Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners


Quotes of the Day:


“Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place and then come down to shoot the survivors.” 
- Ernest Hemingway

“People do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing - not participating in activities that make life bad” 
- Leo Tolstoy



“Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever borrower.” 
- Robert Greene



1.  RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 27 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (27.09.22) CDS comments on key events

3. China's Xi reemerges after trip abroad quashing unfounded 'coup' rumors

4. Nord Stream Leaks Underline Gray-Zone Risks

5. Democrats brace for a national security brain drain

6.  Putin's Empire Starts to Crumble

7. Russians are calling up the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense asking how to surrender, Ukraine says

8. Opinion | The U.S. and China are headed for a showdown at the U.N.

9. US ‘smart power’ can win back the Pacific

10. The Army of 2022: We’re in a bad place if soldiers can choose what mandatory training they complete

11. AFSOC AC-130J gunship to fire laser weapon in flight test in 2023

12. The Strategic Interplay Between AUKUS, the NPT, and the Rules-Based International Order 

13. Meet the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, a Little-Known Unit that Presents a New Model for Security Cooperation

14. What Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand About War

15. Opinion | The disturbing strategy behind MAGA complaints about a ‘woke military’ by Max Boot

16. American Innovation Can Counter China’s BRI

17. Hezbollah and Iran Are Destabilizing the West Bank

18. Moscow Cozies Up With Hamas to Pressure Israel

19 The Nord Stream pipeline leak was an act of ‘sabotage’: Who might have done it, why, and what happens next?

20 Inside a liberated Ukrainian city, and how NATO tactics helped free it

21. The Air Force has finally rescued a stranded Osprey aircraft from a remote Norwegian island

22. A Different Kind of Russian Threat – Seeking to Install Its Candidate Atop Telecommunications Standards Body

23.  American semiconductor leadership suffers from bad defense, no offense







1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 27 (Putin's War)


Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-27

Key Takeaways

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely announce the Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory on September 30 after Russian officials completed their falsified “referenda” on September 27.
  • Russian forces are reportedly committing newly-mobilized Western Military District (WMD) men to the Kherson and Kharkiv Oblast frontlines without prior training.
  • Ukrainian forces are consolidating their positions on the eastern bank of the Oskil river and made further gains on the outskirts of Lyman.
  • Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) as part of the southern counter-offensive interdiction campaign, particularly disrupting Russian efforts to build barge crossings.
  • Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations around Bakhmut and west of Donetsk City, increasingly leveraging penal units.
  • Russian forces inflicted severe damage on a Ukrainian airfield in Kryvyi Rih and continued routine air and missile strikes across southern Ukraine.
  • Russian authorities are establishing checkpoints at Russia’s borders to forcibly mobilize Russian men who are seeking to avoid forced mobilization by fleeing the country.
  • Russian officials are setting conditions to forcibly mobilize or conscript Ukrainian civilians in soon-to-be annexed areas of occupied Ukraine.
  • The Russian annexation of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk will likely exacerbate tensions within DNR and LNR forces, who regularly mutiny when asked to fight outside the borders of their own oblasts.
  • Russian officials may attempt to reframe their invasion of Ukraine and occupation of soon-to-be-annexed Ukrainian territory as a “counterterrorism operation.”


RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 27

Sep 27, 2022 - Press ISW


understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, Katherine Lawlor, Grace Mappes, Riley Bailey, and Mason Clark

September 27, 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.

Russian authorities in occupied parts of Ukraine’s Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts completed their falsified annexation “referenda” on September 27 and implausibly claimed that each sham referendum received between 87 and 99% approval from Ukrainian residents.[1] Russian officials pre-ordained and falsified the approval ratings and alleged voter participation rates for the sham referenda while coercing Ukrainian civilians in occupied territories to performatively vote for Russian annexation, as ISW has previously reported.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely announce the Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory on September 30. The completion of the performative referenda marks the last prerequisite for Russian President Vladimir Putin to declare the Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory. The UK Ministry of Defense reported that Putin will likely make the declaration before or during an address to both houses of Russia's parliament on Friday, September 30.[2] Putin followed a similar approach when he illegally annexed Ukrainian Crimea in 2014: a sham referendum, followed by a presidential decree of recognition and a treaty of accession that the Russian Federal Assembly formally approved within five days of the sham Crimean referendum. The Russian proxy leader of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), Denis Pushilin, told Russian media on September 27 that he previously asked Putin to approve the results of the referendum before it was held and would travel to Moscow to sign an agreement.[3] The head of Russia’s proxy Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), Leonid Pasechnik, announced on September 27 that the LNR will join Russia “very soon” and that he will travel to Moscow on September 27 or 28 to ask Putin in person to approve the results of the sham referenda.[4] ISW previously forecasted that Putin will annex occupied Ukrainian territory by or soon after October 1 to enable the forced conscription of Ukrainian civilians into the Russian military in the normal autumn conscription cycle.[5]

Russian forces are reportedly committing newly-mobilized Western Military District (WMD) men to the Kherson and Kharkiv Oblast frontlines without prior training. A mobilized servicemember of the 1st Tank Regiment of an unspecified unit recorded a video plea stating that his unit will not receive training prior to deploying to Kherson Oblast on September 29.[6] RFE/RL’s Mark Krutov geolocated the serviceman’s surroundings to the 2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division’s base in Kalininets, Moscow Oblast. ISW previously reported that Russian forces have committed elements of the 147th Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Motor Rifle Division to Kherson Oblast in late August, and are likely attempting to reinforce units in the south (that have operated in Kyiv and Kharkiv Oblasts) in short periods with untrained, newly-mobilized men.[7] Elements of the 2nd Motor Rifle Division previously based out of Izyum asked to leave their positions on August 30 due to moral exhaustion.[8] Russian opposition outlet Mediazona also reported that mobilized men of the 237th Tank Regiment of the WMD’s 3rd Motor Rifle Division based out of Valuyki are deploying to Donbas frontlines after only one day of training.[9] ISW cannot independently verify Mediazona’s report, but the 237th Regiment also operated around Izyum since late March.[10] Mobilized men with a day or two of training are unlikely to meaningfully reinforce Russian positions affected by Ukrainian counteroffensives in the south and east.

Key Takeaways

  • Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely announce the Russian annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory on September 30 after Russian officials completed their falsified “referenda” on September 27.
  • Russian forces are reportedly committing newly-mobilized Western Military District (WMD) men to the Kherson and Kharkiv Oblast frontlines without prior training.
  • Ukrainian forces are consolidating their positions on the eastern bank of the Oskil river and made further gains on the outskirts of Lyman.
  • Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) as part of the southern counter-offensive interdiction campaign, particularly disrupting Russian efforts to build barge crossings.
  • Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations around Bakhmut and west of Donetsk City, increasingly leveraging penal units.
  • Russian forces inflicted severe damage on a Ukrainian airfield in Kryvyi Rih and continued routine air and missile strikes across southern Ukraine.
  • Russian authorities are establishing checkpoints at Russia’s borders to forcibly mobilize Russian men who are seeking to avoid forced mobilization by fleeing the country.
  • Russian officials are setting conditions to forcibly mobilize or conscript Ukrainian civilians in soon-to-be annexed areas of occupied Ukraine.
  • The Russian annexation of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk will likely exacerbate tensions within DNR and LNR forces, who regularly mutiny when asked to fight outside the borders of their own oblasts.
  • Russian officials may attempt to reframe their invasion of Ukraine and occupation of soon-to-be-annexed Ukrainian territory as a “counterterrorism operation.”

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

  • Ukrainian Counteroffensives—Southern and Eastern Ukraine
  • Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
  • Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
  • Russian Supporting Effort—Southern Axis
  • Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
  • Activities in Russian-occupied Areas


Ukrainian Counteroffensives (Ukrainian efforts to liberate Russian-occupied territories)

Eastern Ukraine: (Vovchansk-Kupyansk-Izyum-Lyman Line)

Ukrainian forces conducted operations to consolidate their positions on the eastern bank of the Oskil River north of Kupyansk on September 27. Ukrainian officials confirmed that Ukrainian forces liberated Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi (just east of Kupyansk), which reportedly serves as one of the largest railway nodes in Kharkiv Oblast.[11] Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces also continued to advance in the direction of Tavilizhanka (approximately 18km northeast of Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi on the Oskil River’s eastern bank) and have secured positions northwest of the settlement.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued to shell Kucherivka and Petropavlivka (east of Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi) and Dvorichna (west of Tavilizhanka).[13] Social media footage also showed the aftermath of a Russian strike on Kupyansk.[14]

Ukrainian forces continued to advance northwest of Lyman on September 26 and September 27. Ukrainian local officials announced that Ukrainian forces liberated Pisky-Radkivski (approximately 35km northwest of Lyman) on September 26, but noted that Ukrainian forces are still clearing the settlement.[15] Local officials stated they could freely travel between Lozove and Rubtsi, which further indicates that Ukrainian forces have secured some positions northwest of Lyman. Ukrainian journalist Andrii Tsaplienko reported that Ukrainian forces have liberated Ridkodub (20km north of Lyman), and geolocated footage depicts Ukrainian forces moving through the settlement.[16] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Ukrainian forces recaptured Katerynivka and secured their positions in Nove, both east of Ridkodub.[17] Geolocated footage also showed Ukrainian forces entering Korovii Yar, about 20km due northwest of Lyman.[18]

Russian sources are reporting that Ukrainian artillery fire is successfully interdicting Russian forces’ last logistic route to Lyman, running through Svatove-Makiivka-Terny north of the settlement.[19] Russian milbloggers also claimed to witness Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage groups in Torske and Yampil, 14km northeast and 13km southeast of Lyman, respectively.[20]


Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian military officials maintained their operational silence on September 27 and stated that Ukrainian forces are continuing their interdiction campaign in southern Ukraine. Ukrainian military officials noted that Russian forces are continuing to regroup units in the area and have closed entry and exit to Kherson Oblast, possibly to prevent individual Russian deserters and Ukrainian men of fighting age from fleeing to Ukrainian-controlled territory.[21]

Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command noted that Ukrainian forces struck Russian barges operating over the Dnipro River and continued to target Russian efforts to repair the Kakhovka Bridge.[22] Geolocated footage published on September 26 also showed that Ukrainian forces reportedly struck a Russian ferry crossing near Kherson City.[23] Some Ukrainian social media users also reported that Russian forces restarted their efforts to establish a barge crossing near the Antonivsky Bridge, but did not provide visual evidence.[24] Ukrainian forces also continued to strike Russian ammunition depots and key positions in central and northern Kherson Oblast. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command noted destroying a Russian air defense system in Beryslav Raion. Ukrainian forces also reportedly struck four ammunition depots and four Russian weapon and equipment concentrations in Beryslav and Kherson raions.[25] Ukrainian forces also struck Russian military equipment concentration areas in Kakhovka Raion.[26] Ukrainian military officials stated that Ukrainian forces have increased their pace of shooting down Russian aircraft in Kherson Oblast, shooting down six planes and helicopters in the past week.[27]

Ukrainian and Russian sources provided limited information regarding kinetic activity on the Kherson Oblast border. The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian forces continue to shell and strike Ukrainian positions southeast of the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets River, northwest of Kherson City, and south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border near Potomkyne and Osokorkivka.[28] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) also claimed that Russian forces struck Ukrainian command posts near the bridgehead and shot down Ukrainian aircraft in Osokorkivka.[29] Geolocated footage also showed Ukrainian forces targeting Russian positions and military equipment in between Maksymivka and Kyselivka (east of Mykolaiv City), Davydiv Brid on the T2207 highway, and the southern part of Pravdyne (about 30km northwest of Kherson City).[30]


Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces continued unsuccessful ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on September 27. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks northeast of Bakhmut near Soledar and Bakhmutske, and south of Bakhmut near Kurdyumivka, Zaitseve, and Mayorsk.[31] The New York Times cited reports by Ukrainian military personnel that Wagner Group forces in the Bakhmut area are deploying men from penal colonies as cannon fodder who often surrender to Ukrainian forces on contact, confirming previous reports of Wagner Group employing poorly trained prisoners.[32] The article states that more experienced Wagner fighters only advance a certain amount before sending the former prisoners forward with little support amid Ukrainian artillery fire.[33] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted failed ground attacks northeast of Avdiivka near Kamianka and west of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske on September 27.[34] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces are trying to advance in the directions of Pervomaiske, Pobeda, Pavlivka, and Novomykhailivka, all west and southwest of Donetsk City in western Donetsk Oblast.[35] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a failed assault against Russian positions in Marinka.[36]


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

Russian forces inflicted severe damage on a Ukrainian airfield in Kryvyi Rih and continued routine air and missile strikes against Ukrainian positions in southern Ukraine on September 27. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that a Russian cruise missile inflicted heavy damage on airport infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih on September 26, rendering the airfield inoperable.[37] Russian forces continued to conduct routine shelling and air and missile strikes elsewhere in Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts on September 27. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted air and missile strikes on Mykolaiv City, Ochakiv, and Zaporizhia City.[38] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces conducted six S-300 and two Smerch multiple launch rocket system (MLRS) missile attacks against Mykolaiv City on September 27, striking the industrial zone and civilian infrastructure.[39] The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian forces conducted a high-precision air strike against Ukraine's 59th Motorized Infantry Brigade in Mykolaiv City, killing up to 50 personnel and destroying five vehicles.[40] The Russian Ministry of Defense also claimed that Russian forces conducted an air strike in the vicinity of Zaporizhia City that killed 100 personnel of the Ukrainian 9th Special Forces Regiment and 50 “foreign mercenaries.”[41] ISW cannot independently verify the Russian Ministry of Defense’s claims.

Russian forces continued to use Iranian-made drones to attack Ukrainian forces and cities in Southern Ukraine on September 27. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces carried out more than 50 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) sorties on September 27 throughout southern Ukraine and that many of those sorties used Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.[42] Ukrainian sources reported on September 27 that Ukrainian forces shot down three drones conducting operations over Ochakiv and eleven Russian drones conducting operations in Odesa Oblast.[43] A Russian milblogger claimed on September 27 that Russian forces conducted drone attacks on September 26 targeting Ukrainian howitzers in Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts.[44] The Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces used drones to strike a Ukrainian armed forces barracks, a Ukrainian air defense command post, a guard company headquarters, and a fuel storage depot in unspecified locations in Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts on September 26.[45]

Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign against Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast on September 27. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed ten pieces of military equipment and killed more than 20 Russian personnel in Melitopol.[46] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 27 that Ukrainian forces also destroyed a Russian S-300 system and five other pieces of military equipment and wounded more than 50 Russian personnel in Tokmak and Chernihivka.[47]

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

Russian authorities are establishing checkpoints at Russia’s borders to forcibly mobilize Russian men seeking to avoid forced mobilization by fleeing the country. The Russian minister of internal affairs for North Ossetia-Alania, Police Lieutenant-General Andrei Sergeev, announced on September 27 that officials plan to create a mobilization point for the military recruitment office at the Upper Lars checkpoint on the border between Russia and Georgia “in the near future.”[48] Social media footage showed Russian military vehicles moving toward the border, reportedly to establish the mobilization checkpoint.[49] A Russian online outlet reported on September 27 that border officials began to check mobilization lists at the checkpoint, but claimed they were only checking for names of North Ossetian reservists.[50] Sergeev also reported that North Ossetian border officials met with the border department of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to address concerns about increased traffic across border crossings into Georgia and agreed to allow foot traffic over the border in an attempt to alleviate traffic backups and a ”tense” situation. A Finnish writer claimed on September 27 that FSB officials at the Russian-Finnish border are checking names against a mobilization list and detaining men whose names appear, citing an unidentified source.[51]

The Russian Ministry of Defense denied rumors on September 27 that Russian officials asked the governments of Georgia, Kazakhstan, and other states to forcibly extradite Russian men fleeing mobilization back to Russia.[52] Kazakhstan’s internal affairs minister, Marat Akhmetzhanov, told reporters that Kazakhstan would only extradite men who had committed a crime that is also illegal in Kazakhstan and were placed on an international wanted list but did not explicitly refute the rumor.[53] Ukrainian outlets framed his response as a confirmation that Kazakhstan would extradite Russian citizens for evading mobilization if they were prosecuted in Russia.[54]

Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on September 27 that parents of first-year military cadets at the Kuznetsov Naval Academy in St. Petersburg—Russia’s premier naval staff college—protested the possibility that their children might be sent to fight in Ukraine.[55] The GUR reported that academy personnel have placed the cadets under constant surveillance to ensure that they do not leave or contact their parents and that the leadership of the academy has refused to meet with the parents of the cadets. Resistance to mobilization at one of Russia's premier military academies, not just among regular civilians, indicates the steep deterioration of morale among personnel the Kremlin intends to deploy to Ukraine.

Russian officials continued to set conditions for the forced mobilization or conscription of Ukrainian civilians in soon-to-be annexed oblasts to fight against the Ukrainian military on September 27. Ukrainian Telegram channel Mariupol Now shared a screenshot of a text from a person who appeared to be a Russian occupation administrator or military recruiter, inviting the recipient to vote in support of the sham annexation referendum and then report to military headquarters with their passport and personal belongings in compliance with Putin’s partial mobilization order.[56] The recipient told the channel that he was a resident of Mariupol who left in May and said that his phone number is linked to his passport. The Russian-appointed head of the Kherson Occupation Administration, Vladimir Saldo, incongruously claimed on September 27 that all Kherson residents who received Russian passports will not be liable for Russian military service or subject to mobilization.[57] ISW previously assessed that Russian forces would likely forcibly include Ukrainian civilians in occupied areas in their autumn mobilization cycle, which is set to begin on October 1.[58] Ukrainian Luhansk Oblast head Serhiy Haidai reported on September 27 that Russian officials began consulting lists of medical school graduates in Luhansk to forcibly mobilize doctors to assist Russian forces.[59] The Russian-appointed head of the Zaporizhia Oblast Occupation Administration, Evgeny Balitsky, told Russian media on September 27 that mobilization in Zaporizhia Oblast “is not envisioned in the next few years” after annexation.[60] However, Balitsky noted that “volunteers” could fight on behalf of Russia, nodding to the coercive volunteer battalions his administration has already formed in Zaporizhia Oblast.

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

Russia’s illegal annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory will require the establishment of new bureaucracies that Russian officials will struggle to create, and will likely exacerbate bureaucratic infighting and tensions between occupation officials in newly-annexed parts of Ukraine. Russian and occupation officials may be beginning to solidify plans to federally administer newly-annexed parts of Ukraine. One Kremlin-sponsored Russian outlet reported that the former deputy prime minister for defense and former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, may become the head of, or presidential envoy to, a new Crimean Federal District that will encompass illegally occupied Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts.[61] Federal districts do not have much authority as administrative bodies, suggesting that each annexed oblast may operate like a Russian oblast.

The Russian-appointed head of the Kherson occupation administration, Vladimir Saldo, shared a report on September 27 alleging that Kherson oblast will have its own governor and its own executive government and will maintain border controls with Crimea—an unusual arrangement for two entities within one federal district.[62] Saldo claimed that border controls with Crimea are still needed due to Ukrainian “saboteurs” regularly entering Kherson Oblast.[63] He also claimed that Ukrainian territories that are currently under Ukrainian control will soon join Russia. Saldo did not clarify whether he was referring to Ukrainian-controlled parts of Kherson Oblast or larger swathes of Ukraine. Russian officials have previously set conditions to administer newly annexed territory under other types of administration, such as re-establishing the Russian Empire-era “Tauride Governate,” an administrative unit including much of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory but excluding Donetsk and Luhansk.[64] The Kremlin (and local officials) retain the flexibility to enact different forms of administration and may alter occupation structures over time.

The Russian annexation of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk will likely exacerbate tensions within DNR and LNR forces, who regularly mutiny when asked to fight outside the borders of their own oblasts.[65] DNR head Denis Pushilin signaled on September 27 that deployments beyond their oblast borders will increase immediately following the sham referendum. Pushilin told Russian media that DNR forces will deploy all along “the line of combat contact” because they are already “practically part of Russia.”[66] That decision will likely worsen already terrible morale among proxy forces and could lead to infighting as they more formally integrate into and co-locate with the Russian military.

Russian officials may attempt to reframe their invasion of Ukraine and occupation of soon-to-be-annexed Ukrainian territory as a “counterterrorism operation.” Russian-appointed Crimean Occupation Administration head Sergey Aksenov said on September 26 that Russian officials may temporarily close down the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) while conducting their counterterrorism operations in newly-annexed territories, citing a Russian federal law that allows for the suspension of radiological facilities during counterterrorism efforts.[67] Russian forces could use a full shutdown of the plant, the reactors of which are already offline, to attempt to transition the ZNPP onto the Russian energy grid and away from Ukrainian control. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 27 that the situation at the Russian-occupied but Ukrainian-run ZNPP remains tense. The General Staff reported that ZNPP employees do not want to cooperate with Russian forces but are unable to leave occupied Ukrainian territory due to Russian border closures and restrictions on civilian movement.[68]

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.


[1] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15888905

[2] https://ria dot ru/20220924/poslanie-1819200978.html; https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1574633113598283777

[3] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15889141; https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15889223

[9] https://zona dot media/chronicle/214#49986

[27] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/09/27/zbilshena-statystyka-znyshhennya-vorozhyh-litakiv-ta-vertolotiv-kolektyvna-zasluga-vsih-syl-oborony/

[53] https://ria dot ru/20220927/kazakhstan-1819730023.html

[54] https://t.me/stranaua/66347; https://suspilne dot media/285962-kazahstan-ne-vidavatime-rf-uhilantiv-akso-ih-ne-ogolosili-u-miznarodnij-rozsuk/

[55] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/batky-pershokursnykiv-viiskovomorskoi-akademii-protestuiut-proty-vidpravky-kursantiv-na-viinu.html

[60] https://news dot ru/society/na-goryachej-linii-obyasnili-pochemu-ne-mobilizuyut-bezhencev-iz-dnr-i-lnr/

[61] https://www.vedomosti dot ru/politics/articles/2022/09/27/942638-rogozina-nazivayut-osnovnim-kandidatom

[66] https://tass dot ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15889223

understandingwar.org



2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (27.09.22) CDS comments on key events



CDS Daily brief (27.09.22) CDS comments on key events

 

Humanitarian aspect:

The UN mission still has not gotten access to the places where Russia keeps Ukrainian prisoners of war. At the same time, it visited the sites of the internment of Russian prisoners in Ukraine without hindrance, Matilda Bogner, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said.

 

About 800 "Azov" battalion members are currently in Russian captivity. More than 40 of them are women, including pregnant women, Olha Kravchenko, the head of the department for working with prisoners and their families of the Azov patronage service, said.

 

On the night of September 27, Russian troops hit the center of Mykolaiv with multiple rocket launchers, damaging several civilian objects in the city center: houses, shops, the water supply network, the head of the Mykolaiv Oblast Military Administration (OMA) Vitaly Kim, said. Before that, he said that Mykolaiv had come under massive shelling twice that night - approximately at 01:04 and 04:02. No victims were reported.

 

Around 3:30 p.m. on September 27, the Russian army shelled the border areas of Sumy Oblast, Operational command "North" reported. Observers recorded 20 shell explosions caused by the Russian Federation, probably with self-propelled guns, in the area of Rozhkovichi (9 explosions) and Seredyna Buda (11 explosions). No victims were reported.

 

On the evening of September 27, the Kharkiv mayor, Igor Terekhov, reported three airstrikes on the city, namely the Kholodnohirsky district. An infrastructure object was damaged. Head of Kharkiv OMA Sinehubov confirmed that there are power outages in Kharkiv and broken communication with the emergency call line 103.

 

At night, the Russian forces struck Dnipropetrovsk Oblast with almost 90 shells, Valentin Reznichenko, head of Dnipropetrovsk OMA, said. 3 communities - Nikopolska, Marganetska, and Chervonogrigorivska - came under the Russian fire. No one was hurt, but there was destruction.

 

Shelling of the city of Zaporizhzhya became regular almost daily. On the night of September 27, Russian troops fired 10 S-300 missiles at infrastructure facilities, Oleksandr Starukh, head of Zaporizhzhya OMA, said. Power lines were damaged, but no victims were reported.

 

The Russian forces fired two missiles at Odesa from fighter jets on the evening of September 27. Ukrainian air defense forces shot both down, the Operational Command "South" reported.

 

More than 170 km of roads in Kharkiv Oblast have already been cleared of the consequences of hostilities, deputy head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko said.

 

Occupied territories


The Ukrainian Central Election Commission (CEC) condemned the illegal pseudo-referendums held by the occupying Russian administrations in the temporarily occupied parts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts on September 23-27, 2022. The CEC emphasized that they have nothing to do with democratic referenda, are illegal under the Constitution of Ukraine and international law, and therefore will not have any legal force. The CEC called on the world not to recognize their results.

 

According to the legally elected Mariupol city mayor Vadym Boychenko, about 10 thousand male residents of the city are under threat of being mobilized into the Russian army. He said that the evacuation from the city is growing increasingly complex. Only eight people managed to leave the city the previous day, whereas the number was 10-120 people a day in the past weeks.

 

The Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast is completely closed for entry and exit, the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said.

 

The Russian occupiers, who control the situation in Enerhodar, have forbidden its residents to go to the territory controlled by Ukraine and generally do not allow them to go outside the city limits. The special control is applied to operational shift workers of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian MOD reported.

 

In an attempt to encourage enlistment into the Russian Army, the head of the Crimean occupation administration Serhiy Aksyonov said that a bill granting land plots to the residents of Crimea who participated in the war against Ukraine would pass the first reading on September

28. In case a serviceman dies in the war, his family members have the right to receive land, which is a scarce and valuable commodity in Crimea


Operational situation

It is the 216th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas").

 

The enemy continues to concentrate its efforts on establishing full control over the territory of Donetsk Oblast, maintaining control over the captured territories, and disrupting the intensive actions of the Ukrainian troops in certain directions. It fires at the positions of the Ukrainian troops along the contact line, tries to recapture lost positions, and continuously conducts aerial reconnaissance. It inflicts strikes on civilian infrastructure and peaceful residential buildings, violating the norms of international humanitarian law, the laws, and customs of war.

 

The threat of Russian air and missile strikes persists throughout the entire territory of Ukraine. Over the past day, the Russian military launched 9 missile strikes and 22 air strikes and carried out more than 90 MLRS attacks. The previous day, the Russian forces used assault UAVs in the area of Bilenke in Odesa Oblast.


More than 50 Ukrainian towns and villages were affected by the Russian fire, including Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Soledar, Avdiivka, Novopil, Zaporizhzhya, Marhanets, Musiivka, Kryvyi Rih, Nikopol, Potemkine, Osokorivka, Mykolaiv, Ochakiv, and Bilenke.

 

Aviation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces dealt 28 strikes. It has been confirmed that more than 20 Russian manpower and military equipment concentration areas and 7 positions of anti-aircraft missile systems have been hit.

 

Ukrainian missile forces and artillery have inflicted fire damage on 5 enemy command and control points, 12 personnel and military equipment concentration areas, 2 air defense positions, 3 ammunition depots, and over 10 other important targets.

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

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

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

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

 

The Russian military continued to fire tanks, mortars and barrel artillery in the areas around Baranivka, Udy, Hatyshche, Vovchansk, Dvorichne, Kucherivka, Petropavlivka, and Senkove. The Russian forces used UAVs around Izuym and Sosnivka to identify the position of the Ukrainian troops and adjust artillery fire.

 

The Russian military maintains additional units of the 2nd and 16th separate SOF brigades in the border areas of the Russian Belgorod Oblast tasked with reconnaissance and sabotage actions in the de-occupied territory of the Ukrainian Kharkiv Oblast.

 

Kramatorsk direction

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

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


separate SOF brigades, 2nd and 4th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 2nd Army Corps, 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps, PMCs.

 

The Russian forces shelled the Ukrainian Defense Forces with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery in the areas of Stariy Karavan, Ozerne, Siversk, Spirne, Rozdolivka, and Vesele. In addition, they carried out air strikes on the positions of the Ukrainian troops in the areas around Bilohorivka (with a pair of Mi-8) and Spirne (with a pair of Su -25).

 

Donetsk direction

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

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

 

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces near Soledar, Bakhmutske, Hryhorivka, Bakhmut, Vesela Dolyna, Zaitseve, Mayorsk, Yuryivka, Avdiivka, Vodyane, Opytne, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, and Novomykhailivka.

 

Units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas of Soledar, Kurdyumivka, Zaitseve, Mayorsk, Bakhmut, Kamianka, and Pervomaiske.

 

The Russian military conducted offensives in the direction of Striapivka, Soledar with units of the 7th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps; the 131st rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve was employed in Zaitseve (lower), Mayorsk direction; "Wagner" PMC attacked Zaitseve (lower), Kurdyumivka. Hostilities continue.

 

PMC "Wagner" attacked in Mykolaivka, Kurdyumivka directions; Vershyna, Zaitseve; Pokrovske, Bakhmut. All attacks were repulsed, and the enemy was pushed back.

 

The enemy 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps attacked in the direction of Pisky, Pervomaiske; the 9th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps attacked in the direction of Verkhnyotoretske, Kamianka. The Russian forces had no success and retreated.

 

Zaporizhzhya direction

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


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

 

The Russian military fired at the positions of the Ukrainian troops with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery in the areas of Zolota Nyva, Vuhledar, Pavlivka, Yehorivka, Novopil, Novosilka, and Vremivka. In addition, it carried out airstrikes on objects in Novosilki (with a pair of Mi-8s) and Pavlivka (with five Su-25 and three Ka-52).

 

The Russian military is moving S-300 launchers to launch positions in the Shiroky Yar area to launch missile strikes using the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles on Zaporizhzhya and populated areas of Zaporizhzhнa Oblast. At least three S-300 anti-aircraft missile launchers are concentrated on the territory of the concrete construction plant in the Sofiyivka district. In addition, three S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems were discovered in the Tokmak area.

 

Up to 10 pieces of enemy weapons and military equipment and more than 20 occupiers were destroyed in Melitopol. Additionally, the enemy S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, 5 pieces of military equipment were destroyed, and more than 50 occupiers were injured in Tokmak and Chernihivka areas, Zaporizhzhya Oblast.

 

Kherson direction

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

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

 

There is no change in the operational situation. Seven enemy Ural trucks were destroyed and rendered nonoperational in Kherson.


The enemy launched missile and air strikes on Mykolaiv (two S-300 each), Ochakiv (two S-300), and Olhyne (two Mi-8s).

 

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

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

11.8 km;

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

 

The Russian military shelled the positions of the Ukrainian troops with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery in the areas of Chervona Dolyna, Shyroke, Andriyivka, Bilohirka, Ternovi Pody, Lymany, and Myrne.

 

In the Kalininske area, the Russian military reinforced the BTG of the 205th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 49th Combined Arms Army of the Southern Military District with personnel of the 109th rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps.

 

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

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

 

Currently, there are 13 enemy warships at sea providing reconnaissance and blocking shipping in the Azov-Black Sea waters. Up to 24 Kalibr missiles on three carriers, namely one 1135.6 frigate and two Buyan-M missile corvettes, are ready for a salvo.

 

All 4 submarines of project 636.3 that are currently in the Black Sea are at the port of Novorossiysk.

 

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 18 Su-27, Su-30, and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

 

No signs of the formation of amphibious groups for marine landings were detected. 3 amphibious ships of project 775 are in combat training to work out the combat coordination of the marine


infantry group based on the 382nd marine infantry battalion (from Temryuk, Krasnodar Krai, Russia).

 

The Russian forces continue to carry out intensive missile and artillery and air strikes on the objects of the civil and military infrastructure of the seaports of Ukraine.

 

The Russian military continues to use "Shahid-136" kamikaze drones in the maritime zone of Ukraine. On the night of September 27, Shahid-136 drones attacked Odesa and Mykolaiv again. This time, most of the drones were destroyed by Ukrainian air defenses. A spotter was detained in Odesa, who directed kamikaze drone strikes at the most important objects.

 

"Grain Initiative": on September 27, 9 bulk carriers transported 345,000 tons of agricultural products to the countries of Africa, Asia, and Europe from the ports of Greater Odesa. The largest of them is the cape-size MARAN EXCELLENCE with 115,000 tons bound for Tunisia. Since August 1, 231 ships with 5.29 million tons of agricultural products have left Ukrainian ports for the countries of Asia, Europe, and Africa.

 

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 27.09

Personnel - almost 57,750 people (+550);

Tanks – 2,306 (+16);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,881 (+24);

Artillery systems – 1,378 (+9);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 331 (+1); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 175 (+3); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,730 (+19); Aircraft - 261 (+1);

Helicopters – 224 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level - 977 (+7); Intercepted cruise missiles - 241 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).


 

Ukraine, general news

To demilitarize the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), it is necessary to organize a peacekeeping mission involving the UN and the EU, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmygal said. The first step is the regular operation of the ZNPP without the interference of the Russian military and Rosatom workers. The next step is the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of the ZNPP, Shmyhal said. The next step should be the complete demilitarization of Enerhodar and the 30-kilometer zone around the NPP. "The station must work in the energy system of Ukraine so that we can guarantee the safety of its operation," Shmyhal stressed.

 

International diplomatic aspect

US Secretary of State sees no restrictions on Ukraine's use of weapons provided by the US and others to take back its territory, whatever sham referenda Russia holds. "Ukraine has an absolute


right to defend itself throughout its territory, including taking back the territories that have been illegally seized one way or another by Russia. And the equipment, the weapons that we and many other countries are providing them have been used very effectively to do just that as we have seen in North-East Ukraine and we see as well in the South. Because there's no change at all in the territory that is being annexed by the Russians as a matter for us or for the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians will continue to do what they need to do to get back the land that has been taken from them, and we will continue to support them in that effort," said Antony Blinken.

 

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev rushed in to join the nuclear Armageddon chorus, elaborating on what NATO will or will not do if Russia commit a nuclear attack on Ukraine. "I believe that NATO would not directly interfere in the conflict even in this scenario," Medvedev texted on Telegram. "The demagogues across the ocean and in Europe are not going to die in a nuclear apocalypse," he summarized. Nevertheless, there has been clear messaging from the US on Russian nuclear saber-rattling.

 

It's time for China to add its voice and sober Russia a bit. China will lose much of its diplomatic weight if it doesn't convey the right message to Moscow, allowing it to cross the reddest of all lines. Besides the immediate effect of a nuclear strike that might affect any country, for radiation knows no borders, there would be outcomes of another kind. The US and their allies would have no choice (given expectations of nuclear peers) but to respond appropriately, which might lead to a spiral of further and, possibly, uncontrolled escalation. The precedent would require the United States to lower the threshold in possible withstanding China over Taiwan.

 

"We need to keep working together as NATO Allies and with industry to replenish our munitions stocks and provide Ukraine with the support it needs, for as long as Ukraine needs it," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said during an extraordinary meeting of the Conference of National Armaments Directors. Ukraine and France made a step forward on the issue of further supply to Ukraine of Caesar howitzers. France has already donated an unspecified number of modern artillery systems.

 

"I regret using the word 'welfare tourism.' It was an inaccurate description of a problem observed in individual cases," said Friedrich Merz, the leader of Germany's opposition CDU party. Other politicians slammed him over comments he made that Germany is "now experiencing welfare tourism among these refugees" and accused many of them of "taking advantage of the system" by going back and forth between Germany and Ukraine.

 

Russia, relevant news

Almost 66,000 Russian citizens entered the European Union in the past week (September 19 to 25), which is a 30% increase compared to the previous week, the European border and coast guard agency Frontex said. In the last week, most of the Russian nationals entered the EU through the checkpoints on the border of Finland and Estonia, the report says.

 

The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian MOD (GUR) reported that mobilization letters are being received by thousands of Russian "intelligentsia" representatives, private businesses


from Russia's central regions, and giant industrial enterprises. This will change the geographic distribution of Russian KIA. Until now, the five regions with the largest number of KIA include Dagestan, Buryatia, Krasnodar Krai, Bashkortostan, and Volgograd Region. Also, according to the GUR, the number of dead soldiers from poor regions, where ethnic communities live, is much higher than from developed ones.

 

Bulgarian MFA issued a warning to Bulgarian citizens currently in Russia. They are advised to consider leaving the country as soon as possible, using means of transport for this purpose. Bulgarian citizens who remain in the Russian Federation are advised to exercise increased vigilance, avoid places where a large number of people gather, and at the same time pay close attention to the development of the situation in the country.

 

The American Microsoft corporation has limited access to updating the Windows operating system for citizens of Russia - users cannot update computers from Windows 10 to Windows 11..


 

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3. China's Xi reemerges after trip abroad quashing unfounded 'coup' rumors





China's Xi reemerges after trip abroad quashing unfounded 'coup' rumors | CNN

CNN · by Nectar Gan · September 28, 2022


Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders at the Beijing Exhibition Hall on Sept. 27.

Xie Huanchi/Xinhua/Sipa USA

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.

Hong Kong CNN —

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made his first public appearance since returning from a trip to Central Asia, quashing unfounded rumors of a “coup” that sparked a frenzy of speculation ahead of a key Communist Party meeting.

Xi on Tuesday visited an exhibition in Beijing showcasing China’s achievements over his decade in power, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

On the network’s flagship evening newscast, Xi was shown wearing a face mask and viewing the displays at the Beijing Exhibition Hall – where photos of himself featured heavily. He was accompanied by Premier Li Keqiang and other top leaders, including all members of the party’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee.

Xi had not been seen in public since returning to Beijing from a regional summit in Uzbekistan on September 16. The visit was his first foreign trip in nearly 1,000 days since the beginning of the pandemic.

His absence gave rise to a swirl of online rumors, which claimed – without evidence – that he had been overthrown in a military coup and placed under house arrest.

The unsubstantiated rumors were further fueled by claims of mass flight cancellations – a common occurrence under China’s zero-Covid restrictions – and unverified videos of military vehicles on the road.

The wild speculation – which originated from Chinese dissident networks before being picked up and amplified by Indian media – was so intense that the hashtag “chinacoup” was trending on Twitter over the weekend.

That the rumor was able to spread so quickly is in no small part due to the highly opaque nature of the Chinese political system, in which important decisions are mostly made behind closed doors.

The absence of information means that even veteran observers of elite Chinese politics maintain a “never say never” approach, noting that while an occurrence such as a coup remains highly improbable, it’s impossible to know for sure what is really going on.

On this occasion, most were quick to point to the total lack of credible evidence supporting the supposed ‘coup.’ Instead, they noted that Xi was likely following his own quarantine rules and remaining in self-isolation after returning from abroad.

Even as the rest of the world has learned to live with the virus, China is sticking to a stringent zero-Covid policy favored by Xi. The Chinese border is still largely closed, with all international arrivals required to undergo seven days of hotel quarantine, followed by three days of home isolation. Xi visited the exhibition ten days after returning to China.

In July, after a short trip to Hong Kong to mark the 25th anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese rule, Xi disappeared from the public eye for more than a week, before he was shown on state television visiting the far western region of Xinjiang.


Xi Jinping, China's president, speaks at the West Kowloon Station in Hong Kong, China, on Thursday, June 30, 2022. Xi arrived in Hong Kong for its 25th anniversary of Chinese rule, in his first trip to the city since overseeing twin crackdowns on political dissent and Covid-19 that risked the former British colonys future as an international center of commerce. Photographer: Justin Chin/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Justin Chin/Bloomberg/Getty Images

China's Xi pushes forward to third term despite mounting crises

But the timing of Xi’s latest absence had added to the intense speculation. Xi is just weeks away from the 20th Party Congress beginning October 16, at which he is widely expected to break with tradition and be appointed to a third term in power, further cementing his status as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.

Rumors of political infighting and power struggles have long haunted Chinese elite politics thanks to its lack of transparency, especially in the lead-up to important events such as the five-yearly leadership reshuffle.

Under Xi, this information obscurity has only grown, as he ruthlessly cracks down on dissent and disloyalty in the party and concentrates power in his own hands. As a result, the power of party factions and elders is believed to have been significantly weakened.

“The political opacity really makes it much easier for people to trade rumors. There is very little information being leaked from inside China,” said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

The growing public discontent toward Xi’s policies also fueled the rumors, Yang said.

“With the zero-Covid policy causing frustrations and the economy in the doldrums, there is a strong desire for change, and we human beings often want to believe in what we hope to see,” he said.

CNN · by Nectar Gan · September 28, 2022



4. Nord Stream Leaks Underline Gray-Zone Risks



Conclusion:


Causing environmental harm is, in fact, brilliant yet utterly cynical gray-zone aggression. And because regimes like those of Russia and China—not to mention North Korea or Belarus—are utterly cynical, we can expect more along these lines (no pun intended). More holes in Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, for example.


Nord Stream Leaks Underline Gray-Zone Risks

defenseone.com · by Elisabeth Braw


One of three natural-gas leaks from Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the Baltic Sea, as photographed from a Danish F-16 based on the island of Bornholm on Sept. 26 or 27, 2022. Danish Defence

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Ideas

Damaging a neighbor’s environment can be easy, cheap, and deniable.

|

September 27, 2022 02:58 PM ET


By Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow, AEI

September 27, 2022 02:58 PM ET

Around noon local time on September 27, Denmark’s armed forces released footage of leaks in the Baltic Sea. And it wasn’t just any leaks: Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipelines are leaking gas into the Baltic Sea. The day before, Danish and Swedish government agencies had registered unexplained submarine explosions. Russia, it’s becoming clear, is sabotaging its own pipelines – but the more lasting harm will be done to its Baltic Sea neighbors, who are now left with serious damage to their marine environment. But leaking pipelines don’t constitute military aggression. Causing environmental damage constitutes cunning gray-zone aggression – and like all gray-zone aggression, it’s extremely difficult to counter.

The first hint of trouble came around 2 a.m. local time on Monday, when maritime seismic monitors belonging to Swedish Maritime Administration and the Danish Maritime Authority registered mysterious submarine explosions. Around twelve hours later, the crew of a vessel reported leaks on the water surface. Then around 7 p.m., the monitors picked up more explosions, and a little over an hour later reports of new leaks arrived. The explosions and the leaks turned out to be in the same area.

Scandinavian seismological experts and political leaders already agree that the explosions were a deliberate act. Who set them off? In theory, it might have been terrorists or other political extremists, but these lack the technical expertise to stage such sabotage; moreover, it is unclear why they would invest enormous effort and time into sabotage for little apparent gain.

Instead, the culprit appears to be the Russian government. With European countries cutting gas imports from Russia, the pipelines were not in full use anyway. (Germany has declined to certify Nord Stream 2.) What’s more, Moscow is desperately trying to frighten the West. On various occasions throughout September, Russian officials—up to and including Vladimir Putin—have invoked the nuclear specter in an effort to scare Western governments into ending their military support of Ukraine. But it hasn’t worked. Now Russia seems to be testing a new strategy: quietly causing harm to the Baltic Sea, a tiny ocean that is already extremely dirty. In addition to the damage done by commercial shipping, there’s the systematic flow of pollution from Kaliningrad. For years, and despite pleas by Russia’s Baltic Sea neighbors, the Russian exclave was simply pumping its sewage into the sea. In 2016, a sewage plant co-financed by the Swedish International Development Agency became operational—but most of the Baltic Sea’s environmental-damage hotspots remain located­ off Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg. (Baltic states and Poland: you could be doing better too.)

And now, a gas leak. “The gas in the Nord Stream pipes is basically methane, which is a much stronger polluter than CO2, about 29 times stronger,” noted Jaakko Henttonen, a Finnish maritime-environment expert who has for years been involved in Baltic Sea states’ efforts to clean up their ocean. “According to the news so far, the leaks are significant.”

Methane, of course, pollutes the air far more than the water – and by releasing the dangerous gas Moscow appears to be signaling that it’s willing to harm not just its neighbors but the rest of the world too. In addition, Henttonen told me, “Leaking gas could cause an explosion. No traffic should be allowed in the vicinity of the affected area.” That will cause a problem for any clean-up crews the Baltic Sea countries can swiftly assemble.

Damaging another country’s environment is easy, cheap, and can often be done without much risking one’s own habitat. With most of its coastline located elsewhere, Russia won’t suffer much if the Baltic Sea sustains environmental damage. China, meanwhile, has made harming other countries’ environment a veritable trademark. Its long-distance fishing fleet traverses the world’s oceans, parks itself in countries’ exclusive economic zones—where local fishermen earn their livelihoods—and casts their immense nets until the seas are empty. The vessel army then departs, having not only depleted the fish stocks but also harmed the seabed. And off the coast of Taiwan’s Matsu islands, Chinese excavators have for years been digging up sand. The practice presents the Taiwanese government with the constant headache trespassers that do harm but don’t engage in military aggression; Taipei has been forced to invest in an outsized coast-guard fleet. But in addition to being a nuisance, the dredgers cause harm to Taiwan’s maritime wildlife and its seabed. They often also manage to take the sand with them, a not-negligible benefit given that sand is becoming rarer, mostly as a result of China’s massive construction boom.

The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 leaks are not yet a massive environmental disaster like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which saw 11 million gallons of oil to leak into the waters off Alaska. But the leaks will create environmental harm, which Sweden, Denmark and any other good-willing Baltic Sea countries will have to tackle as best as they can. Like overfishing in other countries’ waters, causing gas leaks in their waters is not as dramatic as military aggression, but it causes harm all the same. Because it’s not military aggression, though, it’s virtually impossible to defend oneself against. Countries won’t send long-distance fishing fleets to Chinese waters to teach China a deterrence lesson, nor will they cause explosions to any of their own pipelines that might be located near Russian waters.

Causing environmental harm is, in fact, brilliant yet utterly cynical gray-zone aggression. And because regimes like those of Russia and China—not to mention North Korea or Belarus—are utterly cynical, we can expect more along these lines (no pun intended). More holes in Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, for example.




5. Democrats brace for a national security brain drain

Excerpts:

Democrats on committees with oversight of defense and foreign policy issues are among some of the most vulnerable incumbents in a cycle where Republicans are narrowly favored to take the House.
The urgency to retain national security Democrats — many of whom came to Congress in recent years with extensive military, diplomatic or intelligence experience — is compounded by the retirements of senior Democrats, who represent decades of institutional knowledge on military and national security issues.
Losing leading national security lawmakers, either through retirements or in a wave of election losses, would mean less expertise and less aggressive oversight, Democratic lawmakers said. It would also come as some Democrats warn that handing over the reins to Republicans will jeopardize ongoing aid to Ukraine and other priorities.
“I’m hugely concerned,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee whose Serve America PAC backs numerous Democratic candidates who are military veterans or have civilian national security expertise. “These are some of our best members.”
Among the retirees are three senior Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee: Reps. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Jackie Speier of California. Three other Democrats on the committee — Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Elaine Luria of Virginia and Jared Golden of Maine, all centrists — have among the toughest reelection races among the party’s incumbents.
“I’m going into my fourth term now on the Armed Services Committee and I do see the turnover of everyone below me on the dais and I have never thought that’s ever been good,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a former Marine.




Democrats brace for a national security brain drain

By CONNOR O’BRIEN

09/28/2022 04:30 AM EDT

Politico

A combination of retirements and vulnerable seats could mean big changes on defense committees in the House.


House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith, shown above in Irpin, Ukraine in July, predicted even the most vulnerable lawmakers will pull through on Nov. 8. | Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo

09/28/2022 04:30 AM EDT

A host of House Democrats versed in national security and foreign affairs are at risk of losing their seats in November — just as some of their most experienced members in that realm are retiring from Congress.

Democrats on committees with oversight of defense and foreign policy issues are among some of the most vulnerable incumbents in a cycle where Republicans are narrowly favored to take the House.


The urgency to retain national security Democrats — many of whom came to Congress in recent years with extensive military, diplomatic or intelligence experience — is compounded by the retirements of senior Democrats, who represent decades of institutional knowledge on military and national security issues.


Losing leading national security lawmakers, either through retirements or in a wave of election losses, would mean less expertise and less aggressive oversight, Democratic lawmakers said. It would also come as some Democrats warn that handing over the reins to Republicans will jeopardize ongoing aid to Ukraine and other priorities.

“I’m hugely concerned,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee whose Serve America PAC backs numerous Democratic candidates who are military veterans or have civilian national security expertise. “These are some of our best members.”

Among the retirees are three senior Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee: Reps. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island, Jim Cooper of Tennessee and Jackie Speier of California. Three other Democrats on the committee — Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Elaine Luria of Virginia and Jared Golden of Maine, all centrists — have among the toughest reelection races among the party’s incumbents.

“I’m going into my fourth term now on the Armed Services Committee and I do see the turnover of everyone below me on the dais and I have never thought that’s ever been good,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a former Marine.

Though President Joe Biden has seen his job approval tick up in recent weeks and Democrats are increasingly optimistic about their prospects of holding onto control, they hold only a nine-vote majority.

POLITICO’s Forecast 2020, which analyzes and handicaps elections, rates all three races involving Slotkin, Luria and Golden as toss-ups.

The three lawmakers are vocal members of the Armed Services panel and backed massive increases to the Pentagon budget. Golden and Luria teamed up in June to push through an amendment to annual defense legislation green-lighting a $37 billion boost to Biden’s Pentagon budget, delivering a bipartisan rebuke of the commander in chief’s military spending plans.

Golden, a former Marine, faces former GOP Rep. , whom he unseated in 2018, in the rural Maine district that favored former President Donald Trump by more than 6 points in 2020.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Pentagon official during the Obama administration, faces a difficult reelection bid in a southern Michigan district that went from favoring Trump by just under 1 point to leaning toward Biden by the same margin.

Luria, a retired Navy commander, is running for reelection in a reconfigured Norfolk, Va.-based district that went from a nearly 5-point margin for Biden over Trump to a roughly 3 percentage point cushion for Biden, according to POLITICO’s analysis of state redistricting.

Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Malinowski, a former State Department official in the Obama administration who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has an uphill reelection fight against New Jersey Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger is also on the hot seat, though the former CIA officer is seeking a third term in a new district that Biden would have won by more than 6 percentage points.

Some brain drain is on the way for Democrats no matter how they fare in November, given the retirements of Langevin, Cooper and Speier, who all hold subcommittee gavels.

Langevin chairs the panel that oversees cybersecurity. Cooper leads the Strategic Forces panel and led a push to spin off the Space Force as its own military service. Speier, meanwhile, heads up the Military Personnel panel and pressed for major changes to military law aimed at tackling sexual assault in the ranks of the services.

Republicans are eyeing more incumbent Democrats in their push to reclaim the House.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s campaign arm, in June expanded its target list to 75 Democratic or new districts it aims to flip. Its target list includes Golden, Slotkin, Luria, Spanberger, Malinowski, Reps. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), an Air Force veteran who sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs panels.

The NRCC is also looking to defeat eight-term Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), the fifth-most-senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. The Eastern Connecticut district is far from a lock for Democrats.

But overall, Democrats increasingly see a political landscape that’s vastly improved from just a few months ago, even as Republicans still have the inside track to win the House.

“I don’t care what you’re seeing in the mainstream press,” Rep. Mike Rogers, the top Armed Services Republican, told POLITICO. “It’s not what we’re seeing in our polling. It’s not what we’re seeing when we’re out and about. I think this is going to be an historic election.”

Wrangling more defense cash is a talking point for some incumbents whose districts are host to a large military presence or are home to contractors that build weapons for the Pentagon.

“I’m the only Democrat in the country running my campaign on the fact that I got $37 billion added to the defense budget. Maybe Jared, too,” quipped Luria, whose district abuts Huntington Ingalls Newport News shipyard.

“It’s not only the big national defense issues and priorities, it’s also, like, we build all the carriers and half the submarines,” she said. “They are kitchen table issues also for people’s families, whether they’re serving or working to build and repair our ships.”

Courtney, meanwhile, regularly touts the economic linkage of his work as chair of the Armed Services Seapower panel. His district includes the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, tasked with building Navy attack submarines and a new fleet of nuclear ballistic missile subs.

The party’s dormant base has also been energized by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June. In the wake of the abortion rights ruling, Democrats scored upset wins in a pair of August special elections, including a victory by Army veteran and West Point graduate Pat Ryan in a battleground race in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Congressional Democrats are also coming off a string of legislative wins this summer, including a party-line tax, clean energy and prescription drug pricing package as well as bipartisan legislation to provide billions in subsidies for manufacturers to produce semiconductors in the U.S. aimed at outcompeting China.

House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said members of the committee are “working their districts hard” and predicted even the most vulnerable lawmakers will pull through on Nov. 8.

“We’ve got a few who are in tough races but they’re great candidates and running good campaigns,” Smith said. “I’d say at this point that every Democratic member of the committee who’s running for reelection will be successful.”


POLITICO



Politico



6. Putin's Empire Starts to Crumble



Excerpts:

Still, amid questions about the quality of the conscripts and the Russian military’s ability to train, equip and lead them effectively, there is no doubt that more Russian soldiers sent to Ukraine will mean more death and destruction – for both sides.
If things continue to fall apart for the Kremlin, instability will only spread throughout Russia’s satellites, proxies and client states. While Putin’s enemies may be eager to cheer that on, power vacuums lead to chaos, conflict, bloodshed and widespread misery – the prominent features of most geopolitical collapses.
In Armenia, plenty of suffering has been endured before: death marches, ethnic cleansing and concentration camps were all part of the Armenian Genocide just over a century ago, shortly before the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the wake of World War I. Some researchers estimate that between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were slain from 1915-1917.
As Armenians face an unrestrained Azerbaijan with a superior military – and as Azeri antiwar protesters are rounded up by the authoritarian state’s security services – one can, perhaps, forgive those who actually live in Russia’s “sphere of influence” if they look toward the uncertain future not with hope, but with apprehension.



Putin's Empire Starts to Crumble

The Kremlin chooses to escalate the war in Ukraine with a dangerous gamble, but the signs of an unraveling are becoming clearer both at home and abroad

BY MAC WILLIAM BISHOP





SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

Rolling Stone · by Mac William Bishop · September 27, 2022

VAYOTS DZOR PROVINCE, ARMENIA – The frequency of the ambulances starts to increase the further east you drive. It’s a sign of how bad the situation is. A mix of four-wheel-drive military trucks with red crosses and civilian ambulances are whisking away Armenian casualties in a steady trickle through the mountains.

More than 200 soldiers and civilians have been killed here over the past two weeks; hundreds more have been wounded. It’s the most serious fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia in two years.

On the evening of Sept. 12th into the 13th, Azerbaijan carried out a massive attack across a broad front along the rugged border with their neighbor. The Azeris have advanced inside Armenia to within a few miles of Jermuk, a spa town whose mineral water can be bought in bottles throughout the country.

On the Jermuk highway, a convoy of Russian soldiers heads west, away from the fighting, white-blue-and-red tricolors streaming proudly behind each dark green Kamaz truck as it passes busloads of Armenian reinforcements heading the other way, toward the border. There are Russian soldiers across the region: thousands are in a contested area within Azerbaijan called Nagorno-Karabakh, where they have been since October 2020, when Moscow brokered a ceasefire between the two Former Soviet Republics after a short, but intense, conflict. There are also thousands of Russian soldiers and border guards stationed in Armenia itself – their job is to deter military adventurism.


The Kremlin’s soldiers are here to keep the peace.

In this, they have failed.

Vladimir Putin spent decades modernizing his army and building his empire, ruthlessly asserting control over Russia’s border states through force, intrigue and economic might. Now the cream of his military has been destroyed or is bogged down in Ukraine: hundreds of his once-parade-worthy tanks rusting away as burned-out hulks in wheat fields while thousands of his best soldiers will never return home. Beset by sanctions, his economy survives mainly through energy exports: Putin’s enemies continue to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of gas and oil from Moscow, principle and even self-interest sacrificed to keep the lights on in European cities. The invasion of Ukraine is an increasingly obvious disaster for Russia’s dictator. He simply doesn’t have the bandwidth or resources to deal with another international crisis effectively, and everyone knows it.

“There is a relation between the war in Ukraine and what is happening now… Russia has less capability and less willingness to restrain Azerbaijan,” Tigran Grigoryan, a former member of Armenia’s Security Council, tells me.

Azerbaijan sensing an opportunity amidst Russian weakness and taking it, with backing from Turkey, is a microcosm of the ripple effect of instability the war in Ukraine is having on Russia’s sphere of influence. Russian political scientist Greg Yudin described it as a “catastrophic collapse of Russian foreign policy in a hugely important region.”

The Kremlin’s interests in and historic ties to the region are multitude – and it often plays both sides, selling weapons to Azerbaijan and Armenia alike. Russian energy interests and geography ensure its cooperation with Azerbaijan, but it has been Russian boots on the ground that protect Armenia’s borders. But the sound of Russian boots isn’t quite as fearsome as it was before the invasion of Ukraine.


After years of declining importance in the South Caucasus, the vultures are circling: Russia’s military failures in Ukraine are breeding instability throughout the country’s sphere of influence. The survival of Putin’s grand security strategy depends on achieving victory in Ukraine, but there is more than one way for an empire to implode.

To keep his regime from dying along with his ambitions, Putin must gamble. His announcement on Sept. 21st that Russia would mobilize hundreds of thousands of additional conscripts and send them off to fight in Ukraine is a desperate effort to keep everything from falling apart.

“Putin has been avoiding mobilization this whole time. He knows this is a major escalation, and it turns this into a ‘real war’ instead of a ‘Special Military Operation,’” says Dr. Olga V. Chyzh, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Toronto who focuses on repressive regimes. She researches the Kremlin’s inner circle and the implications of the war in Ukraine for Putin’s rule. “His hand was forced. His only other option was to keep waiting as Ukraine chips away at his territorial gains.”

And the same strategic mistake that has left Putin with a maimed military is decimating its foreign policy.

“Russia is a regional hegemon. But it’s a hegemon that maintains its influence through brute force. They have no social capital… It’s no surprise at all that as soon as we see weaknesses in Russian military might, we see all of these countries going their own way,” Chyzh told me.

“Russia is losing its empire by trying to tighten its grip.”

For the moment, Armenia remains within Moscow’s grasp, like it or not. It is trapped between hostile neighbors, Turkey and Azerbaijan. Since independence 31 years ago, it has counted on Russia for security – a de facto continuation of its subjugation under Moscow as part of the Soviet Union for more than 80 years before that.

But dependence on an undependable – or even indifferent – partner is unsustainable.

“Everyone understands that this is a fake alliance. It doesn’t help Armenia maintain its security any more. There are no illusions about this,” Grigoryan, the former member of Armenia’s Security Council, tells me. Based in Yerevan, he is now a political analyst who hosts a video series called Focus on Russia.


Part of that “fake alliance” was through the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO – Moscow’s answer to NATO – which includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.

And how are things going for the “Russian NATO”?

Well, four of its members are at war, without getting much support from the others. Two of them have even started fighting each other: two weeks ago Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan escalated a long-standing border dispute into clashes that have killed more than 100 and left thousands of civilians displaced. Armenia, another member, has been invaded by non-member Azerbaijan, which has simply decided to ignore – or in some cases even attack – the Russian soldiers tasked with carrying out Moscow’s will in the region. Kazakhstan has been publicly denying rumors that it plans to withdraw from the organization, but is quick to add that it won’t “bow to Moscow” because of the alliance. Belarus, after being used as a launching point for Putin’s failed attempt to capture Kyiv, shows few signs of actually wanting to get any more involved in the war in Ukraine than it must, to placate Moscow.

And of course Russia itself is increasingly on its own globally, its military ambitions plagued by Ukrainian soldiers equipped with NATO weaponry.

Suffice to say, if you take the actual “collective security” part out of CSTO, you’re left with just a meaningless piece of paper and an organizational chart with a fancy logo. So it probably isn’t surprising that there are Armenians who have begun asking: What good is the CSTO if it doesn’t provide any security?


Police officers detain opposition supporters blocking the Armenian Foreign Ministry building during anti-government demonstrations in the capital Yerevan on May 24, 2022. – Yerevan has been gripped by anti-government protests since mid-April, with opposition parties demanding Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation over his handling of a territorial dispute with Azerbaijan. Six-weeks of fighting in autumn 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement. Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed some 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the truce. Karen Minasyan/AFP/Getty Images

Protests against the organization are turning into a regular feature of political life in Yerevan: late on a weekday evening, the chanting of demonstrators can be heard echoing across Freedom Square as Armenians – and some of the many Russian tourists in town – enjoy dinner on the terraces of fancy restaurants along Tumanyan Street.


But Grigoryan says it is unlikely this anger will turn into anything cataclysmic – certainly protests haven’t been uncommon under the rule of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, seen by many Armenians as responsible for their country’s defeat during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. Nevertheless, Grigoryan doesn’t think it likely Russian soldiers will be booted out soon – Armenia is too militarily weak for dramatic diplomatic gestures.

“Any kind of drastic move would only deteriorate the situation. I do not expect any kind of serious change in foreign policy in the next coming years,” Grigoryan said. Still, he adds, “everyone understands that Russia has closer relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey.”

That may be true. But it hasn’t kept Russian soldiers from being fired upon by the Azeris – in the 2020 war, they even shot down a Russian helicopter (although they did apologize afterwards).

In the current hostilities, “there have been multiple reports that the Azeris shelled a Russian base, and the Russians just left. They didn’t do anything,” Grigoryan notes. Whether such shelling is intentional or not, the fact that the Azeris are willing to put the Russians in the crossfire indicates they aren’t overly concerned about a response from Moscow.

Which may be why Armenia is looking farther afield for allies. “I expect Armenia to try to diversify its relations,” Grigoryan cautiously puts it.

In fact, it was the United States who stepped into the current crisis between Azerbaijan and Armenia, brokering a ceasefire in New York between the two neighbors days after the fighting began. That came shortly after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi completed a previously planned trip to Yerevan – a success for Armenia, primarily in that she didn’t cancel the trip despite the fighting on the border.

It was also a success for Pelosi and US foreign policy – Washington was regarded as somewhat disinterested in the region during the Trump administration, in Grigoryan’s estimation. But now, it is “deeply concerned” about what happens between Azerbaijan and Armenia, according to the US State Department.


Yet despite a seemingly emboldened United States playing a more assertive role in the Caucasus, American diplomacy and platitudes aren’t worth as much on the battlefield as its weapons and cash. There’s been no public declaration that Yerevan will receive substantial aid from Washington.

Meanwhile in Azerbaijan, advanced drones, mercenaries and open political backing have been among the material manifestations of Turkish support. Ankara itself has increasingly sought to position itself as a regional power broker in and around the Black Sea and Caucasus: it was Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who brokered a deal on behalf of the UN to allow Ukrainian grain to pass through Russia’s blockade of its ports. Turkish weaponry – the same drones that helped Azerbaijan defeat the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 – were also instrumental in enabling Ukraine to halt Russian armor in the early day of the invasion.

Without tangible foreign military support, most worrying for Armenia now is that there are signs Azerbaijan intends to renew its offensive – and the US, EU members and others are doing little more than pleading for both parties to stop fighting.

There’s – probably – a reason for that, and that reason isn’t a surprising one to anyone paying attention: energy. In July, Azerbaijan signed a deal to boost its exports of natural gas to the European Union, part of a plan to “help Europe to end its dependency on Russian gas.”

“Based on the strengthened energy cooperation, Azerbaijan is already now increasing deliveries of natural gas to the EU, from 8.1 billion cubic meters in 2021 to an expected 12 billion cubic meters in 2022,” the European Commission proudly announced on July 18th, 2022.

But Russia, too, is doing little to stop Azerbaijan. In fact, the leaders of the two countries signed an agreement on February 22nd – just two days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – pledging that “the Russian Federation and the Republic of Azerbaijan, working closely to stimulate international energy cooperation and strengthen global energy security on an equal and mutually beneficial basis, intend to deepen cooperation in the fuel and energy sector.”


Although Azerbaijan’s natural gas exports to Europe are an order of magnitude smaller than Russia’s – 185 billion cubic meters the same year – the energy industry doesn’t work along the same comparatively neat lines as geopolitics. For example, Lukoil – Russia’s largest oil company – owns major stakes in a number of energy projects in Azerbaijan.

Furthermore, Azerbaijan shares a border with Russia – which Armenia does not – and also shares a border with Iran, which is becoming an increasingly important ally for Moscow in its war on Ukraine. Iranian munitions, aka “suicide drones,” acquired by Russia are now attacking Ukrainian cities, while economic and energy cooperation between the Federation and the Islamic Republic continues to increase. It would serve little interest to alienate the one country that serves as an overland route between the two sanctioned states. And then there’s China, which – to put it bluntly – has its own sphere of influence in the region to worry about. It’s worth pointing out that Chinese President Xi Jinping took his first overseas trip since the coronavirus pandemic began to Kazakhstan, where – in addition to meeting Putin – he also highlighted Beijing’s belief in Kazakh independence in the face of “outside” interference.

Kazakhstan, the observant will note, is geographically situated between China and Russia.

You needn’t be Peter the Great to understand that weakness abroad and instability at home are inextricably linked in Russian history.

Which returns us to Putin’s mobilization order.

There are many indications the draft is deeply unpopular at home, but it is unlikely to lead to widespread popular upheavals.

“We have already seen the regime’s repression hardening since the beginning of the war. Putin excels at domestic brutality and oppression. As Russia cuts itself off more and more, we will continue to see a hardening of techniques of repression,” Dr. Chyzh, who has been researching the Kremlin’s political power structures, tells me. “I’m sure Putin has thought about this, and I am sure he is ready. Mass protests directly challenging him are not going to manifest, resistance is very difficult.”



Russian peacekeepers march in formation during the solemn ceremony marking the first anniversary of the introduction of the peacekeeping contingent, near Stepanakert, Azerbaijan. The Humanitarian Response Center in the area has retrieved and handed over 1,962 bodies of dead soldiers, including 1,578 Armenians and Azerbaijani citizens. Grigory Sysoev/Sputnik/AP

But not impossible, particularly in ethnic enclaves and peripheral territories that have traditionally been resistant to Moscow’s rule, such as Dagestan in the North Caucasus, or sought greater autonomy from Russian hegemony, as with portions of the Far East. That ethnic minorities and territories far from Moscow are shouldering an unequal share of the burden of mobilization exacerbates its unpopularity.

“Russian society is very unequal, there’s ethnic Russians and then there is everybody else,” Chyzh says. “Movements toward self-determination may not happen any time soon. But segregation is already a reality. Mobilization definitely won’t help those tensions.”

There have already been numerous incidents of resistance to the mobilization order in Russia – in Dagestan, people have reportedly erected barricades to keep the authorities from enforcing the draft. There have also been isolated instances of direct violence: at least 13 recruiting offices have been firebombed according to Russian-language media monitor Meduza, while a 25-year-old man in the Siberian region of Irkutsk went so far as to shoot a military officer at a draft station. Across Russia, more than 2,390 people have been arrested for acts of resistance against mobilization as of Sept. 26th, according to the independent human rights monitor OVD-Info.

Additionally, Russian internal security services estimate that at least 260,000 Russians have simply tried to flee the country to avoid the draft, according to the Novaya Gazeta Europe, an independent Russian newspaper that since the invasion operates out of Riga, Latvia, in order to avoid censorship by Moscow. One of the popular destinations for Russian draft-dodgers is Armenia, according to English-language video news service “The Armenian Report.”

The mobilization order is a plan concocted by hardliners in the Russian military to flood the battlefield with troops and thereby prevent any further Ukrainian victories. If it fails, it will add to instability within the regime.


“To understand the way Putin’s regime functions, he isn’t accountable to the public. But he is accountable to a small group of people who he needs to stay in power,” Chyzh says. That small group is composed of “hawkish” hardline members of the military and senior members of the security services – who are at least somewhat more cautious in their outlook.

Putin has now bowed to pressure from the hardliners, so it is their reputations – and their power on the line. As one faction fails and another rises, the political infighting could lead to even more desperate decisions inside the Kremlin.

There is no shortage of opinions about whether Putin or his inner circle might contemplate the use of nuclear weapons – tactical or otherwise – to stave off defeat in Ukraine. But it appears to be a realistic enough concern that the White House has privately warned Russia’s leaders that any use of nuclear weapons “would be met with catastrophic consequences,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in an interview with CBS News on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Ukraine will fight on. Its top military leaders are, characteristically, publicly unfazed by the Russian mobilization: “We will destroy everyone who comes to our land with weapons, whether voluntarily or through mobilization,” General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian military, said after Putin’s announcement.

Still, amid questions about the quality of the conscripts and the Russian military’s ability to train, equip and lead them effectively, there is no doubt that more Russian soldiers sent to Ukraine will mean more death and destruction – for both sides.

If things continue to fall apart for the Kremlin, instability will only spread throughout Russia’s satellites, proxies and client states. While Putin’s enemies may be eager to cheer that on, power vacuums lead to chaos, conflict, bloodshed and widespread misery – the prominent features of most geopolitical collapses.

In Armenia, plenty of suffering has been endured before: death marches, ethnic cleansing and concentration camps were all part of the Armenian Genocide just over a century ago, shortly before the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the wake of World War I. Some researchers estimate that between 600,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were slain from 1915-1917.


As Armenians face an unrestrained Azerbaijan with a superior military – and as Azeri antiwar protesters are rounded up by the authoritarian state’s security services – one can, perhaps, forgive those who actually live in Russia’s “sphere of influence” if they look toward the uncertain future not with hope, but with apprehension.

Rolling Stone · by Mac William Bishop · September 27, 2022


7. Russians are calling up the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense asking how to surrender, Ukraine says



Russians are calling up the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense asking how to surrender, Ukraine says

Business Insider · by Mia Jankowicz


President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with a soldier in newly liberated Izyum, published on Zelenskyy's Telegram on September 14 2022Office of the President of Ukraine/Telegram


  • A hotline set up to allow Russian soldiers to surrender is already getting calls, Ukraine claims.
  • Ukraine says its "I Want to Live" hotline guarantees confidentiality and humane treatment.
  • Some Russians have been scrambling to avoid Putin's newly announced partial mobilization.

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Russian men drafted to war by President Vladimir Putin's recent mobilization announcement are using a Ukrainian hotline to ask how they can give themselves up, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense.

Andrii Yusov, spokesperson for the department, said during a televised briefing on Monday that there had been a strong response to the "I Want to Live" hotline, according to Ukrainian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.

The hotline was announced by Ukraine's Ministry of Defense on September 19, two days before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization of reservists to the battlefield.

Yusov said the hotline has received "a lot of calls" from recently drafted Russians, and even some who haven't yet been mobilized, per the newspaper.

Yusov added, per the paper: "They're calling and asking 'What should I do if I get called up? What do I have to do, what's the right way to surrender?'"

Yusov's comments have not been independently verified.

But Putin's announcement sparked protests nationwide and has prompted some Russians to take desperate measures to be called up.

Putin had earlier promised that he would not take this step, which brings the reality of the war to Russians accustomed to civilian life.

Flights to several countries sold out after the announcement, and according to The Guardian, some are paying up to £27,000 for private jets out of Russia. Satellite images also showed traffic at Russia's borders from people trying to leave the country.

A Telegram channel for the hotline has also gathered nearly 14,000 subscribers in the 10 days since it was launched.

One post by the hotline said it had also received calls from Russia-occupied Crimea, and that the hotline is also for Ukrainians in occupied parts of the country who Russia has forced into serving in the war.

The project is "intended both for Russians who chose life instead of death for the unknown ideals of the 'Russian world' and for all others who have become victims of Putin's military machine,'" the post read.

The hotline echoes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's assurances that surrendered soldiers will be treated according to international humanitarian law.

In an address on Sunday — in which he switched to speaking in Russian — Zelenskyy added that Russian troops will also be allowed to surrender confidentially, without the obligation to return to Russia in a prisoner exchange, Radio Free Europe reported.

"It is better not to take a conscription letter than to die in a foreign land as a war criminal," Zelenskyy said, per the outlet.

On Saturday, Putin toughened Russia's penalties for deserters and for those who refuse to fight, the outlet reported.



Business Insider · by Mia Jankowicz


8. Opinion | The U.S. and China are headed for a showdown at the U.N.


Excerpts:


But the Biden team erred by not introducing this resolution two weeks ago, when the Human Rights Council session opened, said former deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Kelley Currie. This gave Beijing a head start on the diplomacy, she said, and wasted the opportunity for senior U.S. officials to press the issue last week, when dozens of world leaders convened in New York for the General Assembly’s main events.

“Better late than never, and we all want this resolution to succeed. But this inexplicable delay was a totally avoidable misstep,” Currie told me. “Meanwhile, China has been aggressively lobbying against the resolution since August 31.

”To be successful, she said, the Biden team will need to deploy diplomatic resources to match or exceed China’s level of effort, with the understanding that many of the tools China uses — bribery, coercion and vote trading — are off the table for the United States.This could be the last chance for the U.N. Human Rights Council to demonstrate its reason for being. If China’s genocide is not even worthy of a debate there, the council’s credibility will be unsalvageable, all those who criticized Biden’s decision to rejoin the body will be vindicated, and the Uyghurs’ cries for help will be muffled.


Opinion | The U.S. and China are headed for a showdown at the U.N.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · September 28, 2022

The United States and some of its European partners have decided to force a vote at the United Nations next week on whether to debate China’s atrocities against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities — acts the United Nations’ own human rights commissioner has said may constitute “crimes against humanity.” But Beijing is working overtime to prevent the debate from ever taking place. This is a crucial test for both the United Nations’ and the Biden administration’s commitments on human rights.

On Monday, the United States filed a resolution, formally known as a “draft decision,” that — if passed — would add China to the agenda of the ongoing session at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. President Biden decided that the United States would rejoin the council when his administration took office. The Trump administration had withdrawn from the council because of its inclusion of several human rights abusers and its overall lack of substantive action. China’s human rights abuses have never been debated there before.

The debate would address the report on China’s abuses released by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Aug. 31, her last day in that post. The Chinese government had tried to thwart the release of the report and afterward called it “wholly illegal and invalid.” Now, Beijing is working to strong-arm countries that sit on the council, threatening them with economic and other punishments if they don’t vote to bury the Bachelet report, several officials and diplomats told me.

The 47-member body will vote before the current session ends Oct. 7. A simple majority is needed for the measure to pass. Although the Biden administration has declared that China’s abuses in Xinjiang constitute an ongoing genocide, the United States and its partners wrote the resolution as a simple call for debate over the Bachelet report, hoping to make it easier for squeamish governments to vote yes.

“We are taking this step deliberately, given an assessment that it is achievable," a senior administration official told me. "The goal is to put the issue on the agenda and pave the way for further action down the line.”

The Biden administration will reach out to any and all council members that it believes can be recruited to the cause over the next few days, both from the U.S. mission in Geneva and including senior officials in Washington, the official said. There’s no preliminary vote count, but the administration believes it’s going to be close.

“We are going to engage on a full-court press,” the official said.

Uyghur activists told me that this resolution represents their only hope that the United Nations might act on the plight of their family members in Xinjiang. The Uyghur American Association held a hunger strike in front of the White House last week to plead for the U.S. and other governments to introduce and pass this resolution.

“Free and civilized nations have come together to support Ukraine in order to defend the international world order. We believe it is the responsibility of those free and civilized nations to support Uyghurs in international forums to defend the same international order,” association President Elfidar Iltebir told me.

Many Uyghur activists are frustrated by what they see as the Biden administration’s lack of attention on this issue. In Biden’s defense, he did mention Xinjiang (briefly) in his speech to the General Assembly; a senior U.S. official spoke at an Atlantic Council event on the U.N. meeting’s sidelines last week. It’s also true that the administration pushed hard for the Bachelet report to be released in the first place.

But the Biden team erred by not introducing this resolution two weeks ago, when the Human Rights Council session opened, said former deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Kelley Currie. This gave Beijing a head start on the diplomacy, she said, and wasted the opportunity for senior U.S. officials to press the issue last week, when dozens of world leaders convened in New York for the General Assembly’s main events.

“Better late than never, and we all want this resolution to succeed. But this inexplicable delay was a totally avoidable misstep,” Currie told me. “Meanwhile, China has been aggressively lobbying against the resolution since August 31.”

To be successful, she said, the Biden team will need to deploy diplomatic resources to match or exceed China’s level of effort, with the understanding that many of the tools China uses — bribery, coercion and vote trading — are off the table for the United States.

This could be the last chance for the U.N. Human Rights Council to demonstrate its reason for being. If China’s genocide is not even worthy of a debate there, the council’s credibility will be unsalvageable, all those who criticized Biden’s decision to rejoin the body will be vindicated, and the Uyghurs’ cries for help will be muffled.

The Washington Post · by Josh Rogin · September 28, 2022



9.  US ‘smart power’ can win back the Pacific



Excerpts:

The US possesses a new smart power beyond those described by Professor Nye. That is “intelligence power” —the ability to collect and analyze data to broadly surveil the oceans and understand where IUU fishing is occurring.
Much of this intelligence is now commercially collected and therefore unclassified. This intelligence needs to be shared comprehensively with Indo-Pacific nations to assist their law enforcement efforts.
These initiatives should be but one of many smart power outreach efforts from the US that ought to include expanded Peace Corps efforts, USAID-funded climate change mitigation efforts, sponsored cultural visits and broad-based human-capital training of public servants and others.
These efforts need to start now. Otherwise, we will witness continued PRC penetration of the Pacific.


US ‘smart power’ can win back the Pacific

US and its allies need to step up their diplomatic games in strategic island region before China consolidates control

asiatimes.com · by Peter C. Oleson · September 27, 2022

Recent developments indicate a cozying-up of Solomon Islands’ leaders to Beijing. This has set off alarm bells in Canberra, Wellington and Washington, DC.

World powers have largely ignored the Solomons and other Pacific Island nations for many years, as they have focused their attention on Afghanistan, the Middle East, North Korea and (more recently) Ukraine. This is one reason the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) advances have been received favorably by some.

This development calls for a “smart power” approach combining hard and soft power. Building on the traditional contrast between hard (coercive military and economic) power and soft (the shaping of preferences via policy, culture, and values).

Harvard Professor Joseph Nye and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage have described the importance of “smart power,” recognizing that hard power alone cannot solve complex challenges.

PRC foreign policy, especially the Belt and Road Initiative, has a patina of soft power but faces growing resistance due to belatedly recognized adverse conditions of crippling debt, preferential use of Chinese labor and cultural friction.

Strategically, Australia, New Zealand and the United States should not ignore the PRC’s penetration of the South Pacific. Despite Beijing’s denials, its opaque agreement with the Solomon Islands government raises concerns that one outcome could be a People’s Liberation Army Navy base in the Solomons, threatening all three Western nations.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Solomon Islands President Manasseh Sogavare in a Covid-era embrace. Image: Xinhua

Australia, New Zealand and the United States should pay greater attention to Pacific Island nations. The recent visit of Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and US Ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy is a start, but sustained attention is required.

A broad-based “smart power” initiative is needed that would include more economic aid and cultural and people-to-people interactions that the populations of countries can see, with impacts they can feel. The United States, New Zealand, and Australia, plus Japan, have great capacities for soft power in the Pacific.

Japan, among other countries, has already made some investments, in addition to proposing others to address the forthcoming challenges of climate change. There are other smart power efforts that would benefit Oceanic nations and counter the expansionist PRC efforts.

The USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed US Navy hospital ship based in San Diego, California, has sailed throughout the Pacific offering medical care, including surgeries, to many island populations. A 2022 cruise is underway related to the Pacific Partnership, a humanitarian assistance and disaster-relief exercise.

The benefits and goodwill resulting from USNS Mercy medical assistance missions are long-lasting. Nevertheless, the United States only has two such hospital ships; the other, the USNS Comfort, is based in Baltimore and sails in Latin America and Africa.

Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy. Photo: US Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kelsey L. Adams

Why not have more? In the Pacific, a fleet of three hospital ships could contribute greatly to US foreign policy objectives. The purchase or leasing and conversion of civilian cruise ships would be relatively quick and less expensive than building new hospital ships.

Such a fleet of hospital ships could be a combined international effort involving Australia, New Zealand and Japan, not only providing medical care but also helping to train indigenous medical personnel and thus leaving a long-lasting impact.

The US Navy also has a tremendous soft power capability with the Seabees – its construction battalions. With the threat of rising sea levels, many Indo-Pacific villages and island infrastructures face relocation challenges.

The employment of Seabees for high-priority remedial construction projects, especially if combined with the use of local labor and training, would meet needs that many island nations cannot satisfy themselves.

Off-duty Navy personnel have often volunteered their labor to local US communities. For example, the off-duty Gold Crew of the USS Maryland (SSBN 738) spent a week helping to restore the village hall in Galesville, Maryland. Such efforts earned the Navy great kudos from the local community. Such efforts could be organized in the Indo-Pacific.

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing has become a major problem worldwide, particularly in the Pacific, notes the US Coast Guard in its 2020 strategic outlook. The Nature Conservancy estimates that many Pacific Island nations will not be able to meet their local food needs in a few years given their population growth and continued IUU fishing.

The PRC is the Number 1 IUU fishing offender.

Chinese fishing boats set off to sea. Photo: AFP / Stringer

The US possesses a new smart power beyond those described by Professor Nye. That is “intelligence power” —the ability to collect and analyze data to broadly surveil the oceans and understand where IUU fishing is occurring.

Much of this intelligence is now commercially collected and therefore unclassified. This intelligence needs to be shared comprehensively with Indo-Pacific nations to assist their law enforcement efforts.

These initiatives should be but one of many smart power outreach efforts from the US that ought to include expanded Peace Corps efforts, USAID-funded climate change mitigation efforts, sponsored cultural visits and broad-based human-capital training of public servants and others.

These efforts need to start now. Otherwise, we will witness continued PRC penetration of the Pacific.

Peter C Oleson, a former senior US government official and professor, is a member of the executive committee of the International Maritime Security Exchange (IMSE). This article was first published by the Pacific Forum’s PacNet and is republished by Asia Times with kind permission.

PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors.

asiatimes.com · by Peter C. Oleson · September 27, 2022




10. The Army of 2022: We’re in a bad place if soldiers can choose what mandatory training they complete


If you can decide not to do the training then it is not mandatory. But I think the CSA and SMA need to re-evaluate their guidance. They should focus on reducing the mandatory training if it is not necessary.


I remember when I was a new battalion commander one of our warrant officers showed me that all the annual training guidance we received from multiple higher headquarters would take more than one year to meet all the training requirements. We were forced to triage.


The Army of 2022: We’re in a bad place if soldiers can choose what mandatory training they complete

Stars and Stripes · by Chris Jenks · September 27, 2022

U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Michael A. Grinston, 16th Sergeant Major of the Army, poses for his official portrait in the Army portrait studio at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va, Aug. 12, 2019. (William Pratt/Army)


Earlier this month Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston publicly espoused willful disobedience as the solution to a problem: more mandatory Army training requirements than time to complete them.

The solution, according to Grinston: “Don’t do it.” He was referring to Army mandated online training requirements including: anti-terrorism training; ethics; equal-opportunity; sexual harassment, assault, response prevention (SHARP); and threat-awareness, along with half a dozen more subjects.

According to Grinston, soldiers should determine what’s important and if that means not completing mandatory online training requirements, so be it. Note that Grinston’s comments, which I find irresponsible, are coming from the most senior enlisted member of the Army.

I served in the Army for 20 years, initially as an infantry officer and later as a judge advocate, and never heard a noncommissioned officer tell subordinates they should pick and choose which regulations they followed.

That the time required for mandatory training exceeds available training time confirms there is an issue. But the solution is to be found at the source of the problem – the Department of the Army, the offices where Grinston works.

The problem is not just with the sergeant major of the Army. Grinston’s boss, Gen. James McConville, chief of staff of the Army, not only didn’t correct Grinston, he added derision to the call to disobey.

McConville was incredulous at the idea that “[p]eople actually do this stuff?” He added that he “was a division commander for three years, and I never did this stuff.” To be clear, the “stuff” are mandatory online training requirements developed by the Army staff supervised by … McConville.

McConville explained that units “don’t have the time” to complete all the training sequences — which his staff has directed them to do. According to McConville, solving this problem is “when senior leaders need to come in,” a curious comment by the most senior officer in the Department of the Army.

The Deputy Chief of Staff G-3/5/7, a lieutenant general who works directly for McConville, issued the requirements by promulgating Army Regulation 350-1, aptly titled “Army Training and Leader Development.” If McConville believes the online training requirements are excessive and/or unnecessary, he can remedy the situation in 60 seconds by calling the Army G-3/5/7 into his office.

Instead, through their ill-advised comments, Grinston and McConville not only undercut their own authority but that of leaders throughout the Army.

What does it say about McConville’s leadership that he publicly mocked requirements from a training and leader development regulation issued by one of his subordinates? What does it say about Grinston’s professionalism that he would advocate not following the regulation governing training, when training is the raison d’etre for the noncommissioned officer corps?

Their comments are akin to IRS policymakers complaining about the tax code that their office produces and then laughing at the people who actually try to follow the code so they can pay their taxes. Just as telling taxpayers to ignore difficult code requirements and do what feels right could produce a disaster for the IRS and the finances of our country, communicating that mandatory Army training is negotiable will end badly.

The Army mission is to fight and win our nation’s wars. Undermining attitudes toward the critical training to accomplish these missions is a mistake. Stated plainly, Grinston and McConville’s guidance, if followed, jeopardizes the Army’s ability to function.

Regulations are on an equal footing with orders in enabling the military to operate in an organized and effective manner. This equivalency is demonstrated by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which in Article 92, criminalizes failing to obey an order or regulation. Similarly, enlisted members of the Army take an oath to obey “the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

What will happen when a company first sergeant directs the unit to conduct all required training, but various subordinate noncommissioned officers follow Grinston’s and McConville’s direction that some training is optional?

Imagine the first platoon sergeant doesn’t believe ethics training is as important as maintenance, so she ignores the ethics training and orders soldiers to remain in the motor pool. The squad leader for first squad is happy to not spend time on ethics training. Another squad leader doesn’t believe there is an equal opportunity issue, so there is no need for that training. Within first squad are two team leaders, one of whom believes SHARP training is not a good use of soldiers’ time, so that’s out, while the other team leader takes a dim view of anti-terrorism training and doesn’t conduct it. Before long you’ve have an Army that believes training is cafeteria-style and can be ignored, allowing personal judgment to erode overall readiness.

According to Grinston and McConville, mandatory means optional, at least for online training. What about other training mandated by regulation? May soldiers pick and choose what they do based on their individual assessment of importance regarding the regulation requiring physical training or rifle marksmanship?

What about an order to attack? Is that also subject to individual assessment?

The sergeant major and chief of staff are supposed to solve problems and lead the Army.

But they are creating problems, and if they are leading the Army, it’s not forward.

That neither the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nor the secretary of defense have publicly commented on the Army leadership’s view of “optionally mandatory” training is also problematic.

If the Pentagon doesn’t care whether mandatory training on subjects like anti-terrorism training, ethics, equal-opportunity, and SHARP is actually done, then it’s time to involve a part of the U.S. government that likely does care – Congress.

The question isn’t if the House and Senate Armed Services committees (HASC/SASC) should investigate the Army leadership’s statements but when to conduct the inquiry.

Congress can wait until, for example, the aftermath of future sexual assaults within an Army unit and an investigation determines that troops had not received SHARP training because their unit leaders did as instructed by Grinston and McConville.

Or, since we can see this future train wreck coming, we can urge Congress to investigate now and prevent it from happening.

The HASC and SASC should direct Grinston and McConville to explain themselves. Initially that could be in the form of written requests from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon. If Grinston and McConville double down on their statements, Congress could then require that they testify at a public hearing. Grinston and McConville could then explain the concept of optionally mandatory training and how the Army expects to effectively function, in peacetime or war, if soldiers are encouraged to selectively comply with regulations based on individual assessments of importance.

Chris Jenks is a professor of law at the Dedman School of Law, SMU Dallas. As a law professor, he served as the Special Counsel to the Department of Defense General Counsel. He is a West Point graduate who served initially as an infantry officer and later as a judge advocate.

Stars and Stripes · by Chris Jenks · September 27, 2022



11. AFSOC AC-130J gunship to fire laser weapon in flight test in 2023


Excerpts;

US Special Operations Command requested about $16 million in FY23 to continue laser integration onboard the AC-130J, a boost of about $4 million above FY22 levels due to the planned start of flight testing. That money also funds ground testing and aircraft fit checks ahead of first flight, according to budget materials.
However, after the final flight demonstration, it will be up to AFSOC to decide whether it can shore up precious funds to transition the program from technology development into a program of record. Technical tradeoffs — such as deciding whether the size, weight and power demands of the laser outweigh other potential capability upgrades — could also factor into the decision.
Another potential problem is that the Lockheed’s AHEL was designed for the Block 20 version of the AC-130J. Currently, all AC-130J Block 20s are going through the modification process to become Block 30s, and it is unknown how much time or money it will take to modify the laser design.


AFSOC AC-130J gunship to fire laser weapon in flight test in 2023 - Breaking Defense

breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · September 27, 2022

An Airman from the 73rd Special Operations Squadron marshals an AC-130J Ghostrider to its parking location after landing at Kadena Air Base on March 29, 2021. (Capt. Renee Douglas/US Air Force)

WASHINGTON — Air Force Special Operations Command will test an airborne laser in flight on an AC-130J gunship in 2023, a year later than planned.

A flying demonstration of Lockheed Martin’s Airborne High Energy Laser, which will be integrated on an AC-130J Ghostrider, will start in summer 2023 and run through fall, AFSOC spokeswoman Lt. Col. Becky Heyse said response to questions from Breaking Defense.

“Results of the testing will determine future operational usage,” she said. “At this time there is no concept of operation/employment developed for the [high energy laser].”

Lockheed delivered the 60-watt laser to AFSOC in October 2021 after completing factory acceptance testing of the system. At that point, flight demonstrations were slated to occur in 2022.

Lockheed continues to work with AFSOC as it integrates the AHEL laser with other subsystems — such as thermal, power management and beam control — and conducts ground testing, a spokesperson said in a statement. The company “is supporting all AHEL program milestones to include Full Laser Characterization, Full System Integration & High Power Checkout, and Full System Test in support of a planned Flight Test in FY23.”

Mounting a directed energy weapon on an AC-130J gunship has been a perennial but somewhat elusive goal for AFSOC for almost a decade. The Ghostrider already packs a formidable punch, outfitted with a Precision Strike Package that includes 30mm and 105mm cannons, while also being able to fire precision guided munitions such as the GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb, AGM-114 Hellfire missile and AGM-176 Griffin. But a high energy laser would provide AFSOC with a way to shoot down missiles or disable enemy electronics clandestinely, as enemy forces would be unable to see the laser as it beams from the gunship.

Former AFSOC commander Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold was especially enthusiastic about the promise of laser weapons, saying in September 2015 that he expected the technology to be available “by the close of this decade.”

“This isn’t Star Wars stuff, folks,” he said then, according to Air Force Times. “The technology is ripe for doing this. … I’ve got the space, I’ve got the weight, and I’ve got the power.”

Lockheed was awarded a contract to integrate AHEL with the AC-130 in January 2019. However, the ultimate future of the program remains unclear.

US Special Operations Command requested about $16 million in FY23 to continue laser integration onboard the AC-130J, a boost of about $4 million above FY22 levels due to the planned start of flight testing. That money also funds ground testing and aircraft fit checks ahead of first flight, according to budget materials.

However, after the final flight demonstration, it will be up to AFSOC to decide whether it can shore up precious funds to transition the program from technology development into a program of record. Technical tradeoffs — such as deciding whether the size, weight and power demands of the laser outweigh other potential capability upgrades — could also factor into the decision.

Another potential problem is that the Lockheed’s AHEL was designed for the Block 20 version of the AC-130J. Currently, all AC-130J Block 20s are going through the modification process to become Block 30s, and it is unknown how much time or money it will take to modify the laser design.

breakingdefense.com · by Valerie Insinna · September 27, 2022



12. The Strategic Interplay Between AUKUS, the NPT, and the Rules-Based International Order - Security & Defence PLuS Alliance



Conclusion:

By virtue of the sheer technological and logistical complexity of the project, the long lead time, and the intensity of existing strategic competition in the region, it should not be taken for granted that the submarines will eventually materialize. On the other hand, pursuing the program poses a huge risk that despite their best efforts, Australia and the IAEA will be unable to prevent damage to the NPT regime. It could be potentially catastrophic for the regime and hence for global nuclear security were another state to mimic Australia and find a means of diverting material for nuclear weaponry, a point that has recently been made by Indonesia and China. This would constitute an indirect threat to Australia, and be a potential disaster for the world at large. It is paramount that in pursuing national security, Australia not inadvertently undermine the global security provided by the NPT regime or undermine the very international order the AUKUS partners are seeking to uphold.

The Strategic Interplay Between AUKUS, the NPT, and the Rules-Based International Order - Security & Defence PLuS Alliance

securityanddefenceplus.plusalliance.org · by Shirley Scott

This commentary focuses on the first dimension of AUKUS: the plan for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines in cooperation with the United States and United Kingdom. The legal dimension of this policy has often been discussed separately from the policy wisdom of such a move. If Australia is to champion the rules-based international order, including in relation to the South China Sea, Australian interests will be best served by our integrating strategic considerations relating to defence and foreign policy with those relating to support for international “rules” and law.

International law and the U.S.-led international order

The term “rules-based international order” (RBIO) recognizes the centrality of rules—the most institutionalized of which are encoded in international law—to the U.S.-led international order. The international legal architecture remains, much of which has taken the form of multilateral treaties during the era of American dominance, but it is increasingly being supplemented by informal agreements and institutions not founded by treaties. The normative ideal of international law as an organizing principle around which the positions of political actors are mediated has been in decline.

Australia’s standing on the international stage has been enhanced by its staunch support for international law. States are not obliged to always make rhetorical reference to international law or the RBIO when their national interests are at stake, but if they choose to do so, one of the worst things they can do from a systemic perspective, is to expose the ideal as untrue and the promise of international law as hollow. This is most often done through blatant hypocrisy and, unfortunately for the United States and its closest allies, that hypocrisy is likely to be most damaging when it is the ardent champions of the RBIO whose behavior appears hypocritical.

International law, the heart of the RBIO, is by no means dead—and, most importantly, while the United States may have been a dominant influence of late, international law long pre-dates the rise of the United States as a global power. And, given the functional importance of international law and affiliated institutions and rules, even if the United States were to somehow extricate itself from the system, it is more likely that international law would be transmogrified, potentially under a different name, than to disappear altogether.

The language of RBIO is, therefore, helpful in pointing to the centrality of rules to the international order, but has arguably been unhelpful by equating those rules too closely with U.S. dominance.

The NPT and the IAEA safeguards system

The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is arguably one of the most important multilateral treaties, second only to the Charter of the United Nations. This is because it has—for the most part very successfully—managed the high-stakes global policy issue of who should be permitted to have nuclear weapons. No one could claim the solution it embodied—that those states that already possessed nuclear weapons on January 1, 1967, be permitted to keep them and those that had not yet developed them never be allowed to do so—was fair. On the other hand, its provisions and associated agreements went a long way toward ensuring that all countries could benefit from the use of nuclear energy for civilian purposes while prohibiting further development of nuclear weaponry.

Any developments that enable non-nuclear weapon states to acquire nuclear weapons while looking as if they are complying with the Treaty will inevitably weaken the credibility of this important regime. Most fundamentally, by Article III of the NPT, non-nuclear weapon states agree to safeguards, as negotiated with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), that ensure nuclear energy resources are not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. States are also obligated, by paragraph two of Article III, to not supply any technology designed for the processing, use, or production of special fissionable material, or the material itself, to any other state.

The NPT regime has increasingly come under challenge from non-nuclear weapon states and civil society dissatisfied with what they perceive to be inadequate progress toward disarmament, as provided for in Article VI. A newer treaty, the Treaty of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons or the so-called Nuclear Ban Treaty, that would ban all countries from owning nuclear weapons, has also gained popularity. A world in which states dissatisfied with the geopolitical status quo could readily develop nuclear weapons would not be in the security interests of any state that is broadly satisfied with the post-World War II configuration of power relations. While an individual dissatisfied country might stand to benefit from developing nuclear weapons capabilities, it would be a huge gamble to allow all states to proceed along those lines.

AUKUS and the NPT

Each AUKUS state has obligations with respect to the NPT, although they are not the same, given that Australia is a non-nuclear weapon state and the United States and the United Kingdom are. Of particular relevance to the AUKUS plan is paragraph 14 of IAEA Information Circular 153, regarding the withdrawal of nuclear material from safeguards for use in certain non-explosive military uses. Prior to doing so, in order to use naval nuclear propulsion technology for example, a state must go through a specific process to ensure compliance with IAEA standards. The legal and technical issues that would need to be addressed by the IAEA before agreeing to any plan that would cover the AUKUS nuclear submarine project would be particularly complex.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi has established a special task force to investigate the “very specific arrangements” the IAEA would need to make with Australia. He is under no illusion that this would be easy to do. “Now we have to dot the Is and cross the Ts, which has never been done before, and it’s a very, very demanding process,” he said. Any agreement between the IAEA and Australia would set a precedent that would inevitably be invoked by others. Canada, South Korea, Iran, and Brazil have all considered nuclear-propelled submarines; notably, Iran cited AUKUS as precedent just last year.

Discussion of Australia developing nuclear-propulsion submarine capabilities has arguably made the work of the IAEA more challenging. Any agreement would need to be watertight to avoid being manipulated to permit the use of nuclear material to develop weaponry when invoked by other countries. It would be extremely unhelpful for the NPT if Australia were to appear to receive special treatment that the IAEA is not willing to extend to others.

Inserting ANZUS into the equation

The rules-based international order includes a whole network of alliances and formalized security arrangements. In terms of Australia’s own security, key here is ANZUS. By Article IV, each party recognizes that “an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties (sic) would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes.” This is far from a commitment on the part of the United States to come to the defence of Australia and contrasts with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, by which an attack on one is to be regarded as an attack on all.

According to Hugh White, emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, nuclear-propelled submarines may be the best option for enhancing interoperability with the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea but are unlikely to be the best submarine option for defending Australia—particularly over the next two decades.

If White is correct and Australia is unable to achieve both, defending one’s own country would seem to be a first-order priority. To do otherwise would be refusing to take full responsibility for one’s own security and to rely fully on the United States despite its not being fully obligated to guarantee that security. If Australia is to assume such ongoing vulnerability, the United States should, at a minimum, upgrade Article IV of ANZUS to more closely align with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Even this, however, may not be enough to save Australia should the United States face China in a showdown in East Asia.

National interests of other key players

Then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson was quite open in explaining that the United Kingdom’s attraction to the AUKUS submarine acquisition plan lay in the jobs that would be created and in the opportunity to update its own technological capacities through “one of the most complex and technically demanding projects in the world, lasting for decades and requiring the most advanced technology.

For the United States, the attraction of AUKUS would seem even more obvious. Unless it has undertaken to pay for the submarines, it would seem ideal to have an ally willingly spend their own funds on a capability for which it will otherwise be dependent on the United States and United Kingdom, at least for the foreseeable future.

This raises the New Zealand question. New Zealand is a member of ANZUS and party to the NPT but—unsurprisingly, given its stance in relation to nuclear-powered ships—was not included in the AUKUS submarine arrangements. The New Zealand-Australia relationship remains an important consideration in any assessment of AUKUS from an Australian perspective, however, not least because of their geographical proximity and because despite perhaps inevitable differences, the two remain close allies.

Jeopardizing global security for a possibility?

By virtue of the sheer technological and logistical complexity of the project, the long lead time, and the intensity of existing strategic competition in the region, it should not be taken for granted that the submarines will eventually materialize. On the other hand, pursuing the program poses a huge risk that despite their best efforts, Australia and the IAEA will be unable to prevent damage to the NPT regime. It could be potentially catastrophic for the regime and hence for global nuclear security were another state to mimic Australia and find a means of diverting material for nuclear weaponry, a point that has recently been made by Indonesia and China. This would constitute an indirect threat to Australia, and be a potential disaster for the world at large. It is paramount that in pursuing national security, Australia not inadvertently undermine the global security provided by the NPT regime or undermine the very international order the AUKUS partners are seeking to uphold.



13. Meet the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, a Little-Known Unit that Presents a New Model for Security Cooperation


Conclusion:


Leaders from the United States and other NATO members continually consider the ladder of escalation—in terms of what lethal and nonlethal aid to provide next to Ukraine—and how Russia might respond. Numerous fundamental realities shape the contours of the overall war, however. Ukraine cannot fight the war with Russia to total victory, for instance, since Russia would never let Ukrainian forces march on Moscow without a nuclear strike. This is precisely why the Trilateral Brigade offers such a significant opportunity. It presents an alternative capability to NATO, a means of indirectly hurting Russia via the training of Ukrainian troops and other coordination activities that enable Ukrainian combat power. It is also a powerful proof of concept, and a strong argument for NATO leadership to encourage the forming of similar joint units with non-NATO members (e.g., Moldova, Georgia, etc.) that also view Russia as a threat to their security. Such collaboration lays the foundation for future security cooperation to improve interoperability capabilities that might be needed in a future conflict.

Meet the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, a Little-Known Unit that Presents a New Model for Security Cooperation - Modern War Institute

Jahara Matisek and William Reno | 09.28.22

mwi.usma.edu · by Jahara Matisek · September 28, 2022

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Lublin, a city in southeast Poland, is notable as the site where, in 1569, the rulers of Poland and Lithuania (which then included large parts of present-day Ukraine) signed a pact to unite the two countries into a single state to better withstand aggression from Russia. Four and a half centuries on, the city continues playing a role in connecting these three countries as home to the headquarters of the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, or “Trilateral Brigade” in members’ own parlance. The brigade’s headquarters is staffed with a mix of soldiers from Lithuania (five), Poland (fifty-eight), and Ukraine (eighteen), and is capable of planning, organizing, commanding, and controlling three associated combat units—one mechanized infantry battalion from each of Lithuania and Poland and a Ukrainian air assault unit—and combat support units (approximately 4,500 total personnel) for international military operations. Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian personnel continue to be assigned to the unit, and the headquarters continues its four main missions of international cooperation: executing and participating in battle staff training, battalion staff officer courses, multinational exercises, and activities of the Joint Military Training Group–Ukraine.

In the shadow of Lublin’s suggestive history, the Trilateral Brigade provides a lens for thinking about flexible options in US and NATO responses to contemporary Russian aggression in Ukraine. This flexibility is especially important in the context of current US doctrine on deterrence in a new phase of great power competition. In August, we traveled to Poland on a DoD Minerva research mission, where we conducted interviews with dozens of military personnel assigned to the Trilateral Brigade. What we found underscores the significance of the organization’s historical roots and highlights the value of this joint military unit acting as a bridge between NATO and Ukraine. While few US and European military personnel are aware of the Trilateral Brigade’s existence, the unit can serve as a template for future security cooperation and facilitate Western efforts in the current Russo-Ukrainian War.

Two Feet in NATO, One Foot Out

The Trilateral Brigade occupies a gray space. While multinational units are not uncommon—the Dutch-German Tank Battalion 414, for instance, was founded in 2016—a joint unit composed of NATO members (Polish and Lithuanian) and non-NATO military personnel (Ukrainian) is obviously rare. This presents both opportunities as well as risks that must be managed in order to take advantage of those opportunities.

NATO is an organization built on the principle of consensus. While this is a critical means of keeping the most successful military alliance in the history of the world together, it also means that even limited activities are difficult when some members are resistant. Here is where an organization like the Trilateral Brigade proves extraordinarily useful. The brigade is a joint training mission, and a lot of activities fall under the category of training—activities that could have direct impacts in the ongoing war in Ukraine, for example. The brigade can therefore play a positive role by enabling Eastern European NATO members who want to lean into what they see as a broad-based confrontation with Russia—what may turn out to be a long conflict of which the war in Ukraine is just the most active and kinetic front—and those further West that might wish to keep the conflict at a distance. These different tolerances for risk point to the range of very real divisions among NATO members and are a foundation of Russia’s strategy of steadily weakening the alliance by exploiting any fissures. The Trilateral Brigade helps bridge these gaps and thus protect against this Russian strategy.

The brigade’s potential contributions to strengthening the defense of NATO’s eastern flank and providing military training in Ukraine is not without difficulties. Chief among these is the risk of escalation, particularly considering the shadow that US and Russian nuclear arsenals cast over the conflict. This concern is real, given the realities of opposed strategic aims: The United States and other NATO members strive to limit conflict to Ukraine’s territory while helping Ukraine’s armed forces inflict enough pain on Russian forces to compel retreat and to deter future aggression. Russia’s leadership seeks to compel the United States and others to stop supporting Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ultimately, the key to managing this risk while also pursuing strategic goals of supporting Ukraine is balance, and the Trilateral Brigade provides additional important options. Assistance managed through the Trilateral Brigade’s decentralized structure is more difficult to target than staging areas and lines of communication associated with assistance to Ukraine. Its functional advantage lies in its capacity to coordinate planning and flows of material resources across a wide territory, and thus may not come with the same risks of escalation as other forward-leaning operations.

Perhaps most fundamentally, the brigade’s unique organization and membership, partly NATO and partly not, should widen our collective perspective on the ways to deliver security force assistance. It leverages an alignment of strategic interests among a subset of NATO members to generate the close coordination between assistance providers and recipients needed for effective security force assistance. With the American strategic vacation over, the United States and its allies and partners must learn from security assistance mistakes with Afghanistan, and forge refined ways of providing military aid that improves Ukrainian military capabilities in a sustainable fashion.

The Trilateral Brigade’s Comparative Advantage

Lublin’s regional and historical importance as the center of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are cited as a “factor in the emergence of Ukrainian national consciousness.” Beyond these deep historical ties, official discourse in all three countries involved in the Trilateral Brigade define their identities in terms of repression and resistance during Soviet rule. Shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine began codifying relationships for military “training-operational cooperation.” Within this identification of shared strategic interests, cooperation among members of the armed forces of these countries began to establish a shared cultural frame for planning and executing operations, a key element in motivating efficient application of military resources and effort.

Formal cooperation between the three militaries began in 1997 with the Lithuanian-Polish Battalion, followed by the establishment of the Polish-Ukrainian Battalion in 1998. Between 2000 and 2010, personnel from the Polish-Ukrainian Battalion (reinforced with thirty Lithuanian troops) were deployed to Kosovo to participate in NATO-led peacekeeping operations. Additionally, Polish and Ukrainian soldiers deployed to Iraq (2003–2005) as part of the Multinational Centre-South Division, which included two Lithuanian infantry companies and logistics personnel. Individually, all three countries contributed forces to support US and NATO missions in Afghanistan (2001–2021) as part of broader goals of improving strategic partnerships with the United States, European Union, and NATO. Personnel from all three countries became familiar with one another as they built personal networks and shared information.

Lithuanian and Polish relationships with Ukraine came to a pause in 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych assumed Ukraine’s presidency, which strained many ties to the US and neighboring NATO countries. Cooperation stagnated until 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and secretly invaded to initiate a separatist revolt in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. After pro-Western leaders returned to power in Kyiv in the wake of the Maidan Revolution, the Trilateral Brigade was formed in late 2014. The brigade achieved operational capability and combat readiness by 2017, as demonstrated by successfully executing its first multinational exercise in December of 2016. This was followed by further symbolic integration as the Trilateral Brigade chose their patron: Grand Hetman Konstanty Iwanowicz Ostrogski. The symbolism was significant: Ostrogski was “the three nations’ hero who successfully led campaigns against the Tatars and Muscovians,” with the greatest unifying victory occurring against Vasili III of Russia in 1514.

In 2020, given deepening defense ties, increased political coordination between Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine followed. This took the form of the “Lublin Triangle,” an interregional cooperative body with one of its aims being to “coordinate actions to protect international law in the context of Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine both in tripartite coordination and in international organizations.” This was not the first time such a cooperative organization was formed in the region. For instance, GUAM (Georgie, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova) was formed in 1997 for “quadrilateral cooperation for strengthening stability and security in Europe based on respect for the principles of national sovereignty, territorial integrity, inviolability of state borders, democracy, the supremacy of law and human rights.”

With these examples of growing collaboration between former Soviet and Eastern Bloc states, the United States and NATO should view the proliferation of such organizations as an opportunity to leverage personal and organizational connections, partnerships, and relationships in a way that strengthens defense institution building and the way security assistance is delivered and received.

One caveat is that highly motivated Trilateral Brigade members and their governments may have higher risk acceptance thresholds than the United States and some other NATO country planners; this brings the discussion back to the fundamental concern over escalation described earlier. During our interviews in Poland, we regularly encountered dismissive attitudes toward the risks of Russo-Ukraine War escalation in interactions with the brigade’s personnel and various other members of the three countries’ armed forces. While there is significant alignment of partners’ strategic aims, coupled with significant capabilities, differing assessments of risk pose the possibility that recipients of assistance will use resources in aggressive and provocative ways that are not to Washington’s tastes and would concern NATO partners that do not share experiences of Soviet rule.

Leveraging the Trilateral Brigade in Competition

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, the United States will seek to exploit the opportunity to weaken and undermine Russia in the context of a grand strategy that views Russia as a declining power—though one that happens to possess about six thousand nuclear weapons—and China as a growing, revisionist, flexing regional hegemon. Helping Russia fail militarily in the Eurasian geopolitical context is not only vital for European security, but also for US and NATO plans to pivot resources, military forces, and strategic thinking toward Asia to contain China’s growing power.

There are three important policy implications of having a non-NATO member like Ukraine codifying relationships with NATO members through a joint security organization like the Trilateral Brigade.

First, the greatest value of the Trilateral Brigade lies in its ability to operate outside of the figurative NATO umbrella while minimizing risks of territorial escalation, as the brigade’s commander told our research team. In practical terms, it means that while the United States and NATO have to be comparatively more legalistic and bureaucratic in training, assistance, advising, and equipping Ukraine, the established regional cooperation of the Trilateral Brigade enables interoperability and long-term relationships between these countries in a way that is difficult for the average US or NATO military unit to achieve. Moreover, such an established regional security organization can enable informal coordination and the sharing of information. Per our interviews, the Trilateral Brigade facilitates numerous activities between Ukrainian forces and NATO, such as collecting lessons learned from open source and personnel involved in the war against Russia. Such data informs military exercises and makes training more realistic between US, European, and Ukrainian personnel.

Second, given growing discussions about Ukraine acquiring 48 to 128 American F-16s, the precedent of a Trilateral Brigade suggests that similar cooperative activities could take place between NATO members and Ukraine. For example, Poland has forty-eight F-16s and Romania has seventeen (plus thirty-two more being acquired this year). This suggests an opportunity to form a bilateral Polish-Ukrainian air squadron or a trilateral Polish-Romanian-Ukrainian air squadron. An operational template of sorts already exists with the Heavy Airlift Wing in Hungary, where twelve countries (the United States, nine other NATO members, and Sweden and Finland) jointly operate three C-17s. Employing joint air force units would be a bridging function for the Ukrainian military, enabling Ukrainian pilots and associated support personnel to learn best airpower practices from their neighbors. This would prevent the Faberge Egg military problem that typically occurs when American advisors are not around to monitor a partner force operating an expensive and complicated weapon system like the F-16 (Iraq, for example, struggles to operate its fleet of F-16s). The significance of this was highlighted while interviewing a Polish fighter pilot, who explained a “mentality change on every level” was needed when Poland established its first F-16 squadron at Poznań air base in 2006. He admitted numerous struggles in the transition away from Soviet-era aircraft and standards for logistics, maintenance, and airfield support. Finally, growing regional cooperation between air forces could possibly accelerate timelines for Ukrainians to be able to employ F-16s more skillfully in combat operations once they are deemed capable of operating independently out of air bases in Ukraine (likely two to three years).

Third, given the deep ties the Trilateral Brigade is fostering between Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian forces, there is an opportunity for NATO and the United States to further enhance the relationship between Western militaries and Ukrainian security forces. For instance, the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade’s leadership mentioned how beneficial the US National Guard State Partnership Program was in facilitating training sessions with National Guard units of California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, which helped them refine training courses on the Military Decision-Making Process. Future engagements with the Trilateral Brigade could include the Canadian military teaching the Operational Planning Process and the British military instructing their 7 Questions combat estimate method. Finally, with the Trilateral Brigade having submitted a plan of training ten thousand Ukrainian infantry by 2023, this presents an opportunity to assign officers and noncommissioned officers from the United States and NATO to act as liaison officers in advising, developing, and facilitating such activities. This would further enhance and improve the combat power and professionalization of Ukrainian forces.

Leaders from the United States and other NATO members continually consider the ladder of escalation—in terms of what lethal and nonlethal aid to provide next to Ukraine—and how Russia might respond. Numerous fundamental realities shape the contours of the overall war, however. Ukraine cannot fight the war with Russia to total victory, for instance, since Russia would never let Ukrainian forces march on Moscow without a nuclear strike. This is precisely why the Trilateral Brigade offers such a significant opportunity. It presents an alternative capability to NATO, a means of indirectly hurting Russia via the training of Ukrainian troops and other coordination activities that enable Ukrainian combat power. It is also a powerful proof of concept, and a strong argument for NATO leadership to encourage the forming of similar joint units with non-NATO members (e.g., Moldova, Georgia, etc.) that also view Russia as a threat to their security. Such collaboration lays the foundation for future security cooperation to improve interoperability capabilities that might be needed in a future conflict.

Lieutenant Colonel Jahara “FRANKY” Matisek, PhD, (@JaharaMatisek) is the fellowship director for the Irregular Warfare Initiative and US DoD Minerva researcher that will be a military professor at the US Naval War College beginning in October 2022. A 2020 Bronze Star recipient for his time as the director of operations and commander of the 451st Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron, he is a command pilot that previously served as a senior fellow for the Homeland Defense Institute and associate professor in the Military and Strategic Studies Department at the US Air Force Academy.

Dr. William Reno is professor and chair of the Political Science Department at Northwestern University. He has conducted fieldwork and interviews in conflict zones across Africa and the Middle East for over thirty years, having authored three books: Corruption and State Politics in Sierra LeoneWarlord Politics and African States, and Warfare in Independent Africa. Dr. Reno has published over one hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals, policy-relevant periodicals, and edited volumes on civil wars, rebels, and military assistance. Finally, he is the principal investigator for the US DoD Minerva-funded program studying how the United States can improve foreign military training.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of the Air Force, or Department of Defense. This article was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-20-1-0277.

Image credit: Staff Sgt. Philip Steiner, US Army

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mwi.usma.edu · by Jahara Matisek · September 28, 2022



14. What Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand About War


What Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand About War

On the modern battlefield, brains and adaptability yield far better results than ruthless brutality does.

By Phillips Payson O’Brien

The Atlantic · by Phillips Payson O’Brien · September 28, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his generals aren’t the only people who think that the more ruthless, hypermasculine, and reflexively brutal an army is, the better it performs on the battlefield. That view also has fans in the United States.

Last year, Senator Ted Cruz recirculated a TikTok video that contrasted a Russian military-recruitment ad, which showed a male soldier getting ready to kill people, with an American recruitment video that told the story of a female soldier—the daughter of two mothers—who enlisted partly to challenge stereotypes. “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea,” Cruz tweeted sarcastically. The Texas Republican is not alone in trumpeting a Putinesque ideal. Several months earlier, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson had similarly complained about a supposedly “woke” Pentagon, which he likened to the Wesleyan University anthropology department. By promoting diversity and inclusion, he insisted, military leaders were destroying American armed forces, supposedly the last great bastion of merit in the country. More recently, Carlson has complained that America’s armed forces are becoming “more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore,” just as China’s are “more masculine.”

Arguments like these were much easier to make before Putin unleashed his muscle-bound and decidedly unwoke fighting machine on the ostensibly weak Ukrainians, only to see it perform catastrophically. More than seven months into the war, the Ukrainian army continues to grow in strength, confidence, and operational competence, while the Russian army is flailing. Its recent failures raise many questions about the nature of military power. Before Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, many analysts described his military as fast and powerful and predicted that it would “shock and awe” the overmatched defenders. The Ukrainian armed forces were widely assumed to be incapable of fighting the mighty Russians out in the open; their only option, the story went, would be to retreat into their cities and wage a form of guerrilla war against the invaders.

Phillips Payson O’Brien: Ukraine is waging a new kind of war

The success of the Ukrainian military over the past few months, along with the evolution of the Ukrainian state itself toward a more tolerant, more liberal norm, reveals what makes a better army in the modern world. Brains mean more than brawn, and adaptability means more than mindless aggression. Openness to new ideas and new equipment, along with the ability to learn quickly, is far more important than a simple desire to kill.

From the moment the Russian military crossed the border, the Ukrainians have outfought it, revealing it to be inflexible and intellectually vapid. Indeed when confronted with a Ukrainian military that was everything it was not—smart, adaptable, and willing to learn—the Russian army could only fall back on slow, massed firepower. The Battle of the Donbas, the war’s longest engagement, which started in late April and is still under way, exposed the Russian army at its worst. For months, it directed the bulk of personnel and equipment toward the center of a battle line running approximately from Izyum to Donetsk. Instead of breaking through Ukrainian lines and sending armored forces streaking forward rapidly, as many analysts had predicted, the Russian army opted to make painfully slow, incremental advances, by simply blasting the area directly in front of it. The plan seemed to be to render the area uninhabitable by Ukrainians, which would allow the Russians to advance intermittently into the vacuum. This was heavy-firepower, low-intelligence warfare on a grand scale, which resulted in strategically meaningless advances secured at the cost of unsustainably high Russian casualties. And in recent weeks, the Ukrainians have retaken much of the territory that Russia managed to seize at the start of the battle—and more.

I struggle to think of another case in the past 100 years when a major military power has performed as poorly against an adversary it was heavily favored to defeat. The supposedly second-strongest army in the world, with its martial spirit, brilliant doctrines, and advanced equipment, was thwarted and is now being pushed back by a Ukrainian military whose prospects most outsiders had dismissed before the war.

The persistence of the Putin-Cruz-Carlson vision of war is surprising, because we have decades, even centuries, of evidence to the contrary. Since the Industrial Revolution, and in many ways before, the ability to run a complex system has been the cornerstone of strategic success. Though much military popular literature likes to stress the human drama of combat—the bravery and sacrifice, the cowardice and atrocity—it is not nearly as important in victory or defeat as many people assume. In state-to-state wars—a category that includes the current Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as broader conflicts such as the two world wars—the side that can most efficiently deploy more effective equipment operated by better-trained personnel has typically emerged victorious.

The combination of education and technology overcame brute force during World War II, when the most militarily skillful and adaptable countries—the United States and the United Kingdom—were able to fight their enemies at a relatively small cost in casualties. The U.K., even though it fought around the world from 1939 to 1945, lost only 384,000 soldiers in combat. The U.S. lost even fewer, suffering approximately 290,000 battle deaths. The German armed forces, by contrast, lost more than 4 million soldiers.

That the British and American armed forces kept their casualties comparatively low is especially notable because they were confronted with an overwhelming majority of German arms, planes, and ammunition. Because of the sickening number of human casualties, the fighting on the Eastern Front between the Nazis and Soviets is widely deemed World War II’s largest engagement, but Germany had to send far more of its war production to fight the British and Americans than it did to fight the U.S.S.R.

The Ukrainians are trying, albeit with far fewer advantages, to do to Russia what the U.S. and the U.K. did to Germany. Ukrainian forces have learned to skillfully use advanced weaponry—in this case NATO-standard systems such as HIMARS and HARM missiles—to neutralize the brute strength of the Russian army. They have accomplished this because Ukrainian society is more flexible, technologically conversant, and willing to learn than the Russian invaders are. They have shown more cleverness and wisdom, and over time that advantage has allowed them to start taking the initiative.

From the October 2022 issue: Ukrainians are defending the values Americans claim to hold

Just as the ability to absorb information is better than lunkhead hypermasculinity in a modern army, diversity and societal integration also bring major advantages. As Ukraine has become more diverse and tolerant, its army has benefited. In contrast with Putin’s homophobic military, the Ukrainian armed forces include LGBTQ soldiers who have incorporated “unicorn” insignia into their uniforms. The valor of these soldiers, and the rallying of the Ukrainian people around a vision of a tolerant and diverse society, has led to an overall increase in Ukrainian support for gay rights—and it underscores the belief that everyone has a role to play in the country’s defense.

The Russian experience could not be more different. Putin has made suppressing gay rights one of the hallmarks of his rule. Determined to capitalize on culture-war tropes of the American right, he has portrayed Russia as a victim of cancel culture. He has retained rigid control over Russian society. While the Ukrainians are opening up, he is clamping down—with what we are now seeing as rather extreme results.

Last week, Putin called for a partial mobilization, which appears to be much broader than was originally announced. Now faced with the prospect of being forced into his army, large numbers of Russian men are desperately trying to get out of the country, and protests and even sabotage have occurred against government authorities. Whether Russian citizens generally view service in Putin’s army as a worthy national endeavor is in doubt. The Ukrainians, conversely, undertook a far more successful conscription at the start of the invasion.

Recent events should banish the idea that the more aggressive killing machine wins the war. Intelligence, technological savvy, and social integration are the assets that matter most on the modern battlefield.

The Atlantic · by Phillips Payson O’Brien · September 28, 2022


15. Opinion | The disturbing strategy behind MAGA complaints about a ‘woke military’  by Max Boot



Opinion | The disturbing strategy behind MAGA complaints about a ‘woke military’

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · September 26, 2022

This summer, I attended the promotion ceremony of a friend, an Army general who was pinning another star on his uniform. A Christian chaplain said a blessing and then the speakers extolled my friend’s lifetime of service to the country. Finally, the general took the oath of office on a Bible held by his wife. It was all very traditional and very moving.

If you think there is anything remotely surprising about this — if you imagine that the speakers would have been extolling the joys of transgenderism or denouncing white privilege — well, you’ve been watching too much Fox “News.” Donald Trump Jr., for example, claims a “militant female” can become an admiral or general in today’s military “for no other reason other than they’re probably female,” or “if you can say, ‘Hey I’m trans.’ ” Tucker Carlson asserts: “It has been one calculated humiliation after another for the U.S. armed forces: vax mandates, anti-white ideology, sex changes, drag shows. Whatever is necessary to telegraph to the United States military you are worthless.”

Needless to say, these fanciful descriptions from bomb-throwers who never served in uniform bear no relation to reality. The U.S. military remains one of the most conservative institutions in America with traditions dating back centuries. That the military now welcomes African Americans, women and LGBTQ people — all groups that were kept out in the past — only strengthens an institution that needs to draw on the talents of the whole country to defend it.

So why are cartoonish inhabitants of the Fox News Cinematic Universe caterwauling about a “woke military”? Because the military has resisted Trumpian attempts to politicize it. The MAGA brigades want to populate the military with far-right officers who will do whatever Trump or a Trump mini-me commands, no matter how illegal.

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Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s new book “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021” — the best account yet of the worst presidency — serves as a useful reminder of all the ways that President Donald Trump tried to harness the military to carry out his unhinged agenda. The authors report that Trump told then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine general, that he wanted generals as loyal to him as Nazi generals supposedly were to Adolf Hitler. (The stable genius had no idea that German officers plotted to kill Hitler.) Trump wanted “his” troops to shoot both undocumented migrants and Black Lives Matter protesters in the legs. He even listened to pleas from his disgraced former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, to have troops seize ballot boxes after the 2020 election.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, became anathema to Trump & Co. not by embracing “critical race theory,” but by making clear that the military would place loyalty to the Constitution above loyalty to Trump. The turning point, Baker and Glasser report, came when Milley publicly apologized for being duped into walking behind Trump through Lafayette Square after it has been cleared of protesters. “Why did you apologize?” Trump demanded. “It’s a sign of weakness.” Ever since then, this combat veteran has been subject to unconscionable abuse from MAGA World. (Tucker Carlson: “He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid.”)

All of these attacks against the military for being too “woke” should be seen as part of the MAGA strategy to harness the armed forces (“the guys with the guns,” as Milley put it) to advance their authoritarian agenda. Blake Masters, the ultra-MAGA Republican Senate nominee in Arizona, has even advocated firing all the generals (“they’re left-wing politicians”) and replacing them with “the most conservative colonels.”

Unfortunately, there would be little to stop a President Trump or a President Ron DeSantis from doing precisely that as long as the Senate confirms their new generals. A MAGA president could even summon back to active duty loony retired generals such as Flynn or Don Bolduc (the GOP Senate nominee in New Hampshire) and appoint them to senior commands — as long as the Senate consents.

There would be no shortage of MAGA retirees to choose from: 124 retired generals and admirals, including Bolduc, signed an open letter last year that pushed false claims of voter fraud and argued that, under the Democrats, “our Country has taken a hard left turn toward Socialism and a Marxist form of tyrannical government.” If Trump wins in 2024, he could choose his Joint Chiefs from their ranks.

Little wonder that five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and eight former defense secretaries signed an open letter of their own warning that “We are in an exceptionally challenging civil-military environment” because of, among other events, “the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt.”

The growing chorus of MAGA complaints about the “woke military,” nonsensical as they are, indicate that the challenges will only grow. A homegrown extremist movement that has already captured control of one of the two major political parties is now trying to bend the armed forces to its supreme leader’s malign will.

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · September 26, 2022


16.  American Innovation Can Counter China’s BRI


Excerpts:

The United States should start by creating an innovation fund through which it brings more high-impact technologies into global infrastructure and development investments. The fund should align with DFC and the U.S. Export-Import Bank to support the necessary front-end financing, partnering, and implementation support for U.S. manufacturers.
It is not necessary to compete with China for poorly conceived and managed projects. In contrast to the BRI’s “railroads to nowhere,” the United States can reframe global infrastructure development around the citizens who need it the most. Let’s unleash U.S. innovation now.


American Innovation Can Counter China’s BRI

In contrast to the BRI’s “railroads to nowhere,” the United States can reframe global infrastructure development around the citizens who need it the most.

The National Interest · by Elaine Dezenski · September 26, 2022

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched in 2013 as a trillion-dollar mega strategy to build infrastructure and influence across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. The BRI is a central aspect of President Xi Jinping’s vision for an ascendant China. It is meant to strengthen economic, political, and military linkages to Beijing through development, especially across the Global South.

However, less than ten years since its launch, the veneer has peeled off the BRI facade. It’s time for a reset. The United States can offer a better citizen-centric model for infrastructure development by leveraging American innovation and know-how.

Reports of large-scale corruption, waste, and opacity in BRI infrastructure deals are no longer surprising. As more examples come to light—from roads to nowhere to empty ports, stadiums, and large-scale digital surveillance—Beijing reveals something very important about the BRI. It seems to advantage China and the few officials who make the deals rather than the people who badly need economic security, health, and connectivity.

Governments that do business with China might survive the reputational fallout from overpriced projects and soaring debt. But citizens lose out every time. As one of the authors wrote in 2020, “a close examination of China’s BRI suggests that Beijing’s partners may become saddled with expensive but under-utilized infrastructure, massive debt, and political instability.” For example, Kenya’s over-budget and unfinished $4.7 billion BRI-financed railway ends abruptly in the middle of an empty field in the Rift Valley, a constant physical reminder of the country’s massive debt to China and the lost opportunity for Kenyan citizens.


For the United States, this represents an opportunity to adopt a strategy that provides a more effective alternative to BRI—a model that reinforces sustainable projects, emphasizes anti-corruption and local employment, and allows countries to preserve their independence from China.

Some of the elements are already in place. Initiatives such as the G7 Build Back Better World combine the efforts of the United States and its partners. The United States, Japan, and Australia launched the Blue Dot Network to offer global standards for quality infrastructure development. U.S. equity investments through the newly launched U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) provide more capital and financing options for global infrastructure projects while encouraging greater private sector investment and partnerships. All of these efforts should be put on steroids.

But equally important is the inclusion of U.S. innovation. As many countries grapple with the economic fallout of Covid-19, food and energy insecurity, and slowing global growth, the immediate needs are pressing. U.S. innovation in key sectors such as health, digital, energy, water, and sanitation, offers an asymmetric advantage over China’s bloated “export” model. While BRI tethers countries to Chinese labor, materials, and extractive loan deals, U.S. innovation can meet local needs quickly and help build economic security for the long term. While the BRI puts assets at undue risk and dependency when bad deals go south, U.S.-led technology, combined with financing and partnerships across business, philanthropy, and government, is meant to build economic strength. And isn’t that the point?

How can we apply innovation for immediate impact while reframing the global infrastructure agenda? By scaling U.S. innovation where it’s needed most. Even small-scale applications can have a big impact, and some companies are already proving it. One example is the American company Zipline, which manufactures and operates fully automated drones to deliver blood, essential medicines, and vaccines instantly and at scale. Zipline’s applications in Ghana, Nigeria, and Rwanda have delivered millions of Covid-19 vaccines together with partners at Pfizer, Gavi, and UPS. Zipline drone deliveries cut missed vaccination appointments by forty-two percent and improve the delivery of essential blood supplies and life-saving care for more than 25 million people across 3,300 healthcare facilities in Africa.

Likewise, the American company Parsyl is making a massive difference in cold-chain vaccine delivery across Africa. Parsyl’s end-to-end data-powered monitoring solution protects health commodities throughout their delivery up to the last mile. In Senegal, Parsyl has already collected over 32.5 million data points and found that replacing or fixing faulty refrigeration could reduce the number of vaccines spoiled due to freezing temperatures by 24 percent.

SINAK, a U.S.-based corporation, is yet another example. Their carbon capture concrete additive and curing solutions reduce the impact of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur dioxide emissions by more than two-thirds, absorbing vehicle emissions directly into the new or existing pavement and reducing the amount of water required for concrete production. While most economies will continue to be tethered to gas and oil for the foreseeable future, improving air quality and health, and reducing industrial water consumption are still possible.

Although Zipline, Parsyl, SINAK, and many other innovators are working hard to create sustainable businesses in Africa, Asia, and other international markets, more targeted support would allow innovation to scale and spread through new global infrastructure initiatives. The U.S. government spends over $40 billion per year on foreign aid. If it aligned even a fraction of that amount with scaling proven citizen-centric innovations in Africa alone, the results would be game-changing.

The United States should start by creating an innovation fund through which it brings more high-impact technologies into global infrastructure and development investments. The fund should align with DFC and the U.S. Export-Import Bank to support the necessary front-end financing, partnering, and implementation support for U.S. manufacturers.

It is not necessary to compete with China for poorly conceived and managed projects. In contrast to the BRI’s “railroads to nowhere,” the United States can reframe global infrastructure development around the citizens who need it the most. Let’s unleash U.S. innovation now.

Elaine Dezenski is the Senior Director and Head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Ambassador John Simon is Founding Partner at Total Impact Capital and former U.S. Ambassador to the African Union. Total Impact Capital advises Zipline on scaling its operations in Africa.

Allie Dichiara is a senior associate at Total Impact Capital.

Image: Reuters.

The National Interest · by Elaine Dezenski · September 26, 2022




17.  Hezbollah and Iran Are Destabilizing the West Bank



FDD | Hezbollah and Iran Are Destabilizing the West Bank

fdd.org · September 26, 2022

Latest Developments

The Iranian proxy Hezbollah has quietly been sending arms to the West Bank in a bid to strengthen Palestinian terrorist organizations. Tehran’s goal is to undermine the authority of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and to provide terrorist groups with the means to attack Israel. This tactic is proving successful. Since the May 2021 Gaza-Israel conflict, the West Bank has experienced a major uptick in militant activity from Tehran-directed groups, while PA security forces have either joined this violence or looked the other way.

Expert Analysis

“Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and their patrons in Tehran understand that war in Gaza will now gain them very little. Stoking unrest in the West Bank, on the other hand, could net new territory. A battle for the future of the West Bank is underway. While the Palestinians may not appreciate Israel’s presence, it may be the only thing preventing yet another takeover by Iranian proxies. – Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research

“Tehran’s military and financial support of Hezbollah empowers terrorist organizations in the West Bank. Furthermore, it erodes the Palestinian Authority’s ability to effectively govern areas under its control at a time when Israel is examining ways to strengthen security ties with its Palestinian counterpart.” – Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

Iran Set Its Sights on the West Bank

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami boasted in August 2022 that Iran’s war against Israel has moved from “Gaza to the West Bank,” and that Tehran has already begun to smuggle weapons to the West Bank.

U.S.-designated Palestinian terror organizations backed by Iran have operated in the West Bank since the 1980s. Tehran has only recently made a concerted effort to arm them by smuggling explosives and other weapons into the territory. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed the details in 2021, saying that “Iranian emissaries” had launched a drone from the T-4 airbase in Syria to deliver explosives for West Bank terrorist organizations. The Israeli military shot down the drone before it reached its destination.

A Weak Palestinian Authority

PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ approval rating is hovering around 30 percent, while about 70 percent want to see him step down. At the same time, his control of the PA security forces and the West Bank is slipping. Tehran and its proxies have stepped into the power vacuum, creating pockets of lawlessness and hotbeds of terrorism in the West Bank. Nablus and Jenin are the two areas of primary concern.

While the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is at the forefront of this activity, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and other armed groups have frequently clashed with IDF troops and attacked Israeli communities. In some cases, PA security forces members have done the same. Compounding the violence is the emergence of splinter factions from PIJ and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in several West Bank cities where the PA has little to no influence.

Israeli Intervention May Prove Necessary

It is unlikely the PA will be able to stop the smuggling of arms by Hezbollah and curb the growing threat of Iran-backed militant organizations without the assistance of the IDF. Just as the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 to combat the threat of terrorism in the West Bank, Israel is now conducting a similar yet more limited operation to stem Iranian influence in the territory.

Related Analysis

Iran-Hezbollah Intelligence Center May Help Hamas Target Israel,” by Jonathan Schanzer

fdd.org · September 26, 2022

18. Moscow Cozies Up With Hamas to Pressure Israel



Moscow Cozies Up With Hamas to Pressure Israel

by John Hardie and Ivana Stradner

algemeiner.com · by The Algemeiner

Russian FM Sergei Lavrov and Iranian FM Mohammad Javad Zarif exchange documents during a signing ceremony following a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the Kremlin in Moscow, March 28, 2017. Photo: Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin.

A delegation from the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, led by Politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, made a multi-day visit to Moscow this month for meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as well as other Russian officials.

Asharq Al-Awsat cited a source in the Russian capital, presumably from Hamas’ Moscow office, as saying that Haniyeh wanted to solicit Russia’s views on his “new ideas” for confronting Israel. For Moscow, the visit likely reflects a continuation of its efforts to leverage the Palestinians and other issues to pressure Israel over its stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Russia and Israel built friendly relations in the decades following the Soviet Union’s dissolution. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Jerusalem condemned the war, but made sure to tread carefully in order to preserve working ties with Moscow, lest Russian military forces in Syria disrupt Israel’s strategically important air operations there.

Nevertheless, bilateral tensions spiked in April after Yair Lapid, then serving as Israel’s foreign minister, joined the chorus of voices worldwide accusing Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Jerusalem later provided Kyiv with some non-lethal military aid and a field hospital.

Related coverage

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In response, Moscow hardened its rhetoric about Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories. Last month, for example, Russia’s embassy in Egypt slammed Jerusalem for accusing Russia of atrocities while allegedly showing “complete disregard and contempt for the lives of Palestinians” during an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.

In addition to its tough rhetoric, Moscow has cozied up to Hamas to signal displeasure to Israel and warn Jerusalem against harming Russian interests. Haniyeh’s visit this month followed a May 4-5 trip by another senior Hamas delegation, which traveled to Russia to discuss a flare-up in Israeli-Palestinian tensions over the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Temple Mount.

That visit came as Russian-Israeli ties soured further after Lapid expressed outrage at antisemitic comments by Lavrov, while Moscow accused Jerusalem of backing what Russia paints as the “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv.” In July, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported that Russia’s ambassador to Israel had expressed dismay over Lapid’s ascension to the premiership, although both sides subsequently denied that report.

The Palestinian issue isn’t the only way that Russia has sought to pressure Israel. Moscow is also threatening, on seemingly spurious grounds, to shutter the Russian branch of the Jewish Agency. Known in Hebrew as the Sokhnut, the agency facilitates Jewish emigration to Israel and is an important symbol of post-Soviet Russian-Israeli relations. Russian officials insist the case is not political, but Jerusalem suspects otherwise. Yet even an August 9 call between Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Putin failed to resolve the issue.

Meanwhile, Russian-Israeli tensions have risen in Syria, where the Israeli Air Force routinely conducts airstrikes targeting Tehran’s efforts to supply its Lebanese terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, with precision-guided munitions that threaten the Jewish state. Although it has historically acquiesced to Israeli airstrikes in Syria, Russia has grown increasingly frustrated with them in recent years, and has pushed Jerusalem to rein in its air campaign, to no avail. Russia’s powerful S-400 surface-to-air missile systems in Syria could endanger Israeli air operations against Iran, a country with which Moscow has pursued closer ties of late.

In May, a Russian-operated Syrian S-300 battery — a less capable system than the S-400, posing little threat to advanced Israeli fighter jets — fired unsuccessfully on Israeli aircraft for the first time. Russia had provided S-300s to Damascus after Syrian forces accidentally downed a Russian Il-20 surveillance plane while targeting Israeli aircraft in a 2018 incident that Moscow blamed on Israel.

Russian-Israeli tensions increased further in June, when Moscow drafted a UN Security Council resolution condemning an Israeli strike that disabled the Damascus airport, which Iran was reportedly using to smuggle weapons.

Moscow likely has little appetite for outright conflict with Israel, particularly when the bulk of Russia’s military is floundering in Ukraine. But there are plenty of other ways that Russia, which maintains an active intelligence presence in the Jewish state, could damage Israel’s interests. As Moscow cozies up with Hamas, Iran, and other enemies of Israel, Jerusalem — and its American allies — would do well to keep a watchful eye.

John Hardie is deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute. Ivana Stradner is an Advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.


algemeiner.com · by The Algemeiner




19. The Nord Stream pipeline leak was an act of ‘sabotage’: Who might have done it, why, and what happens next?



The Nord Stream pipeline leak was an act of ‘sabotage’: Who might have done it, why, and what happens next?

Grid reporters answer five key questions about the pipeline attack.

Dave Levitan, Climate Reporter, Nikhil Kumar, Deputy Global Editor, and Joshua Keating, Global Security ReporterSeptember 29, 2022

grid.news

It’s a mystery worthy of a Cold War-era spy novel: A pair of critical natural gas supply lines linking Russia to Europe are hit by unexplained underwater explosions in the Baltic Sea. The culprit is unknown, as is the precise cause. There are accusations of sabotage and fears for the environment, as the ruptures send giant bubbles of methane to the surface of waters off the Danish and Swedish coasts. Theories abound about who might have done it and why, as do fears about what the explosions could mean for Europe and for Russia.

Except this isn’t fiction. Late on Monday, seismic stations in Sweden, Norway and Finland detected the detonations in the Baltic; it soon became clear that two pipelines that bring Russian natural gas supplies to Europe had been damaged. Known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the pipelines run from Russia to Germany. Although supplies via the former had been halted by Russia in August, and the latter wasn’t yet operational, both pipelines contained pressurized gas. Three different ruptures were found — two on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, one on Nord Stream 2.

An accident — a pipeline hit by a passing ship’s anchor, for example — has been ruled out, given the size of the leaks. “It is now the clear assessment by authorities that these are deliberate actions. It was not an accident,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told reporters in Copenhagen on Tuesday.

Her assessment was echoed by the European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, who, in a statement on behalf of the 27-country bloc, said that everything points to a “deliberate act.” “Any deliberate disruption of European energy infrastructure is utterly unacceptable and will be met with a robust and united response,” Borrell warned, as governments and energy companies across the continent stepped up security around critical infrastructure.

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The immediate impact on Europe’s energy calculus is limited — given that the Russian supply had already been shut off — but longer term, the damage could affect natural gas prices, feeding inflation and pressuring the continent, amid the ongoing war in Ukraine and an energy war with Russia.

Much remains unclear about the nature, cause and impact of the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Grid tackles some of the core questions here:

How much gas was in the pipelines?

Nord Stream 2 has not yet been put into operation; the German government had halted the project just two days before Russia invaded Ukraine. But the pipeline still contained a significant amount of natural gas — 177 million cubic meters, to be precise — which had been pumped through the pipeline in 2021 to bring it to the correct pressure for operations to begin. That’s a bit more than one day’s worth of the pipeline’s capacity, which totals 55 billion cubic meters per year.

Nord Stream 1 ceased operation earlier this year, but it also was filled with gas — possibly the same amount, though details have been hard to come by since the incident. A spokesperson for the company that owns the pipelines said there was a total of 300 million cubic meters of gas in the two-pipeline system when the ruptures occurred.

How dangerous is this for any vessels nearby?

The Danish and Swedish authorities have established a five-nautical mile exclusion zone around the affected areas, and as long as vessels in the area steer clear of that zone, this should not represent any danger. Were they to stray into the area, there is a chance they could lose buoyancy in the vicinity of the escaping gas, and there is also a possibility the plume could ignite, either below or above the water. There is some recent precedent for such a fire; last year in the Gulf of Mexico, a leaking gas pipeline sparked into flame and opened what some described as “the gates of hell.” Those gates were soon closed; authorities shut off valves in the pipeline, and firefighting boats on the surface helped extinguish the flames after five hours.

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How damaging is this environmentally?

While a sabotaged underwater pipeline may conjure images of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill or even the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, the situation with the Nord Stream pipelines is very different and less locally damaging. The pipelines contain natural gas rather than crude oil; the gas will rise quickly through the water column and escape into the atmosphere, as video and images of a frothing circle over the leak have demonstrated.

Still, leaking natural gas is not without impact. Most of the gas is composed of methane, a greenhouse gas that is far more powerful in terms of warming the planet than carbon dioxide. And 300 million cubic meters is not an insignificant amount — according to one estimate, the release of the Nord Stream gas would be equivalent to around 200,000 tons of methane. A representative of the satellite monitoring firm GHGSat, which tracks methane emissions, told Reuters the leak was progressing at around 500 metric tons every hour. It is possible that some of the methane would be transformed by microbes in the water into carbon dioxide, meaning the climate impact would be lower, but the water may be too shallow and the release too abrupt and fast for that to occur, experts have said.

Though there is still uncertainty over the exact amounts and whether there are other more localized ecological impacts, overall this would likely represent a relatively small portion of the globe’s annual methane missions — which run as high as 500 million tons each year.

How do you fix something like this?

Fixing underwater pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure can be extremely problematic. Exhibit A for this is the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, when the leaking well spawned numerous technical ideas for solutions, but eventually took months to actually cap the oil. Again, the Nord Stream pipelines are very different: They lie in much shallower water (around 80 to 110 meters, or around 260 to 360 feet, compared with almost a mile below the surface for Deepwater), and there is a finite amount of gas inside them rather than an effectively endless supply of oil shooting up from a well.

If the claims of sabotage and explosions are correct, there likely isn’t a quick fix for what might be significant holes in the pipelines. With the lines currently shut off and not receiving more gas, that would mean that simply letting all the gas leak out would be the likely end of the acute disaster; beyond that, the timeline for a fix is unclear. According to the Nord Stream company itself: “Currently, it is not possible to estimate a timeframe for restoring the gas transport infrastructure.”

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Who could be behind this?

Europe’s assessment that the damage to the pipelines was “deliberate” inevitably begs the question: Who did this?

This is perhaps the most difficult question to answer — the question with the spy-novel qualities. That doesn’t mean a lot of people are shying from giving their answers.

Given the Kremlin’s actions over the past year, many were quick to point the finger at Russia. Could this, many wondered, be a new chapter in the energy war that is already roiling the European continent? After shutting off gas supplies via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, was Russian President Vladimir Putin raising the stakes even higher by damaging both of these critical energy supply lines?

Several leaders went beyond wondering. A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that the blasts were nothing more than “a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards [the] EU.” Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the blast was “related to the next step of escalation of the situation in Ukraine.”

The Kremlin’s answer was an emphatic no. Putin’s chief spokesman Dmitry Peskov used a Wednesday conference call with reporters to hit back at the speculation, saying that suggestions that Russia was behind the underwater blasts was “predictable and also predictably stupid.” Peskov added that “this is a big problem for us … the entire system is ready to pump gas and the gas is very expensive. Now the gas is flying off into the air.”

The fallout, Peskov argued, didn’t just affect Europe — but also Russia, which relies on the pipelines to earn critical energy dollars. “Are we interested in that? No, we are not, we have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe,” Peskov said.

Indeed, as Richard Morningstar, former U.S. ambassador to the European Union and founding chairman of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, told Grid, “it is a strange situation.” For Russia, he explained, “it doesn’t make sense to damage the pipelines.”

But if not Russia, then who — and why?

There is no straightforward list of suspects. Some pointed fingers — with no evidence — at Western Europeans seeking to put the final nail in the coffin of any dependence on Russian energy. Others suggested that nonstate saboteurs might have been involved.

Russian state media, meanwhile, was predictably quick to pick up on a tweet by a former Polish foreign minster, Radek Sikorski, who tweeted a picture of the surface waters around the damaged pipelines with the caption: “Thank you, USA.” The suggestion: that the damage was done to inflict pain on Russia by cutting off a source of energy dollars for the country.

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For his part, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the leaks were “clearly in no one’s interest.”

Certainly it’s not in Western Europe’s interest. This was made clear by movements on the financial markets on Tuesday, as traders factored in the damage and its potential impact on future supplies. Already sky-high European gas prices rose by around 19 percent. From the point of view of the financial markets, the damage meant that investors were revising expectations of when supplies might resume via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. What had been a timeline based on the war now must factor in the questions of repair. As one Market analyst told the Financial Times: “The probability of Nord Stream 1 coming back before the end of the year has essentially dropped from 1 per cent to zero per cent.”

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

grid.news




21. Inside a liberated Ukrainian city, and how NATO tactics helped free it


"to free the oppressed" or "to help the oppressed free themselves."



Inside a liberated Ukrainian city, and how NATO tactics helped free it

militarytimes.com · by Caleb Larson · September 27, 2022

NEAR THE KUPIANSK FRONT — “Hi guys, nice to meet you,” our military escort shouted in lightly-accented American English. Barrel-chested and six feet tall, he shook our hands in a knuckle-crushing grip. “You can call me Chub,” he said with a broad smile.

Chub — a nom de guerre — was our guide through Kupiansk, a city contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces that lies directly on the front line and is less than 30 miles from the Ukraine-Russia border.

Bisected by the Oskil River and located in the Kharkiv Oblast region, Kupiansk is an important regional rail hub and one that ferried supplies to Russian forces in a broad swath of Northeast Ukraine during the region’s occupation.

Kupiansk lies near the zero line, a dimly defined and hotly contested zone along Ukraine’s expanding front. Although parts of eastern Kupiansk are contested, the city’s western side fell virtually without resistance.

We squeezed together into Chub’s battle-scarred Mitsubishi truck, a donation from Sweden. One window was missing, a section of plastic tarp duct taped over the opening, and the left side of the car riddled with jagged shrapnel holes from a nearby artillery strike. A puncture in the windshield — right in front of the driver’s seat — was patched with silicone.

The situation in Kupiansk is tense, and there is shelling virtually “every day,” Chub explained, adding that the town was within range of Russian artillery positions less than 10 kilometers from the river.

En route to Kupiansk, Chub told us his war stories. He fought the Russians during engagements at Bucha, Zaporizhia, and Lysychansk. He was among the first Ukrainian troops to liberate Balakliya, a hamlet occupied by the Russians during the early days of the war.

Chub’s M4A1 carbine, stamped “Columbia, S.C.” on the lower receiver, fit neatly on the dashboard against the windshield, a tangible sign of the immense military aid the United States has rushed to Ukraine.

Though some of the changes to the Ukrainian military — like Chub’s American-supplied M4 carbine — are easy to spot, significant structural changes are much more difficult to observe but have a greater effect on the battlefield than small arms used by individual soldiers.

Ukraine is moving away from the Soviet Union’s highly centralized and top-heavy command structure. It’s trying to empower noncommissioned officers to make decisions in battle — a concept the U.S. military calls “mission command.” The strategy ensures junior officers understand their commander’s intent but allows them considerable leeway in achieving their objective.

The strategy is bearing fruit.

Chub explained that before NATO established the training pipeline, officers would shout orders and cared more about rank than results. Now, though, “a young officer is usually a good officer.” There is a higher likelihood that Ukraine’s budding NATO-modeled officer corps have been trained “according to NATO standards” and are more likely to treat the soldiers under them with respect. They are also more effective on the battlefield.

Training aside, one of the most dramatic examples of how western weaponry has turned the tide of the war in Ukraine’s favor is evident in Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive in the south, around Kherson, and in the northeast, around Kharkiv.

The success of Ukraine’s push east hinged on mitigating Russia’s considerable advantage in artillery firepower. Rather than targeting individual artillery pieces, however, Ukraine leveraged American-supplied HIMARS rocket artillery systems and British-supplied M270s to target Russian ammunition dumps.

Daily shelling

Driving along with Chub, the mist and cloud cover thankfully provide some respite from the drones Russian spotters use to adjust artillery fire. But the rain also disguises the many potholes and crater’s actual depth, making for slow going on the road.

At the edge of Kupiansk, a Marshrutka taxibus stuffed to the ceiling with boxes is passing out humanitarian aid to residents. Here, Alexander, a 46-year-old local, explains what Kupiansk was like before liberation.


Kupiansk locals collect food aid at the edge of the town. (Caleb Larson)

“Life during occupation was like being part of a colony,” Alexander said. Though Russian forces passed out some humanitarian aid, Alexander and his wife preferred to rely on food they had at home, as well as their backyard garden, rather than take Russian handouts. Alexander explained that the Russians also provided fuel to Kupiansk residents in limited, rationed quantities.

Despite the daily shelling, Alexander is happy Ukrainian forces liberated Kupiansk — “our entire street was happy!” But he acknowledges that some in Kupiansk had few qualms about receiving Russian aid or working with Russian forces.

After Ukrainian forces retook the city’s administrative buildings, they found a list of approximately 175 people in the Kupiansk Oblast region who accepted Russian passports. However, the list is incomplete, and the SBU — Ukraine’s military intelligence service — screens residents in newly liberated areas to weed out Russian collaborators and sympathizers.

Due to Kupiansk’s strategic significance and the rapidity with which Russian forces captured the city, Kupiansk escaped much of the wanton destruction Russia inflicted on other cities. Now, soldiers and residents are forced to take cover in basements, hiding from incessant Russian bombardment.

The city has no power or gas and only intermittent cell phone coverage. The few people in Kupiansk — those too infirm or stubborn to leave — subsist on humanitarian aid delivered by volunteers and cooked over open fires.

Shamil, a 25-year-old Ukrainian soldier, explained the current military situation from a basement bunker command post, but asked to hide his face to protect his identity. A native of Lutsk, in western Ukraine, Shamil’s parents are from Dagestan, a republic of Russia that borders Georgia, Azerbaijan, and the Black Sea.

He is not worried about Russia’s recent mobilization order. “More Russians will come,” he shrugged apathetically. “More will die.” But Russian mobilization puts him in a moral quandary.

He has friends and family in Dagestan. “It’s possible” they could be caught in Russia’s conscription net and sent to fight in Ukraine. However, the Russian region has become a hotbed of anti-war protest in recent days, prompted both by mobilization and the disproportionately high number of Russian casualties from Dagestan.

Shamil’s friends and family “aren’t zombies. They don’t support Russia’s war,” he emphasized with his hands. “First, I am Ukrainian,” and if they were to fight in Ukraine, “I would see an enemy,” Shamil said, “but I don’t know.”

Basement prison

Shelling follows a somewhat predictable pattern in Kupiansk: mornings are more active, the lunch hour generally quieter. Kupiansk’s residents take advantage of lulls in the shelling to get humanitarian aid, cook, or move about the small city.

One of Kupiansk’s main plazas sits next to the Oskil River and offers a view of the contested east bank. Minutes after arrival, the staccato of strafing machine gun fire could be dimly heard through the drizzle on the east side of the river.

Signs of the Russian occupation are visible throughout the city. A large propaganda poster still hangs on an administrative building near the plaza. “We are with Russia, one people,” it reads, a Russian flag emblazoned across the center.


Russian propaganda near the city center. (Caleb Larson)

Mere minutes after arriving at the plaza, the audible shriek of incoming artillery shells marks the end of the Russians’ lunch break and a good time to leave.

Russian occupation forces used the Kupiansk police station, a multi-story building with a below-ground basement prison, as a holding center for hundreds of locals. Alexander, an 18-year-old with a boyish face and the beginnings of a mustache, detailed his detention.

The Russians nabbed him off the street, ostensibly for breaking curfew while on his way home, and stuffed him in a prison cell built for three. There were already about 20 others inside the cell.

At night, Alexander slept on the floor under a bunk. During the day, he and other prisoners worked around the police station, filling sandbags and cleaning up after the Russian police officers. The prisoners also swept Kupiansk’s streets and cleaned up garbage.


Alexander shows the cell where the Russians imprisoned him for five weeks. (Caleb Larson)

While in detention, he was subjected to electric shocks and beaten. “Nobody said anything about when we would be freed,” Alexander explained. Only when Ukrainian forces approached the city did the Russians release the prisoners.

Despite the station’s thick concrete walls, the impact of nearby artillery reverberated through the basement, drowning out Alexander’s voice and cutting our conversation short.

Outside Kupyansk, Russian forces repurposed a sand quarry as an ammunition dump. Several stories below the ground surface and surrounded by heaped waste rock and soil, the area seemed a logical place for hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition.


A view into a sand quarry ammunition depot hit by a HIMARS strike. (Caleb Larson)

Volodymyr, a 58-year-old retiree who volunteered for the army after Russia’s invasion on February 24th, explained that the quarry offered little protection from a recent HIMARS strike.

The approach to the quarry was littered with mangled bits of shrapnel, increasing in size with our proximity to the dump. Dented and unserviceable 152mm and 122mm artillery shells cluttered the steps into the quarry, some with their detonators still fixed in place.


A destroyed building inside the ammunition depot. (Caleb Larson)

Although most of the unexploded ordnance was too damaged to be useful, Volodymyr said that some had somehow escaped destruction and were examined for serviceability in Ukrainian weapons.


Potentially unscathed Russian ammunition inside the ammunition depot. (Caleb Larson)

Outside the charred dump, Volodymyr scratched his chin and motioned with his rifle butt at the cardboard Russian ration boxes, empty tins of canned beef, and other refuse scattered haphazardly on the ground. “This is Russian culture,” he said sardonically before wandering back to his guard post, rifle slung smartly over his shoulder.

The latest reports from the Kupiansk front indicate Ukrainian forces have expanded the initial toehold they carved on the eastern bank of the river, and the counteroffensive appears to be rolling forward toward Lyman, another significant railway hub in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Capturing the city, occupied since late May, would consolidate Ukrainian gains and serve as a springboard for retaking surrounding parts of the region.

About Caleb Larson

Caleb Larson is a multimedia journalist based in Berlin. He covers the intersection of conflict, politics, and technology, focusing on U.S. foreign policy and European security. In addition to time spent reporting from Russia, Germany, and the U.S., he also covers the war in Ukraine, reporting from multiple front-line areas throughout the country.


21. The Air Force has finally rescued a stranded Osprey aircraft from a remote Norwegian island


The Air Force has finally rescued a stranded Osprey aircraft from a remote Norwegian island

Bad weather and a delicate terrain presented a series of challenges in recovering the downed tiltrotor craft.

BY NICHOLAS SLAYTON | PUBLISHED SEP 27, 2022 6:47 PM

taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · September 27, 2022

For more than a month, U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command and the Norwegian military have been tackling an unusual and challenging operation: getting a stranded V-22 Osprey out of a nature reserve on the remote island in Norway where it made an emergency landing.

Now, forty-six days since it first arrived on the Stongodden nature reserve, crews have finally managed to remove the Osprey from the island and are moving it back to safe harbor.

The Norwegian Armed Forces announced late Tuesday that the Osprey had been successfully hoisted via crane off of Stongodden and onto a ship heading for port. On the American side, AFSOC confirmed the recovery and praised the Norwegian effort.

“We’re grateful for the partnership with our Norwegian partners as we’ve worked to recover the V-22 over the past 6 weeks,” Lt. Col Rebecca L. Heyse, director of public affairs for AFSOC, said in a statement to Task & Purpose.

“The successful recovery is a great example of the strength of the partnerships in the European theater that allow us to face whatever challenges come our way.”

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The Osprey made an emergency landing on the northern Norwegian island of Senja on Aug. 12. The cause was a hard clutch engagement, where a sudden shift in power could throw the entire aircraft into a lurch.

The U.S. Air Force V-22 Osprey being moved by crane. (Photo by Trygve Hongset / Norwegian Armed Forces)

Due to multiple incidents like this, AFSOC grounded its entire fleet in August to address the issue — and although it hasn’t been fully fixed, Ospreys were cleared for flights in early September after crews found a workaround as a stopgap.

Despite this, one Osprey remained stuck on the tip of Senja, an island in Troms and Finnmark, the northernmost county in Norway.

First, the Norwegian military and environmental officials had to come up with a plan to remove the Osprey, then get U.S. Air Force approval for it.

Due to the delicate nature of the Stongodden nature reserve, the operation required careful, cautious steps to remove the invasive species of aircraft from the island. Airlifting it out was ruled out, and the weight and size of the Osprey meant it couldn’t be disassembled.

Instead, the solution required a simple idea with a complicated execution: slide it to the sea to get it on a boat.

(Photo by Tiril Haslestad/Norwegian Armed Forces)

According to reports from the Norwegian Armed Forces , crews set up a small camp on the coast of Senja and started building a wooden ramp. The tiltroter craft was drained of its fuel, then put on the ramp. Crews then slowly moved it down the path to the sea.

The successful effort on Tuesday was “both exciting and challenging” according to Norweigian Senior Master Sergeant Odd Helge Wang, who led the work on the ground.

The biggest challenge to the operation wasn’t the physics of it, but inclement weather. Not just on Senja itself — which is in a storm-prone part of northern Norway — but also along the path the barge bearing construction supplies took, so far that efforts to remove the Osprey via a crane ship were delayed multiple times over the last two weeks.

Right now, the recovered aircraft is on its way to the nearest NATO port. It’s unclear what AFSOC intends to do with the Osprey after that.

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taskandpurpose.com · by Nicholas Slayton · September 27, 2022



22. A Different Kind of Russian Threat – Seeking to Install Its Candidate Atop Telecommunications Standards Body





A Different Kind of Russian Threat – Seeking to Install Its Candidate Atop Telecommunications Standards Body

by Mark Montgomery and Ivana Stradner


September 28, 2022

justsecurity.org · by Mark Montgomery · September 28, 2022

September 28, 2022

For the billions of digital devices that people the world over use each day, technical standards provide rules that ensure a device produced in one country can run software developed in a second country, on networks located in a third country. These rules are established in international standards organizations (ISOs), and the leadership of these organizations is critical to ensuring that a transparent, values-based set of principles is in effect, and that a level playing field exists for all companies to participate. Authoritarian states, like China and Russia, have worked to take control of such organizations over the past two decades. To wit, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is holding leadership elections this week at its Plenipotentiary Conference in Budapest, and as Russia floats a candidate to take over the top position from a Chinese official, the United States and its allies need to ensure that the candidate who is more likely to enforce the right principles wins.

The ITU was established more than 150 years ago after the invention of the telegraph to facilitate communications between disparate national communication systems. It quickly grew to encompass broader radio and telephone network issues, and eventually all forms of telecommunications. Ensuring independent control of the ITU is critical for two reasons.

First, consistent international standards help to facilitate international trade and contribute to economic growth. Industrialized and “informationalized” countries like the United States have historically been leaders in standards setting to ensure a free and competitive environment for the development and sale of products. This effort significantly impacts national security — the United States’ ability to pursue strategic objectives is inextricably linked to its economic competitiveness, and to the extent that standards participation benefits U.S. economic power, it benefits U.S. national security interests.

Second, standards participation provides a venue for countries to promote or discourage certain values. Though scientific in nature, standards significantly affect the values that are protected in technical designs. China’s growing influence in standards bodies, for instance, threatens human rights and privacy in the information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem, as can be seen in efforts by Chinese technology firms to shape technical standards related to facial recognition and surveillance. These surveillance technologies have been fundamental to China’s repression of ethnic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang region, and China looks to export these technologies to other authoritarian states. While countries could import Chinese technology regardless of the ITU’s adoption of any specific standard, the inclusion of repressive technologies in internationally adopted standards would certainly help these technologies become the norm.

The ITU was initially a boring place, doing boring (but important) work. Over the past two decades however, China has worked to gain control of the ITU, and other ISOs, in order to promote Chinese companies and interests. Lately, China has also tried to expand the ITUs remit to include internet standards, as these are currently controlled by a non-governmental body that China has struggled to manipulate.

From Chinese Secretary-General to Russian?

The current leader of the ITU is a Chinese official named Houlin Zhao, who has used his role to promote Chinese companies and policies. His actions are so brazen that analysts wrote even two years ago that “[i]t is extraordinary for an international civil servant to shill blatantly for a company from his home country the way Zhao is doing for Huawei, or to so boldly endorse initiatives of his home country the way Zhao has championed China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It is even rarer when those statements involve official responsibilities.”

As Zhao’s term comes to an end, it would be unusual for another Chinese leader to gain support, as the organization generally seeks to vary the representation in its leadership among the membership. But a similarly authoritarian regime, Russia, is looking to take the secretary-general post with its nominee, Rashid Ismailov. He has worked in both the Russian government and in Russian and international telecommunications companies. Running against him is Doreen Bogdan-Martin, an American who is a career ITU official.

While Ismailov has worked with Russian companies and international companies like Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei, it is his work for the Russian government that should prompt questions about his commitment to international principles like transparency and rules-based systems. In 2014, Ismailov was appointed as vice-minister of telecom and mass communications of the Russian Federation. Ismailov has said he intends to lead the ITU in creating initiatives to prioritize individuals’ well-being, but that would run counter to both apparent Russian policy and his own record. The Russian government, to say the least, has a spotty record in terms of how it treats information and personal privacy, and Ismailov’s own experience includes serving as CEO of a company that installed devices that ensured all Russian internet traffic was filtered through sovereign internet infrastructure.

In fact, Russia is notorious for its opposition to free speech and for regulations that violate privacy and tighten control over online content. In 2019, Putin signed the “sovereign internet law” allowing Russia to restrict social media platforms to protect Russia’s “digital sovereignty.” This legislation allows the Kremlin to further restrict social media platforms and the influence of American social media specifically. The new laws theoretically allow Russia to impose fines on platforms that do not block forbidden content such as calls for suicide, child pornography, or information on drug use, but in reality, these laws allow Putin to remove content that contradicts Russian interests or fails to parrot the Kremlin’s talking points.

Moscow also banned virtual private networks, which serve to protect the privacy of customers. The Russian government plans to cut Russia off from the global internet and use the homegrown “Ru-Net” instead, following the China model. The Russians have previously made it clear they would like to use the ITU to establish favorable controls over the internet, There is not a long history of Russian officials serving in international organizations and working at cross purposes with Putin’s principles, so it is hard to imagine Ismailov having the inclination, or opportunity, to push for transparency and rules-based systems that prioritize personal rights. Any Russian’s candidacy must be seen as a package deal with Vladimir Putin.

Alternate Candidate

On the other hand, the alternate candidate, Bogdan-Martin, is a career international official and has been serving as the director or member of the ITU’s Development Bureau since the early 2000s and her work has focused on global equity initiatives. She has spearheaded both the ITU’s donations to the EQUALS Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age and the ITU’s partnership with UNICEF on its Giga project on connecting schools internationally. The United States has come out strong in support of her candidacy

Given the criticality of the ITU to national security and U.S. values of transparency and freedom, and the stark choice in candidates, the U.S. needs take action to ensure the election of Bogdan-Martin, not because she is an American, but because her campaign for election is based on exactly the necessary principles of transparency and fact-based leadership.

When confronted with a similarly stark choice in 2020, the Trump administration corralled U.S. allies and partners to ensure the pro-transparency candidate was elected. In that case, it was a vote for the directorship of the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the United States was able to ensure that Daren Kang of Singapore defeated Wang Binying of China. The United States did a superb job of working overseas capitals and successfully wrangled votes thanks to ambassadors and cabinet members gathering a coalition of allies and partners to support the candidate most committed to transparency and a rules-based system.

As the United States and its like-minded allies look at this impending ITU election, a similarly aggressive effort is needed, and this should be the number one priority this week for every U.S. overseas mission. At the same time, the Biden administration should continue to insist on similar efforts from allies.

While ITU elections rarely make international headlines, the power wielded by whomever is elected this week will have global impact. If the United States and its allies do not stand by principles of transparency now, defending them later will only prove more difficult. As technology continues to advance, it has never been more important to preserve a digital space that is beneficial for all.

IMAGEs: (Left image) Russian nominee Rashid Ismailov (right) shaking hands with current ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, and American alternative candidate Doreen Bogdan-Martin (right) with Houlin. (Courtesy ITU Pictures via Flickr)

justsecurity.org · by Mark Montgomery · September 28, 2022


23. American semiconductor leadership suffers from bad defense, no offense




American semiconductor leadership suffers from bad defense, no offense | Opinion

NATHAN PICARSIC AND EMILY DE LA BRUYÈRE , SENIOR FELLOWS, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES

ON 9/28/22 AT 6:00 AM EDT

Newsweek · by Mark Davis · September 28, 2022

"America invented the semiconductor," declared President Joe Biden upon signing the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, a $280 billion bill intended to strengthen the U.S. semiconductor industry, and with it American competitiveness. "And this law brings it back home," the president continued. "It's no wonder the Chinese Communist Party actively lobbied U.S. business against this bill."

That rhetoric sounds great. Unfortunately, it is just rhetoric. The reality is that without appropriate protection of technological advance, these investments risk ceding competitiveness to Beijing. The U.S. foreign investment review process—overseen by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)—is allowing Beijing-linked entities access to potentially game-changing semiconductor innovation.

The latest example: at the end of August, just two weeks after the CHIPS Act became law, Chinese-funded AlphaWave IP Group announced that its planned acquisition of California-based OpenFive had been approved by all regulators, including CFIUS.

Alphawave is a semiconductor IP company founded in Canada and headquartered in the U.K. It has had extensive exposure to China and Chinese government influence: the company's fifth-largest shareholder, with a more than 6 percent stake, is Wise Road Capital—with which AlphaWave also partners on a China-based joint venture.

What is Wise Road? A government-backed, -guided, and -partnered Chinese investment vehicle charged with the internationalization element of Beijing's semiconductor strategy. Run by Li Bin—a shadowy figure with close Chinese government ties—Wise Road takes advantage of its opaque nature and private-entity facade to buy up cutting-edge technology all across the global semiconductor supply chain.

OpenFive is a perfect target for Wise Road. It provides advanced system-on-chip designs for artificial intelligence, edge computing, and networking solutions. It sits at precisely the advanced point in the semiconductor value chain where the U.S. leads, and where Beijing is working to catch up. AlphaWave's acquisition, therefore, constitutes precisely the sort of threat that U.S. investment review is supposed to defend against.

Neither Wise Road nor its attendant risk factors are news to the U.S. government. In 2021, Wise Road announced it would acquire South Korea's MagnaChip, a designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor platform solutions. CFIUS blocked that $1.4 billion deal, with the U.S. Treasury Department ruling that it posed "risks to national security."


HSINCHU, TAIWAN - SEPTEMBER 16: A closeup of a silicon wafer on display at Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institution on September 16, 2022 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities are crucial to global supply chains, with megacap companies like Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm heavily dependent on the island's exports. Taiwan accounts for some 60 percent of global semiconductor foundry revenue, according to media reports. Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

Wise Road appears to have learned from that failure. This time it took an indirect route, using a third party to relaunch its global Go Out efforts. This is a canny mechanism for evading U.S. defenses. Washington, CFIUS, and other regulatory tools are failing to keep up.

In part, the failure is a tactical one, a refusal effectively to leverage defensive tools meant to protect advanced technologies. Earlier this month the Biden administration issued an executive order to sharpen foreign investment screening by CFIUS; those measures do not address China's indirect route.

The failure is also a strategic one. The U.S. is proving unable to shore up an industrial system that Beijing has co-opted, instead pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into a semiconductor ecosystem built on, dependent on, and penetrated by Beijing.

Washington's failure, in the AlphaWave case and more broadly, signals to China that the U.S. is not serious about competing—CHIPS Act or not. It signals the same to U.S. allies and partners, setting a terrible example for an international ecosystem that the U.S. desperately needs in an industrial competition with China. Wise Road also recently acquired U.K. chip maker Newport Wafer Fab, despite concerns raised by members of Congress and others. Why would London get serious about screening such investments if Washington isn't doing the same?

Moreover, the Wise Road-AlphaWave case is just the tip of the iceberg. Beijing has spent decades integrating itself into the global semiconductor ecosystem—as well as other strategic industries and technologies—so that it can weaponize that integration. It has secured international dependence on Chinese industry for upstream inputs, production, and markets. In the process, it has locked in technological access and influence. The result: systematic co-option. The global semiconductor industry rests on a Chinese foundation. And right now, the U.S. is funneling tens of billions of dollars into that co-opted system without addressing its vulnerabilities.

Washington boasts an impressive arsenal of defensive tools. It should start using them. One way it can do so is by activating investment review to protect against not just direct adversarial efforts to acquire strategic and sensitive technology, but also indirect ones. The same should be done with a revamp of technology export restriction processes managed by the Commerce Department.

But Washington also needs to develop new tools, models, and frameworks to address the strategic, systemic problem. The U.S. needs to invest in the upstream sources of the semiconductor supply chain—such as gallium and electronic-grade silicon—to lessen dependence on China. It needs to impose real guardrails on U.S. investments in cutting-edge technology, to the point of barring any company receiving CHIPS Act subsidies or other incentives from manufacturing chips, operating subsidiaries or joint ventures, or engaging in research partnerships in China. And the U.S. needs to do all of this in conjunction with allies and partners, establishing itself as the leader of a new industrial model—not a lone, half-hearted objector to China's.

That is what global technology leadership in this century would look like. The alternative, of course, is authoritarians cheering an American demise fueled by American technology and American cash.

Nathan Picarsic and Emily de La Bruyère are Senior Fellows at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and co-founders of the supply chain and geopolitical risk startup Horizon Advisory.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

Newsweek · by Mark Davis · September 28, 2022






De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com


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

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

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


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