Quotes of the Day:
“All history proves that there is no cheap and easy way to defeat guerrilla movements”
- Henry Kissinger, 1962
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
- Albert Einstein
"It’s limited war for Americans, and total war for those fighting Americans. The United States has more power; its foes have more willpower."
- Dominic Tierney
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 22 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. Russia created a global food crisis by invading Ukraine. Here’s what can be done to stop millions from starving
3. Gallagher Opening Statement at FY23 NDAA Markup
4. Ukraine Disinformation Fight Sounds Warning Bells for Taiwan
5. ‘Kamikaze’ Drones Strike Russian Oil Refinery, Looks Like Model Sold On Alibaba
6. Former Defense secretary says China ‘could bring Taiwan to its knees’ without invading
7. A More United, Better-Armed Opposition Can Bring Democracy to Myanmar
8. What’s Wrong with Wanting a “Human in the Loop”?
9. New legislation aims to give drone crews tax-free combat pay
10. As China shuts out the world, internet access from abroad gets harder too
11. Nepal Backs Away From US State Partnership Program
12. Congress Should Help End UN’s Latest Anti-Israel Waste of Funds
13. The AP Interview: Estonian PM says don't play down Russia
14. The arrival of Western weapons begins to reshape the battle off Ukraine’s coast.
15. Many Russian Cyberattacks Failed in First Months of Ukraine War, Study Says
16. Pentagon Pressed to Review How It Judges an Ally’s Will to Fight
17. Heavily-armed Finland fires warning to Vladimir Putin as nation vows to FIGHT if attacked
18. Goat Injures Scores Of Russian Soldiers After Triggering Tripwire Connected To Ring Of Grenades
19. Poland Has Had It With Russia
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 22 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 22
Karolina Hird, Mason Clark, George Barros, and Grace Mappes
June 22, 5:45 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Reinforced Russian air-defense systems in eastern Ukraine are increasingly limiting the effectiveness of Ukrainian drones, undermining a key Ukrainian capability in the war. Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch quoted several anonymous Ukrainian officials and military personnel that Ukrainian forces have largely halted the use of Turkish Bayraktar drones, which were used to great effect earlier in the war, due to improvements in Russian air-defense capabilities.[1] Ukrainian officials are reportedly increasingly concerned that US-provided Gray Eagle strike drones will also be shot down by reinforced Russian air defense over the Donbas.[2] Ukrainian forces have reportedly scaled back air operations to 20 to 30 sorties per day and are facing a deficit of available aircraft for active pilots. Russian forces are likely prioritizing deploying air defenses to eastern Ukraine to nullify Ukrainian operations and to protect the artillery systems Russian forces are reliant on to make advances. However, the Ukrainian air force and armed drones remain active elsewhere, inflicting several successful strikes on targets in Kherson Oblast in the last week.
Members of the Russian military community continue to comment on the shortcomings of Russian force generation capabilities, which are having tangible impacts on the morale and discipline of Russians fighting in Ukraine. Russian milblogger Yuri Kotyenok claimed that Russian troops lack the numbers and strength for success in combat in Ukraine.[3] Kotyenok accused Russian leadership of deploying new and under-trained recruits and called for replenishment of forces with well-trained recruits with ground infantry experience—though the Russian military is unlikely to be able to quickly generate such a force, as ISW has previously assessed. Despite growing calls for increased recruitment from nationalist figures, Russian leadership continues to carry out coercive partial mobilization efforts that are only producing limited numbers of replacements while negatively impacting the morale and discipline of forcibly mobilized personnel. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) claimed that Russian authorities in Luhansk are arranging gas leaks in apartment buildings to force men who are hiding from mobilization into the streets.[4] The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) additionally reported that Russian soldiers in occupied Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast, are appealing to local Ukrainian doctors to issue them certificates alleging medical inability to continue military service.[5]
Ukrainian forces conducted a drone strike (likely with a loitering munition, though this cannot be confirmed) on a Russian oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, Rostov Oblast, on June 22.[6] Russian Telegram channel Voenyi Osvedomitel claimed that the strike, which targeted Russian infrastructure within 15 km of the Ukrainian border, originated from Donetsk Oblast.[7] Ukrainian forces have not targeted Russian infrastructure for several weeks, and this strike is likely an attempt to disrupt Russian logistics and fuel supply to Russian operations in eastern Ukraine.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to make gains to the south of Lysychansk and will likely reach the city in the coming days, although they are unlikely to quickly capture the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations towards Slovyansk and made minor advances.
- Russian forces intensified efforts to interdict Ukrainian lines of communication along the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway in order to support Russian operations towards Lysychansk.
- Russian forces focused on defensive operations along the Southern Axis and may have made marginal gains within Mykolaiv Oblast.
- Russian authorities are continuing measures to facilitate the economic integration of occupied areas.
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.
- Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
- Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts
- Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis;
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued efforts to push north toward Lysychansk along the west bank of the Siverskyi Donets River and made measured gains south of Lysychansk on June 22. Head of Luhansk Oblast Administration Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian troops are consolidating their positions in Toshkivka, Ustynivka, Pidlisne, and Myrna Dolyna, and are attacking Bila Hora, directly on the southeastern outskirts of Lysychansk.[8] Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Russian forces took control of Rai-Oleksandrivka and Loskutivka, both 10 km south of Lysychansk.[9] Haidai additionally stated that Russian forces are trying to fix in place Ukrainian units in Borivske and Voronove (both within 5 km southeast of Severodonetsk) and are firing on Ukrainian positions in Synetskyi and Pavlohrad (western suburbs of Severodonetsk along the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River).[10] Haidiai’s claim suggests that Ukrainian forces still control the area to the southwest of Severodonetsk along the eastern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River and are therefore not entirely encircled in the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area. Russian forces continued street fights within Severodonetsk, presumably for control of the industrial zone.[11] Russian forces are moving to complete the encirclement of Ukrainian positions in Zolote and Hirske but likely have not captured these settlements as of June 22.[12]
Russian forces continued offensive operations towards Slovyansk from the southeast of Izyum and west of Lyman on June 22.[13] Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Oleksandr Motuzyanyk stated that unspecified elements of the Russian 1st Guards Tank Army, the 20th, 29th, and 35th Combined Arms Armies, 68th Army Corps, and unspecified Airborne Forces (VDV) are operating in the direction of Slovyansk.[14] Russian forces are reportedly fighting in the forests around Krasnopillya, about 20 km northwest of Slovyansk.[15] Mayor of Slovyansk Vadym Lyakh stated that Russian forces directly shelled a micro-district of Slovyansk, which is the first attack directly on Slovyansk since early June.[16] Russian forces additionally shelled Ukrainian positions west of Lyman around Pryshyb, Sydorove, and Majaky.[17]
Russian forces continued efforts to interdict Ukrainian lines of communication east of Bakhmut along the T1302 Bakhmut-Lysychansk highway but did not make any confirmed advances on June 22.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are re-grouping around Bakhmut to strengthen their offensive capabilities in the area.[19] Russian forces reportedly conducted an unsuccessful assault near the Vuhledar Power Plant in Svitlodarsk, which suggests that Russian forces may drive up the E40 highway to the northwest in order to gain access to the T3102 and support operations against the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk highway.[20] Russian forces additionally conducted an airstrike on Verkhnyokamyanka (see image in-line with text below), a settlement directly on the T1302 within 10 kilometers southwest of Lysychansk, in a likely effort to interdict Ukrainian movements towards Lysychansk.[21] Russian forces will likely continue to regroup and intensify operations in the area between Bakhmut and Lysychansk to advance toward Lysychansk from an additional axis, sever Ukrainian supply lines, and attempt to consolidate control of the entire Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area in the coming days.
[Source: NASA FIRMS Data from June 22 of fire activity in the Lysychansk area]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
There were no significant changes in northern Kharkiv Oblast on June 22. Russian forces continued to focus on preventing Ukrainian advances toward the international border and shelled Kharkiv City and surrounding settlements.[22]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces continued to focus on defensive operations along the Southern Axis and may have secured marginal gains in Mykolaiv Oblast, north of Kherson City, on June 22.[23] Russian Telegram channel Rybar claimed that Russian forces took control of Novopetrivka, Burkhanivka, and Kalynivka, three settlements within 25 km of the Kherson-Mykolaiv Oblast border.[24] Spokesperson for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense Oleksandr Motuzyanyk stated that unspecified elements of the Russian 8th and 49th Combined Arms Armies, 22nd Army Corps, and unspecified Airborne Forces (VDV) are operating between Mykolaiv and Kherson Oblasts to prevent further Ukrainian counterattacks toward Kherson City.[25] Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko stated that Ukrainian forces have recaptured Kiselivka and are now within 15 km of Kherson City, indicating that Russian forces are facing substantial pressure to defend their occupied frontiers against Ukrainian counterattacks.[26]
Ukrainian partisan activity continues to complicate Russian occupation efforts along the Southern Axis. Both the Ukrainian Resistance Center and Kremlin-run RIA Novosti reported that unidentified Ukrainian individuals, likely partisans, conducted an IED attack that injured the Russian-appointed head of Chornobaivka.[27]
Russian forces conducted missile and artillery strikes against various areas in Kherson, Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia Oblasts on June 22.[28] Motuzyanyk stated that Russian forces are conducting missile strikes on Odesa with Kh-35 Bal and K-300P Bastion-P anti-ship missiles, indicating Russian forces have likely exhausted their supply of appropriate missile systems and are resorting to firing on land targets with anti-ship missiles (which can still be effective but are less accurate than purpose-built land-attack systems).[29]
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)
Russian occupation authorities continued economic integration efforts in occupied areas on June 22. Ukraine’s Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration stated that Russian forces are preparing the Berdyansk Commerical Port for grain exports and are using trains to move grain from Melitopol to Russia.[30] Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Vitaly Khotsenko additionally met with Governor of Russia’s Amur Oblast Vasily Orlov to secure patronage for infrastructure and agricultural development of the settlement of Amvrosiivka.[31]
[5] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/okupanty-prymushuiut-ukrainskykh-likariv-vypysuvaty-fiktyvni-dovidky-i-spaliuiut-tila-svoikh-vbytykh.html
2. Russia created a global food crisis by invading Ukraine. Here’s what can be done to stop millions from starving
The potential for instability in the Global South and in underdeveloped areas is surely rising.
Excerpts:
EC: What is important to note for your audience is that 50 percent of the wheat commodities that the WFP purchases for distribution to the most vulnerable were derived from Ukraine. So now they’re forced to go into the global market to purchase similar commodities at a much higher price. And what they are finding is the cost is 50 to 75 percent more than what they paid this time last year. That increases the cost of each operation and reduces the number of people they are able to feed. This means they require an increase in their budget.
...
Even worse, when the numbers don’t match the need, it means you feed the most vulnerable. You feed those on the verge of starvation, you feed those who otherwise have no other access to food, and many of those people are in conflict situations. There’s a line that David uses that I embrace — that it forces you to take the food from the hungry to feed the starving in order to keep people from dying.
Russia created a global food crisis by invading Ukraine. Here’s what can be done to stop millions from starving.
Some of the worst fears about the global food supply chain are coming true.
Deputy Global Editor
June 23, 2022
The situation worsens with each passing day: As the war in Ukraine persists, tens of millions of people living thousands of miles away are facing the prospect of crushing hunger — a calamity with direct links to the war. The latest blow came this week, when Russia destroyed a food warehouse at a key port along Ukraine’s southeastern coast.
As Grid has reported, Russia and Ukraine are critical to the world’s food supply, and conflict between these two producers of basic staples has knock-on effects well beyond the front lines. Ukraine is a major exporter of wheat, corn, barley and cooking oil; in the three decades since the Cold War ended, Ukraine has gone from “bread basket” for the Soviet Union to a central source of sustenance for many other parts of the world.
The war has cut deeply into both Ukraine’s production and its ability to export; Ukrainian grain exports were down by roughly 40 percent in the first half of this month compared with last year, and Russia is currently blocking some 25 million tons of grain earmarked for shipment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned that the figure could triple by the fall. The Russians have also been accused of stealing farm machinery, pilfering grain warehouses and shipping Ukrainian produce out of the country; recent satellite imagery shows Russian-flagged ships carrying Ukrainian grain to Syria.
Supplies to the world from Russia, meanwhile, are being affected by both the international sanctions imposed on Moscow as well as by the war’s disruption of shipping routes.
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It’s already a crisis for countries that depend heavily on Russian and Ukrainian staples. Egypt and Lebanon rely on Ukraine and Russia for more than two-thirds of their wheat imports; in Thailand, close to a third of wheat imports come from Ukraine and Russia; and in Malaysia, more than 65 percent of sunflower oil imports can be traced to the two countries.
Prices are also rising, and fast. A World Bank index that tracks the cost of a basket of staples was up 15 percent in the March to April period — and more than 80 percent higher than two years ago. All told, economists at the bank reckon that food prices will rise 20 percent this year.
David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), has been sounding the alarm. Earlier this month, he told the Guardian that “we are facing hell on earth if we do not respond immediately” to the food crisis being fanned by the Ukraine War. Already, Beasley said, the agency has been forced to cut what it distributes to several countries. “It is a very, very frightening time,” he said. “The best thing we can do right now is end that damn war in Russia and Ukraine.”
Grid spoke to Beasley’s predecessor, Ertharin Cousin, who ran the WFP from 2012 to 2017, about the crisis, the parts of the world at greatest risk and the actions the world can take to avoid the worst-case scenarios. Failure to do so, she said, could mean “as many as 100 to 150 million more people going acutely hungry by the end of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023 if we fail to address these issues with the level of urgency, and the scale, that is necessary,”
Cousin is now a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the founder of Food Systems for the Future, an impact investment fund focused on the food and agriculture sector.
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Grid: The conflict in Ukraine has led to a lot of discussion and a lot of reporting, including by us here at Grid, about global food security. We’ve seen a drastic drop in shipments of food from Ukraine, and we’ve seen rising food prices around the world. As we near the four-month anniversary of the war, what, at this moment, are your chief concerns when it comes to the fallout in this area from the conflict?
Ertharin Cousin: So first let’s take a step back, because the reality is that the food crisis did not begin with Ukraine. Covid, increased fuel prices, as well as climate change had already begun to affect the supply and availability of food around the world. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the inability because of that to move food out of the Black Sea — what that did was exacerbate and create what many of us have called the perfect storm of a food crisis that had already begun but has now become a potential hunger fiasco across many places around the globe.
What concerns me most is that in many countries that are most directly affected, governments lack the financial resources to, for example, support smallholder farmers that would allow them — the farmers — to plant crops, which in turn could fill the gaps in the global system. And they lack the financial resources to support the social safety nets that are necessary to ensure that, as prices increase, the most vulnerable continue to maintain access to food. This is when hunger turns to starvation, when governments lack the capacity to provide assistance to their most vulnerable citizens during times of food shortages and high food prices.
G: So who, in your assessment, is most at risk right now, as the conflict drags on?
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EC: I’m particularly concerned about the net importing countries that have the most challenging fiscal positions, and those are in the Horn of Africa. In Somalia, 100 percent of their grains are derived from Ukraine. You of course also have Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq — a significant portion of their commodities come from Ukraine as well. Other countries in the Horn of Africa have follow-on impacts, because not only do they have this gap from the missing grain from Ukraine, but they’re also experiencing yet another season of drought. And that’s affecting countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But the challenge is not limited to those countries. We are seeing follow-on effects in Central America and South America. Why? Because if 30 percent of global grain exports derive from Russia and Ukraine, and you take that out of the system, basic economics tells you that everything else in the system increases in price. As a result, any country that is a net importing country of grain is in a position where they will experience higher food prices.
The additional effect that we have not talked about is the high price of and availability of fertilizer, because much of the fertilizer in the world also comes from that region. And as a result, what we are seeing is smallholder farmers across the globe — in places as far away as Asia — growing concerned about access to enough fertilizer for the upcoming fall planting season. All these effects, the longer this crisis in Ukraine goes on, continue to mount and increase, and affect ever more countries, ever more people.
G: Who can fill these gaps? Are there countries that could step up? We’ve seen discussion about India, for example, because of its bumper wheat harvests. But they’ve stopped exports recently because they’re looking at domestic concerns. So who can step in?
EC: Yes, let’s start from the top. When it comes to the question of who can and needs to produce more, we need to ensure that the fiscal issues that are affecting the countries we’ve already talked about — the inability of governments to subsidize smallholder farmers and provide social safety nets — we need to address those issues now. That means that we need the G-7, for example, to catalyze the big multilateral financial institutions to support access to capital, to allow those countries to access new financial tools that will provide them with the ability to meet the needs of their populations.
Often what you hear is that there is a process, but what we need now is for the multilateral banks, the World Bank, the [International Monetary Fund], to demonstrate flexibility, not bureaucracy. That will only happen if G-7 encourages, supports and drives that. So finance is a big piece of this.
You mentioned India, and at the beginning of this crisis, India increased their release of commodities into the global system. But then, when the climate-driven heat spike occurred over there earlier this year, resulting in a projected reduction in the harvest that’s presently in the ground, they began to take policy steps — as many countries do — to protect their own domestic food security. And this is what we need to avoid. We need to avoid countries taking actions — export barriers, export bans — that affect the global transfer of commodities in what is a very complex system.
We just saw Turkey suggest that they are going to implement export bans. Now we know that back in 2008, export bans were a critical factor in creating high prices that resulted in instability and riots in some 40 cities across the globe. So it is imperative that we avoid export bans.
It is also quite important that countries like the U.S., Canada, Australia, where you have the opportunity for increasing production — that this work begins to happen. President [Joe] Biden recently announced a commitment to supporting production in the Midwestern U.S., as well as to support the release of some of our stored commodities into the global system. You will see more of that kind of action necessary.
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G: You successor at the WFP, David Beasley, said, just the other week, that we are “facing hell on earth,” and the WFP has had to cut supplies to some places. As someone who used to run that organization, could you take us inside, so to speak, and tell us about the kinds of decisions facing your former colleagues as this war continues?
EC: What is important to note for your audience is that 50 percent of the wheat commodities that the WFP purchases for distribution to the most vulnerable were derived from Ukraine. So now they’re forced to go into the global market to purchase similar commodities at a much higher price. And what they are finding is the cost is 50 to 75 percent more than what they paid this time last year. That increases the cost of each operation and reduces the number of people they are able to feed. This means they require an increase in their budget.
Now, David Beasley has suggested that they will need $23 billion in order to meet the needs of all those who were in need before and will now find themselves in need of food as a result of this crisis. Let me put that into perspective for you. When I left the WFP [in 2017], we were raising $6 billion a year. And the challenge is that you never receive as much money as you need, and that forces you to implement what we would call cut rations. Imagine that. You’re already providing the minimal amount that an individual needs to meet their physical requirements, and then to cut that in order to feed more people — so I’m just leaving everyone hungry. I’m not fully meeting the needs of anyone. And that is what they’re finding themselves forced to do.
Even worse, when the numbers don’t match the need, it means you feed the most vulnerable. You feed those on the verge of starvation, you feed those who otherwise have no other access to food, and many of those people are in conflict situations. There’s a line that David uses that I embrace — that it forces you to take the food from the hungry to feed the starving in order to keep people from dying.
And so the question you ask is so important, because you ask what happens if this conflict continues? What happens if we don’t invest in those smallholder farmers to fill the gaps in the global system, what happens if we don’t provide those social safety nets? The challenge right now is that we have a high-food-price crisis. The challenge is that food is available, but inaccessible, because it’s unaffordable. The probability of moving to an availability crisis on a global level increases as you miss harvests.
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G: I wanted to ask about something you touched upon earlier. Do you think, given the importance of multilateral finance and the need for these global institutions to step up to help solve this food crisis, that the big world powers have been slow to recognize the wide-reaching impact of this conflict? There is of course the devastating impact on the ground in Ukraine. But do you think Washington, London or Paris have been too slow to recognize the broader fallout?
EC: I don’t believe they’ve been too slow. The challenges of food security, hunger and nutrition are challenges that historically don’t rise to the political level. At places like the G-7 and G-20, they’re handled by the agriculture and development ministries. But early on, back in March, the Germans signaled that food security, hunger — that these would be included on the political agenda for the G-7. There have been regular conversations about issues related to food security. The question, is, out of these conversations, what outcomes will be delivered? The world is waiting, including the countries most directly affected.
The African Union leadership has said, publicly, that look, with covid, they did not receive vaccines. Climate change was not their creation, but they are the victims of a changing climate, which is having an effect on their livelihoods, on their lives. And now this war. They’re not in Europe, and while they empathize with Ukraine, they expect the leaders of the global community to recognize the need to take significant action to address the issues we’ve been discussing.
G: Looking to the longer term, we just saw the spring planting season in Ukraine unfold amid conflict. The government there tried to do what it could to keep things on track. But if this war continues, could you elaborate a little more for us what we are looking at later this year or next year? Even if this conflict ends today, we’re going to be living with the fallout for some time, right?
EC: Correct. Each day that this goes forward, each planting season that we miss, each opportunity for moving food from one part of the world to another that we miss, the more challenging the problem becomes.
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Economists at different institutions have suggested that we could see as many as 100 to 150 million more people going acutely hungry by the end of 2022 to the first quarter of 2023 if we fail to address these issues with the level of urgency, and the scale, that is necessary to avoid an availability problem.
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
3. Gallagher Opening Statement at FY23 NDAA Markup
Sounds similar to the IW center but I think it is not quite the same. I also could not find anything in the subcommittee markup addressing the Congressman's statement on PME that is in his remarks but perhaps that will be added during the process.
Excerpt:
The proposed mark also addresses Professional Military Education (PME). It includes a military-civilian consortium to research and make recommendations on PME. This consortium would address challenges in an era of great power competition, new technologies, emerging threats, supply chains, adversarial governments as well as disruptive change.
I look forward to Jim Lacey's critique of the PME proposal.
Gallagher Opening Statement at FY23 NDAA Markup
June 22, 2022 Press Release
– Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, delivered the following opening statement at the full committee markup for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023. The Subcommittee's mark is available
Issues:
4. Ukraine Disinformation Fight Sounds Warning Bells for Taiwan
The PRC's malign information and influence activities (Psychological Warfare and Media Warfare) are key to subversion of Taiwan. Subversion to undermine the legitimacy of Taiwan to collapse its political system to drive unification may be just as important a threat to be countered as is a military invasion.
Ukraine Disinformation Fight Sounds Warning Bells for Taiwan
Short of a drastic overhaul, Tsai Ing-wen’s administration must gain a firmer understanding of vulnerabilities in the domestic information environment.
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Taiwanese see propaganda everywhere. Decades of Martial Law will do that. Under the Kuomintang (KMT) dictatorship, indoctrination saw a generation of Taiwanese rendered “politically and socially inert,” to quote sociologist Chin A-hsiau. With that dark experience in living memory, the democratization of the 1980s and 1990s remains cherished – and any hint of backsliding triggers anxiety.
The 2018 local elections are a case in point. Following a drubbing at the polls for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), there were claims of external, mainly Chinese, interference in the vote and the concurrent referendum on same-sex marriage. A newly assembled Disinformation Coordination Team (DCT) advised the Central Election Committee to push for two bills – one to stop foreign sponsorship of campaign advertising and another to permit injunctions against misleading ads.
Both were rejected. The judiciary’s objection to involvement in the latter evoked memories of an era when the separation of powers in Taiwan was at best nominal.
The loose structure of the new DCT was also telling. “Creating a formal organization solely to deal with disinformation would be unwelcome, if not suicidal, politically,” said Kao Shih-shiuan, an independent policy researcher.
“The legacy of martial law makes people instinctively detest the possibility of government-led propaganda,” explained Kao, who produced a report on disinformation in Taiwan for the Seattle-based National Bureau of Asian Research in 2021.
Along with other Taiwanese analysts, Kao – who previously worked for Double Think Lab, a Taiwan research organization focusing on disinformation – has kept an eye on Ukraine. He highlights the move by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to establish a dedicated Center for Countering Disinformation last year under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. Such a move, he believes, would be neither desirable nor practical for Taiwan.
“The current arrangement [of the DCT] serves as an acceptable modus operandi to overcome existing departmentalism inside the executive branch,” Kao said. It also helps “bypass technical barriers” to the establishment of a formal body.
Public concerns about government overreach are echoed by representatives of other civil society organizations. At an April “hackathon” in the southern city of Tainan, organized by g0v, a collaborative open government community that has gained international renown, Yu Chih-hao said Tsai’s administration was “restraining itself from establishing an anti-fake news law.”
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Drawing parallels with Zelenskyy’s suspension of 11 Russian-affiliated political parties in March, Yu cited discussions in Taiwan’s legislature of a mechanism to disband political parties found collaborating with foreign powers.
“This would cause a backlash,” said Yu, codirector of IORG, a civilian research organization working on information literacy and countering authoritarianism. “This ultimately is about what the public believe. In order to maintain trust, the separation between government efforts and ours should be maintained.”
Billion Lee was another participant in the hackathon. A cofounder of Cofacts, one of the world’s largest open-source fact-checking initiatives, Lee believes that the problem of disinformation in Taiwan is partly age-related. “Many people from my parents’ generation who suffered under martial law and the White Terror have no trust in the government,” said Lee. “We think that making it [fact-checking] as open and decentralized as possible will be more attractive.”
Others are more skeptical about the efficacy of the current approach. T.H. Schee is a 20-year digital veteran who fronts Open Knowledge Taiwan, a community of think-tankers and digital enthusiasts currently focusing on civil defense issues.
His assessment of fact-checking initiatives is blunt. “They’re futile,” said Schee, who served as an advisor to Taipei City Government between 2016 to 2018. “How many news items do Cofacts check each day? It’s less than 10. It’s a needle in – not even a haystack – but an ocean!”
However, Schee stressed that there might be a role for such operations at the onset of an invasion.
“If war breaks out, everyone will need information in those first 24 hours,” he said. “That’s when fact-checking will be important.”
War is naturally seen as a game-changer by most analysts. “Info ops antebellum and during war time are vastly different, and so are the respective counter strategies,” said Kao. “In wartime, I think Taiwan’s government should and would set up a centralized agency. Ukraine has demonstrated the importance of such channels in sustaining overall morale by acting as an authoritative source on information.”
Furthermore, said Kao, Ukrainian civilians have been encouraged to participate by “collecting intel for the military.”
While this is something Taiwan should be looking at, Schee is doubtful that the country’s information environment would support such a response.
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“The thing about Ukraine is the focus on the three Ts: Telegram, Twitter, and TikTok,” he said. “Taiwan just does not have that.”
The high-level of encryption of in Ukraine (which, along with the similarly secure Signal app, has seen nearly 200 percent growth in installs in the country since the onset of the war), the status of Twitter as the preferred platform for connecting policymakers with the public, and the short-video optimization of the latter have been skillfully leveraged by the Zelenskyy administration, Schee noted.
However, all three platforms have low usership in Taiwan and, where the government does engage, the platforms are clumsily utilized. “Taiwan’s government does not have a strong Twitter presence because they see it has negligible market penetration,” said Schee. “In fact, government agencies in Taiwan don’t even have internal social media guidelines. A lot of accounts are tied to a single government official while on duty, so when he or she leaves the post, the account is abandoned.”
The dependence on the LINE instant messaging app, which is based mainly in Japan, also spells trouble in Schee’s view. “Telegram is technically so much better for lots of reasons: functionality, security, responsiveness, and interface,” he said.
More importantly, LINE’s ad-driven business model means they don’t have the development resources to support the amount of traffic Telegram can handle.
“If you want to get information out on Telegram you can use a broadcast channel, where you can have a million subscribers,” said Schee. “In LINE, if you want that, you’d have to pay half a million New Taiwan dollars per month, and you’d need them to enable that function.” Schee points out that Tsai, who has about 1.1 million subscribers, must foot the bill for her personal LINE account.
Ukrainians aiming to influence the war narrative gravitate to Telegram, said Schee, “because it can harness the info flow and distribute it at a very fast internet tempo.”
To make matters worse, the most compromised platform of all enjoys 30 percent usership in Taiwan, the place where it can cause the most harm. Schee remains baffled as to why Taiwan’s authorities have not cottoned on to the dangers posed by WeChat, an app that is part of China’s mass surveillance network.
“They’ve been ignoring its existence,” he said. “That’s a media environment where the Chinese government and media can control the messages flowing through.”
This points to a more fundamental problem with Taiwan’s information environment: the blurred lines between internal and external interference.
The furor over info ops during the 2018 poll centered around the surprise victory of pro-China KMT candidate Han Kuo-yu, who claimed the mayorship of Kaohsiung, traditionally a DPP stronghold. While some analysts saw incontrovertible evidence of Beijing’s hand, others were wary of potentially skewed data.
“There are those who aren’t comfortable with the research,” said Schee. “Disinformation came from all parties in 2018. This was well-recognized. It’s not just from the CCP or from outside the border.”
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While he stopped short of saying that organizations such as Double Think Lab are deliberately misrepresenting the situation, Schee pointed out that they receive funding from the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, under Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also raises questions over the meteoric rise of these particular organizations over others that have been working on disinformation for longer.
“That’s a story worthy of its own story,” he said. “I wouldn’t say they are bad, but the way they interpret the data set is very much in line with what the government wants.”
Acknowledging similar concerns, Kao believes that any future centralized department will have to proceed with caution.
“The situation is complicated, as the government wouldn’t use the relevant mechanisms to respond only to PRC-led disinfo but also to counter genuine domestic cases,” said Kao. “This is a distinction that cannot be easily applied in every case.”
More recently, the establishment of a Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) has again raised questions about the government’s role in policing disinformation. The MODA will take on functions and responsibilities previously handled by various agencies, and while disinformation is not officially within its remit, there has been speculation about the new ministry tackling the issue.
“Multiple government agencies and probably legislators would love to see it meddling in the disinfo scene,” said Schee, who highlighted an increase in prosecutions for “spreading rumors” under the Social Order Maintenance Act.
Minister without portfolio Audrey Tang, who is widely known by the title “digital minister,” has been tasked with convening the MODA, but the final decision on who will head the new ministry has not been announced at time of press.
Behind the scenes, representatives of internet multinationals and human rights groups are said to be engaging another minister without portfolio, Lo Ping-cheng, with a view to his possible assumption of the MODA stewardship.
Either way, with local elections looming in November, Schee believes that the government’s approach is unlikely to change dramatically.
“If Tang turns out to be the new minister, legislators might ask her to work on disinformation,” said Schee. “But even then, I doubt the response on disinformation would be too different.”
5. ‘Kamikaze’ Drones Strike Russian Oil Refinery, Looks Like Model Sold On Alibaba
‘Kamikaze’ Drones Strike Russian Oil Refinery, Looks Like Model Sold On Alibaba
Video shows a mystery drone diving into a refinery in Russia’s Rostov region, raising the possibility of a deniable Ukrainian attack.
BY
JUN 22, 2022 4:28 PM
Video has emerged showing a twin-boom tail configured drone crashing into a Russian oil refinery in Novoshakhtinsk, in the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, this morning. There is already much speculation that the incident was some kind of ‘kamikaze’ drone strike conducted by the Ukrainian Armed Forces. While the identity of the mysterious drone is yet to be established, initial analysis suggests it may have been an adapted, commercially available product that is available on the Chinese marketplace website Alibaba.
Footage of the incident apparently first appeared on the Telegram messaging service this morning before being distributed more widely across other social media channels. Filmed from nearby, the video clearly shows a twin-boom tail, pusher propeller-driven drone flying toward the refinery before making a steep dive and crashing into it, quickly resulting in a blaze.
Audio from the same sequence includes a discussion between men on the ground one of whom asks if the drone might be Ukrainian. Following the explosion, another voice can be heard over a radio transmitter saying, “The refinery has been hit. A drone dived and hit the target.”
Subsequent videos show palls of black smoke rising from where the drone hit the refinery and firefighters aiming their hoses at the flames.
In a statement, the refinery said: “As a result of terrorist actions from the Western border of the Rostov region, two unmanned aerial vehicles struck at the technological facilities of Novoshakhtinsk.” The refinery also said that staff had been evacuated and work paused while the damage was assessed.
The same statement notes that two drones were involved, the first reportedly hitting the refinery at 8:40 AM local time, followed by the second drone at 9:23 AM.
Vasily Golubev, the governor of Russia’s Rostov region, has seemingly also confirmed the incident, saying that fragments of two drones had been found at the refinery, but noting that no one had been injured.
Identifying the drone seen in the video is made more difficult since it’s not entirely clear how close to the camera it was when filmed, making it harder to gauge the size. However, the twin-boom layout is a key characteristic, as are the swept vertical fins at each end of the tailplane.
While the Ukrainian-operated, Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 is also a twin-boom type, the drone in the Novoshakhtinsk incident appears smaller and lacks the curved intersection between the body and the leading edge of the wing, as well as its elliptical-shaped, streamlined fuselage, among other differences. As such, there has been speculation that it could have been a Ukrainian-made PD-1 or PD-2 drone, or a modification thereof. However, both the TB2 and PD series feature distinctive inverted-V-shaped tailplanes connecting the twin tubular booms. This doesn’t appear to be the case here, with the drone instead having prominent swept vertical stabilizers.
Based on its general appearance, there have been claims made that the drone might even be an example of the Russian-made Forpost, implying that Ukraine may have captured one of these and adapted it for a raid within Russian territory. While examples of the Forpost certainly have been brought down over Ukrainian territory in the past, there are also many differences compared with the drone seen in the video, including the distinctive swept tailfins, which the Forpost lacks.
As to the possibility of drones from another, Western source, Ukraine is not known to have received anything that looks remotely similar to the vehicle that we see. However, there have also been suggestions that the drone seen in the video might be some kind of commercially available product, perhaps the Skyeye 5000mm available on the Chinese Alibaba website, that was then rigged up for a ‘kamikaze’ mission by Ukrainian technicians. In particular, the shape of the tailfins on the Skyeye drone seems to tally with those of the drone in the video. The drones are selling for between $5,000 and $10,000 on the site.
Technical Data
Wing Span --- 5000mm
Length --- 3670mm
Length of the fuselage: 2000mm
Width of the fuselage: 375mm
Wing area --- 251.6dm2
Material --- Fiber-Glass
Max. Flying Weight --- 90kg
Twin gas Engine --- 170cc -200cc
Payload --- About 30-45 kg (with full fuel tank)
Cruising Speed --- 55km/hour.
Max Speed 150 km/hour
Empty Weight --- 30kg
Features
*Huge Payload Capability up to 20kg (with full fuel tank)
*With parachute cabin for landing *Large Air Intake & Cooling Duct for engine *Super large size cabin for FPV system
*Heavy Duty Landing gear with Steerable Nose wheel
*Detachable main wings and tail wings, easy to install and un-install, convenient for transport.
*With "H"-tail and"V" tail for option.
Equipments recommended(no included in the parcel):
Engine: 120*170CC (DLE170)
Prop:32 x10 high power wooden propeller
Servo PY-20AL x11
FUTABA3001 servo for accelerator x1
The 5000 VTOL comes with a Kevlar fuel tank. With full fuel of 27 liters, the estimated maximum flight time is over 7 hours. Its maximum take-off weight is up to 85kg and and the maximum payload is about 15 to 20kg.
This scenario actually seems much more likely. After all, while Ukraine is not previously known to have conducted this type of work, the kind of technologies involved would be well within reach of its industrial base, which already has plenty of experience with smaller drones. This would also be much cheaper and easier than acquiring and employing in-production precision-guided weapons and would also provide a significant degree of deniability.
Photos have meanwhile appeared purporting to show the wreckage of at least one of the drones around the refinery, but these fragments are too small to provide much in the way of clues to its identity.
Whatever type of unmanned aerial vehicle was used, providing this was indeed a Ukrainian ‘kamikaze’ drone strike, it marks a significant ability to target objectives within Russian territory, even if it involved a one-way mission.
Not only does the target lie on the Russian side of the border, but on the Ukrainian side is the Donbas region, including an extensive buffer zone of Russian-controlled territory that extends at least as far as Donetsk. If the attacking drones were launched from Ukrainian-held territory, it seems that, at the very least, they must have flown around 100 miles to reach their objective.
The location of the oil refinery at Novoshakhtinsk in relation to the Ukrainian border (yellow) and Donetsk. Most of the territory east of Donetsk is held by Russian and pro-Russian forces. Google Earth
Providing this was a Ukrainian attack, then the Russian air defenses in the region failed to protect against it, once again calling into question their reliability, as well as pointing to the wider inability of the Russian military to establish air superiority over key parts of Ukraine including its border areas.
It is also worth noting that defending against these kinds of attacks is by no means easy, despite the relatively low speed and altitude of the drones themselves. Modern air defense systems are generally not optimized to counter these types of threats, something that Saudi Arabia, and other countries, have found out to their cost. For instance, Iran and its proxies have waged their own drone (and missile) war against Saudi oil facilities, with sometimes dramatic results. The vulnerability of this kind of infrastructure to precisely these sorts of ‘low-end’ drone attacks is a topic we have explored in the past and similar tactics employed by Ukraine could also threaten targets located much deeper within Russia, too.
What makes the apparent attack on Novoshakhtinsk especially notable is that we can clearly see one of the drones hitting a valuable infrastructure target. There have, however, been multiple previous blasts in different Russian provinces along the Ukrainian border in the last months, including reportedly on airbases and ammunition storage sites. While the cause of these previous explosions remains unclear, there has been speculation that they could have been carried out by Ukraine.
Photos have also appeared in the past showing the wreckage of TB2 drones alleged to have been taken in Russian border regions. However, it’s possible that these drones could have strayed across the border before being shot down, or crashing, and their presence in these areas alone does not amount to proof that they were responsible for any previous blasts. One of the precious (and expensive) Ukrainian TB2s is also unlikely to be used for a one-way or ‘kamikaze’ mission of the type that we have apparently seen in Novoshakhtinsk.
Wreckage of Ukrainian TB2 drones claimed shot down by Russia earlier in the conflict:
At the very start of the conflict, meanwhile, on February 24, unconfirmed reports emerged that Ukraine launched a strike against Russia’s Millerovo Air Base, less than 20 miles from the Ukrainian border. While a video showed the tail of a Russian Su-30SM Flanker multirole fighter amid the flames, the cause of this blaze remains unconfirmed to this day and it could also have been an accident.
In April, meanwhile, reports emerged that a pair of Ukrainian Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters had crossed low over the border into Russia and struck an oil storage facility in Belgorod. Once again, there is no conclusive proof that this was indeed a daring Ukrainian air raid and it’s notable that Ukrainian officials also refused to comment directly on allegations that their forces were involved. Indeed at least one Ukrainian official flatly denied their country’s involvement but, with the exception of a treasonist or rogue act, there seem to be few other explanations.
One Skyeye 5000mm being sold on Alibaba for $6,500. Credit: Alibaba
As it stands, the lack of firm evidence and resulting confusion surrounding these various incidents on Russian soil plays squarely into the hands of the Ukrainians. As we have observed in the past, it’s arguably less important whether Kyiv was actually involved in some or all of these apparent attacks and more valuable that seeds of doubt have been sown, especially in regard to Russia’s ability to protect its own borders and the possibility of covert warfare waged by Ukraine. Should Ukraine ultimately expand drone attacks of this kind, it could also present the Russian military with a serious problem as regards relocating in-demand air defense assets to protect key infrastructure.
However, clear video evidence of at least one drone hitting an infrastructure target in Russia is a different matter, especially if Ukrainian officials acknowledge that their forces were responsible for a planned attack. At this stage, we are still awaiting official comments from Ukraine and Russia but will continue to update this story once more details emerge. Regardless, this attack reinforces the fact that we are entering a new age of warfare in which standoff weapons are available to almost anyone.
Contact the author: thomas@thedrive.com
6. Former Defense secretary says China ‘could bring Taiwan to its knees’ without invading
Subversion. To win without fighting. Three Warfares. Unrestricted Warfare. We need to pay attention to more than just the kinetic fight.
Excerpts:
However, Gates says there is more to be concerned about than just an invasion.
Chinese President Xi Jinping “can bring enormous pressure on Taiwan without ever firing a shot through cyber and through economic measures. He could bring Taiwan to its knees and create huge incentives for Taiwan to have a very different attitude toward China.”
Former Defense secretary says China ‘could bring Taiwan to its knees’ without invading
The Hill · by Zach Schonfeld · June 23, 2022
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates discussed China’s chokehold on Taiwan amid rising tensions between the two on the most recent episode of the “One Decision” podcast.
Gates talked to former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove and international journalist Julia Macfarlane about major international concerns for the U.S., saying he does not believe China will invade Taiwan.
“I personally think the likelihood of a full-scale invasion is very low. The Chinese have never undertaken an amphibious operation. It would look something like D-Day and it would have to be huge, and it would require a lot of softening up,” Gates said.
Concerns of an invasion rose after Russia attacked Ukraine, with some afraid the action would embolden China to take its own measures against Taiwan.
Taiwan says it is an independent country, while Beijing insists the island is part of China. The U.S. has supported Taiwan with weapons and training but does not formally recognize the island as independent from China.
However, Gates says there is more to be concerned about than just an invasion.
Chinese President Xi Jinping “can bring enormous pressure on Taiwan without ever firing a shot through cyber and through economic measures. He could bring Taiwan to its knees and create huge incentives for Taiwan to have a very different attitude toward China.”
The podcast discussed multiple international affairs, including the invasion of Ukraine.
“Just to illustrate expectations, we now know that the Russians who actually came down from the north and were headed for Kyiv had five days’ logistic support and actually had packed their ceremonial uniforms for the victory parade in Kyiv. That’s how confident they were,” Gates said.
He continued to say Russian forces were so confident in the support they would receive that they paid off local governments and trusted them to follow Russian orders, but that was not the locals’ plan.
“Someone told me that the Russians had paid off a lot of the local governments, but that the people that they had paid off, who they expected, as it were, to side with them immediately, were under the control of the Ukrainian services and had been told to act as though they were accepting the payoff and that they would get the balance of the money later. In fact, the Russians were really suckered into thinking that a lot of the local administrations north of Kyiv would welcome them,” he said.
Russia and Ukraine are going into their fourth month of war as Russian forces were unsuccessful at taking Kyiv, but are making up ground in the eastern Donbas region.
The Hill · by Zach Schonfeld · June 23, 2022
7. A More United, Better-Armed Opposition Can Bring Democracy to Myanmar
Resistance and unconventional warfare potential in Burma.
Conclusion:
The pro-democracy movement’s political and military problems may be pressing, but they are not insurmountable. The National Unity Government can rest assured of its main strengths: public support, strong commitment from allied ethnic armies, and quiet cooperation from the unaligned ethnic armed organizations. From this base, it should first unite the collective efforts of all anti-junta forces in pursuit of a genuine federal democracy, then craft a joint military strategy. In newly liberated regions, the National Unity Government and ethnic armed organizations should collaborate to establish effective parallel governance mechanisms to raise funds, ensure humanitarian aid and deliver stability. This will demonstrate to the international community that the pro-democracy movement is the people’s government that it claims to be. From there, military victory or the return of civilian rule may be possible.
A More United, Better-Armed Opposition Can Bring Democracy to Myanmar - War on the Rocks
YE MYO HEIN AND LUCAS MYERS
Myanmar’s rocky democratic transition ended abruptly in a military coup on February 1, 2021. Yet, the generals have kicked a hornet’s nest. The country’s Bamar majority has long dominated Myanmar, but an assortment of over 20 ethnic armed organizations have contested this situation for decades, and some have taken up arms once more to oppose the coup. Most crucially, faced with junta gunfire, the largely Bamar-dominated pro-democracy movement also made the grim decision to arm itself and fight the military.
The story of post-coup Myanmar is now one of a dedicated popular democratic resistance gaining momentum against a powerful military machine armed with Chinese and Russian equipment. This resistance is largely led by the predominantly Bamar National Unity Government in a loose coalition with some ethnic armed groups, ousted parliamentarians, and activists. They have shaken the junta to its core, successfully seized rural areas across the country, and enjoined several of the country’s ethnic armed groups to directly support them in the fight.
Yet, the odds against them remain steep. The National Unity Government lacks significant Western support — most notably in the form of arms — and still struggles to bring distrustful ethnic armed groups into a consolidated resistance movement. Currently operating as a diffuse and underequipped insurgency fighting what amounts to at least seven discrete conflicts, anti-junta forces lack strategic-level unity as well. While remarkably effective in numerous tactical skirmishes, the poorly equipped National Unity Government’s long-term prospects are, therefore, less than ideal. The junta’s military, known as the Sit-Tat, is suffering from overstretch and low morale, but still holds key cities and strategic locations with its superior airpower, armor, and artillery.
Nonetheless, the revolution can achieve victory. Resolving the fundamental distrust between the National Unity Government and ethnic armed organizations may be enough to overcome political and military roadblocks. This will require developing a shared political objective and an effective “coalitional” military strategy. It will also require persuading non-aligned ethnic armies as well as the Chinese government to increase the flow of arms, so anti-junta forces can launch coordinated offensives to take and hold territory. These steps could prompt the Sit-Tat’s collapse, or at least compel the junta to allow a return to democratic rule.
The Current Situation
Over the past few months, the National Unity Government’s military momentum has slowed as the junta deployed its air power and heavy weapons, locking down cities and preventing the rebels from consolidating their gains. In places like Mindat, Chin State, and Lay Kay Kaw, Karen State, the junta’s troops ousted poorly equipped People’s Defense Forces. In classic “authoritarian counterinsurgency” fashion, the junta continues to use unanswered firepower to displace lightly equipped units with little concern for escalating civilian casualties.
People’s Defense Forces and newly founded autonomous defense forces were successful in recruiting roughly 100,000 personnel, but only about 40 percent of them have any small arms whatsoever. Many of these weapons are rudimentary, either locally produced, cast off by the junta, or obtained on the black market from China and Thailand. Stealing weapons is not viable at scale. And while Chinese-supported ethnic armed groups have weapons like FN-6 man-portable air-defense systems that could dent the junta’s air and armor, they are reluctant to share them.
Politically, the incredibly diverse ethnic landscape in Myanmar has provided the National Unity Government with a number of potential armed allies, but it has also hampered anti-junta unity. Many ethnic groups have historical grievances and legitimate concerns with a Bamar-dominated pro-democracy movement, which results in limited cooperation beyond the tactical and operational levels. Some groups, such as the powerful United Wa State Army, seek to preserve their own interests regardless of the wider movement’s fate — especially if the National Unity Government’s odds of victory remain low.
Yet despite its problems, the National Unity Government and the wider pro-democracy movement cannot easily be crushed and show little intention of surrender. The junta has failed to cow the populace into submission, retake rural areas, or persuade the ethnic armies to join its side. While Myanmar has experienced numerous unsuccessful anti-government conflicts, and the Sit-Tat is often described as a formidable force, this time is different. As shown most recently during its 2019-20 fighting with the Arakan Army, the junta has struggled to defeat popular insurgencies. In the current round of conflict, the Sit-Tat has not only failed to prevail, in several places it cannot venture out into rural areas without suffering serious losses due to small-unit tactical failures. Moreover, the Bamar majority is now actively challenging the junta in a manner unseen since the 1980s, and fighting has spread throughout the country.
This leaves the Sit-Tat overstretched, overburdened, and short on morale. A total military victory for the pro-democracy forces led by the National Unity Government will still be difficult to achieve, but it is likelier now than it has been in decades. To date, the junta has made clear that it will not negotiate with the National Unity Government. Thus, while military victory is a long shot, the pro-democracy movement has no other option but to ramp up military pressure to either overthrow the junta or compel it to hand power to a civilian government.
The Need for Unity
Despite conducting a series of negotiations, the Bamar-dominated National Unity Government is struggling to find common ground with the ethnic armed organizations to build a mutually acceptable democratic federal state. Some dominant pro-democracy political entities still hold the dismissive views of ethnic actors that marked the National League for Democracy’s rule after 2015. Meanwhile, many ethnic armed groups pursue their own parochial interests. In addition to a few smaller outfits, the most powerful ethnic armed organizations on the National Unity Government’s side are the Kachin Independence Army in the north and the Karen National Union to the east. Both have supported the resistance movement since its inception and frequently launch offensives within their own territories, but they are hesitant to invest scarce resources in battlefields beyond their control.
Beyond the ethnic armed groups, only about 60 percent of the People’s Defense Forces and smaller Local Defense Forces are actually under the National Unity Government’s direct operational command. Moreover, the long hoped-for “federal army” capable of uniting the disparate ethnic armies and the People’s Defense Forces remains out of reach. While many of the ethnic armed groups reject peace talks with the military, they appear reluctant to wholeheartedly back the pro-democracy forces and some are open to junta outreach. This essentially splits the conflict into seven separate theaters with little overlap. It also allows the junta to “divide and conquer” and concentrate mass against isolated resistance pockets, as they have successfully done throughout their history.
The National Unity Government’s People’s Defense Forces have rapidly and effectively established themselves in the form of a cellular, horizontally networked guerilla force. Now the groups aiming to overthrow the junta need to undergo a sequential transition from a loosely organized movement to a more structured and centralized force. Martin C. Libicki and Ben Connable claim that networked armed movements “have lost significantly more often than they have won,” while hierarchically organized insurgencies have a better record. As Régis Debray, an associate of Che Guevara, claimed: “The lack of a single command puts the revolutionary forces in the situation of an artillery gunner who has not been told in which direction to fire.” Centralized command and control is necessary to field a force capable of taking urban settlements and strategic hard points.
Thus, the National Unity Government needs to consolidate its own chain of command and convince the fiercely independent ethnic armed organizations to accept a shared military strategy. It has attempted to do so through the establishment of a Central Command and Coordination Committee, but the ethnic armed groups have been loath to subordinate themselves to National Unity Government control. To overcome this, the National Unity Government will need to form a coalition around mutual goals in order to reach a consensus on an overarching strategy. This means forging a shared political objective before effective strategic military cooperation can occur.
Currently, the National Unity Government’s goal is to seize the central state apparatus, while the ethnic armed groups largely aim to consolidate their own autonomy. Persuading the ethnic armed organizations that it is in their interest to overthrow the Sit-Tat will require real inclusion and commitments to giving up some central authority in a federal democratic future. It would also be a real departure from Aung San Suu Kyi’s practices and likely would require moving beyond her legacy to build a more inclusive one. Any political arrangement must be conducive to genuine cooperation between the pro-democratic political forces and the ethnic armed groups. Most importantly, the National Unity Government must make the case to the ethnic armed organizations that the autonomy they seek can only happen under a democratic federal structure.
To be sure, the pro-democracy resistance movement has taken the right steps to advance this unity. It has created a National Unity Consultative Council, which could be a genuine political platform bringing together the country’s diverse stakeholders. Likewise, the Central Command and Coordinating Committee could create a military command structure that would improve collaboration. If the National Unity Government can demonstrate its practical cooperation with the ethnic armed groups, and the National Unity Consultative Council forges a strong alliance around a federal democratic future, they would be a strong magnet for uncommitted ethnic armies. This would also undermine the junta’s own efforts to co-opt ethnic armed groups. Just recently, the National Unity Government met with the currently uncommitted Arakan Army of Rakhine State in a move that is sure to turn heads in Naypyidaw.
If and once the National Unity Government persuades the ethnic armies to buy into a shared political objective, it can formulate a more effective military strategy and launch operations to take further territory. Based on her study of recent U.S. coalitions, Patricia A. Weitsman argues that “even in the absence of a unified chain of command, effective staff integration” is possible. Considering the reluctance of ethnic armed groups to embrace a “federal army” or fully cooperate with the National Unity Government, pro-democracy forces should at least work on shoring up the Central Command and Coordinating Committee and integrating high-level officers from its constituent coalition members within both itself and aligned ethnic armed organizations to formulate strategy and conduct operations across all seven theaters in Myanmar. This does not necessarily require subordination, but rather compromises and a shared understanding of national-level strategy. Without this, the movement will remain susceptible to the junta’s efforts to divide and conquer it.
Tackling the Military Problem
The other problem facing the National Unity Government is its ongoing lack of arms and equipment. The problem is particularly acute for People’s Defense Forces located outside territory held by ethnic armed organizations, or in regions such as Sagaing and Magway that are distant from Myanmar’s porous borders. In the early days of the conflict, homemade rifles and ancestral hunting weapons were enough to drive back the junta’s demoralized troops. But now, with the Sit-Tat’s forces supported by air power, modern small arms, light armored vehicles, and artillery, the sheer firepower brought to bear on the People’s Defense Forces is causing them to scatter to avoid direct confrontations. Thus, while they have no lack of enthusiastic recruits, they have been unable to move beyond rural guerilla tactics. The ethnic armies, with their better equipment and more reliable access to arms have performed somewhat better against junta offensives. For example, the Kachin Independence Army took the strategic Alaw Bum hill soon after widespread fighting broke out in early 2021, and has held the area against ferocious efforts to retake it with air power and artillery.
Once greater political unity is established, the People’s Defense Forces’ lack of equipment can be mitigated somewhat through cooperation with ethnic armed groups. Many of the ethnic armies, especially those along the Chinese border or aligned with the United Wa State Army, receive Chinese weapons and equipment, including anti-air systems. Other ethnic armies take advantage of longstanding ties to smugglers in Thailand and China to obtain black market weapons or have significant arms-making industrial capacity of their own. However, persuading the China-backed ethnic armies to sell more weapons directly to the pro-democracy resistance likely means getting Beijing on board as well. Given China’s growing support of the junta, this is no easy task. Yet, China is not the completely unitary actor that it is sometimes assumed to be, and Beijing also has a history of hedging in Myanmar. If the National Unity Government can win over the ethnic armed groups, demonstrate its capacity to govern territory, and, crucially, avoid angering China, then a pragmatic Beijing or local officials in China’s bordering Yunnan Province could acquiesce to a livelier arms trade. Given Western reticence towards arming the People’s Defense Forces, this may be their only option.
The End of the War?
The pro-democracy movement’s political and military problems may be pressing, but they are not insurmountable. The National Unity Government can rest assured of its main strengths: public support, strong commitment from allied ethnic armies, and quiet cooperation from the unaligned ethnic armed organizations. From this base, it should first unite the collective efforts of all anti-junta forces in pursuit of a genuine federal democracy, then craft a joint military strategy. In newly liberated regions, the National Unity Government and ethnic armed organizations should collaborate to establish effective parallel governance mechanisms to raise funds, ensure humanitarian aid and deliver stability. This will demonstrate to the international community that the pro-democracy movement is the people’s government that it claims to be. From there, military victory or the return of civilian rule may be possible.
Ye Myo Hein is the executive director of the Tagaung Institute of Political Studies and a public policy fellow with the Wilson Center. His research interests include civil-military relations in Myanmar, the country’s armed conflict, and its politics. The views expressed are the author’s alone, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government or the Wilson Center.
Lucas Myers is a program coordinator and associate for Southeast Asia at the Wilson Center. His work focuses on Southeast Asian geopolitics, Chinese foreign policy, and Indo-Pacific security issues. The views expressed are the author’s alone, and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government or the Wilson Center.
8. What’s Wrong with Wanting a “Human in the Loop”?
Inevitably a system without a man in the loop will malfunction or worse and lead to deaths. I wonder if the person(s) responsible for making the decision to develop and employ an autonomous system will be held accountable when bad things happen. And if we create some system with "pretend human control" who will be held accuntablewhen things go bad? The pretender? The decision maker who allowed the concept of "pretend human control?"
Conclusion:
Let me be clear: We need to strive for exactly the things that proponents of meaningful human control strive for: safety and minimizing unnecessary deaths and harm to civilians. My worry is that we will end up with pretend human control that will not in fact solve the problems we are trying to solve. Meaningful human control often doesn’t get us safety, dignity, or oversight, but only an appearance of those things. So we have to reconsider if there are better ways to govern AI-enabled weapon systems or if there are cases when we should simply not use AI (e.g., killer robots using facial recognition). The illusion that we must have — which implies that we can have — meaningful human oversight is dangerous to our ability to ethically assess AI-enabled weapons. We should be very careful in asserting which problems meaningful human control can solve, because in overstating the extent to which meaningful human judgment is the solution to what ails AI and AI-enabled weapons, we are underselling alternative solutions to genuinely serious problems.
What’s Wrong with Wanting a “Human in the Loop”? - War on the Rocks
At the recent conference on the ethics of AI-enabled weapons systems at the U.S. Naval Academy, well over half the talks discussed meaningful human control of AI to some extent. If you work among the AI ethics community, and especially among those working on AI ethics and governance for the military, you are hard-pressed to find an article or enter a room without stumbling on someone literally or metaphorically slamming their fist on the table while exalting the importance of human control over AI and especially AI-enabled weapons. No meeting or paper on the ethics of AI-enabled weapons is complete without stressing the importance of having a human in the loop, whether in the now outdated sense of meaningful human control, or in the recently more popular sense of appropriate human judgment. It often seems like everyone agrees that having human control over AI weaponry is a good thing. But I am not so sure that “meaningful human control over AI” is the panacea everyone seems to make of it.
Arguments in favor of meaningful human control of AI-enabled weapon systems usually focus on safety, precision, responsibility, and dignity. Centrally, proponents of human control over AI-enabled weapons systems don’t think that lethal targeting decisions should be left to AI. This is why the examples used to stress the importance of meaningful human control often focus on weapons systems that use AI for targeting decisions — systems like Collaborative Operations in Denied Environments (CODE) or HARPY. According to publicly available information, and Paul Scharre’s description of it in the book Army of None, CODE’s purpose is to develop “collaborative autonomy — the capability of a group of unmanned aircraft systems to work together under a single person’s supervisory control.” This control can take several forms depending on whether the system is operating in a contested electromagnetic environment (more contested means more reliance on autonomous features). Usually, the human operator gives high-level commands like “orbit here,” “follow this route,” or “search and destroy within this area.” In cases of search-and-destroy missions, once the airborne vehicles find enemy targets, “they cue up their recommended classification to the human for confirmation,” Scharre reports. In addition, after target confirmation, the system asks for authorization to fire. This means that there are at least three places where a human exerts control over the system: first when drawing the box around the area the drones should search for targets, next when confirming the target, and finally when accepting the plan of attack. Proponents of meaningful human control see this as a great example of leveraging all that is good about AI, while assuring human control — thus minimizing accidents (assuring safety) and thus also identifying who to hold responsible when things go wrong (assuring responsibility assignment).
On the other end of the spectrum, those that question human control as a solution to potential problems with AI often do so by pointing to the speed or complexity of data processing that justifies the use of AI in the first place, making meaningful human oversight impossible. In other words, one of the most significant benefits of AI is that it can process information and act faster than humans, and that it can extract information from patterns that we humans cannot recognize. In many such cases, suggesting that a human can provide meaningful oversight seems problematic, simply because AI is doing things precisely because humans cannot. But, of course, that doesn’t mean (proponents of human control would say) that we can’t have appropriate human judgment somewhere in the life cycle of AI — at least in the development and testing stage, or in the deployment or fielding stage. And that seems reasonable to me. Having meaningful human control or appropriate human judgment need not be about assuring that there is a person pressing a button in the last stage of decision-making (as with CODE). It is about assuring that we use our incredible human cognition and moral judgment to assure safety and accuracy, and it is about assuring that someone is responsible when things go wrong.
Consider the Aegis weapon system, which has been around since the 1970s. Aegis uses a high-powered radar to search, track, and engage targets, and it can do so for over 100 targets simultaneously. Control of Aegis takes the form of the commander picking and choosing various “doctrines” for Aegis — mixing and matching different control types for different anticipated threats. Since Aegis can operate at four different levels of autonomy, a commander might choose one type of autonomy for one type of possible threat and a more human-in-the-loop setting for another type of threat, depending on factors such as the geographic area the ship is operating in or possible threats. This “translates” commanders’ intent to Aegis’ behavior without the commander having to make every single decision. Simply put, appropriate human judgment can take different shapes depending on the AI we are trying to govern and why we want such human control in the first place (e.g., safety, ability to assign responsibility, and dignity).
Even though I am sympathetic to the claim that meaningful human control or appropriate human judgment can take many forms, ultimately, we must acknowledge that there will be times when such control is not possible, or when such control is an illusion that distracts us from other solutions to genuine worries about the use of AI for life-or-death decisions. I consider three arguments meant to jointly illustrate that human control of AI is not the holy grail of safe AI.
To start, there will be times when having a human in the loop as a matter of empirical fact works less well than not having a human in the loop. Consider, for example, AI-enabled weapon systems that are meant to respond or engage at superhuman speeds, like ship self-defense systems (when operating in autonomous mode). Or consider cases of cooperative or collaborative autonomy, like CODE, which are hard to interpret for a human due to the fact that hundreds of drones are sharing information and, in real-time, changing behavior based on information incoming from all these sources. There is a matter of fact about whether these systems can work more effectively with a human in the loop or not. If an AI-enabled weapon system works better without a human in the loop, we are going to have a very hard time justifying the decision to keep a human in the loop for safety’s sake (which tends to be the primary reason for those who want a human in the loop). Thus, it seems like the insistence on humans picking or approving targets in systems like CODE or DARPA’s Target Recognition and Adaption in Contested Environments (TRACE) might at times be misplaced if it is supposedly aimed at safety and accuracy.
But these issues of speed, explainability (i.e., the ability of the operator to understand why the system made the decision it did), and interpretability are not the only worries when it comes to positioning meaningful human control and appropriate human judgment as solutions for problems that ail AI. A potentially more serious problem is that in many cases such human judgment is a figment of our imagination. In fact, even when there is sufficient explainability and time, it is possible that human oversight is illusory. Consider CODE once again. CODE, at least in theory, has three places where human control can be exerted in search and destroy missions: the box drawing, the target confirmation, and the acceptance of the attack plan. But consider how something like CODE gets fielded, tested, and evaluated: with trained and certified operators. Systems that are meant to have meaningful human control or a human-in-the-loop are tested and evaluated (and rightly so) as socio-technical systems (with operators in place obviously). When that socio-technical system doesn’t respond with the right level of safety or accuracy, something must be changed, and that something often is the user interface or the way data is presented to the operator. As we fine tune an AI-enabled weapon system to get the right level of accuracy, we are fine tuning not just the code, but also the way data gets presented and taken up by the operator. Whether this is done through changes in the user interface, or through training, the fact is that until data is presented in a way that maximizes operator compliance with the “right outcome,” developers will continue to make changes to the system. That in turn raises significant questions about the level of control the human is “meaningfully” exerting over the system when the system has been fine-tuned to make it easier for the human to do less, and for the operator to accept the machine’s judgment.
To further illustrate this, imagine a targeting system that identifies objects in the field and provides the tactical action officers and the commanding officer with the likelihood that a certain object is a legitimate target. (This would thus be both an object recognition system and an automated decision support system, because it would be advising tactical action officers whether the object is a legitimate target.) This algorithm could be an ordinary supervised learning model trained on thousands or (better yet) hundreds of thousands of images and other sources of data in various contexts, resulting in superior-to-human identification of objects as a legitimate target. Now imagine that during testing of this algorithm the testing staff consistently fails to trust the algorithms in certain contexts. For example, when the object recognized as a “legitimate target” is next to another object that looks like a school bus (but is not) or whenever there are flashing lights in the right-hand corner of the screen. Now further imagine that when we remove information that seems to be misleading the testing staff, they are much more likely to, consistently and correctly (post hoc), rely on the object recognition algorithm. This casts doubt on the extent to which one can exert “meaningful” control over AI so tested.
The point I am making here is rather simple: When algorithms fail in the field they sometimes fail for technical reasons (e.g., not enough data or poor fit), but more often they fail because of the human-machine interaction problems. When that happens, we identify why the interaction is problematic, why the human is not trusting the machine, or why the way that the data is presented is being misunderstood — and then we change those things. Such changes should make us question to what extent human oversight of algorithms is truly meaningful.
Finally, consider the primary focus of most discussions about meaningful human control: to guard against full autonomy (thus assuring that human dignity is respected and it remains possible to assign responsibility at least). So what is this autonomy we are trying to guard against? While there is a lot of debate about what makes an AI system autonomous, one key worry is a system that could pick out its own targets. In cases when the operator picks out a target and chooses to engage it, that is not autonomy of the worrisome kind. Closer to “worrisome autonomy,” but not quite there, are weapons systems like the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile. This missle is capable of autonomously avoiding incoming threats (it can change course in response to a threat), and it can choose to continue to the target in the last few moments before the attack if connection to the command is lost. But the kind of autonomy that proponents of meaningful human control are most worried about is the kind where the weapon can pick out its own target, like HARPY. HARPY is an Israeli “fire-and-forget” weapon that is programmed before launch to loiter in a pre-determined area and search and destroy radiating targets (radar). HARPY does not target humans (although there are some worries about its inability to engage in collateral harm assessments). But now imagine a system similar to HARPY, a “fire-and-forget” system that targets enemy combatants in an area or enemy ships (to use an example that minimizes the collateral risk). Proponents of meaningful human control do not believe it should ever be left up to a machine to target humans.
I think there are good reasons to question this. Specifically, I am not persuaded that there is a significant moral difference between an operator identifying a single human target based on some data and a human operator drawing a box and defining targets within that box based on equally good data. Consider targeting person X based on information that they are in known enemy territory and are carrying a rocket launcher, that they are approaching a friendly base, and are wearing the enemy uniform. Now consider doing that same thing with an autonomous base defense system using AI to identify potential threats meeting those same conditions. Again, if the system is better or safer as a matter of empirical fact with a human in the loop (i.e., a human confirming each target), then obviously we ought to have a human in the loop. The main question I pose here is, whether in cases when the system works better or as well without a human operator, we have moral reasons to place a human in the loop. I am not persuaded that there is a moral difference between picking out a single target using certain information and picking out multiple targets by using the same type and quality of information to provide definite descriptions of those targets. Any moral difference arises, in my opinion, from empirical fact about what works better, not how far removed the operator is from the final decision.
Let me be clear: We need to strive for exactly the things that proponents of meaningful human control strive for: safety and minimizing unnecessary deaths and harm to civilians. My worry is that we will end up with pretend human control that will not in fact solve the problems we are trying to solve. Meaningful human control often doesn’t get us safety, dignity, or oversight, but only an appearance of those things. So we have to reconsider if there are better ways to govern AI-enabled weapon systems or if there are cases when we should simply not use AI (e.g., killer robots using facial recognition). The illusion that we must have — which implies that we can have — meaningful human oversight is dangerous to our ability to ethically assess AI-enabled weapons. We should be very careful in asserting which problems meaningful human control can solve, because in overstating the extent to which meaningful human judgment is the solution to what ails AI and AI-enabled weapons, we are underselling alternative solutions to genuinely serious problems.
Jovana Davidovic is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa, where she also holds a secondary appointment at the Center for Human Rights and the Law School. Davidovic is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy and the Chief Ethics Officer for BABL, AI — an algorithmic auditing and algorithm impact assessment consultancy.
9. New legislation aims to give drone crews tax-free combat pay
New legislation aims to give drone crews tax-free combat pay
Military drone crews could soon receive the same tax-free combat pay as deployed troops, under a pair of bills slated for release Wednesday.
Service members who fly remotely piloted aircraft or operate their surveillance and targeting sensors don’t qualify for untaxed income because they largely wage war from installations in the continental U.S. rather than in combat zones like Iraq or Somalia.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., the legislation’s sponsors in the House and Senate and members of their respective Armed Services committees, want to fix that.
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“Warfare is increasingly conducted stateside, yet drone crews engaged in active combat situations are not recognized as having served in combat by the military and therefore do not receive benefits or care commensurate with their service,” Blackburn said in a release.
“These servicemembers experience similar stressors to their colleagues who are physically overseas and see similar horrific events play out, and deserve to be treated as such,” she said.
Drone crews would be eligible for untaxed income if they fly missions anywhere within a combat zone approved by the Pentagon, from the Sinai Peninsula to Kosovo to the Arabian Peninsula, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Their annual salaries, and how much they are taxed, vary by state and federal tax brackets, grade and training.
On top of their monthly income and housing and subsistence allowances, these troops already receive an untaxed flight stipend that is separate from combat pay. That monthly combat stipend would become available, tax-free, to the RPA community if the legislation is signed into law.
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"We are poised to go ahead and take a significant step forward" in teaming autonomous drones up with piloted fighters and bombers, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said March 9.
Most of the Pentagon’s drone operations are handled by the Air Force, which flies the MQ-9 Reaper on strike and intelligence-collection missions from Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, an area represented by Rosen and Horsford, as well as from a handful of satellite locations like Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, and Shaw AFB, South Carolina.
A smaller subset of those troops do deploy overseas to handle the aircraft when they launch and return to base.
The provision would apply to any RPA fleet used in designated areas of conflict, like the Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk and RQ-170 Sentinel reconnaissance drones, by any branch of the armed forces.
Service members would qualify in cases when they provide “intelligence, targeting or command and control that has been certified by the Secretary of Defense to be in direct support” of an RPA mission in a combat zone, according to bill text provided to Air Force Times.
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Enlisted recruits and officer aviators could qualify for extra cash this year.
Untaxed income would not kick in retroactively if the legislation is signed into law, but would apply to future pay for those in uniform. Contractors who fly drones for the military cannot claim tax-free pay under the legislation.
Right now, the bills aren’t part of the annual defense policy legislation that is being marked up on Capitol Hill, but could be added in later.
A New York Times article published in April highlighted the emotional trauma faced by drone crews and the policy shortfalls that complicate matters.
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A remotely piloted aircraft assigned to Creech Air Force Base’s 432nd Wing was involved in an unspecified mishap shortly before 8 a.m. March 9.
“Drone crews have launched more missiles and killed more people than nearly anyone else in the military in the past decade, but the military did not count them as combat troops,” Times reporter Dave Philipps wrote. “Because they were not deployed, they seldom got the same recovery periods or mental-health screenings as other fighters. Instead they were treated as office workers, expected to show up for endless shifts in a forever war.”
Rosen’s office did not answer whether more work is underway in Congress to change other policies that disadvantage RPA crews. The Air Force has taken on some of that work itself, such as in 2019, when it ruled that airmen don’t need a medical waiver to continue flying drone missions while pregnant.
“I’m pleased to be building on the bipartisan provision I helped secure in [the 2023 defense policy bill] to support these crews’ mental health and improve their quality of life, and will always fight to make sure that our service members in Nevada and across our country receive the benefits they deserve,” Rosen said in a release.
Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.
10. As China shuts out the world, internet access from abroad gets harder too
Excerpts:
Some government websites fail to load, appearing to block users from specific geographic locations. Other platforms require a Chinese phone number tied to official identification. Files that were available three years ago have started to disappear as Brussee and many like him, including academics and journalists, are finding it increasingly frustrating to penetrate China’s cyber world from the outside.
“It’s making it more difficult to simply understand where China is headed,” Brussee said. “A lot of the work we are doing is digging for little scraps of information.”
One of the most sweeping surveillance states in the world, China has all but closed its borders since the start of the pandemic, accelerating a political turn inward as nationalism is on the rise and foreign ties are treated with suspicion. A harsh zero-COVID policy has contributed to the attrition of foreign residents, particularly after a long and bitter lockdown this spring in Shanghai, China’s largest and most international city.
As China shuts out the world, internet access from abroad gets harder too
TAIPEI, Taiwan —
Most internet users trying to get past China’s Great Firewall search for a cyber tunnel that will take them outside censorship restrictions to the wider web. But Vincent Brussee is looking for a way in, so he can better glimpse what life is like under the Communist Party.
An analyst with the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, Brussee frequently scours the Chinese internet for data. His main focus is information that will help him understand China’s burgeoning social credit system. But in the last few years, he’s noticed that his usual sources have become more unreliable and access tougher to gain.
Some government websites fail to load, appearing to block users from specific geographic locations. Other platforms require a Chinese phone number tied to official identification. Files that were available three years ago have started to disappear as Brussee and many like him, including academics and journalists, are finding it increasingly frustrating to penetrate China’s cyber world from the outside.
“It’s making it more difficult to simply understand where China is headed,” Brussee said. “A lot of the work we are doing is digging for little scraps of information.”
One of the most sweeping surveillance states in the world, China has all but closed its borders since the start of the pandemic, accelerating a political turn inward as nationalism is on the rise and foreign ties are treated with suspicion. A harsh zero-COVID policy has contributed to the attrition of foreign residents, particularly after a long and bitter lockdown this spring in Shanghai, China’s largest and most international city.
At the same time, academics and researchers have complained that the digital window into China seems to be constricting too. That compounds a growing concern for China experts locked out of the country amid deteriorating relations with the West. A tightening of internet access means observers will struggle to decipher what internal pressures China’s leader Xi Jinping may be facing and how to keep track of Beijing’s diplomatic, technological and military ambitions.
Comprehensive analysis on whom China’s Great Firewall keeps out is scarce; much of the focus on the country’s internet freedom remains on domestic censorship. But many researchers who have experienced such challenges suspect that their limited access is part of China’s attempt to ward off what it sees as international meddling, and present its own tightly controlled narrative to the outside world.
Several researchers, for example, noted difficulties accessing Xinjiang government data from abroad, likely a response to international criticism on reports of forced labor and human rights abuses against the western region’s Uyghur population. More puzzling to Brussee was when he encountered similar barriers to the government website of Anhui province, a decidedly less controversial part of China.
Brussee said websites have also added guards against data scraping, limiting how much information he can retrieve via automation on public procurement of surveillance systems, policy documents and citizens or businesses affected by the social credit system. Some bot tests known as CAPTCHA require manual input of Chinese characters or idioms, another barrier for those unfamiliar with the language.
China is keen to project an image of power and superiority. But that has been undermined at times by embarrassing revelations, including recent videos of Shanghai residents protesting harsh lockdown restrictions. The posts were quickly wiped from the Chinese web but continued to circulate beyond the Great Firewall, challenging Beijing’s claims that its zero-tolerance COVID policy was better at containing the pandemic than programs in the West.
Comments on China’s internet can also cast an unflattering light. Earlier this year, users on the nation’s Twitter-like Weibo platform drew condemnation for sexist comments welcoming “beautiful” Ukrainian women as war refugees. An anonymous movement that translates extreme and nationalistic posts from Chinese netizens has outraged state commentators who call it an anti-China smear campaign.
In order to squeeze through bottlenecks, Brussee uses a virtual private network, or VPN, which routes an internet user’s web traffic through servers in a different geographic location. Though it’s a commonly used tool for Chinese netizens to circumvent the Great Firewall, Brussee’s aim is to appear to be visiting websites from within China’s borders.
But VPNs aren’t foolproof. Chinese authorities have cracked down, making connections in and out of China slow and erratic. Brussee said he went a month without a VPN last fall, when his main provider inexplicably stopped functioning. After five fruitless calls to the company, he could only wait for service to eventually resume. His last resort would be to use a Chinese company with more reliable servers inside the country, but he said installing Chinese software comes with additional security risks.
“I don’t think the VPN is enough anymore a lot of the time,” said Daria Impiombato, a researcher at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute who uses VPNs to bounce around to different locations when trying to visit Chinese government websites. “You find workarounds, but it takes way longer.”
One alternative source of information that Impiombato has relied on is WeChat, the ubiquitous social messaging app owned by Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Many party agencies have their own pages on WeChat where they post notices, but it requires a lot of mobile scrolling to find the relevant material, she said.
Signing up for an account, however, has become more challenging for foreigners in recent years as Chinese platforms like WeChat, Weibo and others have implemented additional screening, such as a Chinese phone number and official identification. In some cases, those registration requirements can be more prohibitive than geoblocking, ruling out resources from online discussions to official documents to industry databases.
Graham Webster, editor in chief of the DigiChina Project at the Stanford University Cyber Policy Center, has searched for a way to use Weibo since losing his Chinese phone and subsequently his account. The closest solution he could find was a service that provided temporary, and he suspected fraudulent, phone numbers.
“We are talking about something that would be on the internet for one-fifth of the world’s population and not for the other four-fifths,” Webster said. “This is one more wedge in a steepening curve of barriers between China and the outside world. It leaves a lot more ground for suspicion and uncertainty.”
Blocking foreign internet users, particularly from sensitive information, is not unique to China. According to a 2020 report from Censored Planet, which studies internet freedom and censorship, the U.S. government had blocked about 50 websites from being viewed from Hong Kong and mainland China, including official military home pages and stores of economic data.
But China’s control of information appears more expansive. The government, according to researchers and academics, had made files and data available online over the last decade. But in recent years — as China has become more sensitive about its global image and more critical of the West — that degree of openness has run into a trend to deter outsiders from peering in.
“It’s the effort of openness coming up against the current push towards closedness,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The result is some strange hybrid landscape, where you can have access to a lot of information if you go through all these hoops, specifically because they are not designed for you to have access to them.”
Some who have developed ways to bypass blocks were reluctant to share details, aside from generally trying to emulate a Chinese location, fearing those channels would be plugged as well.
“Describing to a newspaper the workarounds to access blocked Chinese sites ensures that the workarounds will be blocked, too,” one U.S. academic researcher wrote via email. “The only thing I can add, without cutting short my own career, is another common sense measure, namely, scrape and cache whatever one discovers the first time around.”
That’s turned into standard practice for Impiombato, who has grown paranoid about saving her own copies of everything as government web pages, news releases and social media posts have vanished unexpectedly amid her research.
“Sometimes you see the perfect piece of information that you need and then suddenly it’s gone, she said. “You almost have to start from scratch every single time.”
Katherine Kaup, a professor at Furman University who studies China’s ethnic policy, said the country’s changes have forced her and others to consider entirely new research topics and techniques. She has reservations about one day returning to China for field work, and even virtual discussions with people in the country have been dampened by concerns over repercussions for speaking too frankly amid a growing clampdown on dissent.
“I sometimes feel like I’m in a bad sci-fi movie,” she said. “The type of research that we used to do is not going to be possible moving forward in the next few years.”
11. Nepal Backs Away From US State Partnership Program
A relatively benign program that seems innocuous to us is viewed with suspicion in Nepal. Did we have sufficient understanding of the nature, political culture, history, and traditions of Nepal before we made this proposal? Is this being pursued as part of a regional and national strategy or is s this being pushed by a State and its National Guard?
Note also the disinformation.
Excerpts:
Nepalis fear that all these moves would have a negative impact on Nepal’s balanced foreign relations, marked by equidistance from India, U.S., and China.
...
Meanwhile, a document purporting to be an “agreement” between Nepal and the United States on the SPP emerged and went viral in the media. The alleged agreement had strong military content, including joint Nepal-U.S. army training and fellowships for Nepali officers to train in U.S. academies. It said that the U.S. National Guard and U.S. contractors, related vehicles, and light aircraft operated by or for the United States, may use agreed facilities and areas for training, transit, support and related activities, refueling, temporary maintenance of vehicles and aircraft, accommodation of personnel, their dependents, communications, staging, deploying of forces and material. That played into existing concerns about the SPP as a de facto military alliance.
The U.S. embassy promptly stated that the document was a fake, adding, “There is no ‘agreement’ to sign. That is false.” The Nepali government too said that there has never been an agreement. The government’s line was that while the SPP had indicated its readiness to admit Nepal, there has been no follow-up.
Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand said that the government strongly believes that Nepal’s territory should not be allowed to be used against any friendly nation. Airing his views in a meeting of the House of Representatives, Khand said: “Nepal is not connected with the SPP. No decision has been made towards this end. It has not imagined proceeding towards that end either.”
Nepal Backs Away From US State Partnership Program
Suspicious about the military content and wary of antagonizing China, Nepal rejects a U.S. disaster mitigation program.
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Fearing that the U.S. State Partnership Program (SPP) is a trap to involve Nepal in an anti-China military alliance, the Sher Bahadur Deuba government has rejected the program.
The Deuba government – like predecessor governments in 2015, 2017 and 2019 – was initially impressed with the SPP for its disaster mitigation content, but it had to reject the partnership in the end, because the mood in Nepal is unambiguously against foreign programs that smack of a military alliance.
Nepali governments have generally not wanted any transnational agreements that could jeopardize their delicately balanced relationship between India and the United States on the on hand and China on the other.
Flush with success in convincing the Deuba government to get the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact ratified by the Nepali parliament in February, the U.S. moved to bolster the military dimension to Nepal-U.S. relations by pushing ahead with a pending request from Nepal to join the SPP.
The SPP is a bilateral program that is outwardly peaceful in intent. But it is perceived to have deep-set military objectives with consequences not only for Nepal’s internal security, but also for relations with its two big neighbors, China and India. Critics in Nepal say that joining the SPP would be tantamount to signing onto to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS).
The impact on Sino-Nepal relations would be catastrophic if the SPP leads to stronger Nepal-U.S. military ties. At the same time, India might not be thrilled either. Under the SPP, the Indian Army’s exclusive and unique relationship with the Nepali Army would be diluted, a prospect the conservative Indian top brass cannot reconcile with.
Faced with strident and widespread opposition, Deuba had to swear that he would not sign the SPP pact. The rejection is a setback to U.S. efforts to enlarge its strategic imprint in South Asia bordering China.
What Is the SPP?
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The U.S. Embassy in Nepal has been at pains to change perceptions, highlighting on its website that “The State Partnership Program is not and has not ever been a security or military alliance. The United States is not seeking a military alliance with Nepal.”
The embassy’s official description says that the SPP:
… is an exchange program between an American state’s National Guard and a partner foreign country. The U.S. National Guard domestically supports U.S. first responders in dealing with natural disasters, such as earthquakes, floods, and wildfires.
In the event of natural and other disasters, ranging from hurricanes to earthquakes, floods, and fires, the United States seeks to share and exchange the best practices and capabilities of our National Guards — our first-line responders.
The SPP has existed for over 25 years and includes partnerships with over 90 countries, the majority of which are not in the Indo-Pacific the embassy added.
It also explicitly said, in underlined text, “The United States is not pressuring for an SPP with Nepal. Nepal asked to participate in SPP twice, first in 2015 and again in 2017, and the U.S. accepted Nepal’s request in 2019.”
Critics say that while disaster mitigation is fine, the rub lies elsewhere: The SPP is administered by the National Guard Bureau, guided by State Department foreign policy goals, and executed by each U.S. state’s senior military officer (the state adjutant general) in support of the Department of Defense policy goals.
“Through SPP, the National Guard conducts military-to-military engagements in support of defense security goals but also leverages whole-of-society relationships and capabilities to facilitate broader interagency and corollary engagements spanning military, government, economic and social spheres,” the U.S. National Guard website says.
In other words, the SPP is a multi-purpose vehicle to advance wide-ranging U.S. political and strategic objectives under the overall cloak of humanitarian engagement.
Be that as it may, in October 2015, Nepal applied to join the SPP as it wanted U.S. humanitarian assistance to meet the challenges posed by the April 2015 earthquake. Disaster-prone Nepal requested to join SPP in 2017 and 2019 also.
At that time, the SPP did not attract public attention. This was because there was no requirement for the SPP to get ratification from parliament, unlike in the case of the MCC. What brought the SPP under public scrutiny was a flurry of high-level U.S. diplomatic activity in a short span of time after the ratification of the MCC on February 27. The frenetic U.S. activity made observers wonder if the United States had something up its sleeve.
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High-Level U.S. Visits
Uzra Zeya, U.S. under secretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights and U.S. special coordinator for Tibetan issues, made a highly publicized visit to Nepal in May. She created waves by meeting Tibetan refugees, thereby touching a raw nerve in China and creating tremors in the corridors of power in Kathmandu. She took up the refugees’ undocumented status since 1995 and urged Nepal to give the refugees documentation. To encourage Nepal toward this end, Zeya offered a developmental sop of over $600 million. But her demand is unlikely to be accepted by Nepal because China wants Nepal to send the refugees back to Tibet.
The Commanding General of the U.S. Army Pacific, Gen. Charles A. Flynn, was the next to visit Kathmandu, adding grist to the anti-SPP mill. He had apparently urged Deuba and General Prabhu Ram Sharma, chief of staff of the Nepal Army, to put Nepal in the SPP.
The U.S. Embassy in Nepal admitted that “General Flynn did briefly discuss the State Partnership Program with his interlocuters” but said the main purpose of the trip was “to discuss the long U.S.-Nepal partnership on humanitarian assistance and disaster management.”
Worried about Nepal coming under more pressure from the United States, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Hou Yanqi called on Nepal’s home minister, ostensibly to get confirmation of Nepal’s continued adherence to the “One China” policy. But sources said that the SPP was the envoy’s main concern. Nepal’s condemnation of Russia for its aggression in Ukraine had made Beijing suspicious about growing links between the Deuba and the Biden regimes.
Sources say that India was not in support of the SPP either, as it feels that the U.S. advances would unsettle the traditional special relationship between the Indian and Nepali armies.
Nepalis fear that all these moves would have a negative impact on Nepal’s balanced foreign relations, marked by equidistance from India, U.S., and China.
An Alleged Agreement Highlighting Military Content
Meanwhile, a document purporting to be an “agreement” between Nepal and the United States on the SPP emerged and went viral in the media. The alleged agreement had strong military content, including joint Nepal-U.S. army training and fellowships for Nepali officers to train in U.S. academies. It said that the U.S. National Guard and U.S. contractors, related vehicles, and light aircraft operated by or for the United States, may use agreed facilities and areas for training, transit, support and related activities, refueling, temporary maintenance of vehicles and aircraft, accommodation of personnel, their dependents, communications, staging, deploying of forces and material. That played into existing concerns about the SPP as a de facto military alliance.
The U.S. embassy promptly stated that the document was a fake, adding, “There is no ‘agreement’ to sign. That is false.” The Nepali government too said that there has never been an agreement. The government’s line was that while the SPP had indicated its readiness to admit Nepal, there has been no follow-up.
Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand said that the government strongly believes that Nepal’s territory should not be allowed to be used against any friendly nation. Airing his views in a meeting of the House of Representatives, Khand said: “Nepal is not connected with the SPP. No decision has been made towards this end. It has not imagined proceeding towards that end either.”
Comparing SPP with the MCC, Khand said: “We consider and recognize the MCC as a pure development project and not a military project. It was endorsed by all.”
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Deuba is to visit the U.S. in mid-July. But if Washington expected to officially mark Nepal’s entry into the SPP on that occasion, it will be disappointed. Deuba has to face tough parliamentary elections in November this year and cannot afford to take such a controversial step.
12. Congress Should Help End UN’s Latest Anti-Israel Waste of Funds
Excerpts:
The March 2022 bipartisan letter from sixty-eight senators urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prioritize “leading a multinational effort” to “end” the COI. The letter noted that “[b]y unfairly singling out Israel, the UNHRC undermines its credibility to investigate human rights violations around the world.”
Congress should put teeth in the senators’ request. UNHRC activities are funded by the UN regular budget, 22 percent of which is contributed by the United States.
U.S. law already reduces America’s contribution to the UN by the U.S. share of the budget of other anti-Israel UN bodies. Congress should amend U.S. law to similarly reduce the American contribution by the amount of the U.S. share of the COI budget.
With the UN budget in crisis, stretched by coronavirus and by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is even more irresponsible than usual to waste precious UN resources on the COI or any other Israel bashing exercise. The COI’s unbalanced first report discredited the UN and contributed nothing to the cause of peace. Congress and the Biden administration should work together with U.S. allies to end the COI before it causes even greater harm.
Congress Should Help End UN’s Latest Anti-Israel Waste of Funds
With the UN budget in crisis, it is even more irresponsible than usual to waste precious UN resources on the commission of inquiry or any other Israel bashing exercise.
U.S. ambassador Michele Taylor led twenty-two United Nations (UN) member nations Monday in blasting the recently established UN Commission of Inquiry into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (COI). The COI last week issued a first report which was biased, inaccurate, and designed to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and to defend its citizens against terrorism.
In a stark signal that key allies are tired of the UN expending scarce resources on unjustified Israel-bashing, the twenty-two countries—including Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—denounced the COI as exemplifying “the long-standing, disproportionate attention given to Israel” by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which created the COI. The joint statement said this disproportionate focus on Israel “must stop.”
The Biden administration criticized the COI and its report for “a one-sided, biased approach that does nothing to advance the prospects for peace.” In March, a bipartisan letter from sixty-eight U.S. senators slammed the COI as “wasteful” and “likely to further fuel antisemitism worldwide,” and urged the administration to spearhead ending it.
Congress should now help the administration and these allies to stop the COI before it causes further harm to the peace process, Israel, and UN institutions whose credibility and resources are needed to address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s grave abuses of the international system, and other top global priorities.
The COI’s chair is Navi Pillay, whose prior record on Israel was so one-sided that the Obama administration had blocked her from being renewed for another UN post. Pillay has wrongly accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid and called for imposing an arms embargo and other sanctions on it. The two other commissioners have similarly egregious records of anti-Israel bias.
Unlike prior UNHRC commissions of inquiry, which examined specific Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the West Bank and Gaza, this COI was created to exist in perpetuity; is mandated to search for violations in pre-1967 Israel as well as the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem; and appears designed to falsely conclude that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid.
COI Report Unfairly Blames Israel for the Conflict
This first COI report recaps the UN’s myriad past Israel-focused resolutions and analyses. It is a sad reminder of how much UN time and money has been wasted on obsessively and unfairly bashing Israel.
The UNHRC is a particularly egregious Israel-basher. Since its creation, the UNHRC has adopted more resolutions condemning Israel—a robust democracy rated “Free” by Freedom House—than every other country in the world combined. The many UNHRC members with far worse human rights records spotlight Israel because it distracts attention from their own abuses. For example, the UNHRC has adopted zero resolutions on the gross human rights abuses in China, a perennial council member.
The COI report blames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict entirely on Israel. It whitewashes Palestinian terrorism, disregards Israel’s need and right to protect its citizens, omits Israel’s diligent compliance with the law of armed conflict, and ignores Hamas and Iran’s continued genocidal threats.
The report also ignores that Israel has repeatedly offered—in exchange for peace—a Palestinian state in up to 94 percent of the West Bank. Contrary to the COI report, it is Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism, not Israel’s exercise of its right of self-defense, that is the root cause of the conflict.
Report Lays Groundwork for Apartheid Accusation
The report surprised some analysts by not explicitly making the newly-in-vogue false accusation that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. This accusation seemed likely because the COI’s mandate includes language spuriously redefining that crime to include Israel, and Pillay made that accusation herself prior to becoming COI chair.
The facts in Israel and the territories don’t fit either the actual international law definitions of apartheid or even the COI mandate’s false definition of it. Accusing Israel of apartheid would be tantamount to resurrecting the infamous UN General Assembly resolution—passed in 1975 and rescinded in 1991—that falsely asserted that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
The COI report repeatedly references its mandate’s spurious definition of apartheid and features false “evidence” of Israeli violations. It simply refrains for now from connecting its own dishonest dots. Given the COI’s mandate, its commissioners’ past statements, and this first report’s groundwork, the COI seems likely to make the apartheid charge in a future report, perhaps as soon as October.
What the United States Should Do
The Biden administration has repeatedly opposed the COI. At the UN in December, the United States voted for an Israeli motion to entirely defund the COI. The United States and its allies succeeded in cutting the COI’s budget by 25 percent. U.S. ambassador Patrick Kennedy said the “United States will continue to oppose this COI and look for opportunities” to “revisit its mandate” and “persuade more Member States that it is inherently biased and an obstacle to the cause of peace.”
The March 2022 bipartisan letter from sixty-eight senators urged Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prioritize “leading a multinational effort” to “end” the COI. The letter noted that “[b]y unfairly singling out Israel, the UNHRC undermines its credibility to investigate human rights violations around the world.”
Congress should put teeth in the senators’ request. UNHRC activities are funded by the UN regular budget, 22 percent of which is contributed by the United States.
U.S. law already reduces America’s contribution to the UN by the U.S. share of the budget of other anti-Israel UN bodies. Congress should amend U.S. law to similarly reduce the American contribution by the amount of the U.S. share of the COI budget.
With the UN budget in crisis, stretched by coronavirus and by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it is even more irresponsible than usual to waste precious UN resources on the COI or any other Israel bashing exercise. The COI’s unbalanced first report discredited the UN and contributed nothing to the cause of peace. Congress and the Biden administration should work together with U.S. allies to end the COI before it causes even greater harm.
Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and law professor at Arizona State University, is a former U.S. State Department attorney.
Image: Reuters.
13. The AP Interview: Estonian PM says don't play down Russia
We should pay attention to the PM.
The AP Interview: Estonian PM says don't play down Russia
AP · by DASHA LITVINOVA and HARRIET MORRIS · June 23, 2022
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas has told The Associated Press that the West shouldn’t underestimate Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine, saying Moscow is in it for the long haul as the war enters its fifth month.
Kallas said in an interview Wednesday that Europe should ensure that those committing war crimes and attempted genocide are prosecuted, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin escaped punishment for annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and supporting an insurgency in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that killed over 14,000 people even before this year’s war began.
“I’ve heard talks that, you know, there is no threat anymore because they have exhausted themselves. No, they haven’t,” she said of the Russian military, which failed to take Kyiv in the early stages of the war and is now concentrating its firepower in the east.
“They have plenty of troops still who can come (to fight) — They are not counting the lives that they are losing. They are not counting the artillery that they are losing there. So I don’t think that we should underestimate them in the longer term to still keep this up,” Kallas said, despite the low morale and corruption troubling Moscow’s forces.
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Kallas praised the unity that Europe has shown in punishing Russia for the invasion that began Feb. 24, even though she said it was clear from the beginning that it would be “more and more difficult over time” to hang together.
“First, we did the sanctions that were relatively easy. Now we move to sanctions that are much more difficult. But so far, we have managed to get the unity, even if we have different opinions,” she said in the interview in Stenbock House, a government building where she has her office and holds Cabinet meetings..
“This is normal for democracy. We debate, we discuss, and then we get to the solution. So far, it has been a negative surprise to Putin that we are still united,” Kallas said.
Some countries “were very skeptical two months ago,” Kallas said, but now there are “different signals coming from different member states ... that they are on board.”
Estonia, which shares a 294-kilometer (about 180-mile) border with Russia, has taken a hard-line stance over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kallas has criticized other European leaders for talking to Putin and has advocated for isolating Moscow completely, leaving the decision on how to end the war up to Ukraine.
As the war has dragged on, some in the West have suggested reaching a negotiated peace deal with Russia — even if it meant that Ukraine would give up territory. Kallas has warned against it.
In her comments to the AP, she pointed out that this is exactly what happened after Moscow annexed Crimea, backed the separatists in the industrial Donbas and seized territory in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
“For us, it is important to not make that mistake again like we did in Crimea, Donbas, Georgia,” she said. “We have done the same mistake already three times saying that, you know, negotiations, negotiated peace is the goal. ... The only thing that Putin hears from this is that ‘I can do this because no punishment will follow.’
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“And every time, every next time will be with more human suffering than the last one was,” she added.
In Ukraine, those committing war crimes and “conducting or trying to conduct genocide” should be prosecuted.
Sanctions against Russia will take effect over time, she said, and one just needs to have “strategic patience.”
Kallas defended criticism that the sanctions appear to hurt ordinary Russians while failing to deter Putin so far.
“And I still think that, you know, the effects should be felt by the Russian population as well, because if you look, the support for Putin is very high,” she said.
Kallas added that Russian soldiers are bragging about war crimes they commit “to their wives and to their mothers. And if the wives and mothers say that ‘This is OK what you are doing there’ ... I mean, this is also the war that Russia and Russian people are holding up in Ukraine,” she said.
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On the domestic front, the 45-year-old Kallas is fighting for her political future as Estonia’s two-party government led by her center-right Reform Party fell apart early June as she kicked out junior partner Center Party following disputes over welfare and spending issues amid rampant inflation in the Baltic nation.
Earlier this month, Kallas who has led the Reform Party since 2018 and became Estonia’s first female prime minister in January 2021, started coalition talks with two other parties and they are expected to reach a coalition deal by early July.
If not, Kallas will face the grim prospect of governing a weak one-party minority government until the next general election scheduled for March.
___
Jari Tanner contributed to this report from Helsinki.
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AP · by DASHA LITVINOVA and HARRIET MORRIS · June 23, 2022
14. The arrival of Western weapons begins to reshape the battle off Ukraine’s coast.
Can the Ukrainians be successful with advanced western weapons? I am sure they will not be without them.
The arrival of Western weapons begins to reshape the battle off Ukraine’s coast.
Ukrainian weapons hit Snake Island, off the coast of Odesa, as well as a former natural gas rig where Russian forces had placed radio-jamming equipment, a former top defense official said.Credit...Maxar Technologies/Via Reuters
- June 22, 2022Updated 3:03 p.m. ET
KYIV, Ukraine — As Ukrainian forces launch a renewed assault on Snake Island in the Black Sea, recent strikes suggest that they are using powerful Western anti-ship weapons in an effort to undermine Russian naval domination.
The Ukrainian military’s southern command said late on Tuesday that it was using “various forces and methods of destruction” to attack Russian infrastructure on Snake Island, a speck of land south of Odesa that is critical to efforts to control the Black Sea. On Wednesday morning, the military said it had destroyed a Russian air defense system, radar installation and vehicles on the island.
Russia’s defense ministry said it had thwarted the attack, which it said had featured 15 drones and long-range missiles, and was intended to land Ukrainian soldiers on the island. “The unsuccessful fire attack forced the enemy to abandon the landing to Snake Island,” the Russian military said.
The Russians said that “after being convinced that the attempt to seize the island had failed,” the Ukrainians had used long-range anti-ship missiles and drones to attack Russian gas infrastructure facilities in the northwestern part of the Black Sea.
The details of the battle offered by the two sides could not immediately be verified. But Ukrainian officials defended the targeting of Russian offshore drilling infrastructure, saying that Moscow was converting its drilling platforms to military installations by installing high-tech surveillance and communications systems on the rigs.
Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine War
The current round of fighting around Snake Island appeared to kick off on Friday, when the Ukrainians struck a Russian naval tugboat as it was on a mission to deliver weapons and personnel to the island.
On Tuesday, the British military’s intelligence agency said that Ukraine had “almost certainly” used newly delivered Harpoon missiles in the attack — their first demonstrated use. Ukrainian coastal defense capabilities have now “largely neutralized” Russia’s ability to project maritime force in the northwestern Black Sea, the British analysis said.
A photo distributed on Monday by Ukrainian forces showed a fire burning at a food warehouse in Odesa.Credit...Ukraine Forces Of Southern Ukraine/Via Reuters
Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, said that Ukrainian weapons had hit a former natural-gas rig on Monday where Russian forces had placed radio-jamming equipment, blocking Ukraine from getting an accurate picture of the area. Mr. Zagorodnyuk said the strikes might be an indication that important naval weapons Ukraine has been seeking from its Western allies had arrived.
The Russians said that the Ukrainian attack on the drilling rig had resulted in an intensive fire and could lead to “an environmental disaster.”
The strikes at sea come amid an intensification of bombardment across southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has reported more than two dozen Russian missile attacks in recent days. Serhii Bratchuk, the spokesman for the Odesa regional military administration, said a Russian missile barrage on Odesa on Monday had struck targets including a food warehouse and a cemetery.
As both sides duel in the Black Sea, the world is wrestling with a global food crisis caused by a Russian naval blockade that is keeping Ukrainian ships from leaving port with millions of tons of grain.
Snake Island — which covers just 46 acres of rocks and grass — is vital to both the Ukrainians and the Russians. If the Russians have control of the island, a little over 20 miles miles off the coast, they can control shipping lanes in the northwestern corner of the Black Sea.
After a series of attacks in May by Ukrainian forces in and around Snake Island, Russia has reinforced its outpost there with multiple surface-to-air rocket systems, according to satellite imagery and Ukrainian officials.
Mr. Bratchuk said the Russians were trying to turn the garrison on the island into “something that could be the analogue of the warship Moskva.” The Ukrainians sank the Moskva, the flagship on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, in April. Although at that time Ukraine had a handful of domestically made anti-ship missiles, called Neptunes, powerful Harpoon systems appear now to be arriving in the country from the West.
15. Many Russian Cyberattacks Failed in First Months of Ukraine War, Study Says
Ukraine defense: Lucky or good? Or is Russia not as good as we thought? I hope the defenders were good. And I hope we can all learn from the success. But we must anticipate how the Russians (and others) will adapt.
Many Russian Cyberattacks Failed in First Months of Ukraine War, Study Says
June 22, 2022
A report published by Microsoft also found that Moscow’s disinformation campaign to establish a narrative of the war favorable to Russia was doing better than expected.
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The Microsft account of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns by Vladimir V. Putin’s government showed that only 29 percent breached the targeted networks.Credit...Pool photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko
June 22, 2022, 7:19 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — A new examination of how Russia used its cybercapabilities in the first months of the war in Ukraine contains a number of surprises: Moscow conducted more cyberattacks than was realized at the time to bolster its invasion, but more than two-thirds of them failed, echoing its poor performance on the physical battlefield.
However, the study, published by Microsoft on Wednesday, suggested that the government of President Vladimir V. Putin was succeeding more than many expected with its disinformation campaign to establish a narrative of the war favorable to Russia, including making the case that the United States was secretly producing biological weapons inside Ukraine.
The report is the latest effort by many groups, including American intelligence agencies, to understand the interaction of a brutal physical war with a parallel — and often coordinated — struggle in cyberspace. It indicated that Ukraine was well prepared to fend off cyberattacks, after having endured them for many years. That was at least in part because of a well-established system of warnings from private-sector companies, including Microsoft and Google, and preparations that included moving much of Ukraine’s most important systems to the cloud, onto servers outside Ukraine.
The account of Russia’s cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns showed that only 29 percent of the attacks breached the targeted networks — in Ukraine, the United States, Poland and the Baltic nations. But it points to a more successful effort underway to dominate the information war, in which Russia has blamed Washington and Kyiv for starting the conflict that is now raging in Ukraine’s east and south.
The war is the first full-scale battle in which traditional and cyberweapons have been used side by side, and the race is on to explore the never-before-seen dynamic between the two. So far, very little of that dynamic has developed as expected.
Initially, analysts and government officials were struck by the absence of crippling Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid and communications systems. In April, President Biden’s national cyberdirector, Chris Inglis, said “the question of the moment” was why Russia had not made “a very significant play of cyber, at least against NATO and the United States.” He speculated that the Russians thought they were headed to quick victory in February but “were distracted” when the war effort ran into obstacles.
The Microsoft report said that Russia had attempted a major cyberattacks on Feb. 23, the day before the physical invasion. That attack, using malware called FoxBlade, was an attempt to use “wiper” software that wiped out data on government networks. At roughly the same time, Russia attacked the Viasat satellite communications network, hoping to cripple the Ukrainian military.
“We were, I think, among the first to witness the first shots that were fired on the 23rd of February,” said Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft.
“It has been a formidable, intensive, even ferocious set of attacks, attacks that started with one form of wiper software, attacks that are really being coordinated from different parts of the Russian government,” he added on Wednesday at a forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute in Washington.
But many of the attacks were thwarted, or there was enough redundancy built into the Ukrainian networks that the efforts did little damage. The result, Mr. Smith said, is that the attacks have been underreported.
In many instances, Russia coordinated its use of cyberweapons with conventional attacks, including taking down the computer network of a nuclear power plant before moving in its troops to take it over, Mr. Smith said. Microsoft officials declined to identify which plant Mr. Smith was referring to.
While much of Russia’s cyberactivity has focused on Ukraine, Microsoft has detected 128 network intrusions in 42 countries. Of the 29 percent of Russian attacks that have successfully penetrated a network, Microsoft concluded, only a quarter of those resulted in data being stolen.
Outside Ukraine, Russia has concentrated its attacks on the United States, Poland and two aspiring members of NATO, Sweden and Finland. Other alliance members were also targeted, especially as they began to supply Ukraine with more arms. Those breaches, though, have been limited to surveillance — indicating that Moscow is trying to avoid bringing NATO nations directly into the fight through cyberattacks, much as it is refraining from physical attacks on those countries.
But Microsoft, other technology companies and government officials have said that Russia has paired those infiltration attempts with a broad effort to deliver propaganda around the world.
Microsoft tracked the growth in consumption of Russian propaganda in the United States in the first weeks of the year. It peaked at 82 percent right before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, with 60 million to 80 million monthly page views. That figure, Microsoft said, rivaled page views on the biggest traditional media sites in the United States.
One example Mr. Smith cited was that of Russian propaganda inside Russia pushing its citizens to get vaccinated, while its English-language messaging spread anti-vaccine content.
Microsoft also tracked the rise in Russian propaganda in Canada in the weeks before a trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates tried to shut down Ottawa, and that in New Zealand before protests there against public health measures meant to fight the pandemic.
“It’s not a case of consumption following the news; it’s not even a case of an amplification effort following the news,” Mr. Smith said. “But I think it’s fair to say it’s a case not only of this amplification preceding the news, but quite possibly trying to make and influence the creation of the news of the day itself.”
Senator Angus King, independent of Maine and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that while private companies can track Russian efforts to spread disinformation inside the United States, American intelligence agencies are limited by laws that prevent them from peering inside American networks.
“There is a gap, and I think the Russians are aware of that, and it enabled them to exploit an opening in our system,” said Mr. King, who also spoke at the Reagan Institute.
A provision in this year’s defense policy bill being considered by Congress would require the National Security Agency and its military cousin, United States Cyber Command, to report to Congress every two years about election security, including efforts by Russia and other foreign powers to influence Americans.
“Ultimately, the best defense is for our own people to be better consumers of information,” Mr. King said. “We’ve got to do a better job of educating people to be better consumers of information. I call it digital literacy. And we’ve got to teach kids in the fourth and fifth grade how to distinguish a fake website from a real website.”
16. Pentagon Pressed to Review How It Judges an Ally’s Will to Fight
Spoiler alert: we probably cannot fully assess our own will to fight. We just assume as an article of faith that we will always have the will to fight.
But this is probably the most difficult thing to measure and understand and it takes a deep understanding of the nature, culture, symptoms, history, and traditions of a nation. And then it will only be an assessment.
Pentagon Pressed to Review How It Judges an Ally’s Will to Fight
Lawmakers say the U.S. government failed to provide accurate assessments amid the conflicts in Ukraine and Afghanistan.
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Defense officials have acknowledged that they misjudged the Ukrainian military’s ability to stand up against Russian invaders.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
By
June 22, 2022, 6:32 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — Congress is poised to force the Pentagon to study how it assesses allies’ will to fight, amid criticism from lawmakers that the U.S. government has regularly failed to make such assessments accurately.
A provision approved for inclusion in the Senate version of the annual defense policy bill would mandate a study by the Defense Department of how it judges the willingness of foreign militaries to fight their enemies.
In Afghanistan, some U.S. officials thought the Afghan military could hold together and continue to fight the Taliban after the American withdrawal. In Ukraine, U.S. officials initially forecast that the Russians would take Kyiv, the capital, within a few days. Both predictions were wrong.
While the Pentagon has acknowledged problems with its assessment of Afghanistan’s military, it has pushed back against accusations that it misjudged Ukraine. Intelligence officials have said errors in predicting the course of the Russian invasion were more a matter of overestimating the Russians than underestimating the Ukrainians.
Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who pushed for the provision to be included in the annual bill, said that the Pentagon and intelligence agencies had made errors in judging an ally’s willingness to fight, but that such assessments are far more difficult, and more subjective, than counting up tanks.
Better Understand the Russia-Ukraine War
“I am not naïve enough to think that this is easy or straightforward,” Mr. King said. “What I do believe is it’s damned important and that we have to do a better job. Within one year we had two pretty straight up failures in the opposite direction.”
Lawmakers from both parties have echoed Mr. King’s views, but a Pentagon spokesman disputed the contention that the Ukrainians had been underestimated.
“The Department respectfully rejects the notion that there was any doubt about Ukraine’s will to fight,” said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Anton T. Semelroth, a Defense Department spokesman. “It remains inspiring to see the courage and bravery of the Ukrainian people as they stand up against Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion.”
In a hearing before the Senate Arms Services Committee in May, Mr. King argued with Lt. Gen. Scott D. Berrier, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, over whether the Pentagon had misjudged the capacity of the Ukrainians and the Russian forces rather than the will of the Ukrainian military.
The Pentagon, Mr. King said on Wednesday, needs to study what went wrong, where misjudgments were made and whether there is a better way to make predictions. The provision would require that the report be completed by next April. Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, has begun a review of how American spy agencies assessed the Ukrainian and Afghan militaries.
The studies are important, Mr. King said, because had better predictions been made about the resiliency of the Afghan forces, the military withdrawal from Afghanistan might have been done differently. Had the United States predicted how successfully Ukraine would fight, the government might have moved more equipment there faster.
“Intelligence is often shaped by perception of the viewer, of the listener,” Mr. King said. “And the challenge is for policymakers to have unvarnished, clear intelligence, even though it may contradict their policy preference.”
In the case of Afghanistan, Mr. King said intelligence briefers had been far more cleareyed than the Pentagon about the Afghan military’s problems. The can-do attitude of the U.S. military, Mr. King said, appeared to interfere with accurate predictions.
Pentagon officials declined to comment on the provision, which has not yet been voted on by the full Senate. The defense policy bill has been passed every year, though final approval usually comes at its end.
While Pentagon officials and lawmakers disagree about why predictions of the Russian advance were off, they agree that a review of the Afghan war assessments is needed. The military, officials said, is committed to better understanding what went wrong in Afghanistan and where the Pentagon erred in its predictions.
“The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces’ lack of a will to fight overwhelmingly contributed to their ultimate collapse,” said Army Maj. Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman. “They had the people. They had the equipment. They had the training. They had the support.”
Major Lodewick said that while the Afghan forces had struggled with corruption and desertions, the Pentagon had planned to continue to support them on logistics and maintenance from outside Afghanistan after the withdrawal.
“Long-term commitments such as these, however, can only accomplish so much if beneficiary forces are not willing to stand and fight,” Major Lodewick said. “One needs only to look at the current situation in Ukraine for an example of what an equipped, trained and resilient force is capable of achieving.”
17. Heavily-armed Finland fires warning to Vladimir Putin as nation vows to FIGHT if attacked
Excerpts:
Once a non-aligned country, it is now applying to join the NATO military alliance over concerns that
Russia could invade like it did Ukraine on February 24.
Since World War Two, Helsinki has kept up a high level of military preparedness.
"We have systematically developed our military defence precisely for this type of warfare that is being waged there (in Ukraine), with a massive use of firepower, armoured forces and also airforces," Kivinen said.
"Ukraine has been a tough bite to chew (for Russia) and so would be Finland."
Heavily-armed Finland fires warning to Vladimir Putin as nation vows to FIGHT if attacked
Mirror · by Anne Kauranen · June 22, 2022
The Nordic country has built up a substantial arsenal. But aside from the military hardware, General Timo Kivinen said, a crucial factor is that Finns would be motivated to fight.
"The most important line of defence is between one's ears, as the war in Ukraine proves at the moment," Kivinen said in an interview.
Finland fought two wars in the 1940s against its eastern neighbour, with which it shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border.
Once a non-aligned country, it is now applying to join the NATO military alliance over concerns that Russia could invade like it did Ukraine on February 24.
Since World War Two, Helsinki has kept up a high level of military preparedness.
"We have systematically developed our military defence precisely for this type of warfare that is being waged there (in Ukraine), with a massive use of firepower, armoured forces and also airforces," Kivinen said.
"Ukraine has been a tough bite to chew (for Russia) and so would be Finland."
Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin (left) and President Sauli Niinist give a press conference to announce that Finland will apply for NATO membership (
Image:
Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images)
Some 100,000 Finns were killed during the two wars Finland fought against the Soviet Union and it lost a tenth of its territory.
The nation of 5.5 million has a wartime troop strength of some 280,000 with 870,000 trained as reservists. It did not abolish military conscription for males as many other western nations did after the end of the Cold War.
Finnish soldiers seen during military drills in Finland at the start of May (
Image:
Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images)
It has also built one of Europe's strongest artilleries and has stocked up on cruise missiles with a range of up to 370 km (230 miles). It spends 2% of its GDP on defence, a level higher than many NATO countries.
It is ordering four new warships, as well as 64 F-35 fighter jets from U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin.
Finnish army soldiers talk during Lightning Strike 22 exercise on May 23 (
Image:
REUTERS)
It plans to order up to 2,000 drones, its own high altitude anti-aircraft equipment and is building barriers on its border with Russia.
Some 82% of respondents in a May 18 poll by the defence ministry said they would be willing to participate in national defence if Finland was attacked.
Still, Kivinen welcomed Finland's decision to apply to join NATO. Finland and fellow Nordic country Sweden are in talks with Turkey to discuss the latter's opposition to their applications.
Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu attend a wreath-laying ceremony marking the anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany (
Image:
via REUTERS)
Ankara has been angered by what it says is Helsinki and Stockholm's support for Kurdish militants and arms embargoes on Turkey.
NATO membership would allow Finland to boost its early warning capacity by being part of the alliance's joint airspace control, Kivinen said.
Finland would also benefit from the deterrence of being part of an alliance in which an attack on one member is an attack on
all its members, he said.
Nevertheless, he said, "the main responsibility for Finland's defence will still be borne by Finland".
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Mirror · by Anne Kauranen · June 22, 2022
18. Goat Injures Scores Of Russian Soldiers After Triggering Tripwire Connected To Ring Of Grenades
GGOAT? Greatest Goat of All Time? In the weird news category?
Goat Injures Scores Of Russian Soldiers After Triggering Tripwire Connected To Ring Of Grenades
Jayden Collins
Published 1:20, 23 June 2022 BST
| Last updated 1:20, 23 June 2022 BST
Russian forces have faced their toughest challenge yet: a heroic goat.
A goat situated in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region has accidentally triggered a series of tripwires set by the Russian military and inadvertently injured them with their own pinned grenades.
Ukrainian media outlet Pravda reported, via Ukraine’s Chief Intelligence Directorate, that a total of 40 Russian invaders had been injured at a medical institution in Kinski Rozdory.
The military personnel had installed pinned grenades and placed tripwires around the perimeter of the hospital in a ‘circular defence’.
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Credit: Abaca Press / Alamy
A decision they most certainly regretted.
The goat moved around the area and ‘disposed of’ several grenades, which triggered a chain reaction and wounded the soldiers to varying degrees.
This begs the question of whether the goat was an undercover member of the Ukrainian military?
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According to Smithsonian Mag, goats are highly intelligent and inquisitive by nature, so perhaps the goat knew what it was doing.
Unfortunately, it is unclear whether the brave goat survived, however, we are sure he will live on in the memories of all Ukrainians just as the Snake Island heroes have.
A defiant group of Ukrainian soldiers who were defending the island off the coast of Ukraine from a Russian warship famously told the Russian soldiers to 'go f**k yourself'.
Animals have been as steadfast as the Ukrainian people in their resistance to the Russian invasion, with help coming in all forms and sizes.
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Last month Patron, a pint-sized Jack Russel terrier, was recognised for detecting more than 200 explosives during the invasion.
Parton was honoured for his bravery by President Zelenskyy at a news conference in Kyiv with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Zelenskyy said in a statement: “I want to award those Ukrainian heroes who are already clearing our land of mines.
“And together with our heroes, a wonderful little sapper - Patron - who helps not only to neutralise explosives but also to teach our children the necessary safety rules in areas where there is a mine threat.”
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Patron the dog keeps working hard — just yesterday, he helped defuse 262 items of explosive ordnance near #Chernihiv. We are very proud of our very good boy. pic.twitter.com/hw4zyA8S9R
— Stratcom Centre UA (@StratcomCentre) May 1, 2022
As of tomorrow (June 24), the attempted Russian occupation of Ukraine will have raged on for four months.
The Ukrainian people and forces have been valiant in fighting off their invaders.
According to the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, Russia has suffered 34,100 personnel losses, and Ukraine has destroyed 1,496 tanks and 3,606 Armour Protected Vehicles.
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Meanwhile, Russian forces have succumbed to one inquisitive goat.
Featured Image Credit: mauritius images GmbH / Alamy. ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy.
Jayden Collins
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19. Poland Has Had It With Russia
And they are not happy with President Biden either.
Poland Has Had It With Russia
The ratings are out: And Biden falls alongside Putin.
Russians in Poland protest
Members of the Russian diaspora hold banners and shout slogans against Putin's war on Ukraine in Krakow, Poland, on March 20. Omar Marques/Getty Images
Almost all Poles say they see Russia as a major threat, according to a report released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Some 97 percent of Poles also say they have little or no confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin “to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now reaching its four-month mark, has accelerated a dramatic shift in attitudes in Poland—specifically toward NATO, the European Union, and the issue of immigration.
“That’s incredibly rare to get that kind of unified public opinion on one issue,” Jacob Poushter, associate director of global attitudes research at Pew, told Foreign Policy. “And in this case, it’s just very clear that people in Poland are very wary of Russia.”
Poland and Ukraine have had fraught relations dating back to World War II, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced many Poles and Ukrainians to reconcile: 84 percent of Poles now support arming Ukraine through NATO, and three-quarters of people in Poland want Ukraine to become a NATO member—a significant increase in support since 2015, the year following the Russian annexation of Crimea. The Eastern European country, once a part of the Soviet bloc, has now become a strategic hub for transporting military equipment to Ukrainian forces.
Almost all Poles say they see Russia as a major threat, according to a report released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Some 97 percent of Poles also say they have little or no confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin “to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now reaching its four-month mark, has accelerated a dramatic shift in attitudes in Poland—specifically toward NATO, the European Union, and the issue of immigration.
“That’s incredibly rare to get that kind of unified public opinion on one issue,” Jacob Poushter, associate director of global attitudes research at Pew, told Foreign Policy. “And in this case, it’s just very clear that people in Poland are very wary of Russia.”
Poland and Ukraine have had fraught relations dating back to World War II, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced many Poles and Ukrainians to reconcile: 84 percent of Poles now support arming Ukraine through NATO, and three-quarters of people in Poland want Ukraine to become a NATO member—a significant increase in support since 2015, the year following the Russian annexation of Crimea. The Eastern European country, once a part of the Soviet bloc, has now become a strategic hub for transporting military equipment to Ukrainian forces.
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People, mainly women and children, arrive in Przemysl, Poland on a train from wartorn Ukraine on March 28.
The heaviest burden of accommodating fleeing Ukrainians has fallen on the state least prepared to carry it.
But it’s not just Poland that has seen significant shifts in public opinion since the Russia-Ukraine war began. Other countries including Sweden and Israel have also observed changes in public sentiment on the topics of the NATO alliance and confidence in the U.S. president, respectively.
Pew surveyed people’s attitudes from mid-February to mid-May in 17 countries: Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Israel, Australia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and South Korea. It also surveyed respondents in the United States regarding views on Russia and NATO in mid-March.
In Europe, several NATO member countries have a significantly higher view of the security alliance this year than last, the report finds. Sixty-five percent of respondents in NATO member countries said they have a favorable opinion of the alliance. Notably, for nonmember Sweden, which is on track to become a member along with historically neutral Finland, approval of the alliance is at an all-time high.
“Changing one’s identity is clearly harder than changing a geopolitical stance,” Foreign Policy columnist Elisabeth Braw wrote on the Nordic countries’ previous refusal to join the alliance. As recently as mid-February, the Swedish government maintained that it would not apply for NATO membership. But the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine changed all that.
Swedish attitudes toward NATO in the weeks immediately after Russia’s invasion in February were already high, with 77 percent of Swedes surveyed having a favorable view of NATO, but they jumped even more in favor of the security alliance within weeks, Poushter said, rising to 84 percent by early April.
Since February, Putin’s war has killed thousands of civilians, caused a global food crisis, and siphoned up billions of dollars in Western weapons—as Ukrainians plead for more. Confidence in Putin across surveyed countries is at rock bottom, with 9 in 10 of all surveyed saying that they do not have confidence in Putin—whom U.S. President Joe Biden has called a “war criminal”—to do the right thing when it comes to world affairs.
But Biden, whose approval rating in the United States has dropped to 39 percent amid rising inflation and soaring domestic gas prices, isn’t so popular with the rest of the world, either.
In almost all of the 14 countries with data for both 2021 and 2022, Biden experienced a dramatic drop in confidence between last year and now, the report found. With the exception of South Korea, Biden saw a double-digit decrease in the percentage of people who have confidence in him as a world leader.
While Biden’s ratings have dropped significantly from 2021 to 2022, people in these countries still view the current U.S. president more favorably than they did his predecessor, former U.S. President Donald Trump. The only country with a lower public opinion of Biden than Trump is Israel, according to the report.
Partisan divisions within the United States have been fodder for the decline in ratings abroad. The Jan. 6, 2022, Capitol insurrection made a particularly strong hit. “America was no longer seen as a democratic ideal,” Poushter said. “A lot of people around the world definitely see the United States as a very partisan place.”
Mary Yang is an intern at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @MaryRanYang
Anusha Rathi is an intern at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @anusharathi_
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
