trends, impacts and challenges of nonviolent action in Ukraine between February and June 2022, Barcelona: International Catalian Institute for Peace, 2022.

[43] Zoltan Barany, “Armies and Autocrats: Why Putin’s Military Failed,” Journal of Democracy 34, no. 1, 2023: 80-94; Pjotr Sauer, “ ‘The army has nothing’: new Russian conscripts bemoan lack of supplies,” The Guardian, 20 October 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/20/the-army-has-nothing-new-russian-conscripts-bemoan-lack-of-supplies; Timofei Rozhanskiy, “Russian Soldiers Ask: 'We Have Nothing To Fight With. Why Should We Go Up Against Tanks With Only Machine Guns?,” Radio Free Europe, 20 January 2023, https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-war-russia-deserting-troops/32232716.html.

[44] Similar trends were noted in 2021; See the result of the Public Opinion Survey of Residents of Ukraine (November 2021) provided by the International Republican Institute, “IRI Ukraine Poll Shows Support for EU/NATO Membership, Concerns over Economy and Vaccines for COVID-19,” 17 December 2021, https://www.iri.org/resources/iri-ukraine-poll-shows-support-for-eu-nato-membership-concerns-over-economy-and-vaccines-for-covid-19/; “Ukraine: optimism Soars Despite Brutal War,” National Democratic Institute, September 2022, https://www.ndi.org/our-stories/ukraine-optimism-soars-despite-brutal-war; “Opportunities and Challenges Facing Ukraine’s Democratic Transition,” National Democratic Institute, January 2023: 4-16, https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/January_2023_Ukraine_wartime_survey_ENG.pdf.

[45] NATO, Relations with Ukraine, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_37750.htm; Claire Mills, Military assistance to Ukraine 2014-2021, Research Briefing no. 7135 (2022): 2-5, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN07135/SN07135.pdf; Government of Canada, “Canada-Ukraine Relations,” https://www.international.gc.ca/country-pays/ukraine/relations.aspx?lang=eng; Christina L. Arabia, Andrew S. Bowen, and Cory Welt, “U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine,” Congressional Research Service, 26 January 2023, IF12040 (congress.gov); Olesia Holub-Korba, “Poland’s support to Ukraine: facts and numbers,” Rubryka, https://rubryka.com/en/article/polands-support-to-ukraine/.

[46] Dan Sabbagh, “US and UK intelligence warnings vindicated by Russian invasion,” The Guardian, 24 February 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/24/us-uk-intelligence-russian-invasion-ukraine; Dan Sabbagh, “GCHQ head: Putin making strategic errors due to unconstrained power,” The Guardian, 10 October 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/10/gchq-head-putin-making-strategic-errors-ukraine-russia; Ken Dilaninan, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee and Dan De Luce, “U.S. intel helped Ukraine protect air defenses, shoot down Russian plane carrying hundreds of troops,” NBC News, 26 April 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-intel-helped-ukraine-protect-air-defenses-shoot-russian-plane-carry-rcna26015; Felicia Schwartz, Henry Foy, “Western intelligence shows Russians amassing aircraft on Ukraine border,” The Financial Time, 14 February 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/3fd6e91f-71e4-4c02-9360-be20a2a78763.

[47] More information about programs, actions done and ongoing by UK and US to support Ukraine cyberdefence see: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, “UK boosts Ukraine's cyber defences with £6 million support package,” Press Release, 1 November 2022, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-boosts-ukraines-cyber-defences-with-6-million-support-package; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Support for Connectivity and Cybersecurity in Ukraine, 10 May 2022, https://www.state.gov/u-s-support-for-connectivity-and-cybersecurity-in-ukraine/.

[48] International sanction on Russia see: Maia Nikoladze, Kimberly Donovan, Russia sanction database, Atlantic Council, April 2023, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/russia-sanctions-database/; European Parliament, EU sanctions on Russia: Overview, impact, challenges, March 2023, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2023/739366/EPRS_BRI(2023)739366_EN.pdf; US Department of the Treasury, “Fact Sheet: Disrupting and Degrading – One Year of U.S. Sanctions on Russia and Its Enablers,” Press Release, 24 February 2023, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1298; US Department of the Treasury, “With Over 300 Sanctions, U.S. Targets Russia’s Circumvention and Evasion, Military-Industrial Supply Chains, and Future Energy Revenues,” Press Release,19 May 2023, https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1494; Yasmeen Serhan, “Why the Cultural Boycott of Russia Matters,” The Atlantic, 2 March 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/03/ukraine-russia-culture-boycott-putin/623873/; Sophia Kishkovsky, “Russian culture minister and a billionaire arts patron are included in the latest lists of sanctions from the West,” The Art Newspaper, 20 December 2022, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/12/20/russian-culture-minister-and-a-billionaire-arts-patron-are-included-in-latest-lists-of-sanctions-from-the-west.

[49] Regarding the ongoing support after Russia invasion in Ukraine in February 2022 see: Claire Mills, Military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion, Research Briefing, 23 May 2023, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9477/CBP-9477.pdf; Government of Canada, Canada’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development enjeux_developpement/response_conflict-reponse_conflits/crisis-crises/ukraine.aspx?lang=eng; Ministry of National Defence, Poland in favor of continued military support for defending Ukraine, https://www.gov.pl/web/national-defence/poland-in-favor-of-continued-military-support-for-defending-ukraine; NATO, NATO's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_192648.htm, Jacek Tarociński, Andrzej Wilk, “Arms deliveries to Ukraine: crossing the red lines,” OSW Commentary, 9 June 2023, OSW/Centre for Eastern Studies, https://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/osw-commentary/2023-06-09/arms-deliveries-to-ukraine-crossing-red-lines.

[50] “U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine,” Congressional Research Service, 26 January 2023, IF12040, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040.

[51] Pierre Meilhan and Heather Chen, “West to deliver 321 tanks to Ukraine, says diplomat, as North Korea accuses US of ‘crossing the red line’,” CNN News, 29 January 2023, https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/27/world/ukraine-tanks-western-allies-intl-hnk/index.html; European Parliamentary Research Service, “Russia's war on Ukraine: Western-made tanks for Ukraine,” PE 739.316 – January 2023, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2023/739316/EPRS_ATA(2023)739316_EN.pdf.

[52] David Brown, Jake Horton, and Tural Ahmedzade, “Ukraine weapons: What tanks and other equipment are the world giving?,” BBC News, 19 May 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62002218; Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz, “Poland says it will send 10 more Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine this week,” Reuters, 7 March 2023, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/poland-says-it-will-send-10-more-leopard-2-tanks-ukraine-this-week-2023-03-07/.

[53] Sanya Mansoor, “Ukraine Is Getting MiG-29 Fighter Jets from Poland and Slovakia. Here's Why That Matters,” Time, 17 March 2023, https://time.com/6263986/poland-mig-29-fighter-jets-ukraine/; C. Todd Lopez, “F-16 Training, Aircraft, to Fill Ukraine's Mid-Term, Long-Term Defense Needs,” US.Department of Defense - DOD News, 23 May 2023, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3405085/f-16-training-aircraft-to-fill-ukraines-mid-term-long-term-defense-needs/.

[54] European Council/Council of the European Union, Ukraine: EU launches Military Assistance Mission, Press Release, 15 November 2022, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/11/15/ukraine-eu-launches-military-assistance-mission/; Aleksandra Kozioł, “EU Launches Military Assistance Mission in Support of Ukraine,” The Polish Institute of International Affairs, Spotlight no. 133/2022 (2022).

[55] “Estimated number of refugees from Ukraine recorded in Europe and Asia since February 2022 as of January 17, 2023, by selected country. “Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312584/ukrainian-refugees-by-country/.

[56] “Ukraine: IDP Estimate.” IOM UN Migration, Updated 20 December 2022, Ukraine: IDP Estimates - Humanitarian Data Exchange (humdata.org).

[57] “Number of border crossings between Ukraine and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries after Russia's invasion of Ukraine from February 24 to January 24, 2023, by selected country (in 1,000s).” Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312584/ukrainian-refugees-by-country/.

Categories: hybrid warfare

About the Author(s)

Larry P. Goodson

Dr. Larry P. Goodson is Professor of Middle East Studies at the U.S. Army War College,where he is the only person to hold the General Dwight D. Eisenhower Chair of National Security twice (2014-2017, 2004-2007). Since joining the US government in 2002, Dr.Goodson has been continually called upon to serve as a regional advisor on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Middle East by senior U.S. military and political leaders.Dr. Goodson completed his PhD at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Afghanistan’s Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (2001) as well as numerous chapters and articles. Currently, he is writing “The First Great War of the 21 st Century: From Syria to Ukraine to the South China Sea,” which argues that a global war between China, Russia, and the

United States is underway.

Marzena Żakowska 

Dr. Marzena Żakowska is an assistant professor and lecturer at the Faculty of National Security at War Studies University, Warsaw, Poland. She holds a PhD. in Security Science from the National Defence University, Warsaw, Poland. Currently, she is the Director of Global Affairs and Diplomacy Studies and Chair of the War Studies Working Group at the International Society of Military Sciences. As editor and author, she has published books and articles on armed conflicts, hybrid threats, hybrid warfare, Balkan’s security, and social security issues.

4. The Newest Weapon in Irregular Warfare – Artificial Intelligence

Download a PDF here: https://irregularwarfarecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023-7-17-Perspectives_No_9_AI-in-IW-Final.pdf

Excerpts:

AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard are becoming more accessible and advanced and will only improve from their current state. The DoD should leverage these tools and build an understanding of how to use them in irregular warfare both offensively and defensively. While it is true that deep fake and AI technologies are constantly improving, it is also the case that tools to counter it have been rapidly growing as well. Some of the most advanced and life-like deepfakes are created by having two AI algorithms working against each other in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). As a result, these same techniques can be used to develop algorithms for both creation and detection.

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) oversees the DoD’s adoption of data, analytics, and AI to generate decision advantage. While this initiative looks at the AI issues at a higher level, the establishment of DoD AI teams at the command and tactical levels are necessary to monitor information flow and AI-related content. This would allow the DoD to study trends and effects from state and non-state actors both tactically and strategically. Additionally, it would facilitate the DoD use of AI at both a command and tactical level to shape messaging on the battlefield, coordinate information operations at an increased frequency, and potentially counteract any counter-AI related disinformation or content related to ongoing operations.

The Newest Weapon in Irregular Warfare – Artificial Intelligence

irregularwarfarecenter.org

July 17, 2023

Mohamad Mirghahari

Download a PDF of this publication by clicking the icon.

On the morning of 22 May, 2023, an artificial intelligence (AI) generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon surfaced online and spread like wildfire throughout social media. Multiple news sources reported and shared the AI-generated image on their platforms. As a result, markets responded to the reports and image, and the S&P 500 index fell in just minutes after its reporting, causing a $500 billion market cap swing, even though this image was quickly proven as fake.

Artificial intelligence provides an ever-expanding set of new tools that can be applied in irregular warfare, from targeted disinformation campaigns to military deception (MILDEC). In 2012, a Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Publication defined MILDEC as content “intended to deter hostile actions, increase the success of friendly defensive actions, or to improve the success of any potential friendly offensive action.” The Pentagon deep fake (or AI-generated image), which served to negatively impact the U.S. economy and create a substantial amount of confused and misleading reporting, demonstrates that this technology can be used for military deception purposes.

By using artificial intelligence to create different mediums for influence, one can potentially create the illusion of an ongoing war, an attack, a resistance movement, and other versions of collateral for information operations. This use of AI can meet the goals of MILDEC as defined by the DoD.

The image of the explosion at the Pentagon is just the tip of the iceberg of how AI could be used not only to drive disinformation, but also to conduct economic sabotage. Across multiple domains, AI can be an essential part of achieving the objectives of any military operation.

AI can also be used to directly support irregular warfare, such as cyber and influence operations, in a number of ways, both strategically and tactically.

For example, AI can support military deception by automating the creation and dissemination of disinformation, thus removing its development from the hands of planners and teams required to build influence campaigns, leading to increased dissemination of disinformation or messages. Conventional wisdom suggests that increasing the rate of message output or utilizing highly visible entities as amplifiers (such as celebrity “influencers”) would help to attract a “stickiness” factor to the message being disseminated, making it more contagious and thus having a more lasting impact, an idea popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point.

Beyond conventional approaches, artificial intelligence, when coupled with algorithms designed to influence targeted audiences, can generate realistic fake news, social media posts, and other content that manipulates public opinion, confuses adversaries, creates negative or positive sentiment, influences networks, or diverts a population’s attention at a pace which will make it difficult for governments, military forces, and news outlets to verify or confirm an image or recording is fake.

AI can tailor disinformation campaigns to specific target audiences, making them more effective from a macro to micro level. AI can maximize information operations support to irregular warfare by analyzing large amounts of data, including social media, to identify target audiences, understand people’s psychological profiles, and tailor persuasive messages accordingly. AI algorithms can also improve and synchronize content and delivery of these messages to maximize their impact on the target audience.

For example, a demonstration from a private network science and machine learning company FNA isolated which 20 specific international media personalities could best drive down Russian sentiment in Mali, thus lowering the opinion and optics of the Malian people towards Russia and its activities in Mali. These 20 personalities were, by name, identified out of more than 10,000 potential influencers for this activity within just a few minutes, and could even be further filtered based on their network proximity to specific target audiences. However, the inverse of this result is also true: these same 20 personalities are also the accounts to suppress, overwhelm with traffic, or otherwise degrade to achieve the opposite effect, which is to avoid changing Malians’ sentiments on Russia despite Wagner operations in the country, which are suspected to have included massacres and summary executions of the local population.

These solutions, difficult and time consuming to devise from traditional means, utilize different faces of AI, including combining network science features and natural language processing into different machine learning models. The target audiences and the best people to influence the audiences are automatically identified by AI-driven processes, and can be further tuned (or, reinforced) to achieve more specific or greater results over time. A process like this could determine whether you are part of an influence campaign or separated into an echo chamber. The content you consume could have been first generated from an AI deep fake set of images, like the Pentagon attack images from 22 May 2023—a one-two punch not only designed to create a deceptive set of contents, but also to specifically influence or not influence you to contend with the spread of false information.

In planning and during phase zero and one operations, deep fake AI technology can be used to fabricate realistic audio, video, or images to shape the battlefield. State and non-state actors have already been employing the use of this technology. The Venezuelan government has been using AI deep fake technology acting as American newscasters to spread disinformation, and the same AI technology used by Venezuela was also used to spread propaganda in China and Burkina Faso.

Deep fakes can be used to create false evidence, misleading videos, or fake personas to confuse adversaries or manipulate their decision-making processes. These AI-generated deep fakes can be used to draw out desired opponent reactions to an event or policy.

As illustrated by the photo of the alleged Pentagon explosion, by the time the image was declared fake, the intended effects had taken place, including the economic impact and quite likely a security posture change. In addition, emergency services within proximity of the Pentagon shared statements countering the social media reports of the explosion.

AI can help commanders lure and attract adversaries by analyzing their behavior, creating intelligent decoys that look like real targets, generating false communications, and other targeting information used to disrupt their planning. AI can also create false signaling and messaging through AI-developed communications. From AI-generated radar transmissions to communication transmissions such as text messages, phone calls, and radio communications, AI can be used to confound enemies and hinder their decision-making.

As shown by the S&P fall with the “news” of an explosion at the Pentagon, AI can be leveraged for an even more dangerous role in irregular warfare: economic sabotage. AI algorithms can be used to manipulate financial markets, destabilize economies, or undermine confidence in currencies. AI systems can analyze market trends, news sentiment, and social media data to predict and exploit weaknesses in financial systems. They may engage in high-frequency trading, spread false information, or engage in other manipulative practices that cause market volatility or economic instability. Or, in an even more simple way, it can create an image, video, or report that drives the markets down, causing uncertainty in a local economy.

The sectors impacted would not be limited to just the economy. From food security, medical readiness, to supply chain logistics, AI coupled with disinformation can create destabilization in a local populace from thousands of miles away. Could a coordinated information operation use AI and disinformation to cause riots over projected food shortages? How about medicine being restricted in certain areas? Reports of gasoline and oil shortages for the winter? AI can push these narratives at a pace that could shape irregular warfare in ways that we have not seen before.

AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard are becoming more accessible and advanced and will only improve from their current state. The DoD should leverage these tools and build an understanding of how to use them in irregular warfare both offensively and defensively. While it is true that deep fake and AI technologies are constantly improving, it is also the case that tools to counter it have been rapidly growing as well. Some of the most advanced and life-like deepfakes are created by having two AI algorithms working against each other in Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs). As a result, these same techniques can be used to develop algorithms for both creation and detection.

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) oversees the DoD’s adoption of data, analytics, and AI to generate decision advantage. While this initiative looks at the AI issues at a higher level, the establishment of DoD AI teams at the command and tactical levels are necessary to monitor information flow and AI-related content. This would allow the DoD to study trends and effects from state and non-state actors both tactically and strategically. Additionally, it would facilitate the DoD use of AI at both a command and tactical level to shape messaging on the battlefield, coordinate information operations at an increased frequency, and potentially counteract any counter-AI related disinformation or content related to ongoing operations.

Mohamad Mirghahari is the National Security Fellow at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations. Mirghahari previously served in the Department of Defense in key leadership positions, in support of counterterrorism and Special Operations initiatives that have significantly impacted mission-critical outcomes across the globe.

irregularwarfarecenter.org

5. An Arctic ‘Great Game’ as NATO allies and Russia face off in far north

Excerpts:

Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science at the University of Tromso and an expert on Arctic affairs, said the forum may not be salvageable.

“If we are dealing with a long-term freeze — for lack of a better word — we might need another forum to discuss climate change and the ships paddling around the Arctic,” he said.

“We are definitely going to see more tacit power-balancing in this part of the world,” he added. “And I wonder if Tromso is ready for it.”

Lanteigne is a member of the Grey Zone, a research group at the University of Tromso that focuses on hybrid threats. Before his arrest, Giammaria (a.k.a. Mikushin) was listed on the group’s website.

Lanteigne chuckled at the irony of an alleged deep-cover Russian agent posing as a researcher of hybrid threats.

“It was a really interesting illustration of how, when we talk about security, it’s not only a question of military security,” he said. “All of sudden, we see a glaring example.”

An Arctic ‘Great Game’ as NATO allies and Russia face off in far north

The Washington Post · by Emily Rauhala · July 17, 2023

Europe

By

July 17, 2023 at 6:30 a.m. EDT

VARDO, Norway — The officers in tracksuits looked a little nervous as they rapped on the window of the rental car.

They wondered what we were doing here, on an island high above the Arctic Circle, some 4,000 miles from Washington and not far from where Russia bases some of its most sophisticated submarines. Was there a reason we were taking pictures of the hulking white radar stations that look out from Norway to Russia’s Kola Peninsula?

“Because of the political situation, we are checking everything,” one officer said.

For several years now, European and U.S. security and intelligence officials have been keeping a closer eye on the world above the Arctic Circle, knowing that melting polar ice will open new trade routes, propel a race for natural resources and reshape global security. Western officials watched as Russia revived Soviet-era military sites and while China planned a “Polar Silk Road.”

But the war in Ukraine and the dramatic deterioration of Western relations with Moscow have put the frostbitten borderlands between Norway and Russia on heightened alert, while increasing the geostrategic importance of the Arctic.

The result is an uptick in military, diplomatic and intelligence interest that could usher in an iteration of the “Great Game,” the 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires for influence in Asia.

For Russia, because the war in Ukraine has diminished Moscow’s conventional military forces and hobbled the Russian economy, its Arctic assets have become more critical. “The Arctic has become more important because the nukes are more important,” said Maj. Gen. Lars Sivert Lervik, the chief of the Norwegian army.

Meanwhile, NATO has increased its stake in the north, with Finland and possibly soon Sweden joining their neighbor Norway in the alliance.

This spring, a U.S. aircraft carrier made a port call in Norway for the first time in 65 years, stopping in Oslo before participating in exercises with NATO allies in the north. Around the same time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the region and announced that the United States would reopen a diplomatic post in Tromso, a coastal city in the Norwegian Arctic. The U.S. diplomat expected to arrive next month would be the first posted there since the 1990s.

Diplomatic drama and intrigue abound.

The Arctic Council — an intergovernmental forum that promotes cooperation — is in disarray because seven of its members refuse to work at a political level with its eighth member, Russia, disrupting collaboration on critical issues such as climate change.

In the past year, Norwegian media outlets have reported about drones buzzing airports and oil and gas installations, the expulsion of Russian diplomats as spies, and the case of a man accused of illegal intelligence gathering while posing as a Brazilian guest researcher at a Norwegian university.

For NATO allies, “a flashing yellow light turned red, and we need to think more carefully,” said a senior U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss alliance thinking. “Countries need to be sharing more information on destabilizing actions, on things that look strange, and we need to be less naive and more aware.”

***

From a watchtower near the seaport of Kirkenes, young Norwegian soldiers peer across the border into the Russian wilderness, surveilling a summer landscape of smooth rock and low pine — a view that shifts only with the seasons.

In January, not far from here, a man claiming to be a defector from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group ran across a frozen river in the dead of the polar night. Since then, the soldiers said, things have been quiet.

To Lervik, the chief of the Norwegian army, calm at the northeastern frontier is not particularly reassuring. Russia’s capabilities in the north, including nuclear weapons, remain intact and very dangerous, he said.

Western officials worry, too, that Russia could block commercial shipping lanes or U.S. Navy ships en route to Europe, particularly at a potential maritime chokepoint called the “Greenland, Iceland, U.K. gap” that separates the Norwegian and North seas from the open Atlantic Ocean.

“Russia’s ability to disrupt reinforcement is a real challenge to the alliance,” said one senior Western intelligence official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss security matters.

There is also concern that Moscow has mapped critical undersea infrastructure and could engage in sabotage against Europe. Last month, NATO launched a center for protecting undersea pipelines and cables.

The defense policy director at the Finnish Defense Ministry, Janne Kuusela, said that the risk of conventional military confrontation in the Arctic remains low but that does not preclude conflict in the years ahead. “We all see how Russia is acting,” he said.

***

In his newsroom, Barents Observer editor Thomas Nilsen pulled out a map.

He pointed to where we were in Kirkenes, just a few miles from the Russian border. And there was the Kola Peninsula, home to Russia’s Northern Fleet and some of its most advanced air and naval assets, including the core of its second-strike capability.

Nilsen dragged a pen along the page to show what Russia considers its bastion and where its submarines could go to hide.

But he said he is equally concerned about what Russia is doing on the ground in Norway, in and out of view.

“There are ways to send in ‘small green men’ and make this a buffer zone for Russia,” he said, referring to armed soldiers without insignia of affiliation. “That is the game.”

Last year, he wrote a story about a Russian bishop who wanted to build a chapel next to Vardo’s radars — U.S.-funded assets that have loomed over the town for decades.

Members of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has historic ties to Russian intelligence services, he wrote, also were also interested in studying Kirkenes’s water supply.

Frode Berg, a retired Norwegian border inspector who spent 23 months in a Moscow prison on espionage charges, said Norway is still not prepared for possible Russian operations.

Berg, who admitted that he cooperated with Norwegian intelligence and traveled to Russia as a courier, was freed in a prisoner swap. He is now back in Kirkenes and concerned by the lack of alarm.

“Because of what happened to me, I can see spies,” he said. “Other people close their eyes.”

***

The man who identified himself as Jose Assis Giammaria, a 37-year-old Brazilian researcher, had purportedly come to Tromso to work on Arctic security — which made sense, as Tromso is a hub for research and diplomacy on polar issues.

But when Norwegian authorities arrested him in October, they said he was, in fact, a 44-year-old Russian national named Mikhail Mikushin. His previous time at Canadian universities, officials suggested, was part of an effort to develop a backstory for his fake identity. “We are quite certain that he is not Brazilian,” said the Norwegian Security Service’s Thomas Blom last fall.

The arrest shocked Tromso, a city where “Arctic exceptionalism” — the idea that the region can be protected from politics — still held sway.

For more than three decades, diplomats and scientist in the north have argued that the critical work of protecting the Arctic ought to stand apart from politics — “high north, low tension,” as some Norwegians like to say.

But the spy case and the diplomatic discord at the Arctic Council — which has its secretariat in Tromso — have pointed to a resurgence of Great Power competition in the region.

“Our main mission at this time is to keep the council intact, surviving,” said Morten Hoglund, the chair of the Senior Arctic Officials of the Arctic Council.

Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science at the University of Tromso and an expert on Arctic affairs, said the forum may not be salvageable.

“If we are dealing with a long-term freeze — for lack of a better word — we might need another forum to discuss climate change and the ships paddling around the Arctic,” he said.

“We are definitely going to see more tacit power-balancing in this part of the world,” he added. “And I wonder if Tromso is ready for it.”

Lanteigne is a member of the Grey Zone, a research group at the University of Tromso that focuses on hybrid threats. Before his arrest, Giammaria (a.k.a. Mikushin) was listed on the group’s website.

Lanteigne chuckled at the irony of an alleged deep-cover Russian agent posing as a researcher of hybrid threats.

“It was a really interesting illustration of how, when we talk about security, it’s not only a question of military security,” he said. “All of sudden, we see a glaring example.”

The Washington Post · by Emily Rauhala · July 17, 2023

6. A Current War Collides With the Past: How World War II Endures in Ukraine

History never ends. It never fades into the past. Its influence is always present. And then there is geography.

Excerpts:

World War II has been an ideological battlefield in today’s war in Ukraine, with Russia falsely calling Kyiv’s government neofascist and citing that as the rationale for its invasion. The country’s military history is cropping up on the actual battlefield as well, not just with artifacts in the soil but in the lessons Ukraine has learned from a war fought long ago.

Terrain and rivers have often channeled the armies of today into the sites of some of the fiercest fighting in World War II, when German and Soviet troops swept over the valleys and the expanses of wide-open plains.

Indeed, key battles have coincided so closely with the sites of World War II fighting, the Ukrainian military says, that soldiers have found themselves taking cover in 80-year-old concrete bunkers outside Kyiv. They have discovered the bones of German soldiers and Nazi bullet casings in the dirt they removed from trenches in the south.

A Current War Collides With the Past: How World War II Endures in Ukraine

The New York Times · by Andrew E. Kramer · July 18, 2023

World War II has been an ideological battlefield in today’s war in Ukraine, and it is cropping up on the actual battlefield as well.

Oleksandr Shkalikov, a Ukrainian tank driver, scrambles over the surreal landscape revealed after the Kakhovka dam was destroyed.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

By

Andrew E. Kramer reported from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

July 18, 2023, 12:01 a.m. ET

Clambering over boulders, past old tires and shellfish-encrusted scrap metal, Oleksandr Shkalikov ventured onto the dry bed of a vast reservoir.

Out in this wasteland rested a haunting reminder of long-ago battles on this same swath of southern Ukraine: a swastika, chipped into a rock, had emerged from the receding water. The year “1942’’ was written next to it.

“History is repeating itself,” Mr. Shkalikov, a tank driver on leave from the Ukrainian army, said of the World War II-era carving. He noted the timing: The Swastika had become visible because of more recent act of war, the explosion at the Kakhovka dam in June that drained a reservoir the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah.

“We are fighting this war on the same landscape and with the same weapons” as those used in World War II, he said, evoking the heavy artillery and tanks that still shape the course of a land war.

World War II has been an ideological battlefield in today’s war in Ukraine, with Russia falsely calling Kyiv’s government neofascist and citing that as the rationale for its invasion. The country’s military history is cropping up on the actual battlefield as well, not just with artifacts in the soil but in the lessons Ukraine has learned from a war fought long ago.

Terrain and rivers have often channeled the armies of today into the sites of some of the fiercest fighting in World War II, when German and Soviet troops swept over the valleys and the expanses of wide-open plains.

Indeed, key battles have coincided so closely with the sites of World War II fighting, the Ukrainian military says, that soldiers have found themselves taking cover in 80-year-old concrete bunkers outside Kyiv. They have discovered the bones of German soldiers and Nazi bullet casings in the dirt they removed from trenches in the south.

A German soldier crossing the Dnipro River in September 1941.Credit...Associated Press Photo

A monument commemorating soldiers who died in World War near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

World War II began in what is now Ukraine in 1939 with a Soviet invasion into territory then controlled by Poland in western Ukraine, at a time when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were in an alliance. When that pact broke down in 1941, Germany attacked and fought from west to east across Ukraine. The tide of war changed in 1943 with the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, and the Red Army then fought the Nazis in Ukraine moving westward.

One of Germany’s successes early on came in the Battle of the Azov Sea in 1941, when its troops advanced from Zaporizhzhia to Melitopol. Over the course of three weeks, Nazi forces covered this ground to move into position to attack Crimea and surround Red Army soldiers in the Kherson region.

Ukraine is now echoing that World War II offensive, fighting at sites southeast of Zaporizhzhia in what the Ukrainian military calls the “Melitopol direction.” The strategic goal is the same as it was eight decades ago — to isolate enemy soldiers in the Kherson region and threaten Crimea — but Ukrainian troops are moving far more slowly, having gained only a few miles in more than a month.

“Historical parallels, unfortunately or happily, keep coming to the surface,” said Vasily Pavlov, an adviser to Ukraine’s general headquarters who has closely studied the similarities of the two wars.

Strategically, he said, Ukraine’s generals most directly drew on World War II history in devising a defense of the capital, Kyiv, last year.

In the opening days of the war, the Russian army advanced from Belarus toward the floodplain of the Irpin River — only to find that the Ukrainians had blown up a dam and inundated a vast area of fields, blocking the advance. It was a reprisal of a Soviet trick in 1941, when Moscow blew up an Irpin River dam to block a German tank assault, Mr. Pavlov said.

“Generals always prepare to fight the last war,” he said. “But the Russian generals didn’t even prepare to fight the last war.”

German troops eventually captured Kyiv in 1941; the Russians fought for a month in the suburbs last spring and withdrew.

When the current war turned from Kyiv to the east, it similarly retraced the battles of the second world war. Then, as today, the looping course of the Siversky Donets River became a front line — with its high banks and swampy shores serving as natural barriers as rival armies fought over the cities and towns alongside them.

Flooded farmland near Kyiv in 2022. In the opening days of the war last year, the Ukrainians breached a dam and inundated a vast area of fields to block the Russian advance.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

A Ukrainian soldier atop an abandoned Russian tank in the Siversky Donets River, in 2022.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

In World War II, the river formed a portion of the so-called Mius Line, a defensive position the Nazis built to slow Soviet counterattacks after the Battle of Stalingrad.

In the current war, various cities and villages along the Siversky Donets have come into play. Ukrainian forces used the river’s high bluffs and flood plains, for example, to attempt a defense of the city of Lysychansk, ultimately unsuccessful, and to prevent a Russian crossing near the town of Bilohorivka.

Both wars left riverside towns and villages in ruins. The current fighting has also damaged with shrapnel pocks monuments erected to commemorate the World War II fighting.

The village of Staryi Saltiv in the Kharkiv region was touched by both wars, and was largely destroyed each time.

Lidiya Pechenizka, 92, who has lived in the village her entire life, recalled that in both conflicts the fighting was largely defined by the artillery shells flying over the river at enemy soldiers holing up in the village. For civilians, the experiences were similar: cowering in basements and root cellars.

“It was horrible,” Ms. Pechenizka said in an interview this spring.

With neither Russia nor Ukraine able to gain air superiority, the current fighting has hinged mostly on artillery and tanks, as the fighting did in World War II. Other than the addition of drones and sophisticated anti-tank missiles, the armies are fighting with similar weaponry.

Lidiya Pechenizka, 92, has lived in Staryi Saltiv her entire life. War has come to the village again.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

A bunker built on the main road in the small village of Staryi Saltiv, which is in the Kharkiv region.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

The Ukrainian counteroffensive south of the city of Zaporizhzhia is, Mr. Pavlov said, “a direct analogy” to the German offensive in September 1941. The objectives were similar: to move across the plains, cut supply lines to Russian troops on the eastern bank of the Dnipro and move into position to threaten the isthmus of the Crimean Peninsula.

But the parallels go only so far.

In World War II, the Red Army did not have time to fortify defensive lines on the plains; the Germans quickly advanced to the Azov Sea, surrounding tens of thousands of Soviet troops in a pocket to the north.

This time, the Russian have had months to dig in. As a result, Ukraine’s counteroffensive has stalled in the face of formidable fortifications of minefields, trenches and bunkers.

In other ways, too, the fighting is distinct. The Nazi and Soviet armies fought across Ukraine moving perpendicular to the north-to-south flow of the main rivers. Ukraine in the counteroffensive is mostly moving parallel to the rivers, providing at least one military advantage; it does not have to undertake many perilous water crossings.

In the winter of 1943-44, the Soviet Union lost waves of soldiers in an east-to-west crossing of the Dnipro River.

Kateryna Rotarenko, right, and two demining engineers search for human remains in the Kherson region. Ms. Rotarenko is a volunteer in the Ukrainian forces. Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Ms. Rotarenko examining a soldier’s uniform at the opening of a bunker at an abandoned military position in a forest.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

Some of the bodies were found decades later by a Ukrainian nongovernmental group, Memory and Glory, which searched for World War II dead from both sides to provide dignified burials. Since its founding in 2007, it says, the group has found more than 500 remains of soldiers who fought in World War II in Ukraine.

Last year, Memory and Glory members joined the Ukrainian Army to search battlefields for soldiers reported missing in action. It has found more than 200 bodies from the current war — often in the same sites where World War II dead were found, said Leonid Ignatiev, the director.

“When you dig into a trench” looking for bodies of soldiers recently killed, he said, “you find a trench from World War II.”

Near the town of Novy Kamenki, in the Kherson region, the group recently searched for a Ukrainian soldier who had gone missing in action. Instead, they found the bones of a German soldier, Mr. Ignatiev said. The remains were sent for burial in a cemetery for German war dead in Ukraine.

“The high ground, the places for defense, they are all the same,” Mr. Ignatiev said.

Zaporizhzhia, a sprawling industrial city on the shore of the disappearing Kakhovka Reservoir, was occupied by Nazi forces in World War II and is a frontline city today where air sirens wail multiple times a day and Russian missiles occasionally streak in and explode.

Ukrainian demining officers from the State Emergency Services of the Zaporizhzhia Region search for World War II-era mines, grenades and other ordinance in the Dnipro River.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

A World War II-era grenade in the Dnipro River was revealed when the waters receded after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times

But when the water receded from the city’s lakefront embankment after the dam burst, it was unexploded munitions from the past that posed the gravest danger. Ukraine’s emergency services said the sandbars and new islands emerging from the reservoir “turned out to be surprisingly cluttered with explosive objects from World War II.”

Demining crews have found and removed World War II aviation bombs, the service said.

Mr. Shkalikov, the tank driver, whose home is a short walk from the shore, fought in the opening days of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in fields to the southeast of the city.

After his tank hit a mine, he was given leave from his unit, returned home and began exploring the dry lake bed. Finding the swastika emerging from the water, he said, “didn’t surprise me at all.”

The wars are separated by decades, but “the landscape hasn’t changed,” he said.

Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

Andrew E. Kramer is the Times bureau chief in Kyiv. He was part of a team that won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for a series on Russia’s covert projection of power. More about Andrew E. Kramer

The New York Times · by Andrew E. Kramer · July 18, 2023

7. Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’

Air superiority is key to successful warfighting?

Photos and graphics at the links.

Ukraine Adopts Slow Approach to Counteroffensive: ‘Our Problem Everywhere Is the Sky’

Swift loss of several tanks and infantry fighting vehicles has jolted Ukraine and its Western backers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-adopts-slow-approach-to-counteroffensive-our-problem-everywhere-is-the-sky-a2e51d7a?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By James Marson | Photographs by Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal

Updated July 18, 2023 12:00 am ET

ORIKHIV, Ukraine—Six weeks into Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Capt. Anatoliy Kharchenko and his reconnaissance company were supposed to be wreaking havoc miles behind Russian defensive lines pierced by Western-supplied armored vehicles.

Instead, after many of the vehicles got bogged down in minefields, Kharchenko and his men are training how to advance methodically on foot, moving from one line of trees to another, faced with the prospect of taking back their country one field at a time.

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Kharchenko said. “Victory isn’t just important, but it’s the only option, otherwise we’ll all be dead.”

Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched at the start of June, is aimed at retaking some of the nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory occupied by Moscow. The West provided dozens of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles and trained thousands of Ukrainian troops for the campaign.

The swift loss of several tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, many of them immobilized by mines or missiles launched from attack helicopters, jolted Ukraine and its Western backers. Ukraine hasn’t achieved a decisive breakthrough, although it has seized several villages. 

Kyiv’s political and military leadership has complained that slow and insufficient deliveries of Western weaponry left it no choice but to assault Russian lines without adequate air defenses, leaving troops and vehicles vulnerable.

Members of a Ukrainian drone unit check reconnaissance videos.

A member of a drone unit inflates a parachute before folding it for a new mission near Bakhmut.

The Ukrainians are adapting and seeking to press forward in the south as well as around the eastern city of Bakhmut, Russia’s only significant gain in its winter-and-spring offensive. Advancing slowly and meticulously to preserve Western armor, the central aim remains reaching the Sea of Azov, cutting off Crimea and squeezing Russian forces out of the southern Kherson region.

Most of the Ukrainian brigades trained and equipped by the West remain in reserve, waiting to strike. Officers are seeking to preserve precious Western equipment, from tanks to shoulder-fired Stingers, while still pushing forward.

“We are probing with our fingers and working out where to direct our fist,” said Kharchenko.

The stocky former paratrooper and his company of some 100 men had been prepared to push through any gap created in Russian lines and dash south.

Why Ukraine Is Struggling to Puncture Russia’s Formidable Defenses

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The recent turmoil in Russia could provide an opportunity for Ukraine’s battlefield forces. WSJ reporter Ian Lovett and retired Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmitt break down what might be next for the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Photo Illustration: Jeremy Shuback/WSJ

But the gap never appeared. On the third day of the counteroffensive, he drove to Mala Tokmachka to the southeast of Orikhiv to check out the route they were supposed to take. As artillery shells crashed around him, he began to withdraw when he saw a Ukrainian vehicle blown up and body parts of Ukrainian soldiers strewn over the road. He and his teammates dismounted to recover what they could.

Now, the task is even more daunting. After the destruction of the Kakhovka dam flooded the Dnipro River at the start of June, Russia moved some units that had been guarding the river’s eastern bank to bolster forces to the south of Orikhiv. They quickly dug in, expanding the lines of defense and reinforcing the edges of towns and roads.

Kharchenko and his men are training for a more gradual advance over the flat land of the south, where neat villages are dotted among open fields of sunflowers and wheat. They are using U.S.-made Bangalore torpedoes, metal poles with explosive charges, which they hope will help them clear mines and booby traps from lines of trees along the edges of fields so that they can advance and dig in.

Russian fortifications in Ukraine

Areas under Russian control

Russian fortifications

UKRAINE

Bakhmut

Dnipro

Donetsk

Zaporizhzhia

Mariupol

Melitopol

Kherson

RUSSIA

Sea of Azov

Area of

detail

CRIMEA

Black Sea

100 miles

Sevastopol

100 km

Note: Data as of July 16

Source: Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project (Russian-controlled areas, advances); Brady Africk, American Enterprise Institute (Russian fortifications)

Jake Steinberg/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

One of his men questioned why they would seek to advance on foot given that the West provided armor for protection.

Kharchenko said they don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Russians in the early days of the invasion, when Ukraine chewed up column after column of Russian armored vehicles. 

Ukraine has been targeting ammunition stores and command posts with Himars rocket artillery and long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The Storm Shadows can strike farther but are expensive and in shorter supply, while the U.S. has so far declined to provide longer-range ATACMS missiles that can be launched from Himars.

So Ukraine has resorted to using Himars in a more daring fashion in recent weeks, moving them as close as a few miles from the front line to strike deeper into occupied territory and push Russia’s ammunition dumps and command posts farther back.

Cluster munitions provided by the U.S. could help blast holes in minefields and Russian defensive networks including trenches and antitank obstacles called dragon’s teeth.

Russia remains vulnerable because its troops are generally less well prepared and supplied by a weak logistics chain that depends heavily on railways. With Ukraine pushing in several places, Russia doesn’t know where to deploy its reserves and may struggle to react quickly if Ukrainian forces do break through.

Ukraine has been advancing fastest around the small eastern city of Bakhmut, which Russia seized in late May after months of brutal fighting that cost it several thousand fighters.

The Russians barely had time to lay mines after capturing Bakhmut after months of house-to-house fighting.

A school damaged by bombing in Orikhiv.

Ukraine counterattacked and is now pushing Russian forces back on the northern and southern edges of the city. In the south, Ukrainian forces have crossed a canal and are pushing past the town of Klishchiivka, while in the north they are fighting toward a major highway.

As in the south, Russian air superiority is a major obstacle. Russian Ka-52 helicopters hover at a distance of around 5 miles, outside the range of Stinger missiles, and fire laser-guided missiles at Ukrainian targets.

The West blundered by giving tanks and armored vehicles but insufficient means, such as jet fighters or air-defense systems, to protect them from attack, said Yuriy Ulshyn, a 49-year-old commander near Bakhmut, better known as “Grek,” or “Greek.”

“It’s like giving a bike without pedals,” said Grek. “Thanks a lot for the bike, but…”

Grek, a former geologist, commands a unit of some 40 volunteers whom he stations in gaps between larger formations, gluing them together at potential weak points.

His men on a hillside 3 miles from the edge of Bakhmut are armed with a Stinger and a Soviet-era PKM machine gun, looking out for Russian jets, helicopters and aerial drones.

Ukraine’s Bakhmut Push

Ukraine is retaking territory to the north and south of the Russian-occupied city, but is taking losses.

Soledar

Area of detail

UKRAINE

UKRAINE

M03

Berkhivka

AREA HELD BY RUSSIA

UKRAINIAN

COUNTERATTACKS

Bakhmut

Klishchiivka

Zaitseve

2 miles

2 km

Note: Areas of control as of July 16

Sources: Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project; staff reports

Camille Bressange/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Russian Orlan surveillance drones are a constant menace, spotting targets and calling in artillery fire. 

On cloudy days, if the craft swoops low enough, they fire bursts from the PKM, hoping to down it. If the sky is clear, the Russians can watch idly from above the PKM’s range, because Grek’s team is preserving precious Stinger missiles for a more dangerous target like a helicopter or war plane.

 “Our problem everywhere is the sky,” said Grek. “When the enemy can see the whole battlefield, what can you do? You need so much of everything. When he can’t see it, he’s in the dark, and you don’t need as much.”

The lack of equipment weighs on Grek. A tow rope snapped as he was trying to drag a damaged car away from the front line. Immobilized vehicles, even those in Russian range, are quickly stripped for useful parts. He worries about dying not in the heat of battle, but from his lack of an armored car.

“I don’t want to die behind the wheel,” Grek said.

An anti-air system is hidden among trees near Bahkmut. A Ukrainian soldier searches the sky for Russian helicopters. The Greek holds a gun in a trench. A Ukrainian serviceman smokes a cigarette.

He and his men are finding creative solutions.

They scrambled to the top of a slag heap one recent night to mount a camera connected to a Starlink internet terminal powered by a generator. The camera provides a feed that can help them spot Russian aircraft at a distance.

They make their own attack drones in a garage in a nearby town, equipped with enough explosives to take out an armored vehicle when they slam into them. Their latest innovation, as yet untested in battle, is a remote-controlled machine gun attached to the base of an electric wheelchair.

In the south, meanwhile, the flooded Dnipro River has created opportunities by washing away some Russian defenses. 

Ukrainian special forces have crossed the river and are trying to expand a bridgehead opposite the southern capital of Kherson. Other troops have been training in river crossings, including Kharchenko’s men, who used sports inflatables provided by a charity fund.

Ukraine still holds a morale advantage from fighting for its own territory, Kharchenko said. It may take longer and cost more lives, but “there is no other plan,” he said. “It’s our land. We have to do it.”

Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com

8. Ukraine aims to sap Russia’s defenses, as U.S. urges a decisive breakthrough

We should be cautious in our cheerleading. Yes, we are expending a lot of treasure but the Ukrainians are expending all the blood.

If we have been training the Ukrainian forces on large scale offensive tactics we should realize that the tactics normally includes the assumption of air superiority. Are we teaching the Ukrainians tactics that they cannot fully employ if they cannot gain and maintain air superiority?

Ukraine aims to sap Russia’s defenses, as U.S. urges a decisive breakthrough

Ukrainian commanders have yet to use the large-scale offensive tactics they have been trained on, as Kyiv says it needs more weapons to fight the war Washington wants

By Missy Ryan, Isabelle Khurshudyan and Michael Birnbaum

July 18, 2023 at 2:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Missy Ryan · July 18, 2023

Ukraine is making limited advances in its counteroffensive against Russian forces but has yet to employ the kind of larger-scale operations that American officials believe could enable a breakthrough, officials and analysts say, deepening questions among some of Ukraine’s chief backers about whether Kyiv can move fast enough to match a finite supply of munitions and arms.

Five weeks into the highly anticipated operation, Ukrainian forces are attempting to weaken Russian defenses by firing fusillades of artillery and missiles and sending small teams of sappers into the sprawling minefields that constitute their adversary’s outermost ring of defense. But the pace of progress, in three main areas along a vast 600-mile front line, has generated concerns in the West that the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky may not deliver as powerful a blow as it could.

A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share the American assessment of the operation, said the United States and other nations had trained Ukrainian troops on integrated offensive maneuvers and provided mine-clearing equipment including rollers and rocket-fired charges.

“Applying all those capabilities in a way that enables them to breach those obstacles, but do it quickly, is paramount,” the official said. At the same time, the official added, as Ukrainian forces face intense attacks from antitank munitions and armed Russian drones: “We don’t underestimate or under-appreciate that it’s a very tough situation.”

Underlying the evolving assessments of the operation, which Kyiv launched in early June after months of preparation, is a debate about the tactics that can best enable Ukraine to penetrate highly fortified Russian lines and recapture sufficient territory to potentially nudge President Vladimir Putin toward abandoning his goal of cementing permanent control over vast swaths of Ukraine.

Western officials and analysts say Ukraine’s military has so far embraced an attrition-based approach aimed largely at creating vulnerabilities in Russian lines by firing artillery and missiles at command, transport and logistics sites at the rear of the Russian position, instead of conducting what Western military officials call “combined arms” operations that involve coordinated maneuvers by large groups of tanks, armored vehicles, infantry, artillery and, sometimes, air power.

Ukraine’s military leaders argue that, lacking aviation might, they must avoid unnecessary losses against an adversary with a far larger pool of recruits and weaponry. To preserve manpower, Ukraine has fielded just four of a dozen trained brigades in the current campaign.

“We cannot use meat-grinder tactics as the Russians do,” Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister, said in an interview. “For us, the most precious thing is the lives and health of our soldiers. That is why our task is to achieve success at the front while protecting lives.”

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that tracks daily battlefield developments, calculates that Ukraine has liberated some 250 square kilometers since the beginning of the offensive, far short of Western hopes and, as Zelensky acknowledged, slower than Ukrainian leaders had wished.

Expectations are high: a Ukrainian counteroffensive last fall yielded shocking gains against unprepared and undermotivated Russian troops, including the recapture of strategic areas in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

Military analysts say there are important differences this time that come down in Moscow’s favor. Unlike last fall, when Kremlin leaders appeared to doubt Ukraine’s ability to punch back, Russian forces have had months to plant mines, dig trenches and position anti-armor and drone units that have slowed Ukraine’s advance. And unlike in Ukraine’s recapture of the port city of Kherson, where Moscow struggled to resupply and defend positions across the Dnieper River, Russian forces along the front line have no major obstacles at their back.

While Russia’s military is showing signs of strain, including the dismissal of one senior commander, the reported death of another in a Ukrainian strike and the withdrawal of mercenary Wagner forces, it has shown itself to be a formidable adversary. Moscow has been able to ship fresh troops to the front lines, powered in part by Putin accelerating mobilization at home.

Another important feature of Moscow’s defenses are the omnipresent drones that provide Russian forces granular, real-time information about Ukrainian troops’ whereabouts, enabling them to conduct kamikaze attacks or tee up targeted strikes, a challenge that not even American forces — for all their combat experience in recent decades — have faced on this scale.

Analysts say that Ukrainian attempts to breach Russian defenses with armored units early in the offensive were met with overwhelming artillery, antitank missiles, loitering munitions and helicopter fire, generating significant losses. Ukrainian officials say Russia is especially quick to fire on armored vehicles and anti-mine equipment such as the Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC) when they press forward.

As a result, Ukrainian commanders have embraced more low-profile advances involving groups of 15 to 50 people on foot, said Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. Some are sappers who advance on their bellies to find and disable enemy mines. Other infantry teams lie in wait with surface-to-air missiles to take down Russian helicopters.

Rob Lee, a former Marine infantry officer now at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Ukraine’s tactics could minimize losses — but they come with trade-offs.

“Advancing on foot will likely reduce the attrition they sustain,” he said. “But it means the advances will be slower and have less opportunity to achieve a rapid breakthrough.”

Ukraine got a boost this month when President Biden authorized the provision of U.S. cluster munitions to Ukraine, unlocking an arsenal of controversial artillery ammunition that has the potential to tide Ukraine over until Western nations can produce more standard shells.

Analysts say that another impediment to mounting larger-scale operations is the limited training that Ukrainian troops received over the winter on those combined-arms tactics, something that American forces rehearse at a specialized training center year after year.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to comment extensively on Ukraine’s tactics because they don’t want to be perceived as criticizing a close partner at a time of existential threat.

Lt. Gen. Douglas A. Sims, a senior official on the U.S. military’s Joint Staff, noted that Ukrainian troops were being asked to employ new equipment and tactics “all while being shot at and bombed” as they attempt to traverse a massive minefield. He noted that it took months before breakthroughs occurred in other major historical battles.

“And so where they are gaining hundreds of meters a day, maybe a kilometer a day in some places, they’re doing that at great cost in terms of effort,” he told reporters last week. “This is hard warfare; it’s in really tough terrain; it’s under fire, and really, when you consider all of that, it’s pretty remarkable,” he said.

But as the campaign continues without large-scale gains, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military officer, is making urgent appeals for donations of Western air power to offset Ukraine’s disadvantages.

While the Biden administration has not agreed to directly provide the F-16 fighter jets that Ukraine wants, the White House relented in permitting other countries to transfer their own U.S.-origin planes to Ukraine. A European-led training effort is expected to get underway next month.

Ukrainian officials have pointed out that Western militaries would never attempt a massive operation — which he said was the most intense since World War II — without air support.

“So, to say that it is slow or too fast is at least ridiculous to hear from those who have no idea what it is,” Zaluzhny said in an interview. “They do not know what it is. And God forbid they should ever experience it.”

American officials privately say that Western jets would have little utility in the current fight because of Russia’s extensive air defenses.

“It’s just a matter of continuing to apply pressure in a combined-arms approach,” the U.S. official said.

U.S. officials say they expect Ukraine to eventually push though minefields and close in on Russia’s main defensive lines. But Ukrainian forces “have to be careful and calculating here about using all your artillery when they’re still sorting through minefields,” said a second U.S. official, who like other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. “Because you’re going to need that artillery down the road.”

Zelensky’s government has pointed out that the pace of the assault and the timing of its launch in June — after months of officials preparing the “spring” offensive — was partly a function of the gradual supply of Western arms, which have often come only after months of bargaining and logistical delays.

“It’s very much in the hands of the West how far [Ukrainians] advance,” a senior NATO defense official said of Ukraine’s forward movement. “The West is doing all the right things, just six months late.”

Ukrainian officials continue to push for longer-range missiles, something that analysts agree could help diminish Russia’s ability to maintain forward positions. Russia responded with outrage on Monday to the second major attack on the Kerch Bridge, a major supply route connecting Russia to Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which Putin annexed illegally in 2014.

While France announced last week it would provide longer-range SCALP missiles to Ukraine, following a similar decision by Britain to send Storm Shadows, the Biden administration has so far denied Ukrainian requests for the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which has a range of 190 miles, due to concerns about U.S. reserves and the potential for escalation with Russia.

A second NATO official said that “intangibles” — including morale and motivation — still favor Ukraine. “But it is reality that Russia does have more resources broadly speaking, and has more people, and that’s why it’s so urgent,” the official added, to have “an eye toward pressing and constantly maintain that momentum.”

Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv.

The Washington Post · by Missy Ryan · July 18, 2023

9. NATO Can Help Create a Global Security Architecture

A bold proposal.

Excerpts:

Finally, the United States could initiate a process to appoint an Indo-Pacific coordinator at NATO or a Pacific-Atlantic coordinator in Washington—perhaps someone who understands all three regions and deterrence. It would also be prudent to coordinate NATO-AP4 meetings with other minilateral groupings—such as the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security partnership and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—to prevent duplicating initiatives while working closely with the Indo-Pacific point persons in each capital.

North American, European, and Indo-Pacific allies and partners should practice readiness together and build habits of tri-regional cooperation sooner than later. But there certainly are road bumps for this vision of the way forward. Undoubtedly, budget, resources, and consensus would be among the top hurdles in devising and coordinating action plans or practicing joint drills. More fundamentally, the AP4 is not a formal grouping on its own, and NATO so far cooperates only bilaterally with those countries. The AP4 countries have not yet aligned on a common agenda as a group, and the Japan-South Korea relationship is bumpy. For these reasons, it would be understandable if some NATO members are still hesitant about the alliance formalizing initiatives with the AP4.

Despite all these challenges, practical first steps should still be taken. The stakes are too high to wait until after a conflict or crisis occurs in the Indo-Pacific.

ARGUMENT

An expert's point of view on a current event.

NATO Can Help Create a Global Security Architecture

Washington’s Asia-Pacific partners are a building block for a stronger order.

By Duyeon Kim, a Seoul-based adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security and a columnist with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Foreign Policy · by Duyeon Kim · July 17, 2023

NATO’s annual summit last week in Vilnius, Lithuania, was significant beyond discussions about Russia, Ukraine’s membership, and NATO’s future. The leaders from NATO’s four Asia-Pacific partners (loosely called the “Asia-Pacific Four” or “AP4”)—South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand—also participated in their second consecutive NATO summit.

NATO’s annual summit last week in Vilnius, Lithuania, was significant beyond discussions about Russia, Ukraine’s membership, and NATO’s future. The leaders from NATO’s four Asia-Pacific partners (loosely called the “Asia-Pacific Four” or “AP4”)—South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand—also participated in their second consecutive NATO summit.

Their attendance followed last year’s meeting in Madrid, during which NATO adopted its new Strategic Concept (the first since 2010), including China for the first time. It called Beijing a “systemic challenge” to Euro-Atlantic security, in tandem with the Madrid declaration, which described China as a systemic competitor. This year’s Vilnius communique stated that NATO is taking steps to protect against China’s “coercive tactics” and called on Beijing to play a “constructive role” as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council in Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine—something that Beijing has shown little sign of doing so far.

The time is ripe for the NATO-AP4 partnership to become a critical linchpin for global security and stability. It is a critical link that connects three regions: North America, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. Last year, there was enough political impetus to lay the foundation at the Madrid summit with a consensus that security is global and inseparable.

Capitalizing on the NATO-AP4 partnership could send a strong deterrence message to all three authoritarian regimes in possession of nuclear weapons—China, North Korea, and Russia. It can be a linchpin that not only brings the three regions together on shared challenges but knits together the United States’ patchwork of different regional security systems into a global security architecture of networked alliances and partnerships.

The NATO-AP4 partnership is an underappreciated entity whose history dates back to the early 1990s, first with Japan, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Until recently, NATO’s conception of “Asia” was primarily Central Asia as well as its cooperative missions in Afghanistan with both Central Asian and some Asia-Pacific countries after the 9/11 attacks. The four AP4 countries are officially “partners across the globe” of NATO and have begun to transition into the alliance’s new Individually Tailored Partnership Program. NATO is rightfully strengthening bilateral relations with individual countries in the Indo-Pacific. But it should also focus on multilateral cooperation with them.

The United States has long maintained a multilateral security system in Europe and a series of bilateral alliances (“hub and spokes”) in Asia that have largely been dealt with separately. But the evolving global security landscape in which a crisis in Europe affects the Indo-Pacific, and vice versa, requires a comprehensive and integrated approach. Russia’s war on Ukraine has resulted in inflation, food shortages, and disruptions in global supply chains while likely emboldening and providing tips for Beijing’s and Pyongyang’s own strategic calculations.

NATO for its part would be able to broaden its political-military network and contribute to Indo-Pacific security in practical ways, and its AP4 partners would become members of a global security community of like-minded countries that support one another across multiple domains. In these ways, NATO could also become the first forum in which hard security issues are discussed at a global level.

To be clear, NATO’s priority and top preoccupation will likely always be Russia and defending the North Atlantic region against all threats. It is unlikely to expand into a global alliance that commits to defending Asian countries militarily or get involved in a conflict militarily (unless perhaps North Korea or China struck the U.S. homeland). But with NATO’s recent recognition of the threat from Beijing and Pyongyang, there are opportunities for it to do far more than just dialoguing with Indo-Pacific countries for cultural education or putting forward rhetoric about a united front, important as those goals also are.

Since the 2022 Madrid summit, NATO and its AP4 partners have ramped up high-level political discussions and amplified rhetoric about solidarity to defend the rules-based international order. During his visit to Tokyo this January, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stressed: “What is happening in Europe today could happen in East Asia tomorrow. So we must remain united and firm.” He expressed interest in opening up NATO’s first liaison office in Asia in Tokyo (although France has expressed objection). The Vilnius communique reportedly omitted language about such plans in the final round of talks.

All of these movements and aspirations are headed in the right direction. But more can and should be done to translate talk into practical action that conforms to the framework of NATO’s priorities, outlined in its 2022 Strategic Concept, while staying true to the alliance’s statutes.

First, NATO should host regular Track 1 and Track 1.5 dialogues on deterrence and other key security topics to deepen all three regions’ respective situational awareness about one another’s immediate security threats, experiences, and deterrence targets as well as their understanding of different regional contexts. Deterrence should feature prominently on their agenda because it is one of NATO’s core tasks and each region faces adversaries whose incentives to use nuclear weapons could originate from non-nuclear domains, while advanced weapons risk blurring the line between nuclear and conventional capabilities.

Decision-making during a crisis has become more difficult, and the chances of miscalculation have increased, particularly amid great-power competition in a multipolar nuclear era. In the conventional military domain, questions continue to loom as to whether China might one day invade or blockade Taiwan.

East Asian countries could draw on relevant experiences from NATO, including deterrence measures, practices, and consultative mechanisms to strengthen U.S. extended deterrence in Asia—particularly the reassurance component of Washington’s defense commitment to its Asian allies. A common understanding of the security lexicon is also necessary because basic terms such as nuclear-sharing and arms control have been used in some Northeast Asian countries with varying definitions and different perceptions of them.

The three regions should devise and practice joint plans for crisis response and management that expand and deepen the existing political dialogues held between the North Atlantic Council and NATO’s AP4. A coordinated response among NATO, the AP4, and the European Union that is aligned with United States across multiple domains (military and nonmilitary) is important in dealing with threats from Beijing—or any potential crisis in Asia. Political, policy, and military officials should be involved in drawing up and implementing these plans.

At the very least, political and military officials from the three regions could conduct tabletop exercises together on scenarios—including a crisis in Taiwan, on the Korean Peninsula, or in the South China Sea—that result from a failure in deterrence. Practicing these scenarios is important to minimize disarray when a crisis happens and to prevent adversaries from driving wedges among the allies. Having a basic plan would also manage expectations and provide predictability and a supportive role for member states in NATO (and the EU) in crisis response scenarios.

For example, some NATO or EU member states, including Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, have recently been deploying naval and other military assets to the Indo-Pacific to symbolize solidarity in defending a rules-based international order. What happens if a crisis occurs while any one of them is there for a routine drill? What would these ships and aircraft do? Some European lawmakers recently told me that those military assets would “run back home.” That might be the politically and legally realistic reaction. But while NATO members would not engage militarily in a response outside the Euro-Atlantic region, the mission and message of solidarity would instantly crumble and hand adversaries an opportunity to divide them.

Therefore, like-minded allies and partners need to discuss at least a basic conception of their supporting roles, bearing in mind that there could be numerous possibilities for a crisis scenario. NATO could assist in economic and political ways or even provide military support in similar forms that some AP4 countries have to Ukraine. After all, the Indo-Pacific countries that have supported Ukraine expect Europe to do the same if a crisis happens in Asia.

U.S. allies and partners from all three regions could also deepen joint and combined military exercises in the Indo-Pacific region. These could be stand-alone drills or held on the sidelines of existing multinational military exercises, such as those hosted by Australia (Talisman Sabre). Such drills could be conducted using carefully imagined hypothetical scenarios and targets to minimize misperceptions by Beijing, Pyongyang, and Moscow, but the skills that are practiced would be transferrable to a real-life situation if and when warranted.

Finally, the United States could initiate a process to appoint an Indo-Pacific coordinator at NATO or a Pacific-Atlantic coordinator in Washington—perhaps someone who understands all three regions and deterrence. It would also be prudent to coordinate NATO-AP4 meetings with other minilateral groupings—such as the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) security partnership and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—to prevent duplicating initiatives while working closely with the Indo-Pacific point persons in each capital.

North American, European, and Indo-Pacific allies and partners should practice readiness together and build habits of tri-regional cooperation sooner than later. But there certainly are road bumps for this vision of the way forward. Undoubtedly, budget, resources, and consensus would be among the top hurdles in devising and coordinating action plans or practicing joint drills. More fundamentally, the AP4 is not a formal grouping on its own, and NATO so far cooperates only bilaterally with those countries. The AP4 countries have not yet aligned on a common agenda as a group, and the Japan-South Korea relationship is bumpy. For these reasons, it would be understandable if some NATO members are still hesitant about the alliance formalizing initiatives with the AP4.

Despite all these challenges, practical first steps should still be taken. The stakes are too high to wait until after a conflict or crisis occurs in the Indo-Pacific.

Foreign Policy · by Duyeon Kim · July 17, 2023

10. Maintaining the U.S. Defense Sector’s Competitive Edge

Conclusion:

It has been decades since the United States faced a serious peer competitor, and we need to broaden and strengthen the industrial contributors to the Department of Defense to meet that competition. It is time to better leverage midsized enterprises across the defense industrial base and throughout the acquisition process. While the United States cannot and should not try to duplicate the centralized structures of its peer competitors, it can employ a whole-of-nation strategy that leverages the full range of our commercial sector. To be successful, both the Defense Department and Congress must identify, utilize, and advance every tool and resource in the U.S. defense industrial base to ensure the nation is postured to deter, preferably, and win, if necessary, any conflict with a peer adversary. More importantly, the United States needs to transition from a Cold War–era industrial system to a broader, more dynamic future industrial network that taps into the innovation and production capacities across the U.S. private sector and fully employs the strengths of our free enterprise system.

Maintaining the U.S. Defense Sector’s Competitive Edge - War on the Rocks

KURT SCHERER AND FATIH OZMEN

warontherocks.com · by Kurt Scherer · July 18, 2023

American power and prosperity are destined to decline unless Washington can reverse the decline of U.S. manufacturing capacity and the toxic effects of decades of defense consolidation. In 2022, the Defense Department assessed that it was “increasingly reliant on a small number of contractors for critical defense capabilities” and that current policies and investments were not supportive of a defense ecosystem built for peer conflict. While there is no doubt the United States remains the world’s leading technology innovator, the Pentagon struggles to compete with China’s ability to produce new military capabilities at scale. America’s military edge requires a defense ecosystem and future industrial base that can identify, innovate, develop, and produce at scale new technologies able to change the face of modern warfare. Without competitive options and a resilient production capacity, the U.S. industrial network will lag China’s military-civil fusion, making it more difficult to deter conflict.

Three actions can help correct the current defense sector imbalance and equip the Department of Defense with an industrial ecosystem that can rapidly access and adopt new technologies. First, the Pentagon should diversify the industrial base by incentivizing midsized enterprises to play a critical role in providing innovation, options, speed, value, and competition. Second, the government should create incentives for companies to serve as “innovation translators,” facilitating the scalability of demonstrated commercial prototypes to numbers that can be useful for the U.S. military. Third, the Pentagon should avoid investments in technology already being developed faster and more effectively in the private sector.

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The United States had 51 defense prime contractors in the early 1990s, compared to the five it has today. Moreover, even as defense contracting dollars increased over the past five years, the number of defense sector companies seeking those contracts shrank by 17,000 over the same period. However, this imbalance can be reversed. Midsized enterprises, specifically those between $1 billion and $5 billion in annual revenue, represent an important yet underutilized element of the U.S. defense ecosystem. By taking the following actions, the Defense Department would be better positioned to leverage innovation more rapidly and at scale.

Recognize and Amplify

The Pentagon does not recognize midsized enterprises as a distinct asset class providing distinct capabilities. As a result, there is little advocacy for them. Meanwhile, midsized enterprises play vital roles in the defense ecosystem, particularly as integrators and suppliers of key components for major defense systems. Creating a robust program to increase the focus on identifying and supporting commercial technology in these midsized companies could result in more rapidly meeting operational requirements, catalyze access to innovation, and diversify potential supply to the Pentagon. Diversification provides three advantages. The first is speed. For example, having multiple producers of solid-rocket motors would allow the various missile systems that rely on such motors to be produced simultaneously, rather having them all languish in a queue on the same production line. Dependence on one source leads to diminishing returns, even if additional resources are applied. The second advantage is resiliency. Multiple sources of supply reduce operational and supply chain risk that could be created through location-specific disruptions or attacks, raw material dependency, and costs incurred through distance. The third advantage is readiness. Multiple sources create the ability to provide a greater number of options if they are suddenly needed. In a future national emergency, the U.S. government will need and should have a ready-made plan of action to look beyond existing players to create needed outcomes requiring speed, resiliency, and readiness.

In addition, enhancing awareness and engagement with midsized companies will increase the number of business leaders who understand how to work with the Defense Department. The current level of consolidation to date has created fewer corporate leaders who understand the intricacies of doing business with the Pentagon. The challenge of working with the U.S. military, which includes implementing required security and compliance processes and waiting on contracting timelines, has been an impediment for companies that might otherwise have an interest in pursuing defense work, even if their technologies could be considered dual-use.

The Pentagon should strive to amplify companies that fit in this “no man’s land.” A place to start would be identifying midsized suppliers or potential suppliers in the five “critical focus areas” (casting and forgings, missiles and munitions, energy storage and batteries, strategic and critical minerals, and microelectronics) highlighted in the Department of Defense’s competition report as components for which the Pentagon is reliant on limited and vulnerable domestic supply chains. Agile and innovative midsized enterprises can build resiliency in these five areas by serving as additional supply sources or providing a domestic alternative for a capability that the Pentagon is reliant on importing, such as batteries.

Innovation Translators

The Department of Defense has improved its ability to work with small technology developers, particularly through its Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer programs and Other Transaction Agreements. Those programs help small businesses navigate the acquisition process and provide funding for early-stage technology development — addressing at least one of the obstacles of incentivizing the private sector to invest in research and development. While the Pentagon has improved its access to innovation, small business funding effectively ends when the prototype is ready to be produced at scale. Middle- and late-stage technology development and production are far more resource-intensive than prototyping and primarily rely on the Pentagon’s cumbersome and lengthy budgeting processes.

This is also where Congress can play a role to incentivize rebalancing the defense industry, specifically creating and funding “innovation translators” for the Department of Defense. The model should be shaped to clearly define the role between “innovators” and “technology owners” and the handover between these groups. This technology transition role could be filled by larger primes and supported by midsized enterprises. Congress should consider legislation that incentivizes large prime and midsized companies to establish technology transition functions that operationalize the technology on behalf of the government. Such additional measures can build on the existing Defense Department Mentor-Protégé Program, whose eligibility requirements are far too narrow to have an impact across the defense ecosystem. While helpful for those involved, only about 200 small businesses have benefitted from the program over the past five years.

The model could entail the Pentagon’s identification of a particular technology or technology area where a start-up or small business is ready to bring commercial market products to the Pentagon (e.g., AI, robotics, cybersecurity capabilities, etc.). The Defense Department would engage either a major prime or midsized enterprise to act as the technology transfer agent. The innovator who developed and owns the technology would then license their product to the technology transition agent (prime or midsized enterprise) and also receive a financial share of future profits. In return, Congress could authorize the Pentagon to provide either the prime or midsized enterprise with an “approval” that would provide access to distinct types of contracts set aside for business entities engaged in technology transfer. Such an incentivization would be similar to existing contracts that are set aside for veteran- or minority-owned small businesses. There are other efforts complementing these recommendations such as the Defense Innovation Unit’s concept paper on how the Defense Department could become a “fast follower” for the operationalization of commercial dual-use innovation. “For commercial technologies that [the Defense Department] does not invent, [it] must become a ‘Fast Follower’ to gain rapid access to these technologies to maintain at least technological parity with adversaries.”

Congress should incentivize a new model of industry engagement with the Pentagon that establishes incentives for midsized enterprises and major primes to rapidly deliver the cutting-edge technological capability needed to meet growing challenges across the globe.

Clarification Needed

The Pentagon’s research and development budget of $144 billion this year is the largest in history, but it is not necessarily a sign of success. For decades, the Defense Department was a leader in technological innovation, with classified programs several years ahead of what the U.S. commercial sector could produce. Over the last decades, that dynamic has flipped, with the U.S. commercial sector increasingly leading the discovery and development of technology on which the Pentagon is dependent. Given this reality, the department needs to recognize that it doesn’t need to invest in large amounts of redundant capital investment. As Former Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord told the Building the Base podcast, “All of our systems and processes focus on the government developing [new technologies]. We have major primes who have set up organizations to be very efficient and effective in that type of system, however, it doesn’t fit where we are today.”

The Pentagon should continue to undertake a comparative analysis to determine where the private sector is doing things more efficiently or effectively. Second, the department should be selective about where it takes the lead, and therefore invests its time, effort, and resources. The Pentagon needs to be a good integrator, not a replicator. To these points, the Office of Strategic Capital is a promising new initiative that seems to align with this approach in several ways and should be a good start along this path.

As the Department of Defense curtails its redundant technology development role, a greater number of midsized companies can serve in a “first level” integration role and effectively create a bridge between small business solutions and department needs. Given their understanding of the innovation process, business solutions, and commercial efficiency, midsized companies can integrate the right subset of solutions and serve as the intermediary of the small businesses for the Pentagon. This delineation would be similar to NASA’s determination that it was more efficient to partner with industry on commercial and crew cargo programs, while the agency focused its technology development efforts on exquisite one-of-a-kind capabilities for which the government is the sole customer.

Conclusion

It has been decades since the United States faced a serious peer competitor, and we need to broaden and strengthen the industrial contributors to the Department of Defense to meet that competition. It is time to better leverage midsized enterprises across the defense industrial base and throughout the acquisition process. While the United States cannot and should not try to duplicate the centralized structures of its peer competitors, it can employ a whole-of-nation strategy that leverages the full range of our commercial sector. To be successful, both the Defense Department and Congress must identify, utilize, and advance every tool and resource in the U.S. defense industrial base to ensure the nation is postured to deter, preferably, and win, if necessary, any conflict with a peer adversary. More importantly, the United States needs to transition from a Cold War–era industrial system to a broader, more dynamic future industrial network that taps into the innovation and production capacities across the U.S. private sector and fully employs the strengths of our free enterprise system.

Become a Member

Kurt Scherer serves as a managing partner for C5 Capital, a specialist venture capital firm focused on providing mission-driven capital for the right leaders and technologies to preserve our way of life.

Fatih Ozmen is the chief executive officer of the Sierra Nevada Corporation, a global leader in aerospace and national security.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Kurt Scherer · July 18, 2023

11. The West Cannot Cure Russia’s Nuclear Fever

Excerpts:

Short of curing the fever, the United States and Europe can still take steps to lower the temperature. Considering Karaganov’s confidence that non-Western states would eventually forgive Russia for using nuclear weapons, the United States should continue to press Beijing, New Delhi, and other capitals to reinforce the nuclear taboo in their dealings with Moscow. It is welcome that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, while in Moscow in March, reportedly warned Putin personally against nuclear use. NATO, meanwhile, should hone its focus on strategic risk reduction with Russia, taking unilateral steps that reduce the risk of nuclear war without compromising allied defense and deterrence. Most importantly, the U.S. administration should disabuse the Russian leadership of any misplaced hubris regarding its ability to control the fallout from “limited” nuclear use. Deterrence has both nuclear and conventional dimensions. In line with the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, it is the role of the U.S. nuclear forces to deter both large-scale and limited nuclear attacks against both the U.S. homeland and the territory of allies and partners. On the heels of the Karaganov debate, the Financial Times reported that the United States, the United Kingdom, and France informed Putin that they would attack Russia with conventional means in the event of Russian nuclear use. Yet even if Russia were to meet only with a conventional response to nuclear first use, it must appreciate that the escalation risks would be overwhelming, given the nuclear arsenals that back up NATO’s conventional means as both sides move up the escalation ladder.

Still, such measures will unlikely suffice to cure Russia’s nuclear fever, absent a more fundamental resolution to its confrontation with the West over Ukraine. Western societies may well have to live with recurrent spikes of nuclear signaling for a long period to come. Those spikes should neither be discarded as mere “bluff” nor be read as indicative of Russia’s imminent resort to nuclear weapons. Rather, nuclear signaling will always need to be contextualized: That requires accurate readings of how Moscow — at any given moment in time — views the dynamics surrounding the Ukraine war and, concomitantly, assesses the requirements of intrawar deterrence and escalation management. In pursuit of such accurate readings, Western defense establishments will have their work cut out.

The West Cannot Cure Russia’s Nuclear Fever - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Hanna Notte · July 18, 2023

In June 2023, Russia’s expert community descended into a public debate about the wisdom of preemptive nuclear use. The exchange occurred against the backdrop of Ukraine’s counteroffensive and betrayed a fear that Russia might lose the war — if not imminently, then over time. The debate about nuclear use marked a qualitative shift compared to previous Russian debates in that select voices flirted expressly with nuclear strikes against European countries, expressing considerable confidence that the United States would not retaliate in kind. Though the majority of the debate’s participants argued against preemptive nuclear use, the debate suggested a frustration with the perceived diminishing returns of Russia’s verbal “saber-rattling” and evoked an urgent need to restore Russia’s nuclear coercive reputation.

The nuclear musings are especially disconcerting in light of the “known unknown”: Vladimir Putin’s threshold for using a nuclear weapon. Putin’s views matter, since he is the one ultimately deciding on nuclear use. While he appears to have always viewed nuclear weapons as a deterrent, Putin has also championed the development of nuclear systems intended for regional warfighting, repeatedly recalled the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as having set a “precedent,” and embellished his statements on the nuclear subject with messianic overtones. Those looking toward Russia’s declaratory policy for firm cues about the circumstances that could trigger nuclear use will not find comforting certainty, either, since it is meant to deter with intentional ambiguity.

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Western observers must therefore accept an uncomfortable reality: For as long as Russia fights against Ukraine, and for as long as the United States and Europe support Ukraine in its defense, there will be no cure against Russia’s “nuclear fever” — and the risk of nuclear war will remain. Russia’s heightened efforts to induce fear via nuclear signaling are also entirely consistent with the country’s deterrence strategy, which has been honed over decades. At best, Western states can hope to lower the temperature and seek to credibly deter Russia’s crossing of the nuclear threshold. At worst, U.S. and European leaders have to contemplate how to respond to nuclear use and all the implications that any such decision may entail.

The “Karaganov Debate”

The recent Russian debate was triggered by prominent intellectual Sergey Karaganov. In an article entitled “A Difficult But Necessary Decision,” Karaganov argued that, should the United States and Europe fail to stop supporting Ukraine, Moscow would ultimately have to resort to preemptive nuclear use against Western countries. He conceded that the employment of “God’s weapon” would entail “grave spiritual losses” for his country and that Russia’s non-Western friends — chiefly China and India — would be abhorred at first. But since “winners are not judged,” Russia would ultimately be forgiven for having broken the eight-decade-old nuclear taboo.

While Karaganov had likely hoped to agitate Western audiences, the commotion caused by his article was predominantly domestic. Dmitry Trenin, another prominent expert, partially sided with Karaganov. Though he stopped short of calling for nuclear strikes against Europe and was less dismissive than Karaganov of escalation risks resulting from such strikes, Trenin echoed Karaganov in bemoaning the loss of fear of nuclear war in the United States and Europe. He urged the Russian leadership to put the “nuclear bullet” into the “revolver drum,” calling for nuclear signaling in action, not just rhetoric.

Other participants in the debate pushed back. Ivan Timofeev urged for Russia’s retention of a high bar for nuclear use, while Ilya Fabrichnikov pleaded for “demonstrative restraint” vis-à-vis the West. Fyodor Lukyanov, the prominent editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, argued that Russia “won’t be able to ‘sober up the West’ with a nuclear bomb.” A group of scholars at Moscow’s Institute of World Economy and International Relations penned a piece in Russia’s daily newspaper Kommersant, questioning the suitability of limited nuclear use for preventing further escalation and solving “strategic problems.” Karaganov himself rounded off the debate by publishing a second, more strident piece, in which he offered specific recommendations for moving up the nuclear escalation ladder. This is a concept first championed by American physicist Herman Kahn that describes escalation between adversaries, beginning with crisis and ending at strategic nuclear war.

The lively exchange coincided with an intensified obsession, shared among Russian politicians and propagandists alike, over alleged U.S. and European efforts to inflict a “strategic defeat” upon Russia. The fear — no matter how outlandish it may seem to American and European audiences — is that the United States and Europe seek to “dismember” the country and destroy it as an independent entity. This obsession, coupled with Ukraine’s counteroffensive, likely explains the timing of the “Karaganov debate” as symptomatic of a wider anxiety among Russia’s ruling elites over the course of the war.

The subject matter is gloomy. However, this discussion is welcome, especially considering the political environment in which it is taking place. In wartime Russia, it has become damaging to one’s career and, potentially, dangerous to stay outside the chorus of pro-war voices. That numerous Russian scholars have argued publicly for nuclear restraint is a good thing. Some Russian experts have also privately dismissed Karaganov as a marginal voice or, worse, as someone who has lost touch with reality. This line of reasoning suggests that the nuclear weapon skeptics are by far the more credible side of the debate. Yet even Karaganov’s critics admit that there is a worrying nuclear normalization unfolding in Russia. They concede that discussions on nuclear use have become more widespread and acceptable. The casual nuclear talk has transcended the strategic community to reach mainstream media coverage and public discourse in what some scholars have termed Russia’s new nuclear normal or Russia’s nuclear fever. In late June, Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov likened Russian domestic television coverage of nuclear weapons use to “dog food commercials,” suggesting that the weapons had been mentioned 200 times in the preceding two weeks alone.

But What’s Actually New?

The arguments themselves presented by Karaganov (and to some extent Trenin) are not new. Last year, Trenin had already contended that the fear of nuclear war needed to be reinstilled in the United State and Europe, while Karaganov had welcomed that Russia was finally, if belatedly, moving up the escalation ladder. Their arguments also fit with longstanding elements of Russia’s nuclear doctrine and declaratory policy. As Michael Kofman and Anya Fink wrote in these pages, Russian strategic deterrence — employed in wartime for the purpose of “escalation management” that can be aimed at terminating hostilities on terms acceptable to Moscow — foresees the heavy use of “nuclear signaling” to induce fear. Russian strategic deterrence, according to Kofman and Fink, is holistic in that it comprises – besides political, military, and diplomatic means — “informational measures” (including saber-rattling) in an iterative process that takes into account reactions by the adversary.

Still, the recent expert exchange is noteworthy in several ways: First, while Western experts have long agonized over Russia’s potential use of a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, the Karaganov debate centered exclusively on Russian strikes against NATO countries. Indeed, Karaganov hinted specifically at Poland and the Baltic states as targets of preemptive nuclear use, rather than of nuclear strikes in response to any prospective direct U.S. and European aggression against Russia. He also argued with considerable self-confidence that Russia could engage in such strikes without risking a U.S. nuclear response. Russian military strategists have never discounted the possibility of preemptive nuclear use per se, nor do they believe such use will inevitably escalate uncontrollably. But, unlike Karaganov, they do not write off nuclear escalation risks in recklessly optimistic terms, either. It is in the spirit of healthy risk awareness that Russian scholar Alexey Arbatov, inserting himself into the recent debate, mockingly challenged Karaganov to “share his secret [for how to reduce the risks of nuclear escalation] with the [Russian] General Staff, which has been trying to solve this problem for many decades.”

Restoring Russia’s Nuclear Coercive Reputation

The Karaganov debate is also noteworthy in that some of its participants urged the Russian leadership to explore intermediate rungs on the escalation ladder more aggressively. Proponents of such escalation likely recognize that Russia’s verbal saber-rattling, intended to deter NATO’s direct entry into the Ukraine war and to slow or prevent Western military support for Ukraine, is less threatening than when the war began.

Russia has already moved from words to actions. It is proceeding with the deployment of short-range nuclear weapons to Belarus and has suspended its participation in the New START Treaty. Going forward, Karaganov — who counts two dozen steps Russia could take on the escalation ladder — advocates for the redeployment of missiles, among other measures. Russia could conceivably conduct a nuclear test, having hinted at the possibility in February. Others have written that its military may also be contemplating new ways to manipulate alert levels or other strategic gestures. Again, such measures fit with Russia’s existing doctrine, which envisions a broad arsenal of “preemptive measures” and “demonstrative actions” for the purpose of intrawar deterrence by fear inducement and escalation management. In light of current fears in Russia that the Ukraine war might not end on terms acceptable to Moscow, calls to resort to such measures should not come as a surprise.

What Does Putin Think?

While the Russian military can experiment with various forms of “fear inducement,” it is the president who ultimately decides on the most extreme measure of nuclear use. Looking at his statements made over the years, Putin appears to have always viewed nuclear weapons as an instrument of strategic deterrence rather than as a warfighting tool. His past contention that it is “impossible” to consider nuclear weapons “as a factor in any potential aggression, because it … would probably mean the end of our civilization” has betrayed a healthy skepticism of the notion that limited nuclear use à la Karaganov is viable.

That said, Putin has also presided over nuclear modernization programs focused on a wide range of nuclear weapons suited for not just deterrence, but also regional warfighting contingencies. He has cultivated a preoccupation with American precedent, repeatedly pointing out that it was the United States that first used nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That reference is disconcerting because Putin seems to be obsessed with what he considers the entitlements of American power. Putin is convinced that Russia has the right to emulate any and all aspects of past U.S. conduct: If the United States can forward-deploy nuclear weapons on the territories of European allies, then Russia can do the same in Belarus. If the United States can withdraw from nuclear agreements, so can Russia. Similarly worrying are the messianic overtones in some of Putin’s statements on the nuclear subject. In 2018, he maintained that Russia would be forced to defend itself using all available means if its very existence was put at stake. He concluded by asking: “Why would we want a world without Russia?” In another statement, Putin asserted that Russians “will go to heaven” in the event of nuclear war.

Given the mixed evidence regarding how Russia’s “first person” looks at nuclear use, Western observers are left to ponder the country’s declaratory policy. Its latest incarnation permits nuclear use under four conditions, including “when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” That notion, however, affords the Russian leadership — which may well equate regime survival with state survival — considerable interpretative leeway, and intentionally so. If the weakening of Russia’s conventional military force continues, where Russia might draw the line on what triggers nuclear use might well change; indeed, Putin might not yet have defined that line himself.

It is precisely in this context that the nuclear implications of the failed mutiny led by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appear most ominous. As several analysts with deep knowledge of Russia’s 12th Main Directorate, the primary military organization responsible for nuclear munitions, noted, the odds of Wagner being able to take control of nuclear weapons, let alone using them, were extremely low. But should Prigozhin’s mutiny have been indicative of a brittleness of the Russian state, then the implications for nuclear escalation pathways with Russia might not be trivial. What if Wagner had marched closer toward Moscow, with Prigozhin’s end game remaining unclear throughout? What if panic had taken hold among those in the Kremlin? And what if — in that situation — there had been concern over Western states exploiting the situation or over Russian frontlines collapsing in Ukraine? Would the “very existence of the state” have been feared in jeopardy, per Putin or his closest advisors? It is welcome that the United States reportedly communicated with the Kremlin as the mutiny unfolded to affirm that Washington had nothing to do with Prigozhin’s actions. Still, future manifestations of vulnerability at the heart of the Russian state, whether perceived or real, could lead to sudden spikes in nuclear fever, elevating the importance of careful crisis communication as an immediate antidote.

Russia’s Nuclear Fever Has Few Outside Cures

For as long as Russia is fighting a war against Ukraine, and for as long as the West supports Ukraine in fighting back, the West cannot cure Russia’s nuclear fever. Since the Russian leadership has convinced itself that prevailing in Ukraine is an existential matter for the Putin regime, messaging alone — clarifying that “strategic defeat” of Russia means only its exit from Ukraine, but not its dismemberment — will unlikely suffice to tone down Russia’s nuclear signaling.

Short of curing the fever, the United States and Europe can still take steps to lower the temperature. Considering Karaganov’s confidence that non-Western states would eventually forgive Russia for using nuclear weapons, the United States should continue to press Beijing, New Delhi, and other capitals to reinforce the nuclear taboo in their dealings with Moscow. It is welcome that Chinese leader Xi Jinping, while in Moscow in March, reportedly warned Putin personally against nuclear use. NATO, meanwhile, should hone its focus on strategic risk reduction with Russia, taking unilateral steps that reduce the risk of nuclear war without compromising allied defense and deterrence. Most importantly, the U.S. administration should disabuse the Russian leadership of any misplaced hubris regarding its ability to control the fallout from “limited” nuclear use. Deterrence has both nuclear and conventional dimensions. In line with the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, it is the role of the U.S. nuclear forces to deter both large-scale and limited nuclear attacks against both the U.S. homeland and the territory of allies and partners. On the heels of the Karaganov debate, the Financial Times reported that the United States, the United Kingdom, and France informed Putin that they would attack Russia with conventional means in the event of Russian nuclear use. Yet even if Russia were to meet only with a conventional response to nuclear first use, it must appreciate that the escalation risks would be overwhelming, given the nuclear arsenals that back up NATO’s conventional means as both sides move up the escalation ladder.

Still, such measures will unlikely suffice to cure Russia’s nuclear fever, absent a more fundamental resolution to its confrontation with the West over Ukraine. Western societies may well have to live with recurrent spikes of nuclear signaling for a long period to come. Those spikes should neither be discarded as mere “bluff” nor be read as indicative of Russia’s imminent resort to nuclear weapons. Rather, nuclear signaling will always need to be contextualized: That requires accurate readings of how Moscow — at any given moment in time — views the dynamics surrounding the Ukraine war and, concomitantly, assesses the requirements of intrawar deterrence and escalation management. In pursuit of such accurate readings, Western defense establishments will have their work cut out.

Become a Member

Hanna Notte, Ph.D., is a senior research associate with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation and a senior associate (nonresident) with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her work focuses on arms control and security issues involving Russia, the Middle East, their intersection, and implications for U.S. and European policy. She holds a doctorate and M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford University and a B.A. in social and political sciences from Cambridge University.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Hanna Notte · July 18, 2023

12. Army Shift from Brigades Back to Divisions Raises Concerns Among Retired Generals

We have retirees in the Army and the Marine Corps questioning their services' reorganizations.

Army Shift from Brigades Back to Divisions Raises Concerns Among Retired Generals

military.com · by 17 Jul 2023 Military.com | By Adrian Bonenberger · July 17, 2023

Change is afoot in the Army: Divisions are returning to prominence.

From recent reporting to rumors and offhand comments made during briefings, an image is beginning to emerge of the Army of the future. Bursting with enablers and officers, full general staffs, additional brigade and battalion headquarters with more staff, and funding, the divisional headquarters may soon replace brigade headquarters as a unit's heart.

That would mark a big change from the past 20 years. During much of the Global War on Terror, or GWOT, the action downrange in combat and at home in garrison was at the brigade combat team, or BCT, level. For the overwhelming majority of veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan, "division" was a combat patch, a notional way of organizing brigades.

"The BCT model worked really well during GWOT," according to a retired brigadier general with experience at the brigade and division level who agreed to an interview on the condition that his name not be used. "In that fight, most of the tactical challenges could be dealt with by a rifle company. The Army fights two levels down; two levels up from the company level is the brigade."

In a literal sense, divisions never left. While at garrison, the division was the origin of daily or weekly operations orders and taskings for troops. Downrange in Iraq or Afghanistan, the division coordinated the distribution of assets such as helicopters, aircraft and artillery -- but was unseen by soldiers patrolling from smaller company- or platoon-level forward operating bases, or FOBs.

But the importance of divisions waned in the beginning of GWOT. Assets were pushed down to BCTs. A thriving culture (or bureaucratic hassle, depending on one's perspective) vanished with the flourish of a pen, never to return. Until now.

The restructuring originated in the 1990s when, after the Cold War, some Army planners saw smaller conflicts and insurgencies of the type later encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan as the future of conflict (others did not). Drawing on feedback from officers and data pulled from exercises, leadership decided on a dramatic overhaul of force structure.

Between 2003 and 2004, as brigades were standardized or made "modular," assets that had existed mostly at divisions since their creation -- a signals battalion; military intelligence battalion; artillery brigade; and a brigade full of support and logistics, so-called "enabler" units -- were sent to brigades in company- or battalion-sized elements.

This gave brigades the resources they needed during GWOT to function autonomously. It also helped forge teamwork and relationships in training and garrison that translated to more effectiveness downrange in combat. The reorganization also eliminated unnecessary battalion and brigade staff positions, freeing up force structure spaces for combat soldiers, sergeants and officers.

One factor complicating the shift is that most people who experienced both models and were in a position to compare are no longer in the military. This uncertainty is helping fuel a debate now over how much power to keep at Army brigades -- or whether to move it all back to the division level.

Some worry that bringing the units back from the brigade to division level risks losing lethality at the point where it is most needed on the battlefield -- that it will be adding potentially redundant layers of bureaucracy that will slow decision-making, decrease flexibility, degrade unit flexibility and trust, and reduce interoperability.

"Our first-order principle for how to organize the Army is that we should optimize our force structure for warfighting," retired Gen. Robert "Abe" Abrams said in an interview.

Abrams commanded a pre-modularity brigade combat team in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom II and later a division with several modular BCTs underneath it in combat in Afghanistan, and feels that the Army got the BCT exactly right.

"At present, the BCTs are optimized for lethality," he said. "Take assets from the BCT commander, you're losing some of that fighting capability."

Abrams stressed that the advantages gained through training, in shared language through habitual associations, and with relationship-building collectively outweigh the benefits of keeping those assets at a higher level.

"We risk taking a step back as a force if we back away from the BCT model that's proven itself so effective at fighting together as a team," Abrams said.

Though most agree losing the BCT's combat capabilities would be a mistake, others see the move to re-emphasize divisions -- and possibly even corps -- as inevitable and necessary for planning and command.

"In a fight, it can be difficult for a brigade commander to know what's around them," retired Maj. Gen. Fred "Doug" Robinson said.

Robinson said that combined arms warfare has always been difficult to manage, and that the complexity of war is only growing with technological advances in weapons such as drones and cyber warfare.

"At the most, you've got 24 to 48 hours of space in which to plan and think in a peer-to-peer fight," he said. "There just aren't enough hours in the day. Properly staffed, divisions can help plan and make those decisions. It opens up planning for days rather than hours."

Retired Maj. Gen. William "Bill" Nash commanded a brigade during Desert Storm that was similarly organized to one of the more recent modular BCTs. He later commanded the 1st Armored Division in Germany, from which it deployed to Bosnia in 1995.

"A division is more than a major general," Nash said during an interview. "It's an ex-brigade commander, chief of staff, a dozen lieutenant colonels who've graduated from Leavenworth and probably one or more War College graduates. It's people with brigade and battalion command and staff experience, who can write sensible orders and coordinate effectively."

Nash, like Abrams, said he hopes the transition to divisions with fuller staffs keeps brigades powerful.

As a strong believer in habitual associations and the importance of units training together and knowing one another's strengths and weaknesses, Nash said the division he led in Bosnia was at its best just after it redeployed, and that the combination of real-world experience and training helped form one of the strongest units he'd ever seen.

"Having the division structure in addition to a strong brigade component is nothing but advantage," he said.

Meanwhile, the Army's recent struggles with recruiting are putting planners in a tough position.

"Restructuring the force is a zero-sum game," said Abrams. "Ideally, you'd have all the personnel and equipment you want. To do everything correctly you'd need to expand, and that would take well over half-a-million people. We're 30,000 short of the 485,000 authorized to man the force we have now."

And that means strengthening divisions could come at the expense of brigade power -- something nobody wants to see happen.

If recruiting continues to pose a challenge, the retired brigadier general who wished to remain anonymous feels that technology may make up some ground, by helping ensure the right people get to the right positions.

"We're developing our understanding of people and their personalities," he said. "With the right tools, we can maximize the use of the people we have. One way or another, though, we'll get it done."

-- Adrian Bonenberger, an Army veteran and graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, reports for Military.com.

military.com · by 17 Jul 2023 Military.com | By Adrian Bonenberger · July 17, 2023

13. Putin’s Deadly Blow to Grain Deal Will Hurt Ukraine - and World’s Poorest

Excerpts:

That spike is already here. News of Russia’s decision drove up prices on global markets Monday morning; wheat, corn and soybean prices all rose on the news. Wheat futures—the price of wheat for future delivery—were up 4 per cent on Monday morning.

If these price rises persist, the impact could be catastrophic.

In the richer world, it will hit central bank efforts to fight inflation—and likely lead to further interest rate increases.

But the pain will be particularly acute in developing countries, where government budgets remain deeply constrained in the aftermath of the pandemic, and food prices never came down after last year’s spike. Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Egypt, Rwanda, Sierra Leone are among countries where food price inflation is already running at record levels.

Even NATO ally Turkey, a country that helped broker the grain deal, is at risk, with food price inflation already running at double digits, according to World Bank data.

“Approximately 80 % of East Africa’s grain is imported from Russia and Ukraine,” David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, said in response to Russia’s move Monday.

Ultimately, he warned, “the world’s most vulnerable will face the harshest consequences of today’s withdrawal.”

Putin’s Deadly Blow to Grain Deal Will Hurt Ukraine - and World’s Poorest

The UN Deal Was a Rare Example of Successful Diplomacy in the War

Published 07/17/23 02:57 PM ET|Updated 15 hr ago

NIkhil Kumar

themessenger.com · July 17, 2023

Russia’s decision Monday to pull out of a critical deal that allows the export of Ukrainian grain by sea may drive up global food prices and hit hardest among the world’s poor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmtry Peskov said the Kremlin had “suspended” its participation in the year-old agreement, which Moscow claims favors Ukraine.

“As soon as the Russian part is fulfilled, the Russian side will immediately return to the implementation of that deal,” he said, referring to Putin’s demands that in return for Russia facilitating Ukrainian exports, the West do more to help Moscow sell its agricultural products on the world markets.

The developments Monday triggered global alarm, with policymakers worrying about a fresh spike in international food prices as markets factor in a cutoff in supplies from Ukraine, a leading producer of key staples such as wheat, corn and sunflower oil. The grain deal, a rare diplomatic victory in the midst of the war, has helped bring prices down—and in turn, helped poorer nations secure the grain they need to feed their people.

Before the war, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency which is a lifeline for Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and other countries ravaged by war and drought, sourced around 40 % of its grain from Ukraine. The end of the deal means the UN will have to buy grain elsewhere—almost certainly at higher costs, straining its budget and limiting what it can purchase.

Russia’s suspension of the deal will “strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters in New York.

“Hundreds of millions of people face hunger and consumers are confronting a global cost-of-living crisis. They will pay the price,” he said.

Former U.S. national intelligence officer and Russia expert Fiona Hill was more pointed. “This is very deliberate on Putin’s part,” she said Monday, during a Council on Foreign Relations event on Ukraine. “He is weaponizing food, no question.”

Workers load grain at a port in Izmail, Ukraine, on April 26.AP Photo/Andrew Kravchenko

Russia’s victims

This weaponization will be hardest to bear for those already struggling to survive.

The U.N.-brokered deal had reopened the supply chain for food staples from Ukraine. Before the war, the country was one of the world’s top five sources of barley, maize and wheat exports, and it dominated the market for sunflower oil.

The war led to a dramatic drop in farming inside Ukraine—and a stop to shipments via the Black Sea, the main thoroughfare for ships transporting Ukrainian food supplies to countries around the world.

The deal fixed the Black Sea problem, allowing ships to move through the sea, carrying grain on to destinations as diverse as Britain, Germany, France, Somalia, Yemen, India, China, Japan and beyond.

All told, over the past year, a total of 32.9 million metric tonnes of grain have been shipped out under the deal.

The poorest nations—where more of citizens’ budgets go to basic food supplies—benefited as the dea’l kept a lid on food prices, which are down around 23 per cent since last year’s March high. Beyond that, the world’s hungriest benefited because some 750,000 metric tons of Ukrainian grain went to the World Food Programme after the deal was signed, and those staples were sent on to Somalia, Yemen and other recipients of WFP aid.

Now those gains will be lost, as the Black Sea shipments are stopped again.

The timing is terrible. Just last week the U.N reported that 2.4 billion people didn’t have regular access to food last year, and as many as 783 million faced hunger. When the report was issued, Maximo Torero, chief economist for the Food and Agriculture Organization, said that if Russia refused to renew the grain deal, “you will have a new spike for sure” in global food prices.

That spike is already here. News of Russia’s decision drove up prices on global markets Monday morning; wheat, corn and soybean prices all rose on the news. Wheat futures—the price of wheat for future delivery—were up 4 per cent on Monday morning.

If these price rises persist, the impact could be catastrophic.

In the richer world, it will hit central bank efforts to fight inflation—and likely lead to further interest rate increases.

But the pain will be particularly acute in developing countries, where government budgets remain deeply constrained in the aftermath of the pandemic, and food prices never came down after last year’s spike. Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Egypt, Rwanda, Sierra Leone are among countries where food price inflation is already running at record levels.

Even NATO ally Turkey, a country that helped broker the grain deal, is at risk, with food price inflation already running at double digits, according to World Bank data.

“Approximately 80 % of East Africa’s grain is imported from Russia and Ukraine,” David Miliband, the head of the International Rescue Committee, said in response to Russia’s move Monday.

Ultimately, he warned, “the world’s most vulnerable will face the harshest consequences of today’s withdrawal.”

themessenger.com · July 17, 2023

14. Ukraine’s Attack on Crimea Bridge Sheds Light on ‘Sea Drones’ in War

I would imagine north Korea (and other rogue states and non-state actors) is learning from this

Excerpts:

Since late October 2022, Russia has seen an uptick of attacks by Ukraine’s maritime drone fleet in Sevastopol and Novorossiysk, some 100 miles from Crimea. Ukraine has used unmanned surface vehicles like this one posted to social media, and is developing the “Toloka TLK-150,” a hybrid of a submarine and a missile, according to the Kyiv Post.

"The age of explosive USVs is just beginning," the RAND report found. "Navies that can effectively use these systems could have a great advantage over their adversaries."

The Ukrainians weren’t saying anything about the specific weapons used in Monday’s attack, preferring to keep Russia and the rest of the world guessing. But analysts suspect this won’t be the last the world sees - and hears - about Ukraine’s waterborne drones.

Ukraine’s Attack on Crimea Bridge Sheds Light on ‘Sea Drones’ in War

Waterborne weapons blew up the Kerch Bridge - and may be a weapon of the future

Published 07/18/23 05:00 AM ET|Updated 29 min ago

James LaPorta

themessenger.com · July 18, 2023

Monday’s attack on the Kerch Bridge didn’t just damage the lone bridge connecting mainland Russia to the annexed Ukrainian territory of Crimea. It also shed light on Ukraine’s fleet of marine drones — and offered fresh evidence that these underwater weapons have joined their airborne cousins as key elements in the war.

The almost 12-mile long Kerch Bridge, the longest in Europe, holds symbolic and strategic importance to Moscow as a logistical supply route to Crimea. Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said Monday that “two Ukrainian unmanned surface vehicles attacked the Crimean bridge” and that law enforcement agencies had opened a criminal case into the matter. The statement said two adults were killed and one child was injured.

This isn’t the first time Ukraine has used marine, or “sea drones” against Russian targets. In October, Ukraine unleashed several of these weapons against the home of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea.

While the use of ships and boats packed with explosives is not new (such weapons have a history that dates to the 3rd century), the increased use of uncrewed and weaponized water drones seems to suggest an evolutionary shift.

Drones - from air to water

Simply put, a drone is an aircraft or vessel with no people on board, and which can operate either autonomously or by remote control. Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, these unmanned systems, particularly aerial drones, have played pivotal roles on the battlefield, not only providing crucial surveillance and intelligence-gathering capabilities for Ukrainian forces but also carrying out offensive attacks.

But generally, when people think of drones, they don’t imagine machines that can sail or submerge; they think of the airborne variety, used by hobbyists or photographers or the military - such as the MQ-9 Reaper, which became a workhorse in the long U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Like aerial drones, water drones go by different names and have numerous applications in commercial and military settings. And they have been around for a while.

One of the first unmanned underwater vehicles was developed in the 1950s by the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and funded by the Office of Naval Research. It was known as “The Special Purpose Underwater Research Vehicle” and could plunge to depths of up to 10,000 feet and operate efficiently for four hours.

For the next four decades, underwater drones were used to reach the wreckage of ships including the Titanic (in 1985) and (in 1989) the Bismarck, a German battleship sunk in 1941.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Navy began to use water drones to disable sea mines, and in 2003, during the Iraq war, one was used to remove mines near the port of Umm Qasr in southern Iraq. In 2019, as underwater drones became more prevalent, the Navy stood up an entire unit dedicated to their use.

When sea drones became weapons

It’s unclear when water-based drones were first weaponized, but they have come a long way from the days of “fire ships” - an old naval warfare tactic of setting vessels ablaze and directing them towards an enemy's fleet.

In the last decade, weaponized water drones have made their mark in many parts of the world, from the Persian Gulf to Yemen to the war in Ukraine.

According to a RAND Corporation report, Ukraine has used "explosive uncrewed surface vessels" (USVs, or sea drones) frequently against Russian fleets and even infrastructure.

More sophisticated versions can travel long distances, evade detection and can carry heavy explosives. All those qualities would have been necessary in Monday's Kerch Bridge attack.

"Explosive USVs," the RAND report found, "are versatile, able to be launched from piers or large ships" and "can linger indefinitely in unobtrusive places before they stealthily approach their targets."

Since late October 2022, Russia has seen an uptick of attacks by Ukraine’s maritime drone fleet in Sevastopol and Novorossiysk, some 100 miles from Crimea. Ukraine has used unmanned surface vehicles like this one posted to social media, and is developing the “Toloka TLK-150,” a hybrid of a submarine and a missile, according to the Kyiv Post.

"The age of explosive USVs is just beginning," the RAND report found. "Navies that can effectively use these systems could have a great advantage over their adversaries."

The Ukrainians weren’t saying anything about the specific weapons used in Monday’s attack, preferring to keep Russia and the rest of the world guessing. But analysts suspect this won’t be the last the world sees - and hears - about Ukraine’s waterborne drones.

themessenger.com · July 18, 2023

15. One Hundred Dead Choppers: Russia’s Helicopter Losses

Apparently Russia does not have air superiority either.

WAR IN UKRAINE COUNTEROFFENSIVE

One Hundred Dead Choppers: Russia’s Helicopter Losses

Russia has had 100 helicopters neutralized during its war on Ukraine, including 10 since the start of the counteroffensive and 40 percent of its prized Ka-52 Kamaz Alligator attack helicopters.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/19552

by Pete Shmigel | July 18, 2023, 8:22 am | Comments (2)

Russia has now lost 100 helicopters since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including 10 over the course of Kyiv’s summer offensive, according to data collected by an independent intelligence and monitoring organization.

In its most recent website update, Oryx reports that the Russian military has now had 100 helicopters neutralized since February 2022 including 87 destroyed, 12 damaged and one captured by Ukrainian forces.

Ten Russian helicopters have been downed since the beginning of June when Ukraine ramped up counteroffensive activity on several sections of the 1,000-kilometer-long front.

Among Russia’s losses are 38 Ka-52 Kamaz “Alligator” helicopters which are considered by some military experts as “one of the best attack helicopters in the world.” This represents a loss approaching 40 percent of all Ka-52s that Russia allocated to its war on Ukraine.

The loss of 100 helicopters is significant due to the increased importance of air power at this phase of the war. Namely, as Ukrainian forces attempt to advance on the ground into occupied eastern and southern Ukraine, the Kremlin is seeking to use what remains of its superior air power as a critical advantage in its defensive strategy.

This includes increased helicopter attacks against oncoming Ukrainian infantry fighting vehicles, including those provided by Western allies, and troop concentrations, as well as the ability to rapidly bring up reserve troops and supplies from rear echelon positions in occupied southern Ukraine in particular.

Recent satellite imagery of an airfield in occupied Berdyansk showed the presence of 20 recently transferred Russian helicopters, including five Ka-52s, as well as construction to expand the facility.

At least some of Ukraine’s counteroffensive equipment losses are believed to have been inflicted by Ka-52s hovering over the battlefield and firing rockets, according to Forbes.

“Such aircraft are relatively unencumbered by harassing Ukrainian aircraft and mobile short-range air defense systems – known as SHORAD – both relative weaknesses that Kyiv has repeatedly urged the West to help strengthen over 16 months of full-scale war,” Forbes wrote.

At present, Ukraine has received commitments from the US, UK and European allies to potentially start F-16 jet training of Ukrainian pilots in August.

Kyiv Post analysis shows that Russia averages some 5 to 10 times more air strikes per day than Ukraine. Typically, Russia flies over 40 airstrikes per day, whereas Ukraine has most recently been flying less than 10 and, some days, as few as 5.

Analysts have noted that Russia has allocated some 500 fixed-wing aircraft and 100 Ka-52 helicopters to the war on Ukraine.

Of the 100 overall Russian helicopter losses, the breakdown by type, according to Oryx, is as follows:

·      20 Mi-8 transport helicopters;

·      5 Mi-8 electronic warfare helicopters;

·      4 Mi-24P attack helicopters;

·      3 Mi-24V attack helicopters;

·      10 Mi-35M attack helicopters;

·      13 Mi-28 attack helicopters;

·      38 Ka-52 “Alligator” attack helicopters;

·      7 of unknown type.

Oryx, a Dutch open-source monitor, only records a piece of military equipment as a loss if there is video or photo evidence and a geolocation of the loss.

Russia’s true losses are likely to be higher.

Ukraine claims that Russia’s helicopter losses are currently 310. It says that Russian forces in Ukraine have lost “five times more helicopters” than during Moscow’s operations in Chechnya throughout the 1990s and early 2000s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. (According to Oryx, Russia lost 24 helicopters in the First Chechen War, and 51 in the second phase of the conflict.)

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, a military think tank, has said that “the best Ka-52 crews got shot down early in the war while trying to penetrate deep behind Ukrainian lines.”

A Ka-52 Kamaz “Alligator” typically has a crew of two. One unit is priced at around $10 million.

“Now less-skilled crews are easy targets for ever bolder Ukrainian air defenders… The loss of experienced crews might sting more than the airframe write-offs do. It could take years for the air force to train good replacements for all the Ka-52 fliers who’ve died in Ukraine,” Forbes noted, citing RUSI.

Pete Shmigel

Pete Shmigel is an Australian writer. With a background in politics, business, sustainability, the military and mental health, he has been published by the major newspapers in Australia. He helped initiate Lifeline Ukraine.

16. I’ve seen firsthand what land mines do by Robert Bruce Adolph

I’ve seen firsthand what land mines do | Column

Long after a war like the one in Ukraine ends, the land mines remain and blow up, killing and maiming innocents.

by Robert Bruce Adolph

Tampa Bay Times

Land mines maim and kill long after a conflict is over. I’ve recently seen this firsthand as a security consultant to the United Nations in Azerbaijan, where hundreds of thousands of mines remain a threat even after the Azerbaijan-Armenian conflict ended. This lesson will have to be relearned in Ukraine, as civilians will eventually have to deal with the tens of thousands of land mines that Russian soldiers laid to impede the current Ukrainian offensive. They will kill innocents long after the war ends, as will “duds” from cluster bombs from both sides.

Robert Bruce Adolph [ Provided ]

We need increased international efforts to address leftover land mines globally. Land mines, scattered along the former front lines between Azerbaijan and Armenia, turn the area into kill zones. According to the Azerbaijani Mine Action Agency, more than 150 civilians have died and more than 400 have been injured. Leftover land mines hinder agricultural activities, restricting access to fertile lands and undermining food security. They obstruct the safe reconstruction of critical infrastructure, hampering the recovery and exacerbating poverty.

Wherever mines remain after a conflict ends, they not only render agricultural lands unusable, but they also destroy delicate ecosystems. This environmental degradation endures for generations.

Addressing the dangers more globally requires strong, multilateral action. International organizations, such as the United Nations and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, play a crucial role in fostering global cooperation, advocating for mine clearance efforts, providing assistance for survivors and promoting legislative frameworks to prevent further use of mines.

Whenever the Ukrainian conflict ends, it will likely take many decades to remove the anti-tank and anti-personnel land mines. More civilians will die before that happens. This is why it is vital to pressure the involved parties to adhere to international humanitarian law and conventions, such as the Ottawa Treaty, which bans anti-personnel mines.

I have seen the damage done by mines in my long military and U.N. careers in places like Egypt (Sinai), Cambodia, Lebanon, Iraq and, now, Azerbaijan. I don’t want to see it anymore.

Robert Bruce Adolph is a former senior Army Special Forces soldier and United Nations security chief. In May 2022, he served as mission leader for a multinational team in support of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Ukraine. More recently, he served as a security consultant to the U.N. in Azerbaijan. To learn more, visit his website at robertbruceadolph.com.

Tampa Bay Times

17. Ukrainians training on Abrams tanks at US base in Germany look to be battle-ready in weeks

Ukrainians training on Abrams tanks at US base in Germany look to be battle-ready in weeks

Stars and Stripes · by Phillip Walter Wellman · July 17, 2023

U.S. M1A1 Abrams tanks to be used to train Ukrainian soldiers arrive at Grafenwoehr, Germany, on May 12, 2023. About 200 Ukrainian soldiers are expected to complete their training in the coming weeks. (U.S. Army)

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany — A trio of M1 Abrams tanks with Ukrainian soldiers at the controls took turns firing at targets more than a mile away at this vast U.S. Army training area in Bavaria, the blasts echoing across the hilly expanse.

Roughly 200 Ukrainian trainees are here learning to operate the most advanced American battle tanks. They’ll soon will be ready to use them against invading Russian forces in Ukraine, their U.S. military instructors said.

The Pentagon is set to deliver 31 refurbished Abrams tanks to Kyiv by fall, part of the roughly $50 billion in military aid the U.S. has given since the February 2022 start of the Russia-Ukraine war.

“As we continue to train Ukrainian armed forces on more and more advanced weapons systems, we continue to be amazed at how quickly they adapt,” U.S. European Command spokesman Capt. William Speaks said at the Grafenwoehr Training Area on Friday.

A small group of journalists were allowed a rare glimpse Friday into the instruction the Army-led Joint Multinational Training Group-Ukraine has been providing.

The soldiers were not made available for interviews, and military officials did not allow photos or video of the training.

The multinational group was established in 2015 to train Ukrainian soldiers in their home country but shifted to Germany after the full-scale Russian invasion.

Since then, more than 12,000 Ukrainians have been taught to use 36 American military systems, including Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles, at Grafenwoehr and the nearby Hohenfels training area, officials said Friday. About 1,000 Ukrainian troops are now at the two sites, they said.

“They want to know as much detail as we can provide. They’re driven, inspired and all in,” a U.S. defense official involved in the Abrams training said of the troops. The American trainers were not allowed to be identified under the military’s ground rules.

In the only exercise observed, three stationary tanks fired 120mm cannons twice each at 10-foot-wide targets about 1.2 miles away. All but one shot hit the mark, which the officials indicated was a good performance.

An exercise later that evening involved shooting at targets while the tanks moved, they added. It was Week 8 of a 12-week crash course designed to get the troops back to the war as quickly as possible.

An M1A1 Abrams tank with an attached mine roller at Grafenwoehr Training Area, Germany, on July 14, 2023. (Phillip Walter Wellman/Stars and Stripes)

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Training will continue after the soldiers leave Germany, and channels will be set up for crews to contact American experts should problems arise, a U.S. defense official said.

President Joe Biden at first was unwilling to transfer Abrams to Kyiv, with Pentagon officials saying the roughly $10 million tanks are too complex and expensive for the Ukrainians to operate, maintain and repair.

The Abrams runs on a jet turbine engine rather than a diesel engine like many other armored vehicles. It burns through fuel at a rate of about 2 gallons per mile, meaning a ready convoy of fuel trucks is necessary for it to operate.

While an Abrams can power through most challenging terrain, fuel trucks sometimes can’t. That’s one reason many analysts believe the German-made Leopard 2 is a more suitable tank for Ukraine.

But at the start of the year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz insisted he would allow Leopards to be sent to Ukraine only if the U.S. also agreed to send Abrams tanks.

The tanks being used by the Ukrainians at Grafenwoehr arrived in Germany in May and aren’t the same ones that will be sent to the battlefield.

The combat tanks are being modified first, with sensitive technology being removed to prevent it from falling into the hands of Russian forces, USA Today reported in May.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he doesn’t expect the arrival of the Abrams tanks to have a decisive impact on the war.

“Thirty-one tanks, even very good tanks, are not going to make a big difference,” Cancian said in an email. “The main contribution is political, showing that the United States is willing to give Ukraine the most powerful weapons in its inventory.”

Maintaining and sustaining the Abrams also could prove burdensome for the Ukrainians, said Marina Miron, a researcher in war studies at King’s College London.

“It’s good to have additional tanks, but I don’t think the benefits of the Abrams here outweigh all the other problems associated with it,” Miron said in a phone interview.

The U.S. soldiers working with the Ukrainians in Germany downplayed concerns about the tank’s complexity, saying the training takes that into account.

In about a week, crews that have been operating each tank individually are expected to finish their qualifications and move on to live-fire training as platoons of four tanks and companies of about a dozen.

They’ll also work with other elements such as artillery, mortars and reconnaissance during the drills, officials said.

During the final two weeks, the troops will shift from Grafenwoehr to Hohenfels, where their tanks will be outfitted with a laser system and companies will have a simulated fight in which the opponents use Russian fighting tactics.

The drills are meant to be as realistic as possible, using scenarios that the Ukrainians could find themselves in very soon, the trainers said, although they acknowledged that when and how the Ukrainians use the Abrams tanks will be up to Kyiv.

At Camp Kasserine, an area at Grafenwoehr where Ukrainians and their U.S. instructors live in tents, about a half-dozen Ukrainian soldiers could be seen waiting under a shady tree. They all appeared to be in their late 30s or 40s.

A U.S. defense official said it was common to meet grandfathers out here training, including some working on the Abrams. One man training on a different system was 71 years old and said he signed up to ensure his grandchildren have a future, the official said.

Speaks, the EUCOM spokesman, said the Abrams training also should be seen as an investment for the future.

“This particular training is not just about the current fight,” he said. “This is an investment in Ukraine’s long-term security.”

Stars and Stripes · by Phillip Walter Wellman · July 17, 2023

18. Tell Russians Putin Has to Go

I doubt there will be such calls from the White House.

But assuming someone decided to heed the author's recommendations, what would we be prepared to do to support the Russian people? We should not be calling for such action without the will to follow through with support.  

Excerpts:

The Russian public is struggling with the war. Although public polls indicate that support for the war remains high, Kirill Rogov, a political scientist at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, concludes that when it comes to supporting the war, “the median electorate is internally contradictory, unstable, and unconsolidated. Events can lead to unexpected shifts.” When the Russian media outlet Meduza, which operates outside Russia and is labeled a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin, asked why some of its Russian readers still support the war, one respondent wrote, capturing the mood, “The only thing worse than war is losing one.” There seems to be no alternative to continuing to fight, as losing or capitulation would result in crushing reparations and endless humiliation. The war may have been a mistake, but Russia is in too deep now to just walk away. Americans should be familiar with this feeling of inertia, given their experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq—and, of course, Vietnam. Once in a war, few people want to give up and see their country humiliated.

Although it is still hard to envision Putin’s being ousted, Prigozhin has reminded the world that anything is possible, even in Moscow. As with Germany in 1918, further defeat on the battlefield is likely necessary before anyone can act to depose Putin, but it is now clear that he is not immune from the effect of events on the front. Thus, continued Ukrainian success on the battlefield and the West’s unwavering resolve to support Ukraine are crucial. After all, Wilson’s words would have had little effect had German commanders not come to see the war as essentially unwinnable.

Tell Russians Putin Has to Go

Biden Should Call on Russians to Oust Putin and End Their Isolation

By Max Bergmann

July 18, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Max Bergmann · July 18, 2023

The Wagner mercenary group’s failed mutiny last month revealed that Vladimir Putin, a leader once seen as the strongest of strongmen, may not have as tight a grip on power as previously believed. As Putin seeks to reassert control, speculation is rife about what the attempted insurrection by Wagner’s chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, means for the future of Putin’s regime—and whether Russia’s adversaries could capitalize on Putin’s moment of weakness.

The Biden administration has a rare opportunity to put added political pressure on Putin by offering the Russian people a path out of the economic and diplomatic isolation from the West to which their country has been subjected for the past 17 months. Putin’s invasion has been nothing short of a disaster for Russia, with more than 50,000 killed and 150,000 wounded, roughly one million of its best and brightest fleeing abroad, an economy slowly being strangled, and the country more isolated on the world stage than it has been in 100 years. Yet public support in Russia for the war and for Putin appears to be holding, according to polling. In part, Russians see little alternative to trudging on. But the United States can lay out a different path. To do so, U.S. President Joe Biden should outline what a post-Putin Russia could look like, just as President Woodrow Wilson formulated a vision for postwar Germany in 1918.

After four years of fighting, one of the many factors that drove Germany to capitulate in the fall of 1918 was a clear message from the United States. Earlier that year, Wilson had promised Germany a “just peace,” outlining a vision of the postwar order in which Germans would be unable to deny the basic rights of other countries—and would itself be afforded those same rights. Wilson told the U.S. Congress in February 1918 that “there shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages. . . . National aspirations must be respected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent.”

The hypocrisy of Wilson’s promise was undeniable, given his racist views and support for Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation at home. And if the German high command had known the terms of the peace that they would ultimately be all but forced to accept, they doubtless would have fought on. But Wilson’s pledge that Germany could end the war without humiliation and crushing reparations gave German military leaders something to latch onto as they looked for a way out of an unwinnable war in October 1918, and it ultimately played a role in their decision to initiate regime change in Berlin with the goal of negotiating a less punitive armistice.

Today, by outlining a peace settlement that includes a hopeful future for Russia, Biden might be able to produce a similar outcome by appealing to influential Russians within the halls of power— in the military, governing institutions, and the private sector—who could conceivably set the country on a new course. Biden should not offer this vision in a grandiose Wilsonian speech hailing democracy or a new world order. Instead, he should articulate a number of practical steps that the United States and its allies and partners would take to allow Russia to become a respected member of the international community instead of a pariah state—“a giant North Korea,” as the historian Stephen Kotkin has described what Russia might one day be if it stays on its present course. This promise should come with three conditions: a full withdrawal of Russian forces from all of Ukraine, a pledge to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and reduce tensions with the West, and the ouster of Putin.

PEACE WITHOUT VICTORY

As the historian Robert Gerwarth explains in his book November 1918: The German Revolution, “Wilson’s ideas for a ‘just peace’ had been of no importance for the strategic considerations” of the German generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff between January and September 1918. By November of that year, however, “a moderate ‘Wilsonian peace’ without victors or vanquished was the best Germany could hope for,” Gerwarth writes. By then, Germany was exhausted, both at home and on the front. At home, the German public was suffering food shortages and growing labor unrest. On the battlefield, Allied powers were making advances that reversed Germany’s gains from its successful but costly spring offensive. Morale among German forces was also collapsing, more and more American troops were joining the fight, and Germany’s Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Ottoman allies were capitulating. In early November, as the German naval command contemplated initiating a final climactic and likely suicidal attack on the British fleet, German sailors mutinied in the city of Kiel, leading to a wider revolution.

As Gerwarth explains, the German high command “understood that the Americans would need some sign of domestic reform before they would negotiate seriously with Germany.” According to Gerwarth, this context is essential for understanding why there was a “sudden ‘change of mind’ about the parliamentarization of the German political system.” Thus, Germany’s top military officers led a “revolution from above,” with Kaiser Wilhelm initiating “a cynical process of ‘democratization.’” Ultimately, the United States conveyed to Germany that to begin armistice negotiations, the Kaiser would have to go—and so he went.

No historical analogy is perfect, especially when used to advance a policy argument. Germany in 1918 had active political parties and a weak leader. It had suffered through four years of war and saw the balance of power on the battlefield shift with the United States’ entry into the war. This is obviously far different from present-day Russia. The deprivation felt in wartime Germany was far more severe than the sanctions-induced challenges facing Russia. There were also active political parties available to take the reins of power. Despite these differences, Wilson’s offer to Germany provides a model for how Biden might convince influential Russians to abandon Putin.

Biden would need to communicate that for Russia to have a path back, it would need to end the war and replace the leadership in the Kremlin. The most important audience for this speech would be Russian elites and insiders from the military, government ministries, and the private sector. The new government in Moscow would need to be willing to reduce hostilities, restore arms control agreements, and release American hostages (such as the journalist Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine) and Russian political prisoners (such as Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza. It would also have to be open to repealing the repressive measures that Putin imposed when the war began, which outlawed dissent, criticism, and opposition. Should Russia take these steps, the United States would agree to roll back sanctions and unwind Russia’s diplomatic isolation. The United States would encourage accountability for those culpable for war crimes, not collective punishment.

In his speech, Biden could talk about how he wants to see Russians once again traveling and studying in the United States and Europe; finding jobs, customers, clients, and investors in the West; collaborating with international partners on cutting-edge science research; and competing with pride in next summer’s Olympic Games in Paris. The point would be to paint a portrait of a Russia with a future defined by prosperity and connection with Europe rather than poverty and isolation.

REGIME CHANGE

Such a speech from Biden would assert that the obstacle to the West’s positive relations with Russia is Putin. Biden could remind Russians that when he entered office, he sought to engage and work with Putin, holding a summit in June 2021 with him in Geneva. Months later, Putin launched his unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. He has demonstrated to Western leaders that he cannot be trusted and therefore cannot broker a lasting peace. He has lost all credibility. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for him for alleged war crimes. As long as Putin leads Russia, the United States and Russia will be adversaries and U.S. sanctions will remain in place.

There would be little downside to delivering such a speech. Of course, Putin would be aghast at an American call for regime change, and the United States would be accused of making the war existential for Putin and thus possibly prolonging it. But the war is already existential for Putin. There is a danger that such a speech would exacerbate his paranoia, seemingly confirming that the United States is out to depose him and exploiting cracks in his regime. He might purge any potential rivals or repeat his threats to use nuclear weapons in response, raising the risk of dangerous escalation.

But Putin isn’t suicidal. His paranoia exists because he wants to survive, not enter a world-ending conflagration. Putin is desperate to portray this war as an epic clash between Russia and the West. The United States should make it a war about Putin.

It should also be expected that such a message will likely have little initial resonance in Russia. Anti-Western sentiment runs deep, and the Russian state media would hardly let a U.S. president’s words pass over its airwaves unfiltered. Yet Russia is not hermetically sealed, especially if the targeted audience for such a speech is not the general public but the Russian elite.

Prigozhin’s march on Moscow has likely spooked many of them, from oligarchs to government technocrats to military officers. Putin visibly lost control, a possibility that had previously been unthinkable. Although the elite owe their status to Putin, they are restless. To many, the invasion of Ukraine was a shockingly reckless decision, and they are feeling the squeeze of sanctions and economic deprivation. A leaked recording from earlier this year between two Russian elites pulled back the curtain, revealing deep dissatisfaction with the Kremlin’s current course. With the war going badly, the Prigozhin affair was another demonstration that the big boss may have lost his touch.

The United States should make it a war about Putin.

This cross section of the Russian elite is not full of brave liberals willing to risk their neck for their country. Instead, it is a group that largely looks out for itself, which for years has meant aligning with Putin. But Prigozhin’s march made it possible to imagine alternatives. Putin has created a system of power that revolves around him, which means that if he goes, so does their access to power and therefore potentially their financial well-being. Prigozhin might have represented a degree of continuity with Putin, being another nationalist hard-liner committed to prosecuting the war. But if he took power, it would have caused disarray in Putin’s court. With Putin’s loss of control, elites in the Russian system are likely thinking about a Plan B. Offering Russia a more hopeful and prosperous future, an alternative to endless war and hard-line nationalism, may be something that those disaffected in the center of power are willing to risk pursuing. They wouldn’t have dared put their necks out until now, but Prigozhin almost got to Moscow.

The prevailing assumption is that a Russian hard-line nationalist would be most likely to replace Putin. But Putin is already a hard-line nationalist. Hard-liners may talk about doubling down on the war, but losses on the battlefield may make these positions increasingly untenable. For instance, mobilizing more men for war could lead to further domestic blowback. More fruitless Russian counteroffensives could be ordered. But that’s what prompted German sailors to mutiny in October 1918, leading to a broader revolution.

How a move against Putin could unfold is impossible to predict, but after Prigozhin, it is now less fantastical to imagine such scenarios. It often takes just a spark. Suppose Russian mid-ranking military officers, appalled by the leadership of their high command and nervously looking to the future of a depleted and broken Russian military, try to seize Biden’s offer of an off-ramp. With the backing of their men, they could refuse to fight or move to depose their leadership. If Putin lost control of Wagner, could he lose control of the army? Government officials in Moscow or at local and regional levels might see the way the wind is blowing and not lift a finger to protect the regime, just as they did nothing to stop Prigozhin. Suppose the public and the troops on the front decide to take matters into their own hands or rally to a Kremlin alternative?

Such developments are a way off and may never come. It took nine months for the Germans to take Wilson up on his offer. Russia would need to believe the war is lost and their position untenable. That requires battlefield success by Ukraine, not a speech by an American president. But planting the seed of an idea with the military, the elites, and the public that there is a way out of this war may end up bearing fruit.

ALTERNATIVE REALITY

The Russian public is struggling with the war. Although public polls indicate that support for the war remains high, Kirill Rogov, a political scientist at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, concludes that when it comes to supporting the war, “the median electorate is internally contradictory, unstable, and unconsolidated. Events can lead to unexpected shifts.” When the Russian media outlet Meduza, which operates outside Russia and is labeled a “foreign agent” by the Kremlin, asked why some of its Russian readers still support the war, one respondent wrote, capturing the mood, “The only thing worse than war is losing one.” There seems to be no alternative to continuing to fight, as losing or capitulation would result in crushing reparations and endless humiliation. The war may have been a mistake, but Russia is in too deep now to just walk away. Americans should be familiar with this feeling of inertia, given their experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq—and, of course, Vietnam. Once in a war, few people want to give up and see their country humiliated.

Although it is still hard to envision Putin’s being ousted, Prigozhin has reminded the world that anything is possible, even in Moscow. As with Germany in 1918, further defeat on the battlefield is likely necessary before anyone can act to depose Putin, but it is now clear that he is not immune from the effect of events on the front. Thus, continued Ukrainian success on the battlefield and the West’s unwavering resolve to support Ukraine are crucial. After all, Wilson’s words would have had little effect had German commanders not come to see the war as essentially unwinnable.

Forging an acceptable peace with a post-Putin Russia would still be an extremely difficult task. Russia would have to accept Ukraine’s potential membership in the EU and NATO. Poland and the Baltic states would inevitably resist efforts to thaw relations or to roll back EU sanctions. Ukraine would rightly demand justice and reparations for Russian war crimes and destruction. But the reality is that Russia is not going to be fully conquered at the conclusion of this war, making reparations difficult to demand. Ukraine or The Hague will only be able to try war criminals if Russia willingly turns them over.

A proposed settlement to the war that insists on Russia’s weakness or extensive concessions will only strengthen hard-liners inside the country. (It must be noted that Wilson’s ceding control of the Paris peace talks to the French and British led to a punishing settlement that undermined the nascent German democracy and led to the rise of the Nazi Party.) The United States should instead reassure Russians that if they end the war, respect Ukraine’s sovereignty, reduce tensions with the West, and oust Putin, they will be saving their country from defeat and decline and giving Russia a chance to peacefully thrive alongside its neighbors.

MAX BERGMANN is Director of the Stuart Center and the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2011 to 2017, he served in a number of positions at the U.S. Department of State, including as a member of the Policy Planning Staff.

Foreign Affairs · by Max Bergmann · July 18, 2023

19. Taiwan Situation Going From Bad To Worse As China Preps For War

I have never heard of this web site before. But it provides a long and interesting description of the situation.  

Taiwan Situation Going From Bad To Worse As China Preps For War - CDM - Human Reporters • Not Machines

creativedestructionmedia.com · by Decoding Politics · July 17, 2023

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Taiwan made big headlines last August and earlier this year when China did mini blockades and US officials met with Taiwanese leaders. Since then, it’s largely been out of the news. But the situation is deteriorating at an alarming rate. The US has essentially thrown its official policy since 1979 in the trash can and is provoking China in the worst possible way. Meanwhile, China has shown every possible indication of preparing for war in the next 18 months, with three identifiable windows for action. China will HAVE to act to secure its interests and save face. It has gotten so dangerous for them that there is no way they will let this continue.

Backgound

First, a quick reminder of what the US and China’s actual positions are on the island of Taiwan. Taiwan was a province of China for hundreds of years. In 1949, the communists took over China, and Taiwan seceded to become its own country, officially protected by the USA. In the 1970’s China and the US re-opened ties, and one outcome of that was a new policy on Taiwan.

As of 1979, the US’s official policy is that Taiwan is a part of China, and that one day they will sort out their re-unification. Sort of like recognizing a couple is separated, won’t divorce, and will eventually reconcile. The US has zero official defense guarantees to Taiwan. It does not recognize Taiwan, has no embassy or diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and communicates via intermediaries. The US also has agreed not to have its leaders meet Taiwanese leaders. Biden earlier this year gaffed that we would defend Taiwan- Blinken had to go to Beijing and the administration back on script.

China’s view is resolute that Taiwan is a part of China. It wanted to achieve a re-unification before 2049 (100th anniversary of the PRC). They have proposed for decades a system similar to Hong Kong. The last few years have effectively seen this solution discarded by Taiwan and now China too. The rhetoric the past 18 to 24 months has been very hawkish and China has been threatening reunification by force. They believe that the US is arming Taiwan and is pushing for independence. It has to stop them both before it poses a military threat to China’s Belt and Road and its facilities in the South China Sea.

Last year, Taiwan unleashed several provocations and tested a blockade for two weeks. They mockingly sent drones over Taiwan occupied islands near China. They condemned Taiwan and in the October Party meeting, they all but guaranteed an impending invasion. We spoke of escalation last year, but were not certain if it was an invasion then or not. And there was no invasion. But that October Xi and the CCP made numerous incremental preparations for war, and said that the country faced “High Seas and Storms from a Major Event”. Hmmm what would event might that be?

Overview of the Current Situation

What has happened in the past few months? Not a lot of good news. First, a document that we have discussed before emerged from the Chinese Foreign Ministry called “US Hegemony and Its Perils”. It’s a comprehensive indictment of US policy in all fields, and essentially a call for the US to stop messing around in the Chinese sphere of influence. This is about as close to a declaration of war without saying it as we have ever seen. Some journalists with a better understanding of Chinese history have said that it’s closely patterned off of ancient Chinese official declarations of war, and so is in fact a start of war. But we cannot confirm that. If it is, Taiwan is going to be the first battlefield.

Then the Chinese have refused to talk to the US Defense Department on multiple occasions. Anthony Blinken and Janet Yellen went groveling to China in the past month, and came back with nothing.

This statement was released in May, which shows just how determined Chinese officials are. When will people accept this language at face value? It never makes the front page of the New York Times.

From the article:

A recent increase in exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries is an “extremely wrong and dangerous move,” Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Tan Kefei said in a statement and video posted online.

China’s People’s Liberation Army “continues to strengthen military training and preparations and will resolutely smash any form of Taiwanese independence secession along with attempts at outside interference, and will resolutely defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Tan said, in a reference to Taiwan’s closest ally, the United States.

But the headline that is certain to make China act came last week. The Taiwanese Foreign Minister revealed that the island nation has been talking to the US about joining its ‘nuclear shield’ policy.

Source: SCMP

To call this a redline for China would be the understatement of the year. This a red alert for China! This is de facto recognizing Taiwan as a nation, arming it with potential nuclear weapons, 100 miles off the Chinese coast. And it means that in the event of a conflict over Taiwan, the USA would use nuclear weapons against China itself. China cannot allow this, similar to the red alert for Russia of NATO ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

The timing is pretty clear, as it was rehearsed last year and we have discussed before. Weather wise, the only two windows that are open for invading Taiwan are in March and in October. If China wanted to have an effective invasion in October, it would be best to blockade the island ahead of time. We guess that a two or three month blockade would be more than enough to see the island deprived of food and fuel and vulnerable to a quick strike. The Chinese have rehearsed a blockade several times in the past two years and constantly fly airplanes into Taiwanese air space, so they would be prepared to implement this. The Taiwanese Defense Ministry releases statements like this daily, showing the amount of incursion.

The Military Scenarios from Here

So starting around early August into November, be prepared for tensions to skyrocket. And then two more windows next year- next April and next October. China has essentially two ways to retake Taiwan. The first is a blockade to starve them out, as Taiwan is a huge importer of food and energy. The second would be to launch a quick, massive strike rapidly followed by an amphibious invasion when the conditions look right. The initial strike would be a massive, Desert Storm style bombardment to knock out all the key points on the island and the innumerable artillery and military systems dotting the island.

After that initial strike, China would have to capture and hold the impressively fortified beaches of Taiwan. That task is formidable – it would take 3 to 5 days just to transport all the troops and equipment to be able to land, and then would have to be continually resupplied for weeks in order to establish a beachhead. They would almost certainly have to seize a port in order to make this operation work. From there, it could move on the two major cities and major transportation points.

These two are not mutually exclusive- it could be a blockade followed by an invasion weeks later, or a blockade could be a complement to the invasion.

Without foreign assistance, the Chinese Navy and Air Force would ground down Taiwanese troops, given the vast discrepancy between population size and military capabilities. There would be fierce fighting at the landing sights. China would have to send more waves of troops, similar to the Korean war. But Taiwan would eventually run out of the supplies to conduct a war.

We encourage anyone looking to dig into this more thoroughly to hit the Project 2049 website or read their book The China Invasion Threat by Ian Easton. It goes through all scenarios and variables in great detail and we rely on it much of its findings.

The Global Response

How would the rest of the world react, if we one day woke up with Chinese missiles and jets raining over Taiwan and troops on boats? First, let us remind you before the media muddies the water: No nation has an obligation to do a thing to help Taiwan. Let’s go through the major players’ strategy piece by piece.

Taiwan itself has several advantages and a few disadvantages. The country has a massive geographical advantage in the initial stages even though the island is only about the size of the state of Maryland. The first advantage is that it has many small islands between itself and any coming Chinese invasion forces. All of these are rocky, small, and filled with weapons systems that could harm the incoming Chinese troops – the three green island chains are owned by Taiwan.

Secondly, its terrain is unlike the famous Normandy landing locations, which had mile after mile of long sandy beaches. Half the country is a mountain range reaching up to 12,000 ft high, which would rule out any invading force coming from the eastern side of the country. The capital city Tapiei is nestled in a valley surrounded by low and high mountains. There is a very narrow access to these valleys, so Chinese forces have to face the decision to attack it head on, at great risk, or to capture easier locations and slowly march on Taipei. All of the Chinese planning acknowledges that an invasion cannot be all at once, it has to be done in stages including occupying the outer islands.

The North and Western are also hilly, with few spots that are suitable for an amphibious landing. Chinese planners have identified only 14 beaches, and 10 ports around the country, that would work. Obviously, these have been outfitted with a warren of defenses and weapons systems that would take substantial time to cut through. Those beaches are small, and would be easily defended- they would not fall in 8 hours like some of the easy D-day locations . It’s far more likely that half of these beaches would end up more like the 1942 Dieppe Landing than D-Day for China. The likeliest landing spot is considered to be around Haihu and Linkhou, near the fourth largest city of Taoyuan and 30 miles from Taipei.

On D-Day, the Allies were able to move almost 160,000 troops across a distance of 60-80 miles in calm waters. The number reached 600,000 after the first month. The Chinese will have to move at least 150k or 200k of troops, across 150 to 300 mile distances with many rocket defenses able to attack them. It is a formidable logistical challenge.

Taiwan’s other advantage is the size of its military. Although a small country of 23m people, almost 1% of them are on active duty. Another 250k are in the reserves. Many citizens receive military training, or law enforcement training. China would face a well-trained military, whose active soldiers would equal its initial invasion force.

On the downside, Taiwan’s air defense, air force, and navy are miniscule and could be knocked out in a couple of days. Chinese naval superiority means they could easily blockade the island and prevent reinforcements and fuel shipments to the island. The Chinese air force would have almost total control over the island in the first couple weeks, which would make large Taiwanese troop movements difficult.

The United States is the only player who could realistically offer major aid. What would they do? Would they even react? We do not know if they would choose to react militarily, as it could easily to turn into a complete disaster (more on that later), but we think they will choose not to. Similar to Ukraine, they’d send advisors but shy away from direct US involvement in the conflict. We think any response would be almost entirely economic.

If they choose to act, the likeliest is to bring nearby naval and air force assets to bear. It would take several weeks to re-arm, transport, and reposition existing US army troops in other parts of Asia to actually participate in a ground war on Taiwan, making it unlikely.

What kind of assets could the US use? First is its permanent presence in the Pacific, mainly in Guam and Japan of about 30,000 sailors between the two fleets stationed there. The army presence is roughly 25,000 troops, most who would have to remain to defend South Korea:

At any one time, the US has eight aircraft carrier battle groups circling the world. Two of those are close enough to intervene- one off of Northern Australia, the other off of Indonesia. In the event of a major conflict, probably two more could be added. These locations are released every few days and obviously change frequently.

The largest advantage that the US has is its submarine fleet. A war simulation said that if the Chinese and US went toe to toe, the US advantage from its submarine fleet would allow the US to win – but it would cost half of its ships and subs in many scenarios done by CSIS. As submarines have 150 sailors each, such a conflict would lead to thousands and thousands of dead. If the US were to bring its naval and air assets in the region fully to bear, for several weeks, that force combined with the Taiwanese army could probably lead to a Korean War style stalemate.

We would put the odds of the US intervening on a massive scale as very low. We would think that there would be ‘advisors’ and ‘NATO assistance’, but the American response would be 90% or more economic. A full-on conflict would be a political disaster for any politician pushing it.

First, it would be a declaration of war on China. That would open the door for China to US military assets anywhere. With the US already heavily committed to fighting Ukraine and stationing assets in Poland and Romania, it would be over-stretched everywhere. That would move the US from being able to potentially win one conflict at a time (Ukraine or Taiwan), to instead losing three or four all at once (Ukraine, Taiwan, Middle East, potentially South Korea). Game over for US and dollar hegemony.

Secondly, any serious scenario of the US Navy, Air Force, Marines and/or Army getting involved generates thousands if not ten of thousands of casualties. Those numbers would exceed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With an election one year away, this would be political suicide for the Democrats. If the Republicans win in 2024 and assume power January 2025, it would be probably be after the window for military action has occurred.

The heavy amount of CCP money that went to Biden’s family for ten years and many other prominent politicians will also no doubt influence the decision to not escalate militarily.

HyperSonic Missiles Change the Game

The most important reason we think that the USA would be foolhardy to escalate comes from a recent weapons development: hypersonic missiles. These are missiles developed over the past decade only in Russia and China – the US has canceled its program twice. The first use was in Syria in 2021, and Russia has scaled up their usage in the Ukraine war.

The advantage is that they go at speeds of Mach 9 to 15 (that’s 11,500 miles per hour) compared with regular missiles at Mach 2 or 3. US missiles defenses such as the Patriot cannot target and hit anything going above Mach 5. Russia’s new Kinzhal hypersonic missile has been deployed against Patriot missile batteries in Ukraine. Several strikes combined with other missiles completely overwhelmed the system and led to a Kinzhal blowing up a $1.2bn Patriot battery in May. It appears that the US’ best technology can be easily beaten by the Russians’ best. Alex Krainer estimates that the Russians have 30-40 Kinzhals currently and can produce 200 per year – this is not a one-off event.

Source: IAS

In addition to having access to Russian technology, the Chinese have been developing their own missile program. This technology is even more advanced than the Russian’s best so far. The DOD acknowledged that “China has deployed an intermediate-range hypersonic missile that can hit targets thousands of miles away and has a “high probability” of penetrating US defenses, according to a report.” They discuss a hypersonic missile that can reach Guam and easily evade existing missile defense systems.

China also developed a more specialized weapon, that has a range of 1000 miles and was designed to take out aircraft carriers. They have a version to be launched from shore, from ship and from airplanes. They released footage of the successful tests has already scared Western military officials silly – you can find tons of articles on the various iterations.

Journalist Pepe Escobar mentioned that between the hypersonic missiles China’s military has in possession and ballistic missiles, the Chinese feel secure from the US Navy. His sources estimate that from the time hypersonic missiles are launched to impact, the Chinese could wreck any aircraft carrier near Taiwan in only twelve minutes. And its missiles can reach further to US ships in Japan, the Philippines or Guam in under an hour.

Let’s go through the logic here in bullet point format:

China could use these missiles to knock out most major targets in Taiwan, including underground bunkers. Doing this is in the initial phases makes an invasion far more likely to succeed

A conflict over Taiwan realistically could only see US Navy and Air Force assets intervene and they would have to react quickly

Most of US naval assets are the two fleets in Guam and Japan, and the aircraft carrier strike groups in the region (currently two, potentially four)

China and its ally Russia have a combined total of 150 and 400 hypersonic missiles and are producing more each month

US missile systems, also used by Taiwan, cannot defend against these missiles

China could launch several dozen missiles at once targeting US assets across the Pacific

They would reach their targets within 30 minutes, wreck our major assets and kill tens of thousands people (each carrier alone has more than 5,000 people, plus the surrounding strike group)

Given the overwhelming chance that upon getting involved the US would suffer a Pearl Harbor/Battle of Taranto/Prince of Wales level defeat, why get involved in the first place? And if we did choose to get involved and lost half of our Pacific fleet, the USA would have to acknowledge reality and pull back. It would take ten years to replace those ships.

We should add that all of the scenarios and estimates of a fair fight if it is China versus US and Taiwan we highlighted earlier did not include this new variable. If you include the hypersonic technological edge and deterrent to foreign navies, the battle could be tipped early on heavily towards the Chinese side.

The Economic Preparations for War

Fund manager and China hawk Kyle Bass recently gave an excellent presentation and Q&A at the Hudson Institute on the threat to Taiwan. It echoed many of the major points we have discussed: China’s military buildup, the constant Cross Straits tension, the strategic alliances to secure commodities like food and oil, and the likely windows to attack.

Bass found several fascinating details on China’s efforts to prep its economy to survive war and international sanctions:

Divesting from Treasuries, and moving many of those assets to Europe, to the tune of several hundred billion dollars

Passing a New Corporate Sanctions Law with sweeping powers to nationalize assets

Numerous announcements in Fujian province, the one closest to Taiwan, of new major hospitals, air-raid shelters, and travel bans

Chinese state owned banks are repatriating assets and withdrawing their order books

We encourage you to watch the full presentation to get an idea of how meticulously the CCP is planning ahead of time, and to understand better how heated the rhetoric has become in Beijing.

US Economic Reaction

The US and China have been locked in an escalating economic conflict for years now. Sanctions on companies and officials, bans of the others’ technologies, and blocking key deals have become routine. The US is already threatening massive sanctions for China if it assists Russia in Ukraine. A conflict over Taiwan would see the economic sanctions package that hit Russia thrown at them.

The major difference is here that China is far more important to the global economy than Russia. There would be difficult questions about implementation. The US buys $540bn worth of goods and services from China annually- would that just stop, leaving retailers’ shelves empty before Christmas? Do you confiscate China’s $800bn of US Treasuries? Do you shut out banks in Hong Kong, the #3 banking center globally, from SWIFT ? Do you go to allies to seize Chinese assets in their countries too? All of these were possible on Russia, albeit politically stupid. With China, such a Russian style sanctions package would be a political disaster and an economic neutron bomb. Explaining to Americans that Christmas is cancelled because of sanctions on China would be a political disaster to manage. Let alone a global depression. Bass speaks of a surgical way to do this and cripple China but insulate the globe. We are not quite sure of what measures he sees and their implementation, but we would like to learn more.

The final reason is that Taiwan is the global hub of the semiconductor industry, controlling 50% of capacity. The semi supply chain is incredibly integrated across three dozen countries. Making chips is an unfathomably complicated process - factories can cost $40bn, and require equipment with hundreds of thousands of components. A successful invasion would mean that China could completely block the US from this industry in retaliation for sanctions. China views the industry as a national security issue now and would likely nationalize it in Taiwan. An unsuccessful invasion or long conflict would completely screw up the world’s most important industry. We think that the US would avoid something so disruptive for a more surgical package of sanctions.

For that reason, we think we would see a broader but less severe package against China than we saw against Russia. The international community would be up in arms if it happened again. Other countries would also be mad that their largest trading partner was just deleted from global banking. They would run from Treasuries before theirs were confiscated.

As far as economic impact….a successful blockade and invasion of Taiwan would cause chaos in markets and particularly in the global semiconductor and electronics industry. Many Taiwanese assets would be nationalized by China. We think that you should watch headlines closely and be prepared to hunker down for the worst, especially as we near the October 2023 and April/May 2024 windows.

• Biden Admits US Out Of Ammunition - Why Are We In Ukraine Again? Ask Xi Jinping
• The Supreme Court Reasserts Rule Of Law And Affirms Our Constitution

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creativedestructionmedia.com · by Decoding Politics · July 17, 2023

20. Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War

A long read. The table of contents and introduction are provided below. The entire report can be read ath link: https://www.csis.org/analysis/cyber-operations-during-russo-ukrainian-war?mc_cid=1c07d4ee3b&mc_eid=70bf478f36

Conclusion:

The use of cyberspace to connect battle networks, support intelligence, and exchange information is here to stay. Of note, it took less time for the communication technology to become ubiquitous in war than it did for the printing press to give way to written military orders. Yet the shape of modern war is reinforcing previous academic work skeptical of the term “cyberwar” and the extent to which states have successfully integrated the use of malware, which may be better suited for espionage than battlefield tool kits. Combined arms warfare is hard. Cyber combined effects are even more difficult and prone to uneven results, opportunity costs, and the perennial fog and friction that hang over the use of violence in pursuit of political objectives.

It is dangerous to use any one case to generalize the character of war. Yet the scale and stakes of the war in Ukraine make it a crucial case for understanding the future of war. Because it is hard to imagine any future conflict where cyberspace does not play some supporting role across the levels of war, failing to analyze how great powers such as Russia apply cyber power risks missing key trends.

The mix of empirical assessment and alternative futures reviewed here suggest that cyber operations will likely prove better suited for shaping strategic interactions—whether through espionage or propaganda campaigns—than determining tactical outcomes. As with electronic warfare and signals intelligence, even when cyber operations support the art of battle, it will be indirectly and through altering the balance of information between opposing forces. Even here, the decision to employ exquisite cyber capabilities will be subject to intelligence and technical gain/loss analysis as commanders at different levels in the chain of command seek to preserve capability and balance exploitation with access. Put simply, the rush to use cyber access for a battlefield effect risks losing operational and strategic access. There is a commitment problem hanging over cyber operations: fear of future loss limits current use. This makes the idea of “cyber call for fire” at the battalion and company level a prospect that will always be subject to restrictions based on rules of engagement, authorities, and gain/loss considerations in a manner that structurally limits its responsiveness. This logic adds to preference for substituting easier-to-measure physical effects such as artillery and missile strikes. Why hack what you can destroy?

The strategic logic of cyberspace is harder to gauge. There still is the prospect that Moscow has held back significant cyber capabilities to hold Western critical infrastructure at risk as a strategic deterrent. Even if this is true, a cursory look at Ukraine shows that previous efforts to use cyber operations to degrade critical infrastructure have produced only limited, temporary results. The prospect is further questionable given the balance of offense and defense in cyberspace as multiple countries and firms race to search for intrusions. Last, even though cyberspace is critical to modern political warfare and propaganda campaigns, the extent to which the population continues to be captured by subtle lies and deepfakes is unknown. The future could prove that distracted citizens around the world prove as susceptible to cyber-enabled influence campaigns as they are to data-driven marketing. Alternatively, people will begin to adapt, making them more resilient to the flood of lies that accompanies all war, but also likely more cynical and prone to mistrust.

Cyber Operations during the Russo-Ukrainian War

From Strange Patterns to Alternative Futures

Grace B. Mueller

Postdoctoral Fellow, Army Cyber Institute

Image

Benjamin Jensen

Senior Fellow, Future War, Gaming, and Strategy, and International Security Program

Brandon Valeriano

Distinguished Senior Fellow, Krulak Center for Innovation, Marine Corps University

Ryan C. Maness

Assistant Professor, Naval Postgraduate School

Jose M. Macias

Research Assistant, International Security Program

Table of Contents

1. In the Future . . .
2. Introduction
3. Making Sense of Cyber Operations
4. Russian Cyber Operations
5. Policy Implications
6. Conclusion

In the Future . . .

• Cyber operations will play a supporting rather than decisive role in major theater wars. Great powers will continue to invest in cyber capabilities but see diminishing returns on these investments outside of intelligence and deception efforts once major conflict breaks out.
• War will still be a continuation of politics by other means and rely on the more tangible effects of violence than on the elusive effects of compromising information networks. During the transition to warfighting, military commanders will prefer the certainty of lethal precision strikes against high-value targets to the uncertainty of generating effects in cyberspace.
• The merits of cyber operations continue to be their utility as a tool of political warfare because they facilitate an engagement short of war that leverages covert action, propaganda, and surveillance but in a manner that poses a fundamental threat to human liberties. Cyber operations will remain a limited tool of coercion. Due to their uncertain effects, military leaders will initiate fewer critical cyber operations against command and control and military targets than currently anticipated. They will also face fewer restrictions on waging information warfare to mobilize and shape discontent.

Introduction

How central are cyber operations to combined arms campaigns in the twenty-first century? Between the spring of 2021 and winter of 2022, Russian military forces began to mass combat troops along Ukraine’s eastern border. On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. It marked the fourth time Russia used military force against a neighbor since the end of the Cold War and the seventh time Russia used cyber operations as part of a larger campaign or independently as an instrument of coercion against a neighboring state.[1]

Pundits and academics alike came out with grand predictions about a coming cyber war.[2] Researchers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) even argued during the war that “Russian cyberattacks on government and military command and control centers, logistics, emergency services . . . were entirely consistent with a so-called thunder run strategy intended to stoke chaos, confusion, and uncertainty, and ultimately avoid a costly and protracted war in Ukraine.”[3]

This edition of the On Future War series uses an empirical analysis of attributed Russian cyber operations in Ukraine to extrapolate future scenarios for the use of cyber operations in major theater wars below the nuclear threshold. The best predictions about an uncertain future come from analysis of past attack patterns and trends as well as seminal cases—such as Ukraine—that are almost certain to change the character of war. Reference the Statistical Appendix for more information. 

Into the war’s second year, Russia remains locked in a protracted conventional conflict that, in addition to pitched battles and missile strikes, has seen sabotage, forced displacement and kidnapping of children, systematic rape and torture, and threats to use nuclear weapons. Yet, Russia has not launched an all-out, costly cyberwar against Ukraine or its backers in the West. The so-called “thunder run” never materialized.[4] Rather, a mix of Ukrainian determination, the characteristics of the cyber domain, and a Russian preference for waging a global campaign focused more on misinformation and undermining support for Kyiv appear to have taken its place.

This installment of On Future War analyzes Russian cyber operations linked to the war in Ukraine. This study uses the publicly attributed record of Russian cyber operations in Ukraine to extrapolate insights about the character of cyber operations as instruments of warfighting and coercion in the twenty-first century. The empirical evidence demonstrates that while there has been an uptick in cyberattacks during the conflict, these attacks did not demonstrate an increase in severity, a shift in targets, or a shift in methods. Despite proclamations of doom, gloom, and a revolution in warfare, Russia behaved in a manner contrary to most popular expectations during the conflict. While cyber-enabled targeting at the tactical level is almost certain to occur alongside signals intelligence—a practice first documented in Ukraine in 2016—the prevailing trends suggest cyber operations have yet to make a material impact on the battlefield.[5] Where Russian cyber operations have made a difference is in their support to information operations and propaganda in the Global South, where Moscow has successfully spread disinformation to undermine support to Ukraine. Similar to earlier academic treatments that find cyber operations play a key role in shaping intelligence, deception, and political warfare, the Ukrainian case illustrates that the digital domain plays a shaping rather than decisive role even during extensive and existential combat.[6]

In addition to casting doubt on the cyber thunder run, the empirical record, especially when compared to previous Russian cyber operations, offers a baseline prediction about the future and how states will integrate cyber operations into a spectrum of conflict ranging from crises to major wars.[7] While the system could evolve and cyber operations might prove to be decisive instruments of war in the future, the record to date suggests alternatives for how this technology will be leveraged on the battlefield. Specifically, integrating the empirical record of cyber operations in Ukraine alongside well-established findings from the quantitative study of war suggests three scenarios.

1. Cyber Stalemate: Russia struggles to integrate cyber and conventional effects on the battlefield and beyond due to the resilience of cyber defense as well as the power of public-private partnerships.
2. War Comes Home: Russia regroups and launches a wave of cyberattacks against critical U.S. infrastructure.
3. Digital Lies: Russian cyber-enabled influence operations and computational propaganda degrade support for the United States and the war in Ukraine.

Looking across these scenarios suggests key policy options—each consistent with active campaigning and integrated deterrence—the Biden administration could take over the next two years to shape what will likely be a long-term competition with Russia that extends deeper into the twenty-first century. Over time it has become clear that resilience and a focus on defensive operations can forestall the potential impact of offensive cyber operations. Defense in cyberspace requires expanding public-private partnerships and collaboration alongside pooled data to identify attack patterns and trends. Last, the United States and its partners will need to develop better ways and means for countering how malign actors such as Russia use cyberspace to distort global public opinion. For every failed network intrusion, there are thousands of successful social media posts skewing how the world looks at the war in Ukraine.

21.  MARSOC Raiders to deploy in smaller, tech-loaded teams as conflict gets more complex

MARSOC, adapting to overcome.

MARSOC Raiders to deploy in smaller, tech-loaded teams as conflict gets more complex

sandboxx.us · by Hope Seck · July 17, 2023

The Marine Corps’ special operations forces have already embarked on initiatives aimed at building “Cognitive Raiders” who excel at problem-solving and mental agility and adaptability. Now, the Marines are revealing plans to deploy these elite troops in smaller, capability-dense teams that can be customized for the region and the conditions they’ll face.

At the Modern Day Marine Expo at the end of June, MARSOC Commander Maj. Gen. Matthew Trollinger discussed the “Next-Generation Raider Force,” which aims to give the command the flexibility it needs to accomplish a spectrum of global missions. Nestled within the MARSOC concept of Strategic Shaping and Reconnaissance, or SSR, Next-Gen Raider will take a hard look at MARSOC critical skills operators’ training and technological needs to maximize their effectiveness, even with a small footprint.

Related: Who are the Marine Raiders?

Marine Raiders with Marine Forces Special Operations Command, discuss MARSOC’s legacy and future plans during a MARSOC panel at Modern Day Marine 2023, Washington, D.C., June 28, 2023. MARSOC personnel spent time at MDM 23 meeting with industry professionals, demonstrating new technology advancements, and speaking on the future of the command. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Henry Rodriguez)

This emphasis is driven by a changing world and the expectation that the U.S. may soon find itself in conflict with a near-peer competitor and operating in an environment as complex and geographically challenging as the Pacific. It’s also informed by MARSOC’s tradition of punching above its weight class: Trollinger said the command executes nearly 9% of U.S. Special Operations Command’s (SOCOM’s) missions with under 5% of SOCOM’s total force strength and less than 2% of its budget.

Maj. Gen. Matthew Trollinger, commander, Marine Forces Special Operations Command, answers questions during the MARSOC “Campaigning for the Future” panel at Modern Day Marine 2023, Washington, D.C., June 28, 2023. MARSOC personnel spent time at MDM 23 meeting with industry professionals, demonstrating new technology advancements, and speaking on the future of the command. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Henry Rodriguez)

“We’re known for deploying with a [Marine Special Operations Team] or [Marine Special Operations Company],” Trollinger told an audience at the expo. “What we’re looking at is, you know, it doesn’t need to be that standardized. It can look a little different than that and come with some different capabilities, some higher-end capabilities, that are needed and necessary in that environment.”

To that end, he said, MARSOC leaders are taking an in-depth look at how elements are organized and equipped – and they’re listening to the Critical Skill Operators (CSOs) and enablers themselves to ensure they develop the right solutions. (CSOs are special operations warriors and form the core of MARSOC; they are supported by personnel of various other specialties. Both CSOs and support personnel are considered Marine Raiders.)

Speaking alongside Trollinger were three MARSOC personnel including a CSO, a communications specialist, and an intelligence specialist, their identities withheld for operational security reasons, who discussed their own most pressing needs downrange.

The communicator, who’d been in MARSOC for two years, said she’d like to see comms gear that’s more intuitive and easier to set up for

“If it’s more plug and play, and making it as simple as a push of a button so we can move on to the next task, then that’s definitely something we need,” she said.

She said she was impressed, for example, with the apid accessory integration device (RAID) plate on display at Modern Day Marine, a developmental concept that combined a number of modular systems, including radios and robotic controllers, into a single lightweight body-worn plate that promised to lighten an operator’s equipment load by as much as 25 pounds.

John Bolen with Tomahawk Robotics and Nick Hutchinson with Marine Forces Special Operations Command demonstrate the rapid accessory integration device (RAID) plate to Brig. Gen. Kyle Ellison, commanding general, Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and industry professionals at Modern Day Marine 2023, Washington, D.C., June 28, 2023. The RAID plate is designed to integrate modular systems into one lightweight device to lighten the load on the individual operator. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Henry Rodriguez)

The critical skills operator said MARSOC needed rapidly deployable and rugged comms equipment that would better enable team members to track personnel across the battlespace, but also better ways to camouflage their own signatures from hostile forces.

“The ability to hide in the noise is the No. 1 thing I think we need to attack, from my perspective,” he said.

Marine Raiders with Marine Forces Special Operations Command conduct military freefall parachute training on Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Mar. 7, 2023. MFF training ensures Marine Raiders maintain operational currency and capabilities to support global mission requirements. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Henry Rodriguez)

As far as how much smaller deployable MARSOC elements might get, much remains uncertain. Trollinger emphasized that the goal was not to create a new unit of a specific size, but to expand the options MARSOC could offer to a relevant geographic combatant commander. Col. Ian Fletcher, MARSOC’s assistant chief of staff for plans and resourcing, indicated that this effort was part of a maturation process for the command, which at 17 years old, remains SOCOM’s youngest component.

“Naval Special Warfare had to learn this. U.S. Army Special Operations had to learn,” Fletcher said, “how to create more options and opportunities, so you can program deployments; you’re not just being reactive to deployment.”

Feature Image: U.S. Marines with Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One (MAWTS-1) and 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, Marine Raider Regiment prepare to jump out of a KC-130J Hercules during Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 2-16 at Site 54, near Wellton, Ariz., April 15, 2016. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Zachary M. Ford, MAWTS-1 COMCAM/ Released)

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sandboxx.us · by Hope Seck · July 17, 2023

22. U.S. Falling Behind China in Critical Tech Race, Report Finds

Excerpts:

For most of the critical technologies, “the United States is largely stagnating in patents in these areas, [and] in many cases United States patent grants are actually declining,” Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty said during the company’s release briefing for the report. And for the capabilities actually in development, the United States heavily relies upon Chinese suppliers, she said.

“This is not just a defense problem,” Dougherty said. “This isn't just a microelectronics problem. This is an overriding trend that spans all U.S. federal programs and activities.” All 12 of the critical technologies Govini analyzed “are highly dependent on Chinese entities for completing their projects, for developing their products, for bringing their goods and services to the market, and that market includes some of our most sensitive national security programs.”

One of those critical technologies is artificial intelligence, and over the last five years the United States’ total spending on AI has increased incrementally at best, even as “the technology advancements in AI have been staggering,” Dougherty said. Meanwhile, China has openly stated its commitment to be the global AI leader by 2032, and has granted patents for AI systems significantly faster than the United States in recent years, she added.

U.S. Falling Behind China in Critical Tech Race, Report Finds

nationaldefensemagazine.org · by Josh Luckenbaugh

7/17/2023

iStock illustration

The United States risks losing the technology competition with China if it doesn’t take significant steps to shore up its defense industrial base and integrate advanced capabilities into its military systems, according to a new report from commercial data company Govini.

In its 10th annual “National Security Scorecard” released July 17, Govini evaluated 12 technologies critical to national security using its Ark.ai commercial data platform, which the report described as “the first digital twin of the U.S. industrial base.”

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning to continuously enrich its dataset, Ark.ai “presents a digital representation of the companies, capabilities and capital that together form the industrial and innovation bases of the United States,” the report said. “By traversing these systems, analysts, managers and decision-makers in the national security sector are able to solve challenges that restore and strengthen America’s position in the competition with China.”

However, the picture of the industrial base Ark.ai currently paints is not encouraging for the United States, the report said. Govini found that in all 12 technology areas, “the United States is falling behind China in the core science as measured by the patents granted in each country.”

Patents are “a leading indicator of technological dominance in the future,” said Govini Chairman and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work. They are “the seed corn for making new discoveries that put you on the top of the competitive food chain. And that's what scares me the most: China's doing far better than us in terms of the overall number of patents.”

For most of the critical technologies, “the United States is largely stagnating in patents in these areas, [and] in many cases United States patent grants are actually declining,” Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty said during the company’s release briefing for the report. And for the capabilities actually in development, the United States heavily relies upon Chinese suppliers, she said.

“This is not just a defense problem,” Dougherty said. “This isn't just a microelectronics problem. This is an overriding trend that spans all U.S. federal programs and activities.” All 12 of the critical technologies Govini analyzed “are highly dependent on Chinese entities for completing their projects, for developing their products, for bringing their goods and services to the market, and that market includes some of our most sensitive national security programs.”

One of those critical technologies is artificial intelligence, and over the last five years the United States’ total spending on AI has increased incrementally at best, even as “the technology advancements in AI have been staggering,” Dougherty said. Meanwhile, China has openly stated its commitment to be the global AI leader by 2032, and has granted patents for AI systems significantly faster than the United States in recent years, she added.

And when it comes to AI development, the Defense Department “is not actually the pacing spender, or setting the course on the trends that we see with respect to AI activity in the federal space,” she said. While that shows the United States sees the race for AI dominance as more than a military issue, the department has historically struggled “with aligning itself bureaucratically to really drive adoption and acceleration of AI within DoD activities and programs,” she said.

Dougherty noted the Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office “has been given a revamped mandate to … accelerate and adopt AI within the department,” and said she hopes the CDAO recognizes “how much room for acceleration there is, which … goes beyond simply spending to the outcomes that are driven by that investment.”

Beyond the fact the AI supply chain is heavily reliant on entities based in China “or in other adversarial countries,” the report also revealed the top U.S. vendors for AI “are the traditional defense contractors and traditional primes,” Dougherty said.

“There's a disconnect there,” she said. There is a need for the national security ecosystem “to attract and scale companies that are outside the Beltway and outside the traditional defense system, particularly in areas like artificial intelligence.”

Dougherty said that around five years ago, Govini analyzed the top 100 defense vendors and the top 100 AI companies, “and we found almost no overlap. Five years later … we've made very little progress, and while we might be attracting some of these non-traditional entrants into the defense procurement system to contribute to AI on national security problems, we certainly aren't scaling them, at least not based on these numbers.”

If the United States is to reverse the trend of falling behind China in critical technology competition, significant change is needed, she said. “Perhaps the change that's needed is a better model between the U.S. federal government from an R&D perspective in terms of what we nationally inspire, invest in [and] fund for R&D, versus what we're expecting to get out of the commercial sector from that same research-and-development perspective.”

Most research and development in the United States today is commercially funded, and to assure America’s place as the preeminent country for technologies like AI, the government must be more “strategic” about its research-and-development initiatives, “in addition to continuing to put investment where it needs to go given the stakes,” Dougherty said.

Work said China is doing everything it can to outpace and then catch and surpass the United States. “By 2049, they want to be the number one economy in the world and the number one military power in the world. Is that a future that the United States wants?

“I would hope not, and I would hope that we go into this and say, ‘This is an existential competition that we have to win, and we are going to make decisions based on data which gives us the best opportunity to win the competition,’” he said.

nationaldefensemagazine.org · by Josh Luckenbaugh

23. How to cut the Pentagon budget without gutting defense

From Heritage.

How to cut the Pentagon budget without gutting defense

BY WILSON BEAVER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 07/15/23 10:00 AM ET

The Hill · · July 15, 2023

America’s National Security Strategy warns that the risk of conflict between great powers is increasing, but you wouldn’t know it from the current debate over the defense budget.

The debt deal negotiated by Congress and signed by President Biden caps defense spending in 2024 at $886 billion for FY 2024, a 3.3 percent increase. The money allocated for 2025, $895 billion, represents an even smaller increase, at only 1 percent over 2024.

With inflation currently running at around 4.9 percent, these amounts are not enough to keep up with inflation, much less to build a military capable of deterring China from aggression against its neighbors.

So if spending cannot keep up with inflation, policymakers must at least ensure that every dollar is being spent efficiently. For those in Congress interested in increasing the capability and lethality of the military, the first option they should pursue is to look for savings and efficiencies within the defense budget itself.

Policymakers should start by reducing non-defense spending contained within the defense budget, thus allowing the Department of Defense to better focus its spending on direct military capability.

Take, for instance, the decades-long decline in weapons and systems procurement as a percentage of the overall defense budget. Although the defense budget should first and foremost fund direct military capability, we have instead prioritized spending on other objectives such as research and development and operations and maintenance. Of course, maintenance costs usually increase as procurement slows. Today, the military is forced to spend more and more on the upkeep of older and older systems.

Civilian companies such as Delta Airlines and Maersk know this. They choose to replace their planes and ships far sooner than the Air Force or the Navy does, specifically to avoid these rising maintenance costs. The average age of U.S. Air Force fighter aircraft is 32 years, whereas the average age of a Delta Airlines jet is 15.1 years (and even then, Delta gets criticized for its “aging planes”).

It is time for our military to catch up. To that end, any program that has been in the research phase for more than a few years and shows no sign of transitioning to an acquisition program should be carefully considered for elimination. While we always want our men and women in uniform to have the best equipment, the purpose of research should be to provide military capability, not simply to pursue research for research’s sake. The proposed fiscal 2024 budget contains a whopping $145 billion in research and development funding. Much of that would be better spent buying more planes, munitions, and ships.

Better still, those billions — in addition to other misaligned funds in the budget — could be put directly toward the American military’s efforts to deter the People’s Republic of China, which the 2022 National Defense Strategy identified as our most “consequential strategic competitor” for the coming decades. For example, the Marine Corps’ Advanced Reconnaissance Vehicle program and the CH-47 Chinook helicopter program could both be cut to reallocate funding to lines of effort better suited to conflict in the Indo-Pacific.

Such reforms could also free up resources to accelerate this budget’s salutary move to multi-year procurement authorities to buy top-priority missiles. Also helpful would be the loosening of rules that currently limit the share of munitions that private companies (as opposed to the government) are allowed to produce for the military.

Policymakers should also consider contracting and management reforms within the Defense Department, such as expanding hiring and firing authorities for civilian employees, updating the federal regulations on commercial item procurement, and cutting bureaucratic red tape would not only yield savings, but lead to an overall more efficient military.

The same can be said for a new round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC), which could result in billions more saved annually. According to one official estimate, the savings from previous BRAC rounds amount to roughly $12 billion annually. Nonetheless, in the face of congressional opposition, the Pentagon has given up even asking for permission to start another BRAC round.

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Unfortunately, that’s par for the course in the Biden administration — asleep at the wheel as inflation and government spending continue to spin out of control. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our government can and should take steps to bring defense spending under control. This is not at odds with having a capable military.

The defense budget deserves the same scrutiny as any other government agency. In fiscal year 2024, defense hawks and fiscal hawks must find common purpose by focusing on improving the existing defense budget. Together, we can move money away from inefficiency and waste and toward increased capability and lethality.

Wilson Beaver is the Senior Policy Analyst for defense budgeting in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense.

The Hill · by Rebecca Beitsch · July 15, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com