Quotes of the Day:

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” 

- Isaac Asimov

 "It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory." "The soldier's heart, the soldier's spirit, the soldier's soul, are everything."

 - GOA George C. Marshall

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom...must undergo the fatigue of supporting it.” 

- Thomas Paine

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 16 (Putin's War)

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (16.09.22) CDS comments on key events

3. China Is Running Covert Operations That Could Seriously Overwhelm Us

4. Chinese and Russian militaries share a potential weakness, new US report finds

5. Chinese military top brass mirroring command failures in Russian army

6. New change at the Pentagon waters down focus on Taiwan, critics say

7. Opinion | How to counter today’s tribalism and build ‘a more perfect union’

8. Xi Jinping won’t ditch Vladimir Putin, for now

9. Murderers and sex offenders in Russian prison sent to fight in Ukraine

10. Disinformation via text message is a problem with few answers

11. Clausewitz’s ‘Warlike Element’ and the War in Ukraine

12. Xi Jinping’s coming checkmate of Putin

13. Russia is building a closer alliance with the world’s autocracies – the west should beware

14. ‘Wildfire of disinformation’: how Chevron exploits a news desert

15. A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company

16. Ukraine and "The New Ministry of Truth"

17. Pope Francis Sought To Meet With Xi Jinping, But China Declined

18. TikTok’s C.E.O. Navigates the Limits of His Power

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 16 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-16

Key Takeaways

• The discovery of mass graves and torture chambers in liberated Izyum confirm previous ISW assessments that the Bucha atrocities were emblematic of Russian activities in occupied areas rather than an anomaly.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently threatened to expand Russia’s attacks on civilian Ukrainian infrastructure if Ukraine continues reported attacks on military facilities in Russia.
• The Ukrainian Resistance Center warned that Russian forces may conduct false flag attacks in occupied areas between September 17 and September 20.
• Ukrainian forces captured all of Kupyansk City on September 16, continuing offensive operations east of the Oskil River.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly shelled targets in Valuyki, Belgorod Oblast, Russia, overnight on September 15-16.
• Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s occupation headquarters in Kherson, likely using HIMARS, and are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counteroffensive.
• Russian administrative officials are rallying around Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s call for “self-mobilization” at a local level to provide additional forces to the Russian military.
• Forced Russian mobilization campaigns are likely depleting male populations in parts of the claimed territory of the Russian proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) along the front lines.
• Immediate and coordinated Russian information responses suggest that Ukrainian partisans may not be responsible for the September 16 assassination of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Prosecutor General and his deputy.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 16

Sep 16, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Katherine Lawlor, Grace Mappes, Mason Clark, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 16, 8pm 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.

The revelations of mass graves of civilians and torture chambers in newly liberated Izyum confirm ISW’s previous assessments that the Bucha atrocities were not isolated war crimes but rather a microcosm of Russian atrocities throughout Russian-occupied areas. The Ukrainian General Staff published images on September 16 showing a mass burial site in Izyum, Kharkiv Oblast and noting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the site contained more than 400 bodies showing signs of torture and brutality.[1] The Ukrainian Ministry of Reintegration reported that the number of war crimes victims in Izyum may exceed those of Bucha.[2] The head of Ukraine’s National Police, Ihor Klymenko, stated that Ukrainian officials have found 10 Russian torture chambers in Vovchansk, Kupyansk, Balaklia, and Izyum.[3] One torture chamber was reportedly located in the Balakliya police department, where “Russians wore masks and tortured civilians with bare electric wires,” according to Andriy Nebytov, the head of the National Police Main Directorate in the Kyiv region.[4]

ISW Non-Resident Fellow Nataliya Bugayova had warned in April 2022 that “Bucha is an observable microcosm of a deliberate Russian terror campaign against Ukrainians. Similar intentional atrocities are happening throughout Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine.”[5] Ukrainian officials will likely continue to find evidence of Russian war crimes and atrocities as Ukrainian forces liberate occupied areas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to threaten increased attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure if reported Ukrainian attacks on Russian military positions in Russian Federation territory continue. Putin said that Russia has been “rather restrained in our response” to Ukrainian “terrorist acts [and] attempts to damage our civilian [sic] infrastructure” in a question-and-answer session with reporters following the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting on September 16.[6] He continued “more recently, the Russian armed forces have dealt a couple of sensitive blows” that are “warning shots,” and threatened that more serious attacks could follow. Putin did not explicitly refer to the reported Ukrainian strikes on the base of the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division near Valuyki that occurred on September 16, nor did he make clear which Russian actions he was referring to. But Russian forces have increased attacks on civilian infrastructure throughout Ukraine over the past several weeks as Russian media personalities increase explicit calls for such attacks.[7]

Putin’s comments are likely in part a response to criticism by Russian milbloggers, who attacked the Kremlin for failing to protect Russian territory and for failing to respond adequately. One milblogger asked if the Kremlin still regards Belgorod Oblast as part of Russia, part of the “special military operation” zone, or part of Ukraine.[8] Another blamed the reported Ukrainian attack on Valuyki on the so-called “regrouping” of Russian forces (referring to the initial language the Russian Ministry of Defense used to describe the rout of Russian forces in Kharkiv Oblast) and warned that another “regrouping” could allow Ukrainian forces to attack other critical Russian areas.[9] Putin has increasingly shown a determination to appease the milbloggers and the constituencies they speak to and on behalf of, even at the expense of the uniformed Russian military and the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The Ukrainian Resistance Center warned on September 16 that Russian forces are planning to conduct false flag attacks against civilian population in Russian-occupied Ukraine and urged Ukrainians in occupied areas to avoid public places between September 17 and September 20.[10] The Resistance Center suggested that such false flag attacks could be attempts to “divert the attention of the world community from the defeat in Kharkiv and the discovery of Russian war crimes” in liberated areas.

Correction: ISW's 9/15/2022 update contained several errors. We mistakenly located the Kinburn Spit in Crimea rather than Kherson Oblast. We reported Ukrainian attacks northwest of Kharkiv City rather than Kherson City. And we reported Ukrainian operations continuing southwest of Izyum, near Lyman, instead of southeast of Izyum. We apologize for these errata, which have been corrected in the 9/15 update text.

Key Takeaways

• The discovery of mass graves and torture chambers in liberated Izyum confirm previous ISW assessments that the Bucha atrocities were emblematic of Russian activities in occupied areas rather than an anomaly.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently threatened to expand Russia’s attacks on civilian Ukrainian infrastructure if Ukraine continues reported attacks on military facilities in Russia.
• The Ukrainian Resistance Center warned that Russian forces may conduct false flag attacks in occupied areas between September 17 and September 20.
• Ukrainian forces captured all of Kupyansk City on September 16, continuing offensive operations east of the Oskil River.
• Ukrainian forces reportedly shelled targets in Valuyki, Belgorod Oblast, Russia, overnight on September 15-16.
• Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s occupation headquarters in Kherson, likely using HIMARS, and are continuing ground maneuvers in three areas of Kherson Oblast as part of the ongoing southern counteroffensive.
• Russian administrative officials are rallying around Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s call for “self-mobilization” at a local level to provide additional forces to the Russian military.
• Forced Russian mobilization campaigns are likely depleting male populations in parts of the claimed territory of the Russian proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) along the front lines.
• Immediate and coordinated Russian information responses suggest that Ukrainian partisans may not be responsible for the September 16 assassination of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Prosecutor General and his deputy.

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

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

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

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

Ukrainian forces captured all of Kupyansk City on September 16, continuing offensive operations east of the Oskil River. Russian milbloggers initially reported that Ukrainian forces captured eastern Kupyansk before claiming that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian advances.[11] Geolocated footage confirms that Ukrainian forces established positions on the east bank of the Oskil River in Kupyansk, however.[12] Russian forces will likely struggle to hold positions in eastern Kharkiv Oblast and in northern Luhansk Oblast as Ukrainian forces establish more positions on the east bank of the Oskil River, the line at which Ukrainian forces had halted on September 11. ISW has previously assessed on September 13 that Russian forces are likely too weak to prevent further Ukrainian advances along the entire Oskil River if Ukrainian forces choose to resume offensive operations.[13] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) People’s Militia sources additionally claimed that Ukrainian forces struck Nyzhnia Duvanka (20km north of Svatove, Luhansk Oblast) with HIMARS.[14]

Ukrainian forces reportedly shelled targets in Valuyki, Belgorod Oblast, Russia, overnight on September 15-16. Belgorod Oblast Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov claimed that Ukrainian rounds struck a power substation in central Belgorod, and footage depicts damaged buildings and cars.[15] A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces fired over 20 rounds at Valuyki from positions 20km southwest of the city, which is within Ukrainian tube artillery range.[16] The attack appears to have struck a base of the Russian 3rd Motorized Rifle Division just north of Valuyki.[17] Russian sources posted images of a Tochka-U missile that reportedly struck Valuyki, but the images cannot be geolocated.[18]

Valuyki is situated on a critical Russian rail line to northern Luhansk Oblast. Ukrainian forces have cut Russian Ground Lines of Communication (GLOCs) through Kharkiv Oblast, likely forcing Russian forces to redirect logistics from the large bases and concentration points around Belgorod City through the Valuyki rail line. Sustained damage to this rail line would severely complicate Russian logistics supporting the Russian defense of Luhansk Oblast and eastern Kharkiv Oblast. A Russian source stated that the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 206th Regiment is defending in Russia itself near Valuyki, indicating Russia is deploying proxy forces to screen Russian logistics – and additionally indicating the increasing Russian reliance on proxy forces for tasks even in Russia.[19] Gladkov and other sources stated that Ukrainian forces shelled additional Russian settlements on and near the Kharkiv-Belgorod Oblast border.[20]

Russian forces continued to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in northeastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces shelled Pristyn, northeast of Izyum on the west bank of the Oskil River, likely to prevent Ukrainian forces from establishing another bridgehead over the river.[21] The Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) People’s Milita stated that Russian forces continue to defend Lyman from Ukrainian ground attacks and shelling.[22] Geolocated images from September 15 confirm that Russian forces maintain positions in Lyman.[23] However, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces shelled Lyman, indicating that Ukrainian forces may have made some gains around the settlement.[24]

Ukrainian sources confirmed previous reports that Ukrainian forces struck Russian rear positions in Luhansk Oblast on September 15. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on September 16 that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian concentration area causing many casualties among Russian servicemen in Perevalsk, Luhansk Oblast, likely on September 15.[25] Geolocated images show the aftermath of a Ukrainian strike on a LNR base in Kadiivka, also likely from September 15.[26] ISW reported on Russian claims of a series of Ukrainian strikes in rear Luhansk Oblast, including Perevalsk and Kadiivka, on September 15.[27]

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian military officials are continuing their operational silence regarding the progress of the southern counteroffensive, noting that fighting continued along the southern axis without reporting any territorial changes.[28] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces continued counter-battery fire against Ukrainian positions and attempted to regroup frontline troops.[29] Ukrainian government and local sources reported mounting Russian casualties and the deployment of low-quality Russian units along the Kherson front. Local Russian media in the city of Ufa reported that members of the Shaymuratov volunteer battalion, operating around Mykolayiv, have not communicated with Ufa residents for over a week. The wife of one volunteer stated the Russian Ministry of Defense is not picking up her calls and that recruitment centers only state that the volunteers are abroad.[30]

Ukrainian forces struck Russia’s occupation headquarters in Kherson, likely using HIMARS, on September 16. Local social media reported that five Ukrainian rockets struck the Kherson Administrative Court building, which houses Russia’s occupation administration, and depicted heavy damage.[31] The Russian-appointed deputy head of the Kherson Occupation Administration stated the strike occurred during a meeting of Russian-appointed city and municipal heads.[32] Occupation authorities reported three deaths as of 1550 local time.[33] Kherson Oblast deputy occupation head Kirill Stremousov and several Russian milbloggers reported that Ukraine used HIMARS to conduct the strike.[34] Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast Military Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan confirmed that Ukrainian forces struck Russian occupation authorities on September 16 and destroyed a Rosgvardia base in the city center on an unspecified date, warning civilians in occupied Kherson to stay away from Russian positions.[35] Ukraine’s ongoing interdiction campaign in the Kherson region continues to degrade Russia’s ability to administer occupied territory, in addition to disrupting Russian military logistics.

Ukrainian military officials stated that Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign on September 16, targeting Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) across the Inhulets and Dnipro Rivers and notably disrupting Russian food and water supplies.[36] GUR reported that Ukrainian strikes have cut off Russian troops in Kherson from their food and water supplies, and that an unspecified Russian Air Assault unit based in Kakhovka (in Russian rear areas on the left bank of the river) cannot supply its frontline units.[37] The Ukrainian General Staff claimed that Ukrainian strikes are severely degrading Russian morale.[38] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian missile and artillery units struck Russian concentrations in Beryslav, Darivka, and Stara Zburyvka, as well as a pontoon crossing in the Kozatske Raion.[39]

Ukrainian and Russian sources indicated three areas of kinetic activity on September 16: northwest of Kherson City, near the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets River, and south of the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border west of Vysokopillya. Milbloggers and DNR officials claimed that Russian VDV (airborne) forces repelled a Ukrainian attack near Pravdyne (northwest of Kherson City) on September 16.[40] However, Ukraine’s General Staff reported Russian forces shelled Ukrainian positions in Pravdyne, indicating Ukrainian forces have likely at minimum entered the town.[41] Geolocated footage depicted a DNR military correspondent in Oleksandrivka (directly west of Kherson) on September 16, confirming that Russian forces retain control of the town despite recent Ukrainian assaults.[42] Imagery released by pro-Russian telegram channels confirmed that Russian forces repelled an assault by Ukrainian naval infantry in the Andriivka area (near the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets River) on September 16.[43] Russian milbloggers reported that Ukrainian forces continue to deploy troops and equipment to the Andriivka and Bilohirka areas but that rising water levels in the Inhulets River due to Russian strikes on dams in Kryvyi Rih have blocked half of the Ukrainian crossing points.[44] Ukraine’s General Staff reported Russian forces shelled Novopetrivka (south of Kryvyi Rih) on September 16, suggesting that Ukrainian forces occupy the town despite previous Russian claims to have repelled Ukrainian attacks on the town.[45]

Russian Main Effort- Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks across the Eastern Axis and continued routine fire along the line of contact on September 16.[46] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground assaults directly on Bakhmut and south of that city, against Avdiivka, and southwest of Donetsk City.[47] Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast Head Pavlo Kyrylenko stated that Russian forces used S-300 anti-air systems in a ground-attack role to strike Selydove, likely to cut Ukrainian logistics lines between southern Donetsk Oblast and central Ukraine.[48] Russian forces have previously used air defense systems to strike ground targets in southern Ukraine and Kharkiv Oblast but have not previously done so extensively in the east, indicating further Russian deficiencies in precision fire munitions. Geolocated footage shows Russian forces striking Ukrainian positions east of Spirne on an unspecified date.[49]

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

Russian forces did not conduct any ground assaults in Zaporizhia Oblast west of Hulyaipole and continued routine fire on the western Zaporizhia Oblast front line and against Ukrainian rear areas in Mykolaiv Oblast on September 16.[50] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Russian forces fired cruise missiles from positions in the Black Sea at port infrastructure in Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast, less than 10km across the Dniprovska Gulf from the Kinburn Spit in Kherson Oblast.[51] The Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed the strike on Ochakiv.[52] Russian forces also fired on hydraulic infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast again on September 16.[53]

Ukrainian forces likely struck the Melitopol airfield overnight on September 15-16. Ukrainian Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov reported that explosions occurred at the airfield and posted footage of Russian air defenses activating amid multiple audible explosions.[54] Zaporizhia Occupation Administration Councilmember Vladimir Rogov reported explosions in Melitopol overnight but did not specify a cause.[55]

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors passed a resolution on September 15 calling on Russia to cease all operations at and against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and any other nuclear facilities in Ukraine.[56] Russian sources denounced the IAEA resolution and claimed that Ukrainian forces again shelled the area around the ZNPP.[57] Russian forces continued routine fire on settlements on the north bank of the Kakhovka Reservoir, likely from positions in and around Enerhodar on the south bank.[58]

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

Russian administrative officials are rallying around Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s call for “self-mobilization” at a local level to provide additional forces to the Russian military. Vladivostok City Hall confirmed on September 16 that the city administration is sending letters to men between the ages of 25 and 63 with military and reserve experience and those who are registered with their local military commissariat in Vladivostok, inviting them to join BARS (Combat Army Reserve of the Country) or Tigr (Naval Infantry) volunteer units.[59] The council emphasized that “each recipient makes their own decision.” Russian recruiters likely intend the letters to confuse recipients into thinking they have been formally and legally conscripted; the letters are in fact only invitations to discuss volunteering. The city council’s confirmation is a substantive deviation from the previous approach of Russian local administrations denying responsibility for the misleading letters. Vladivostok’s open admission indicates that Russian municipal leaders may be under pressure from federal authorities to produce set numbers of volunteer battalions.

Other local leaders announced new battalions in support of Kadyrov’s call on September 16. Kirov Oblast Governor Alexander Sokolov announced that Kirov had formed its second volunteer battalion named “Shironin” and claimed that the oblast’s Vyatka volunteer battalion is already fighting in Ukraine.[60] The Russian-appointed head of occupied Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, reported on September 16 that Crimea is increasing its efforts to recruit volunteers.[61] Aksyonov announced that unspecified large banking institutions have joined the efforts to fund the provision of necessary and modern equipment for the volunteer battalions. Magadan Oblast Governor Sergey Nosov announced his financial support for Kadyrov’s call and called on all regions to implement self-mobilization, even small regions like his own Magadan, which has only one military recruitment center.[62] The heads of the Voronezh, Chuvashia, and Bashkiria regions also announced their support for self-mobilization and claimed that about 1,000 volunteers from each of their regions are already deployed.[63] Kemerovo Governor Sergey Tsivilev pledged financial support for volunteer battalions and claimed that many Kemerovo residents are already fighting in the Russian military.[64] Kadyrov himself announced on September 16 that two of his Chechen Akhmat battalions, Vostok and Zapad, have deployed to unspecified areas of Donbas.[65] Kadyrov also announced that he had created another “Akhmat-1” OMON unit with 2,000 heavily-armed personnel and claimed that it is not the last unit he and the Chechen Republic will field.[66] He claimed that his new unit will fire on Ukrainian and Western personnel (which Kadyrov commonly and baselessly claims are directly fighting with the Ukrainian military) in Ukraine but did not specify whether the unit has already deployed.

Likely anti-war Russian activists conducted a Molotov cocktail attack against a building that previously housed a military recruitment center and where “information about those liable for military service” was still stored in Shakhovskaya, Moscow Oblast on September 16.[67]

Forced Russian mobilization campaigns are likely depleting male populations in parts of the claimed territory of the Russian proxy Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR) along the front lines. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) reported on September 15 that Russian forces are seeking to mobilize 6,000 local men in occupied Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast.[68] The GUR stated that Russian forces are detaining military-age men in public places like the town’s central market but noted that previous Russian mobilization campaigns (and men fleeing those mobilizations) mean that Russia has effectively eliminated the military-aged male population in Horlivka. The report stated that Horlivka men who were mobilized into the DNR’s 9th Naval Infantry Regiment, which may have been in Kherson Oblast, have not been heard from since September 11. Horlivka’s position on the front lines of the conflict likely means that Russian forces have continually drained its fighting-age men for assaults on key nearby locations like Bakhmut.

Wagner Group financier Evgeniy Prigozhin’s campaign to recruit Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine is likely already bearing fruit. Ukraine’s Odesa Military Administration Spokesperson Serhiy Bratchuk posted footage that he said showed the first batch of Russian convicts deploying to Ukraine on September 16. Bratchuk claimed that the convoy was spotted in Tambov Oblast, Russia and was transporting 400 Russian prisoners to unspecified areas in southern Russia for training.[69] Russian propagandist Sasha Kots reshared the footage and said it appeared Wagner forces would be replenished.[70]

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)

Unidentified assailants detonated an IED in the office of the Russian-appointed LNR Prosecutor General in Luhansk City, Luhansk Oblast, killing LNR Prosecutor General Sergey Gorenko and Deputy Prosecutor General Yekaterina Steglenko on September 16.[71] LNR head Leonid Pasechnik called the attack a “terrorist act” that demonstrated that the “Kyiv regime has gone beyond all limits.”[72] DNR Head Denis Pushilin also denounced it as a Ukrainian terrorist attack.[73] Russia’s Investigative Committee immediately ordered the opening of a criminal investigation into the attacks.[74]

The immediate and coordinated Russian responses to the attack suggests that Ukrainian partisans may not be responsible for the LNR assassinations. Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podolyak did not attribute the attack to partisans, but instead offered two theories: that the killings were the result of organized crime groups feuding over sharing looted property, or that Russian forces conducted a “purge” of those who witnessed Russian war crimes.[75] Russian forces have already proven themselves capable of large-scale false-flag attacks that threaten their own personnel or infrastructure, as they did with their falsified strike on the Olenivka prison on July 28.[76]

Unidentified assailants also killed the Russian-appointed Zaporizhia Occupation Administration’s deputy head of housing and communal services, Oleg Boyko, and the Berdyansk Occupation Central Election Committee head, Lyudmyla Boyko, on September 16. Russian milbloggers blamed the couple’s death on “terrorists.”[77]

Ukrainian forces separately arrested the head of the “People’s Militia of Balakliya” on September 16 as he attempted to escape from liberated Kupyansk to Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast. Ukraine’s SBU said that the man ran recruitment for and managed the illegal pro-Russia militia on behalf of Russian occupiers.[78]

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

[1] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0PQj2YNW6vQ37CED65Zi... https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/09/16/na-misczi-masovogo-pohovannya-v-izyumi-vyyavleno-ponad-400-til-volodymyr-zelenskyj/

[3] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/09/16/na-deokupovanyh-terytoriyah-harkivshhyny-vyyavleno-10-rosijskyh-kativen-naczpolicziya/

[6] https://www.kpdot ru/daily/27446.5/4649065/

[10] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/09/16/rosiyany-mozhut-vchynyty-zlochyny-proty-myrnogo-naselennya-tot-pid-chuzhym-praporom/

[30] https://ufatime dot ru/news/2022/09/16/dobrovolcheskij-batalon-iz-bashkirii-vnov-ne-vyhodit-na-svyaz/.

[34] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/16/09/2022/6324308b9a7947491c5f50ca; https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/143; https://t.me/grey_zone/15047; https://t.me/grey_zone/15046; https://t.me/rybar/38901;

[37] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/pidrozdily-okupantiv-v-khersonskii-oblasti-ne-mozhut-zabezpechyty-sebe-pytnoiu-vodoiu-ta-tikaiut-cherez-dnipro-na-vkradenykh-motorkakh.html.

[39] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=494371232143576; https://t.me/senkevichonline/2517; https://nikvesti dot com/ua/news/politics/256182.

[60] https://rossaprimavera dot ru/news/bf3dc50a

[62] https://theins dot ru/news/255107

[67] https://chehov-vid dot ru/news/incidents/32521/ocherednoy-voenkomat-pytalis-podzhech-v-podmoskove/

[68] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/v-horlivtsi-vnaslidok-mobilizatsii-do-okupatsiinoi-armii-praktychno-ne-zalyshylos-cholovikiv.html

[71] https://www.kommersant dot ru/doc/5569158; https://t.me/glava_lnr_info/295 ; https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/09/16/na-okupovanyh-terytoriyah-likvidovano-kolaborantiv/; https://twitter.com/CasperSerg82/status/1570716729696985088; https://t.me/rybar/38874

understandingwar.org

2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (16.09.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (16.09.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

At night, the enemy shelled the Slobidsky and Kyivsky districts of Kharkiv. Four people were injured.

The Russian military continues to shell the liberated areas of the Kharkiv Oblast. During the day, 12 people were injured. According to the Center for Emergency Medical Aid, ten people were wounded in the Kupyansk district due to Russian shelling, including children aged 12 and 13.

The Russians almost completely destroyed Izuym. There is hardly a house in the city that Russians did not damage. A consolidated rescue team clears mines and rubble damaged by the Russians, looking for unexploded shells or mines. Under the rubble, the bodies and remains of Izyum civilians killed in the bombings in March are being searched.

More than 400 graves have been found at the site in Izyum, but the number of victims is not yet known. "We have a terrible picture of what the occupiers did, particularly in the Kharkiv region," said Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin. "In fact, now such cities as Balaklia, Izyum are standing in the same row as Bucha, Borodianka, Irpin," he added.

The UN human rights office will send monitors to Izyum. "They (monitors) are aiming to go there to try to establish a bit more about what may have happened," said the Spokesperson and media officer at UN Human Rights Office.

Of the 450 bodies found, 99% with signs of violent death - exhumation began today in the Izyum Forest. Following the results of the first day of exhumation of mass graves, 22 bodies of civilians were examined, 11 of them women.

10 torture chambers of the Russian army were discovered in the liberated cities of the Kharkiv Oblast.

In Kupyansk, the SBU is investigating how the occupiers illegally detained citizens. The Russians set up a prison in the district police department. In these premises, the Russians detained and abused local residents who refused to cooperate. "Few people among the residents of Kupyansk wanted to help the enemy, so the "prison" was three times overcrowded: in cells designed for 140 people, the occupiers held more than 400 simultaneously. Illegally imprisoned citizens were forced to sleep standing up." According to international conventions, such treatment is considered torture and cruel, inhumane treatment and punishment.

In the afternoon of September 16, Ukrainian air defense forces shot down an enemy missile over Uman, Cherkasy Oblast (central part of Ukraine). As a result, there is damage to non-

residential facilities and power outages. Fortunately, no one was hurt, the head of the Cherkasy Military Administration, Ihor Taburets, reported.

At night, the occupiers shelled Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In Nikopol, one wounded civilian reported; 11 high-rise and private buildings, a lyceum, a kindergarten, a social service center, several businesses, gas pipelines and power lines were damaged.

According to the Head of Dnipropetrovsk Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, on the afternoon of September 16, the Russian shelled the Zelenodolsk community with heavy artillery, killing two men and injuring one.

The Russians again hit the critical infrastructure of Kryvyi Rih (3rd day in a row). Valentyn Reznichenko reported severe destruction of hydraulic structures.

The water in the Ingulets River turned red after a Russian strike on the dam. Industrial enterprises have provided over 50 large dump trucks with debris, loam and crushed stone for backfilling the locks. Head of the Military Administration of Kryvyi Rih Oleksandr Vilkul reports that the city's water supply has been stabilized. Elimination of the consequences of enemy shelling on hydraulic structures continues.

In Donetsk Oblast at night, the Russians shelled Pokrovsk and Bakhmut districts on the front line. In Selydovo – 1 dead and 5 injured. In addition, 32 five-story buildings, a school, a gymnasium and a kindergarten were damaged.

In Sumy Oblast, 4 enemy mines hit the territory of the Krasnopillia community in the morning from the Russian side of the border. No victims and destruction were reported.

During the past day, 23 civil infrastructure objects were damaged by the Russian shelling of Zaporizhzhya Oblasts.

During September 15-16, the Russians shelled the Bashtan district of Mykolayiv Oblast. As a result, a farm warehouse was partially destroyed, and one house was damaged.

Operational situation

It is the 205th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy continues to focus its efforts on disrupting the active actions of Ukrainian troops in specific directions, maintaining the temporarily captured territories and establishing full control over the territory of Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian military is shelling the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces along the contact line. The enemy is trying to regroup its troops in separate directions and conducts aerial reconnaissance. The threat of air and missile strikes throughout the territory of Ukraine persists.

The enemy shelled residential areas and civilian infrastructure objects, violating the norms of International Humanitarian Law, laws and customs of war. The enemy launched 11 missile strikes, 15 air strikes and carried out 96 attacks from rocket artillery systems on objects on the territory of Ukraine, in particular in the areas of Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kupyansk, Siversk, New York, Maryinka, Hulyaipole, Myrne and Velyky Artakiv.

During the past 24 hours, to support the actions of ground groupings, the Ukrainian Air Force carried out 18 strikes on places of concentration of enemy manpower and equipment. As a result, it was confirmed that 13 enemy strongholds, areas of concentration of weapons and military equipment, and five positions of enemy air defense complexes were hit.

Air defense units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed two UAVs of the occupiers in different directions.

Ukrainian missile troops and artillery units inflicted fire on three areas of the enemy's manpower and military equipment concentration, including enemy logistics hubs and pontoon crossings.

The morale of the personnel of the invasion forces remains low. Kharkiv direction

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

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

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

The enemy command is trying at any cost to hold the line Lyman - Yampil, and the Lozove area, including the village of Rubtsi, for as long as possible. The enemy shelled, in particular, from the Russian Federation's territory, the Hoptivka, Kozacha Lopan, Mala Vovcha, Zybyne and Strilecha.

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

2nd Army Corps' units and the remnants of two enemy BTGs of the 150th motorized rifle division did not manage to break through to the south of Siversk in the direction of Verkhnyokamyanske and along the Siversk Donets. They mostly lost their combat capability.

The remnants of RF Armed Forces tactical grouping, which was on the defensive of Izyum, are now completing their concentration in the area of Nyzhnya Duvanka - Kuzemivka - Svatove - Mistky. Most likely, these are the remains of two or three BTGs from the 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division and/or the 237th tank regiment of the 3rd motorized rifle division. This grouping could be reinforced by one or two BTGs of the 41st Combined Arms Army units and the consolidated BTG of the 106th airborne division.

The enemy fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Dvorichna, Horokhovatka, Pryshyb, Tetyanivka, Kryva Luka, Ozerne, Pyskunivka, Raihorodok, Starodubivka, Bilohorivka, Siversk, Rozdolivka, and Spirne.

Donetsk direction

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

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

The enemy fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces near New York, Lyman, Mykolaivka Druga, Zaytseve, Odradivka, Soledar, Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Yakovlivka, Vesele, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Pervomaiske, Avdiivka and Vodyane.

Ukrainian Defense forces successfully repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Odradivka, Zaitseve, Bakhmut, Vesela Dolyna, Avdiivka and Novomykhailivka.

The 3rd separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps attacked the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the direction of Vershyna, Odradivka; PMC "Wagner" in Kodema, Odradivka; and

Kodema, Zaitseve; the 2634th rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve - in Pokrovske and Bakhmut; fighting continues.

In the direction of Klynove, Vesela Dolyna, mercenaries from the "Wagner" PMC were defeated and retreated.

The 1st separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps advanced in the direction of Spartak and Avdiivka, and the 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps – in the direction of Solodke and Novomykhailivka, both failed and retreated to their original position.

Zaporizhzhya direction

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

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

The enemy took no active action but shelled along the entire line of contact.

Kherson direction

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

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

The fire impact of enemy artillery was recorded along the entire line of contact. In addition, the Russian forces conducted aerial reconnaissance by UAVs and carried out 34 sorties of operational-tactical aviation.

The enemy is trying to hide massive losses after the fire damage inflicted by the Ukrainian Defense Forces on the places of Russian troops' concentration. The bodies of Russian soldiers were taken away in packed trucks due to UAF high-precision strikes in the areas of Kherson, Vasylivka, Perevalsk and other towns and villages.

Russian forces deployed elements of the "Pole-21" radio suppression system in the areas of Kamyshany and Chaplynka to protect their objects from Ukrainian Defense Forces' missile strikes and UAVs.

The enemy uses for uninterrupted logistical support of the troop grouping:

•      ferry crossings across the Dnipro River between Podstepne and Sadove, Nova Kakhovka and Kozatske;

•      pontoon-bridge crossing over the Ingulets River in the Darivka area;

•      Antoniv railway bridge - for fuel supply through three pipelines (previously only one was used, fuel is delivered by fuel transport and pumped by pumping stations).

In addition, the Russian forces continued work in the area of the Kakhovka HPP to fill the lock chamber with crushed stone and metal structures to create a continuous passage (probably at the final stage, at least 30 trucks were delivered on September 14).

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

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

11.8 km;

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

The operational situation is unchanged.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

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

Along the southern coast of Crimea, there are four enemy cruise missile carriers (including a submarine). Up to 28 enemy Kalibr missiles are ready for a salvo.

Additionally, 13 other enemy warships and vessels of the auxiliary fleet of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla are at sea, providing reconnaissance and blockade of navigation in the Azov-Black Sea waters.

A group of 5 large amphibious ships conduct training near the southern coast of Crimea, ensuring the combat coordination of the BTG of the reinforced 382nd separate battalion of the Russian marines (based in the city of Temryuk, Krasnodar Krai, Russia). The rest of the amphibious ships are in the ports of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol for restocking and planned repairs. There are no signs of the direct formation of an amphibious landing force to land on the southern coast of Ukraine.

Three enemy submarines of project 636.3 are in the port of Novorossiysk.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 9 Su-27, Su-30 and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

A caravan of four ships left today from the ports of the Odesa region. It was led by the bulk carrier BREEZE, which left the port of Odesa, and

CS CIHAN, also from Odesa, ANNABELLA from the port of Chornomorsk and NAVIN VULTURE from Pivdenny port were next. During the operation of the grain corridor, 149 ships loaded with Ukrainian agro-industrial products - about 3 million 400 thousand tons - left the ports of Great Odesa. Eight ships are approaching the Odessa coast today.

The crew of a sea merchant vessel caught in the Black Sea and handed to the border guards of Ukraine a life raft for 20 people from the sunken Russian ship "Moskva". The lifeboat was kept afloat only by being attached to several life jackets. A broken paddle damaged by corrosion and cylinders for pumping air were on the raft. There was also a waterproof bag with Russian coins and elements of the military uniform of sailors and marines. This discovery proved the carelessness of the Russian military leadership - the raft was most likely defective.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 16.09

Personnel - almost 54,050 people (+200);

Tanks – 2,199 (+6);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,690 (+8);

Artillery systems – 1,302 (+7);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 312 (+1); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 168 (+1); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,550 (+28); Aircraft - 250 (0);

Helicopters – 215 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level - 908 (0); Intercepted cruise missiles - 233 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

Energoatom, the Ukrainian operator of the ZNPP, informed that it has delivered to the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear power plant 25 tracks of spear parts to repair damage caused by the Russian illegal activities at the station. The load also includes chemical reagents required for the operation of the ZNPP and, most importantly, additional fuel supplies to ensure the operation of diesel generators in the event of another blackout.

Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, stated that the readiness of Ukraine for the heating season is more than 80%:

•      significant coal resources have been accumulated;

•      the process of pumping gas into storage facilities is underway;

•      additional gas supplies from Western partners are being discussed;

•      One and a half billion hryvnias have been allocated to prepare for emergencies;

•      one and a half thousand mobile generators and dozens of backup boilers were purchased.

Real estate prices have risen in Ukraine: rent and purchase growth in different regions ranges from 19% to 78%. According to "Economy Now Ua", last month, rental prices increased in all Oblasts of Ukraine, except for the Kirovohrad Oblast, where they fell by 20%. Rent prices rose the most in Kyiv and Cherkasy Oblasts (40%). Real estate prices increase on the secondary market was recorded in Kirovohrad, Sumy, Kyiv and Zaporizhzhya Oblasts. Ukrainians most often looked for apartments in the Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, as well as in Poltava, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa Oblasts.

Oleg Horohovskyi, the co-owner of one of the largest online banking in Ukraine, "Monobank", reported a powerful DDoS attack on the bank.

"The most powerful DDoS attack. We have passed, we are going up. Everything is normal now," Horokhovsky wrote on social networks. He did not give details.

International diplomatic aspect

The US announced a new defence assistance package worth $600 million. It will include arms, munitions, and equipment from US Department of Defence inventories. The Pentagon expects that two batteries of the NASAMS air defence system will be delivered to Ukraine within two months. With the recent drawdown, the total amount of assistance the Biden Administration has provided Ukraine reached $15.8 billion.

Germany and Greece have finally agreed on a swap deal to deliver 40 BMP-1 tanks to Ukraine, while Germany will replenish them with 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles. Meanwhile, Poland and South Korea sealed a $3 billion deal to procure 48 Korean FA-50 fighter planes.

Russia, relevant news

From September 19, the Latvian authorities will impose restrictions on crossing the Latvian border for Russian holders of Schengen visas.

Estonia breaks customs cooperation with Russia. The draft decree submitted by Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu to terminate the agreement between Estonia and Russia on cooperation and mutual assistance in customs matters has already been approved by the government, ERR reports. This agreement may be terminated by written notice from one of the parties. After that, it will continue to operate for six months.

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Humanitarian aspect:

At night, the enemy shelled the Slobidsky and Kyivsky districts of Kharkiv. Four people were injured.

The Russian military continues to shell the liberated areas of the Kharkiv Oblast. During the day, 12 people were injured. According to the Center for Emergency Medical Aid, ten people were wounded in the Kupyansk district due to Russian shelling, including children aged 12 and 13.

The Russians almost completely destroyed Izuym. There is hardly a house in the city that Russians did not damage. A consolidated rescue team clears mines and rubble damaged by the Russians, looking for unexploded shells or mines. Under the rubble, the bodies and remains of Izyum civilians killed in the bombings in March are being searched.

More than 400 graves have been found at the site in Izyum, but the number of victims is not yet known. "We have a terrible picture of what the occupiers did, particularly in the Kharkiv region," said Ukraine's Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin. "In fact, now such cities as Balaklia, Izyum are standing in the same row as Bucha, Borodianka, Irpin," he added.

The UN human rights office will send monitors to Izyum. "They (monitors) are aiming to go there to try to establish a bit more about what may have happened," said the Spokesperson and media officer at UN Human Rights Office.

Of the 450 bodies found, 99% with signs of violent death - exhumation began today in the Izyum Forest. Following the results of the first day of exhumation of mass graves, 22 bodies of civilians were examined, 11 of them women.

10 torture chambers of the Russian army were discovered in the liberated cities of the Kharkiv Oblast.

In Kupyansk, the SBU is investigating how the occupiers illegally detained citizens. The Russians set up a prison in the district police department. In these premises, the Russians detained and abused local residents who refused to cooperate. "Few people among the residents of Kupyansk wanted to help the enemy, so the "prison" was three times overcrowded: in cells designed for 140 people, the occupiers held more than 400 simultaneously. Illegally imprisoned citizens were forced to sleep standing up." According to international conventions, such treatment is considered torture and cruel, inhumane treatment and punishment.

In the afternoon of September 16, Ukrainian air defense forces shot down an enemy missile over Uman, Cherkasy Oblast (central part of Ukraine). As a result, there is damage to non-

residential facilities and power outages. Fortunately, no one was hurt, the head of the Cherkasy Military Administration, Ihor Taburets, reported.

At night, the occupiers shelled Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In Nikopol, one wounded civilian reported; 11 high-rise and private buildings, a lyceum, a kindergarten, a social service center, several businesses, gas pipelines and power lines were damaged.

According to the Head of Dnipropetrovsk Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, on the afternoon of September 16, the Russian shelled the Zelenodolsk community with heavy artillery, killing two men and injuring one.

The Russians again hit the critical infrastructure of Kryvyi Rih (3rd day in a row). Valentyn Reznichenko reported severe destruction of hydraulic structures.

The water in the Ingulets River turned red after a Russian strike on the dam. Industrial enterprises have provided over 50 large dump trucks with debris, loam and crushed stone for backfilling the locks. Head of the Military Administration of Kryvyi Rih Oleksandr Vilkul reports that the city's water supply has been stabilized. Elimination of the consequences of enemy shelling on hydraulic structures continues.

In Donetsk Oblast at night, the Russians shelled Pokrovsk and Bakhmut districts on the front line. In Selydovo – 1 dead and 5 injured. In addition, 32 five-story buildings, a school, a gymnasium and a kindergarten were damaged.

In Sumy Oblast, 4 enemy mines hit the territory of the Krasnopillia community in the morning from the Russian side of the border. No victims and destruction were reported.

During the past day, 23 civil infrastructure objects were damaged by the Russian shelling of Zaporizhzhya Oblasts.

During September 15-16, the Russians shelled the Bashtan district of Mykolayiv Oblast. As a result, a farm warehouse was partially destroyed, and one house was damaged.

Operational situation

It is the 205th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy continues to focus its efforts on disrupting the active actions of Ukrainian troops in specific directions, maintaining the temporarily captured territories and establishing full control over the territory of Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian military is shelling the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces along the contact line. The enemy is trying to regroup its troops in separate directions and conducts aerial reconnaissance. The threat of air and missile strikes throughout the territory of Ukraine persists.

The enemy shelled residential areas and civilian infrastructure objects, violating the norms of International Humanitarian Law, laws and customs of war. The enemy launched 11 missile strikes, 15 air strikes and carried out 96 attacks from rocket artillery systems on objects on the territory of Ukraine, in particular in the areas of Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kupyansk, Siversk, New York, Maryinka, Hulyaipole, Myrne and Velyky Artakiv.

During the past 24 hours, to support the actions of ground groupings, the Ukrainian Air Force carried out 18 strikes on places of concentration of enemy manpower and equipment. As a result, it was confirmed that 13 enemy strongholds, areas of concentration of weapons and military equipment, and five positions of enemy air defense complexes were hit.

Air defense units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine destroyed two UAVs of the occupiers in different directions.

Ukrainian missile troops and artillery units inflicted fire on three areas of the enemy's manpower and military equipment concentration, including enemy logistics hubs and pontoon crossings.

The morale of the personnel of the invasion forces remains low. Kharkiv direction

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

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

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

The enemy command is trying at any cost to hold the line Lyman - Yampil, and the Lozove area, including the village of Rubtsi, for as long as possible. The enemy shelled, in particular, from the Russian Federation's territory, the Hoptivka, Kozacha Lopan, Mala Vovcha, Zybyne and Strilecha.

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

2nd Army Corps' units and the remnants of two enemy BTGs of the 150th motorized rifle division did not manage to break through to the south of Siversk in the direction of Verkhnyokamyanske and along the Siversk Donets. They mostly lost their combat capability.

The remnants of RF Armed Forces tactical grouping, which was on the defensive of Izyum, are now completing their concentration in the area of Nyzhnya Duvanka - Kuzemivka - Svatove - Mistky. Most likely, these are the remains of two or three BTGs from the 423rd motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd motorized rifle division and/or the 237th tank regiment of the 3rd motorized rifle division. This grouping could be reinforced by one or two BTGs of the 41st Combined Arms Army units and the consolidated BTG of the 106th airborne division.

The enemy fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the areas of Dvorichna, Horokhovatka, Pryshyb, Tetyanivka, Kryva Luka, Ozerne, Pyskunivka, Raihorodok, Starodubivka, Bilohorivka, Siversk, Rozdolivka, and Spirne.

Donetsk direction

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

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

The enemy fired at the positions of the Ukrainian Defense Forces near New York, Lyman, Mykolaivka Druga, Zaytseve, Odradivka, Soledar, Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Yakovlivka, Vesele, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Pervomaiske, Avdiivka and Vodyane.

Ukrainian Defense forces successfully repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Odradivka, Zaitseve, Bakhmut, Vesela Dolyna, Avdiivka and Novomykhailivka.

The 3rd separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps attacked the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the direction of Vershyna, Odradivka; PMC "Wagner" in Kodema, Odradivka; and

Kodema, Zaitseve; the 2634th rifle battalion of the mobilization reserve - in Pokrovske and Bakhmut; fighting continues.

In the direction of Klynove, Vesela Dolyna, mercenaries from the "Wagner" PMC were defeated and retreated.

The 1st separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st Army Corps advanced in the direction of Spartak and Avdiivka, and the 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps – in the direction of Solodke and Novomykhailivka, both failed and retreated to their original position.

Zaporizhzhya direction

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

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

The enemy took no active action but shelled along the entire line of contact.

Kherson direction

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

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

The fire impact of enemy artillery was recorded along the entire line of contact. In addition, the Russian forces conducted aerial reconnaissance by UAVs and carried out 34 sorties of operational-tactical aviation.

The enemy is trying to hide massive losses after the fire damage inflicted by the Ukrainian Defense Forces on the places of Russian troops' concentration. The bodies of Russian soldiers were taken away in packed trucks due to UAF high-precision strikes in the areas of Kherson, Vasylivka, Perevalsk and other towns and villages.

Russian forces deployed elements of the "Pole-21" radio suppression system in the areas of Kamyshany and Chaplynka to protect their objects from Ukrainian Defense Forces' missile strikes and UAVs.

The enemy uses for uninterrupted logistical support of the troop grouping:

•      ferry crossings across the Dnipro River between Podstepne and Sadove, Nova Kakhovka and Kozatske;

•      pontoon-bridge crossing over the Ingulets River in the Darivka area;

•      Antoniv railway bridge - for fuel supply through three pipelines (previously only one was used, fuel is delivered by fuel transport and pumped by pumping stations).

In addition, the Russian forces continued work in the area of the Kakhovka HPP to fill the lock chamber with crushed stone and metal structures to create a continuous passage (probably at the final stage, at least 30 trucks were delivered on September 14).

Kherson-Berislav bridgehead

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

11.8 km;

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

The operational situation is unchanged.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

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

Along the southern coast of Crimea, there are four enemy cruise missile carriers (including a submarine). Up to 28 enemy Kalibr missiles are ready for a salvo.

Additionally, 13 other enemy warships and vessels of the auxiliary fleet of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and the Caspian Flotilla are at sea, providing reconnaissance and blockade of navigation in the Azov-Black Sea waters.

A group of 5 large amphibious ships conduct training near the southern coast of Crimea, ensuring the combat coordination of the BTG of the reinforced 382nd separate battalion of the Russian marines (based in the city of Temryuk, Krasnodar Krai, Russia). The rest of the amphibious ships are in the ports of Novorossiysk and Sevastopol for restocking and planned repairs. There are no signs of the direct formation of an amphibious landing force to land on the southern coast of Ukraine.

Three enemy submarines of project 636.3 are in the port of Novorossiysk.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 9 Su-27, Su-30 and Su-24 aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved.

A caravan of four ships left today from the ports of the Odesa region. It was led by the bulk carrier BREEZE, which left the port of Odesa, and

CS CIHAN, also from Odesa, ANNABELLA from the port of Chornomorsk and NAVIN VULTURE from Pivdenny port were next. During the operation of the grain corridor, 149 ships loaded with Ukrainian agro-industrial products - about 3 million 400 thousand tons - left the ports of Great Odesa. Eight ships are approaching the Odessa coast today.

The crew of a sea merchant vessel caught in the Black Sea and handed to the border guards of Ukraine a life raft for 20 people from the sunken Russian ship "Moskva". The lifeboat was kept afloat only by being attached to several life jackets. A broken paddle damaged by corrosion and cylinders for pumping air were on the raft. There was also a waterproof bag with Russian coins and elements of the military uniform of sailors and marines. This discovery proved the carelessness of the Russian military leadership - the raft was most likely defective.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 16.09

Personnel - almost 54,050 people (+200);

Tanks – 2,199 (+6);

Armored combat vehicles – 4,690 (+8);

Artillery systems – 1,302 (+7);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 312 (+1); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 168 (+1); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 3,550 (+28); Aircraft - 250 (0);

Helicopters – 215 (0);

UAV operational and tactical level - 908 (0); Intercepted cruise missiles - 233 (0);

Boats / ships - 15 (0).

Ukraine, general news

Energoatom, the Ukrainian operator of the ZNPP, informed that it has delivered to the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear power plant 25 tracks of spear parts to repair damage caused by the Russian illegal activities at the station. The load also includes chemical reagents required for the operation of the ZNPP and, most importantly, additional fuel supplies to ensure the operation of diesel generators in the event of another blackout.

Prime Minister Denys Shmygal, at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, stated that the readiness of Ukraine for the heating season is more than 80%:

•      significant coal resources have been accumulated;

•      the process of pumping gas into storage facilities is underway;

•      additional gas supplies from Western partners are being discussed;

•      One and a half billion hryvnias have been allocated to prepare for emergencies;

•      one and a half thousand mobile generators and dozens of backup boilers were purchased.

Real estate prices have risen in Ukraine: rent and purchase growth in different regions ranges from 19% to 78%. According to "Economy Now Ua", last month, rental prices increased in all Oblasts of Ukraine, except for the Kirovohrad Oblast, where they fell by 20%. Rent prices rose the most in Kyiv and Cherkasy Oblasts (40%). Real estate prices increase on the secondary market was recorded in Kirovohrad, Sumy, Kyiv and Zaporizhzhya Oblasts. Ukrainians most often looked for apartments in the Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast, as well as in Poltava, Zaporizhzhya, Dnipropetrovsk, and Odesa Oblasts.

Oleg Horohovskyi, the co-owner of one of the largest online banking in Ukraine, "Monobank", reported a powerful DDoS attack on the bank.

"The most powerful DDoS attack. We have passed, we are going up. Everything is normal now," Horokhovsky wrote on social networks. He did not give details.

International diplomatic aspect

The US announced a new defence assistance package worth $600 million. It will include arms, munitions, and equipment from US Department of Defence inventories. The Pentagon expects that two batteries of the NASAMS air defence system will be delivered to Ukraine within two months. With the recent drawdown, the total amount of assistance the Biden Administration has provided Ukraine reached $15.8 billion.

Germany and Greece have finally agreed on a swap deal to deliver 40 BMP-1 tanks to Ukraine, while Germany will replenish them with 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles. Meanwhile, Poland and South Korea sealed a $3 billion deal to procure 48 Korean FA-50 fighter planes.

Russia, relevant news

From September 19, the Latvian authorities will impose restrictions on crossing the Latvian border for Russian holders of Schengen visas.

Estonia breaks customs cooperation with Russia. The draft decree submitted by Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu to terminate the agreement between Estonia and Russia on cooperation and mutual assistance in customs matters has already been approved by the government, ERR reports. This agreement may be terminated by written notice from one of the parties. After that, it will continue to operate for six months.

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3. China Is Running Covert Operations That Could Seriously Overwhelm Us

Sobering.

China Is Running Covert Operations That Could Seriously Overwhelm Us

By Nigel Inkster The New York Times5 min

View Original

Credit...Anson Chan

Mr. Inkster is a former director of operations and intelligence at Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.

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In my three-decade career with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, China was never seen as a major threat.

If we lost sleep at night, it was over more immediate challenges such as Soviet expansionism and transnational terrorism. China’s halting emergence from the chaotic Mao Zedong era and its international isolation after Chinese soldiers crushed pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square in 1989 made it seem like an insular backwater.

It’s a different picture today. China has acquired global economic and diplomatic influence, enabling covert operations that extend well beyond traditional intelligence gathering, are growing in scale and threaten to overwhelm Western security agencies.

The U.S. and British domestic intelligence chiefs — the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, and the MI5 director general, Ken McCallum — signaled rising concern over this with an unprecedented joint news conference in July to warn of, as Mr. Wray put it, a “breathtaking” Chinese effort to steal technology and economic intelligence and to influence foreign politics in Beijing’s favor. The pace was quickening, they said, with the number of MI5 investigations into suspected Chinese activity having increased sevenfold since 2018.

The culture of the Chinese Communist Party has always had a clandestine nature. But as the party has become an even more dominant force in China since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago, this has metastasized in state institutions. China can best be described as an intelligence state. The party views the business of acquiring and protecting secrets as an all-of-nation undertaking, to the point that rewards are offered to citizens for identifying possible spies and even schoolchildren are taught to recognize threats.

The West cannot fight fire with fire. Mobilizing government, society and economic and academic systems around competition with foreign foes the way China does would betray Western values. But leaders of democracies need to internalize the sea change that has taken place in China and ensure that engagement with Beijing is tempered by a hardheaded sense of reality.

The last state intelligence threat of comparable magnitude was posed by the Soviets. But the Soviet Union was isolated and impoverished. China’s successful economy, on the other hand, is a key engine of global growth, vastly increasing Beijing’s reach.

Barely visible on the world stage 30 years ago, China’s intelligence agencies are now powerful and well resourced. They are adept at exploiting the vulnerabilities of open societies and growing dependence on China’s economy to collect vast volumes of intelligence and data. Much of this takes place in the cyber domain, such as the 2015 hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, in which sensitive data on millions of federal employees was stolen. Chinese intelligence operatives also are present in state-owned enterprises, state media organizations and embassies and consulates. China’s consulate in Houston was closed by the Trump administration in 2020 after it served as a national hub for collecting high-tech intelligence.

But Chinese covert operations don’t stop there.

China’s Intelligence Law, which was enacted in 2017, required its citizens to assist intelligence agencies. But this legislation simply formalized a situation that had already been the norm. The wider China challenge comes from organizations and actors engaged in activities that may not conform to normal concepts of espionage.

Much of this is organized by the United Front Work Department, a party organization that seeks to co-opt well-placed members of Chinese diaspora communities — and whose scope has been expanded under Mr. Xi. China also endeavors to entice other Western citizens. A textbook case, exposed this year, involved a British politician whose office received substantial funding from an ethnic Chinese lawyer who thereby gained access to the British political establishment. One Chinese approach is to patiently cultivate relationships with politicians at the city or community level who show potential to rise to even higher office. Another is known as elite capture, in which influential Western corporate or government figures are offered lucrative sinecures or business opportunities in return for advocating policies that jibe with Chinese interests.

For China, this work is about survival. Technology and business intelligence must be acquired to keep China’s economy growing fast enough to prevent social instability. Mr. Xi has stressed the need to adopt “asymmetrical” means to catch up to the West technologically.

China may be ahead of the game now, but there are tools that Western intelligence and security agencies can bring into play, including providing staff members with the requisite language skills and an awareness of China and the workings of the Chinese Communist Party. But they need help.

Liberal democracies cannot just play defense; political leaders must champion greater investment in offensive intelligence collection capabilities and outreach programs that educate businesses, political organizations and other potential targets about their vulnerabilities. Systems also are needed to assess the national security implications of what otherwise might just seem normal commercial activities by Chinese companies or non-Chinese entities acting as fronts for Beijing.

New and more effective legislation that is attuned to the changing dynamics is vital. Britain is taking a step in the right direction. It looks set to enact a national security bill that would broaden the definition of espionage and take measures to create, as the Home Office put it, “a more challenging operating environment” for those acting as agents for foreign interests. Australia enacted similar legislation in 2018 to curb foreign covert political influence after concerns emerged over Chinese activity.

Countering Beijing poses a difficult balancing act, especially in countries with large Chinese diaspora populations. A case in point was the F.B.I.’s program for preventing theft of economic and scientific intelligence from U.S. universities, started by the Trump administration under the China Initiative. The program had a chilling effect on ethnic Chinese scientists and engineers who felt they were unjustly victimized. It was terminated this year.

Western countries shouldn’t be afraid to make bold moves. Actions like Britain’s mass expulsion of Soviet intelligence officers in 1971 after a surge of spying activity rarely, if ever, affect wider relations. Nor should the impact of espionage and subversion be overstated. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War not because of its intelligence operations — which were good — but because of the failure of its governing ideals.

The same may prove true with China. Western policymakers and intelligence services must innovate and adapt. But they also must ensure that strategies they employ honor the ideals of freedom, openness and lawfulness that pose the greatest threat to the Chinese party-state.

Nigel Inkster (@NigelInkster) is a former director of operations and intelligence for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, from which he retired in 2006. He is the senior adviser for cybersecurity and China at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

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4. Chinese and Russian militaries share a potential weakness, new US report finds

The 72 page NDU report by Joel Wuthrow can be downloaded here: https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratperspective/china/china-perspectives-16.pdf?utm_source=pocket_mylist

This is generating a good pbit of press that I am seeing in my various news feeds.

Chinese and Russian militaries share a potential weakness, new US report finds

CNN · by Brad Lendon, CNN

Seoul, South Korea (CNN)China's military leaders share a potential weakness that has undermined their Russian counterparts in Ukraine and could hamper their ability to wage a similar war, according to a new report from the US National Defense University.

The report identifies a lack of cross-training as a possible Achilles' Heel within the People's Liberation Army (PLA), but analysts remain wary of underestimating China's capabilities and warn against comparisons with Russia.

The report delved into the backgrounds of more than 300 of the PLA's top officers across its five services -- army, navy, air force, rocket force and strategic support force -- in the six years leading up to 2021. It found that in each service leaders were unlikely to have operational experience in any branch other than the one they began their careers in.

In other words, PLA soldiers stay soldiers, sailors stay sailors, airmen stay airmen. Rarely do they venture outside those silos, the report said, noting a sharp contrast to the US military, where cross-training has been a legal requirement since 1986.

The 73-page report went on to say that this "rigidity... could reduce China's effectiveness in future conflicts," particularly in conflicts requiring high levels of joint-service action, and suggests PLA forces would become bogged down by the same sort of problems that have bedeviled their Russian counterparts in Ukraine, "where the overall cohesion of forces was low."

Read More

Chinese army and naval units conduct a live-fire drill in Zhangzhou City, China, on Aug 24, 2022.

Since the beginning of Russia's invasion of its neighbor seven months ago, deficiencies in the Russian military structure have become plain to outside observers.

In the recent rout of Russian forces by a Ukrainian counteroffensive, Moscow's ground forces lacked air cover, analysts say, while earlier in the war, logistical problems played havoc with Russia's ability to resupply its forces -- its trucks lacked suitable tires for the terrain and kept breaking down from a lack of maintenance.

According to the report's author Joel Wuthnow, the PLA's senior leaders could face similar problems due to their lack of cross-training.

"Operational commanders, for instance, rarely have career-broadening experience in logistics, and vice versa," said the report by Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at the university's Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.

"Operational commanders who never needed to gain a high level of understanding of logistics or maintenance might fail to use those forces optimally, paralleling another Russian failure in 2022."

A brigade of the PLA Army under the Eastern Theater Command, together with a department of the navy, air force and army aviation, organizes a red and blue combat drill for troops in Zhangzhou, China, on Sept 2, 2022.

In a comparison of four-star rank commanders in 2021 -- such as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or the head of Indo-Pacific Command in the United States or leaders of the Central Military Commission or theater commands in China -- all of the 40 US officers had joint-service experience compared to 77% of their 31 Chinese equivalents, the report found.

It also noted another key difference: In the US, almost all the four-star commanders had operational experience. In China, almost half were "professional political commissars."

Don't underestimate the PLA

Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii, said the new report "is the best assessment of where China is at and going that I have seen."

But he cautioned against using it as a predictor of how the PLA might fare in a Ukraine-like war as it had numerous other advantages over the Russian military.

China gives better training to new recruits and no longer relies on conscripts, he said, whereas the Russian army "relies on seven-month conscripts for 80-85% of its enlisted personnel."

And, unlike Russia, China has a professional non-commissioned officer corps, he added.

Schuster, who now teaches at Hawaii Pacific University, estimated that China is about four or five years behind the US in terms of joint operation abilities -- but warned recent exercises "suggest they are catching up."

He cited recent Chinese operations like those around Taiwan after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in early August as demonstrating this.

Analysis: 'New normal' across the Taiwan Strait as China threat looms ever closer

"The study's unstated implication that the PLA may be unable to do effective joint ops is misplaced," Schuster said.

The report by Wuthnow, who is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University in Washington, also found demographic differences between Chinese and US leaders.

"Senior (Chinese) officers were homogenous in terms of age, education, gender, and ethnicity," the report said.

Among the four-star ranks, Chinese officers were older on average than their American counterparts (64 vs. 60) and had more years in the military (46 vs. 40).

"US leadership was also more diverse, with two women and three African Americans, compared to a homogenous PLA leadership (entirely male and 99% Han Chinese)," the report said.

And one final stark difference: 58% of the US officers had served in a foreign country while none of the Chinese officers had overseas experience.

Newly recruited civil servants undergo military training at the Shizhong District People's Court in Zaozhuang, China, on Sept 3, 2022.

The Xi factor

The report also noted how Chinese leader Xi Jinping has tightened his grip on the PLA's leadership since taking control of the Chinese Communist Party in 2013.

Through his role as chairman of China's Central Military Commission, Xi has been personally involved in the selection of senior officers, it said.

"All PLA officers are members of the Chinese Communist Party and must have enough political acumen to demonstrate loyalty to Xi and his agenda," it said, noting that Xi rotates top officers geographically within China to prevent them from developing "patronage networks" that might one day threaten his leadership.

But it also noted that Xi has been careful to reward loyalty and patience in the senior officer corps.

"Xi Jinping has not skipped over a generation of people who had waited their turn to promote young Turks more familiar with modern conflict," it said.

As those older officers reach retirement ages for their grade -- as old as 68 for those on the Central Military Commission -- their successors will bring more experience of the modern battlefield, including the newest technologies, the report said.

But the silos, reinforced by tradition and organizational culture, are expected to remain, it said.

CNN · by Brad Lendon, CNN

5. Chinese military top brass mirroring command failures in Russian army

A report from Jerusalem.

Chinese military top brass mirroring command failures in Russian army

Jerusalem Post

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) high command became so centered around President Xi Jinping that any move to invade Taiwan would likely meet little resistance from generals, according to a Pentagon-funded report, similarly to command issues in Russia's top military brass highlighted in the invasion of Ukraine.

The report, “Gray Dragons: Assessing China’s Senior Military Leadership,” analyzed more than 300 biographies of senior Chinese military officers from 2015 and 2021 to assess the composition, demographics, and career patterns of the PLA leadership.

“When you go through the data and analyze who China is promoting up to [senior] levels, you start to see some parallels” with “the generals who were faulted for giving [Russian President Vladimir] Putin apparently pretty bad military advice”, Joel Wuthnow, a senior fellow at the National Defense University, which is funded by the Pentagon, told the South China Morning Post.

“What happens if Xi Jinping himself makes up his mind that, for political reasons, he has no choice but to [invade Taiwan]? How willing would the military be to voice their concerns to him?” Wuthnow asked. “Would they not be under significant pressure to do what the boss asks them to do without pushing back?"

“What happens if Xi Jinping himself makes up his mind that, for political reasons, he has no choice but to [invade Taiwan]?”

Joel Wuthnow

PLA officers must continue to be responsive to Xi and the party, according to the report, as all the officers are members of the Chinese Communist Party and must have enough political acumen to demonstrate loyalty to Xi and his agenda.

Xi has been personally involved in selections through his position as CMC chairman and has increased his control through anti-corruption investigations. Also, officers are rotated geographically to prevent patronage networks.

The top 25 or so senior officers serve on the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and in the National People’s Congress, where they provide military advice and look after PLA equities.

“After the Party Congress, I think the decision-making in China will be even more Xi-centric,” Wuthnow added, referring to the 20th National Congress of China’s Communist Party, set to take place this fall.

President Xi Jinping is expected to accept a third term without facing explicit resistance, although observers worry about uncertain days ahead, especially regarding Taiwan.

Cohesion gaps similar to Russia's military

"Rigidity in PLA assignments could reduce China’s effectiveness in future conflicts—especially those requiring a high level of jointness and adaptability, like the war that Russia launched against Ukraine in 2022—if Chinese military leaders lack perspectives beyond their own service, specialty, and department," the report said.

The PLA frequently advocates for officers who can think in new ways, but the assignment system does not prioritize or produce broad experience or risk-taking.

Officers with almost no experience leading troops from other branches are less likely to be confident in commanding those forces and more likely to delegate authority to specialists within those services.

This could produce situations such as that of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the overall cohesion of forces was low.

Senior PLA officers also tend to stay not only within their own services but also in their assigned functional areas. Operational commanders, for instance, rarely have career-broadening experience in logistics and vice versa.

Operational commanders who never gained a high level of logistical or maintenance understanding might fail to use those tools optimally in a broad combat scenario, paralleling another Russian failure in 2022.

“Whether that is talking about logistics, or whether it’s talking about the inventory of supplies that you need, leadership is one of the important things, too, because if you don’t have adequate leadership then actually using these things effectively in battle is much more problematic,” Wuthnow told the South China Morning Post.

Jerusalem Post

6. New change at the Pentagon waters down focus on Taiwan, critics say

Another way to look at this is what if we are subordinating China to our Taiwan policy? Maybe the critics have it backwards.

New change at the Pentagon waters down focus on Taiwan, critics say

Politico

“Anything that dilutes America’s focus on helping Taiwan to defend itself is a really bad idea,” Sen. Dan Sullivan said.

The Defense Department has moved U.S. policy toward Taiwan from the East Asia office to the China office created by the Trump administration in 2019. Critics of the move say it sends a signal to Beijing that the U.S. considers Taiwan policy part of China policy. | Chiang Ying-ying/AP Photo

09/16/2022 01:29 PM EDT

The Pentagon has made administrative changes in how it handles Taiwan policy, a shift that lawmakers and former officials say sends the wrong signal to Beijing as the Chinese military steps up drills around the self-ruled island.

The move — which involves placing the Taiwan portfolio under the office responsible for China policy — could provide a new line of attack among President Joe Biden’s opponents who claim he is weak on China.

The changes come as officials are increasingly worried about Beijing’s aggression toward Taiwan, particularly after a crisis erupted in the Taiwan Strait in August after China launched unprecedented military exercises, including sending missiles over the island, in response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei.

“Anything that dilutes America’s focus on helping Taiwan to defend itself is a really bad idea,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) told POLITICO. “Pulling Taiwan back into a portfolio dominated by China sends the wrong signal to Beijing — that they can dictate our relationship with the island democracy. Or worse, it will facilitate consultation with Beijing on our approach to Taiwan’s security needs.”

The Defense Department says the move is a bureaucratic change designed to increase internal efficiency within the agency’s policy shop.

But the timing of the move, coming just weeks after a tense standoff in the Taiwan Strait, could not be worse, critics say.

“The Chinese will not interpret this as a coincidence,” said Heino Klinck, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for East Asia in the Trump administration. “I think unintentionally or perhaps naively, we are signaling that our relationship with Taiwan is a subset of our relationship with mainland China.”

Prior to the Trump administration, both China and Taiwan were under the purview of the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for East Asia, along with nations such as Japan, South Korea and Australia. In June 2019, the Pentagon created an office focused solely on China, a move that experts hailed at the time as putting the necessary focus on Beijing.

But now, the Pentagon is moving the Taiwan desk out from under the East Asia office and into the portfolio of the newly created deputy assistant secretary of Defense for China, Michael Chase, a Defense Department spokesperson confirmed.

“This bureaucratic move will increase efficiency and harmonize efforts within OUSD Policy. Moreover, it aligns staff and leadership with the bureaucratic structures at other executive branch agencies, including the State Department,” said spokesperson John Supple. “In no way does this shift reflect a change in our one-China policy, our commitment to allies and partners, or focus on preserving a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

But within the China portfolio, Taiwan will inevitably get less attention, said Randy Schriver, the former head of Asia policy at the Pentagon during the Trump administration.

“It’s almost inevitable given China’s size that Taiwan becomes a subset,” Schriver said. “Traditionally, Taiwan has been viewed as a problem to manage in the China context and this is a return to that.”

Beijing will likely look favorably on the move, because “it looks like Taiwan is a part of China,” he added.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said for years he intends to “reunify” the mainland with Taiwan, and he has not ruled out using force to do so. The U.S. military assessed in 2021 that China could invade Taiwan by 2027, an explosive scenario that would likely embroil the U.S. Navy as well as Pacific nations.

The United States’ policy on Taiwan is deliberately ambiguous, although Biden has said the U.S. would come to the island’s defense if it is attacked. The official government position continues to support a One China policy and does not recognize Taiwan as a separate nation, but Washington backs Taipei with arms sales for self-defense.

The Biden administration recently asked Congress to approve an estimated $1.1 billion weapons sale to Taiwan that includes 60 anti-ship missiles and 100 air-to-air missiles — the first since the military exercises in the strait. But critics say more is needed.

“My concern is that again we are unintentionally messaging both mainland Taiwan and the region writ large and globally that in the wake of Speaker Pelosi’s visit and in the wake of what many are referring to as the fourth Taiwan Strait crisis, we are making policy adjustments, policy changes that favor Chinese positions,” Klinck said.

The move has practical implications as well as policy ones. Organizationally, it makes more sense for Taiwan to remain under the East Asia office with responsibility for Japan and Australia, all countries with which the U.S. has strong military relations, said Eric Sayers, a former senior adviser to U.S. Pacific Command and now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

It also makes more sense to align allies and partners under a single deputy assistant secretary, and leave the China office to focus its energies on Beijing, he said.

“I trust Ely’s judgment here,” Sayers said, referring to Ely Ratner, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for Indo-Pacific affairs, who is responsible for both the China and East Asia offices. “But I also think it’s a good oversight question for Congress to be asking.”

POLITICO

Politico

7. Opinion | How to counter today’s tribalism and build ‘a more perfect union’

Wise advice. Will we (members of all the different "tribes") heed it?

Opinion | How to counter today’s tribalism and build ‘a more perfect union’

By Bernice B. Donald and Don R. Willett 

September 16, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Bernice B. Donald · September 16, 2022

Bernice B. Donald is a judge on the U.S Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. Don R. Willett is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

Federal judges rarely write newspaper op-eds. Rarer still: a joint op-ed by two assumed foes. In this era of poisonous tribalism, what could these two judges agree on?

After all, one is an African American female Obama appointee, the other a White male Trump appointee.

For starters, we’re friends. More, we respect each other as judicial siblings committed to a shared oath; our robes are black, not red or blue. In this coarse and graceless age, believing that our similarities eclipse our differences might be derided as Pollyannish. So be it.

Saturday is Constitution Day. But let’s begin with the Declaration of Independence, which in 2026 will mark its semiquincentennial — 250 years.

The Declaration is aspirational, debuting a uniquely American theory: that government exists to secure people’s inborn, individual, inalienable rights. The Constitution is architectural, erecting a structure to achieve those ideals. But the union was very far from perfect at the founding: One-third of the Declaration’s signers were enslavers.

Still, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was right in 1963 when he called the nation’s founding documents “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” While he recognized that America had “defaulted” on that note in failing to recognize equality for African Americans, he also knew that those founding documents made possible a government that could correct itself over time. He was echoing Frederick Douglass, who a century earlier declared that the Declaration’s promises of liberty and equality are eternal, even if America betrayed those promises.

King implored Americans not to tear down the nation’s heritage but to live up to it. Doing so might seem difficult these days, when entrenched tribalism threatens to swamp citizens’ shared attachment to the nation. But that makes trying all the more important. This Constitution Day, here are five suggestions to help form a “more perfect union.”

Log off. In today’s hot-take culture stoked by social media, the art of disagreeing agreeably seems quaint. The snarling, sneering and sniping is on full display in a realm we know well: modern law schools. Online incivility seems to fuel real-life boorishness. Earlier this year, a panel at Yale Law School brought together lawyers from the left and right to tout the importance of free speech. Chaos ensued. That is what happens when views held by the “other side” are deemed no longer debatable but disreputable. Better to reject venomous online voices — and promote civility in the physical world.

Learn up. The civics IQ of “We the People” is not exactly Mensa-level. According to the 2022 Annenberg Civics Survey, most American adults cannot name all three branches of government, and 25 percent cannot name a single one. The judicial branch is likely the least understood — especially by those who depict the judiciary as hijacked by craven politics. Facts are hostile witnesses. The Supreme Court’s rate of dissent today is no higher than it was in 1945, when eight of nine justices had been appointed by the same president. Besides, fixating on the Supreme Court is distorting: Ninety-nine percent of federal cases go no higher than regional circuit courts. That’s where we serve, and we can attest, as research has shown, that roughly 98 percent of circuit-court decisions are unanimous — hardly a sign of ideologically driven judging.

Reach out. Genuine across-the-aisle friendships are rare today. According to an NBC News-Generation Lab poll last month, about half of college sophomores say they wouldn’t date, or even choose as a roommate, someone who didn’t vote as they did in the 2020 presidential election. Americans too often hunker down in like-minded echo chambers, marinating in confirmation bias, rarely encountering, much less befriending, anyone who sees the world differently. Cross-party friendships are no easy feat. But if Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could do it, so can we — and so can you.

Pull back. Many Americans view everything through a political prism. Entire identities get distilled to partisan labels. The places where attachments were found — such as civic and religious institutions — have thinned out, and politics has rushed into the vacuum. Political strife is nothing new, but things have radically intensified. Regrettably, some judges contribute to the noxiousness, penning acidic opinions that fuel a perception of judges as ideological combatants rather than evenhanded arbiters. But the toxicity is culture-wide. Fact: There is more to life than politics.

Plug in. President Jimmy Carter put it powerfully during his 1981 farewell address when he said he would be taking up “the only title in our democracy superior to that of president, the title of citizen.” American citizenship is not a spectator sport. Be engaged citizens, not enfeebled (or enraged) bystanders. Self-government is not self-perpetuating. This raucous republic belongs to us all, and the secret sauce is a sleeves-rolled-up citizenry.

This Constitution Day, if any identity should define us as Americans, let it be one that transcends ideological and demographic differences: Our common identity as heirs to a rich civic inheritance.

The Washington Post · by Bernice B. Donald · September 16, 2022

8. Xi Jinping won’t ditch Vladimir Putin, for now

The subtitle says it all.

Xi Jinping won’t ditch Vladimir Putin, for now

China’s goal in Ukraine is Western disunity and failure, more than a Russian triumph

The Economist

Vladimir putin owes Xi Jinping an apology, for he carried a whiff of failure into his meeting with China’s leader in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on September 15th. That taint of humiliation follows bruising Russian setbacks in the war on Ukraine that Mr Putin chose to wage.

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Mr Putin’s offence is compounded by poor timing. Back in February, on the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Mr Putin and Mr Xi declared a “no limits” friendship between their two countries. Days later the Russian leader invaded Ukraine. This latest Xi-Putin meeting, on the margins of a summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a grouping of Eurasian powers, came a month before the highest-stakes gathering of Mr Xi’s career. A Communist Party congress opening on October 16th is expected to bestow on him power and ideological authority of a sort last wielded by Mao Zedong. Mr Xi goes into that congress facing headwinds from a slowing economy and a public growing exhausted by his draconian “zero-covid” policies. Now, on his first trip outside China since the pandemic, Mr Xi found himself sharing the world stage with a leader whom he has called his “best friend”, but who stands exposed as brutal, reckless and incompetent.

For all that, it would be premature to imagine that Russian losses in the plains and river valleys of Donetsk are enough to make Mr Xi rethink his decision in February to publicly align his vision of global security with Mr Putin’s. That world-view is based on a shared hostility to American-led alliances in Asia and Europe; scorn for Western multi-party democracy; and calls for a security order that heeds the “legitimate security interests” of sovereign states (Chinese and Russian code for deferring to big countries).

Mr Putin has time to redeem himself in China’s eyes. For Chinese interests to be advanced, Russia does not need to achieve all its war aims, let alone to control this or that Ukrainian oblast. China’s cold-eyed priority is for the American-led West to end up divided and weakened. China views this as a long game. It still hopes to see Europeans hold “America’s war” responsible for soaring energy prices causing pain to citizens and businesses across their continent, especially after a long, hard winter.

Throughout the past week of Russian retreats, China has maintained impressive message discipline. Each night, the main evening news programme on China Central Television, “Xinwen Lianbo”, has followed the same pattern. Over images of rockets being fired and shells zipping skyward, it tersely reports assertions by Russia’s defence ministry that it has struck targets in Ukraine, followed by Ukrainian claims to have fought back. The Biden administration is often accused of troublemaking, for instance by sending new weapons to fatten the profits of American arms manufacturers. Then comes the meat of each report: a lengthy account of how unhappy Europeans are reeling from sky-high fuel prices and gas bills, and how they blame them on American-led sanctions. This is delivered over such captions as “International view: America is only out for itself, and Europe is headed for failure.”

Propaganda chiefs might call their low-drama war-reporting proof of China’s neutrality in the fight between Russia and Ukraine. But that claim of neutrality has never been convincing. Chinese officials have spent months repeating Russian talking-points about America provoking the war by expanding nato up to Russia’s borders. Chinese diplomats and state media have promoted and relayed Russian disinformation accusing American armed forces of funding and controlling biological-weapons laboratories in Ukraine. China has, however, largely ignored Mr Putin’s wildest justifications for his invasion, notably his history-twisting ramblings about Ukraine being an eternal homeland of the Russian people, before it was carved off as an artificial state in a “historic, strategic” blunder by Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.

China’s preferred account of the war was signalled by Li Zhanshu, the third-ranking official in the Communist Party and head of China’s pliant legislature, the National People’s Congress, during a visit to Russia this month. Mr Li said that Russia was “not crushed by the severe sanctions of the United States and the West, but rather in a short period achieved stability and showed resilience.” Without quite defending Mr Putin’s invasion, Mr Li told Russian parliamentarians that their country had been backed into a corner by nato expansion and had its national security threatened, adding: “Russia took actions that were necessary and China understands it.” In Moscow, Mr Li paid a respectful visit to Lenin’s former residence—perhaps because in Mr Xi’s China, questioning the wisdom of communist immortals is not encouraged.

Russia is useful, America is the obsession

Self-interest explains Chinese policy. China denounces American defence alliances and sanctions because it fears the same levers being used to contain China in Asia, or to punish an attack on Taiwan. Chinese leaders believe they will gain from a Russian draw or victory in Ukraine, concludes a senior Western official. “Either Russia is weakened and so China is stronger in their bilateral partnership, or Russia can claim victory and that’s a defeat for the West.” Either way suits China, he says. Taking advantage of Russia’s semi-isolation, China is buying its oil and gas at low prices, and will soon pay for more of it with its non-convertible currency, the yuan. Ever-cautious about its interests, China has avoided overt challenges to Western sanctions. “Our Chinese friends are tough bargainers,” Mr Putin noted, days before meeting Mr Xi.

To China, Mr Putin’s current woes are unwelcome but manageable. Abject defeat for Russia in Ukraine would be another matter. For one thing, it might trigger regime-threatening chaos in Moscow. For another, if liberal democracies stay united and prove willing to endure pain to defend the rules-based order, that would undercut China’s favourite charge that the West is in decadent decline. Mr Xi wants a fighter for a friend, not a loser. ■

The Economist

9. Murderers and sex offenders in Russian prison sent to fight in Ukraine

Murderers and sex offenders in Russian prison sent to fight in Ukraine

Shipped off to slaughter: 400 murderers and sex offenders are seen being sent from prison to Ukraine after agreeing to fight in Putin's war in return for a pardon... if they survive

• Hundreds of violent criminals will have combat training and ship off to Ukraine
• Video showed dozens of prison vans shuttling inmates to the camps
• It comes as Russian leaders scramble to reinforce dwindling troop numbers
• Head of PMC Wagner group Yevgeny Prigozhin was seen recruiting inmates
• Prisoners will be pardoned if they survive six months, promised Wagner chief

By DAVID AVERRE and WILL STEWART FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 06:33 EDT, 16 September 2022 | UPDATED: 07:56 EDT, 16 September 2022

Daily Mail · by David Averre · September 16, 2022

Up to 400 violent criminals are being shipped off to fight for Russia on the frontlines in Ukraine after recruiters promised them a pardon in exchange for six months of service.

Prisoners from penal colonies who signed up for the deal were seen filing into prison vans destined for a 'training camp' in the south of Russia, video footage has shown.

After perfunctory military instruction the murderers, sex offenders, burglars and other convicts will be sent to the front line following the mass jail release.

Deserters have been warned they will be shot - but those who survive six months will be pardoned by Putin and allowed to resume their lives no matter how heinous their crimes.

The Russian leader and his military commanders are scrambling to recruit as many new fighters as possible without having to introduce mass conscription in a desperate attempt to reinforce dwindling troop numbers across the border.

It comes as close Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, who heads up the infamous private army known as the Wagner Group, personally travelled to a prison in the Mordovia region to deliver a speech encouraging inmates to sign up as mercenaries earlier this week.

Prisoners from penal colonies in Tambov region are seen being shuttled to combat training camps before being shipped off to Ukraine

Head of the PMC Wagner Group of mercenaries Yevgeny Prigozhin is pictured amid a recruitment drive at a prison in Mordovia

Prigozhin said that Ukraine's lightning counteroffensive near Kharkiv this past weekend - which saw Russian troops abandon their positions in an en-masse retreat - was a 'disgrace' his private army could reverse

Prigozhin, 61, did not mince his words and threatened to recruit prisoners' children should they refuse the offer.

'The first sin is deserting. No-one deserts, no-one gives up, no-one surrenders. You’ll be taught what to do regarding surrender.

'Two grenades which you must have on you. One grenade for our foes, and one for yourself.

'Those who do not like this… send your own children to the front,' Putin's crony declared.

'It's either the PMC [Private Military Company] and prisoners, or your children. It's up to you.'

Those who die on the front line 'will be buried as heroes', Prigozhin told the inmates.

So far Putin has baulked at launching a full-scale mobilisation of new recruits, but there are rumours he is poised to announce partial conscription in certain regions.

Prigozhin meanwhile indicated to loyalist Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that Ukraine's lightning counteroffensive near Kharkiv this past weekend - which saw Russian troops abandon their positions in an en-masse retreat - was a 'disgrace' his private army could reverse.

'They are patriots and cannot allow the disgrace of their Motherland,' Prigozhin claimed.

'Secondly, they are professionals of the highest level and many of them… have gone through dozens of wars, preparing themselves for the greatest day when their beloved Motherland will have to be defended.'

Prigozhin graduated as a trusted Kremlin fixer and gained the moniker 'Putin's chef' after being his personal cook at several banquets (Putin left, Prigozhin right)

Yevgeny Prigozhin (middle) pictured with other Wagner Group fighters at LNR at the beginning of August 2022

He went on to describe his mercenaries as 'warriors, unlike many Kremlin critics who never leave their plush cars'.

They would not 'use Chanel perfume and drive in Nappa leather cars, but climb basements and trenches to keep the situation under control'.

'Of course, if I were a prisoner, I would dream of joining this friendly team in order to be able not only to redeem my debt to the Motherland but also to repay it with vengeance.'

Prigozhin, who graduated as a trusted Kremlin fixer and gained the moniker 'Putin's chef' after being his personal cook at several banquets, is also tasked with overseeing several so-called 'troll farms' - hordes of workers and volunteers who manipulate social media networks to publish a sea of pro-war propaganda inside Russia and abroad.

While Putin's chef continues his whirlwind recruitment tour of Russian prisons, defence minister Sergei Shoigu faces being summoned to a Russian parliament hearing amid his forces' dismal performance in eastern Ukraine.

It is virtually unknown for the State Duma to summon a defence minister to account for himself.

But Russia's armed forces have been openly criticised by military commentators this week after losing control of large parts of Ukraine's Kharkiv region to a lightning advance by Ukrainian forces.

Shoigu, who has held the defence post for 10 years, is said to have been 'sidelined' by Vladimir Putin following Russia's failures in Ukraine.

Russia's lower house of parliament will consider summoning Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (left) to face questioning over his disastrous military campaign in Ukraine

Russia's armed forces have been openly criticised by military commentators this week after losing control of large parts of Ukraine's Kharkiv region (Pictured: A Ukrainian national guard serviceman walks on destroyed Russian APCs near the recently retaken area of Izyum, Ukraine, on Thursday)

Under Shoigu's leadership, Ukraine claims a staggering 54,050 Russian soldiers have been killed since the war began. An estimated 250 aircraft, 4,690 armoured personnel vehicles and 2,199 tanks have also been destroyed (Pictured: Ukrainian serviceman repair a captured Russian tank in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on Thursday)

Senior lawmaker Sergei Mironov, a strong supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and head of the small pro-Kremlin 'Just Russia' party, was quoted in the Kommersant newspaper as saying that the State Duma Council, which manages the chamber's business, would discuss the matter on Monday.

Mironov had tweeted on Wednesday that his party had proposed the session with Shoigu 'so that the deputies can speak with him behind closed doors and ask all the questions that interest us and the citizens'.

Russia's defeat in the Kharkiv region was its biggest since it was driven back from an advance on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in the first weeks of the invasion, which began on February 24.

Under Shoigu's leadership, Ukraine claims a staggering 54,050 Russian soldiers have been killed since the war began.

An estimated 250 aircraft, 4,690 armoured personnel vehicles and 2,199 tanks have also been destroyed, according to Ukraine's Defence Ministry.

Daily Mail · by David Averre · September 16, 2022

10. Disinformation via text message is a problem with few answers

​I get many tests (and emails) from the leaders of both political parties every day. They are often so foolish that I cannot believe anyone could take them seriously. I make liberal use of he delete command.

Disinformation via text message is a problem with few answers

nbcnews.com · September 13, 2022

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Text messaging has become a big part of political mesasging, but misinformation has also crept in.Shira Inbar for NBC News

Sept. 13, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

By Kevin Collier

The biggest election disinformation event of the 2022 midterm primaries was not an elaborate Russian troll scheme that played out on Twitter or Facebook. It was some text messages.

The night before Kansans were set to vote on a historic statewide referendum last month, voters saw a lie about how to vote pop up on their phone. A blast of old-fashioned text messages falsely told them that a “yes” vote protected abortion access in their state, when the opposite was true — a yes vote would cut abortion protections from the state’s constitution.

The messaging effort and referendum both failed. But the campaign shows how easily a bad actor can leverage text messages — which still rely on the same basic technology from when they were developed in the 1990s — to spread disinformation with few consequences. And while there’s now a cottage industry and federal agencies that target election disinformation when it’s on social media, there’s no comparable effort for texts.

Scott Goodstein, who built the bulk text messaging apparatus for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and has since advocated for stronger reforms to rein in potential abuse of political text spam, said there’s little stopping other political groups from spamming voters with disinformation.

“This is very easy, and there’s no real cost or consequences for a bad actor to upload very, very targeted voter-file-based groups and spread misinformation, disinformation, horrible rumors,” Goodstein said.

Kansas “was just foreshadowing the future,” he added. 

In many ways, it’s harder to spread overt election disinformation on American social media platforms than ever before. Since the 2016 election, when Russia’s “troll factory” ran unchecked, Facebook and Twitter started taking the issue more seriously, hiring teams that routinely remove that kind of content, taking down coordinated accounts pushing misinformation and preemptively informing users about basic civic matters like how and where to vote. They’re aided by the FBI, which in 2017 spun up a dedicated unit, the Foreign Influence Task Force, that tips them to foreign online propaganda.

But there is no company or regulatory agency that monitors the contents of all of the billions of text messages that are sent every day. American phone carriers employ some anti-spam measures, but they’re clearly limited: More Americans are filing complaints about spam and scam text messages with the Federal Trade Commission this year than ever before, an agency spokesperson told NBC News, and 2022 is likely to be the first year where they outpace complaints about phone calls.

How to avoid being scammed via text message

July 29, 202202:25

Of the three major U.S. phone carriers, T-Mobile didn’t respond to a request for comment, and AT&T and Verizon referred questions to CTIA, an industry group. CTIA senior vice president Nick Ludlum said in an emailed statement that by design, “Wireless carriers do not pre-screen the content of their customers’ text messages.”

Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor who studies disinformation, said while there’s been substantial data-based research of disinformation on social media from academia and third-party social analytics companies, there’s never been any way to comparably study text messages.

“What are you going to do with text messages? There’s no tool to collect it all, and nor should there be, necessarily,” Linvill said.

“This is an underappreciated tactic, and I feel like it’s becoming more popular than in the past,” he said. “It’s really hard to measure.”

Federal restrictions on political text messages were loosened right before the 2020 election. One of the last major acts of the FCC during the Trump administration was to make it easier for political campaigns to send text messages, even to numbers on the do not call list, provided each message was sent by a person and not an automated system.

But campaigns developed a simple workaround that makes sending those messages almost as fast as if they were automated, said Kevin Bingle, the founder of Right Digital, a conservative digital political outreach company in Ohio.

“I don’t think people are breaking that rule. I really don’t,” Bingle said. “The way they get around it is they have a warehouse or just a team of people who are sitting there with iPads.”

“I can schedule a send to the 10,000 voters, and it takes a few hours for them to get through it, but there’s literally an office park full of people just sitting there hitting a button to manually send the messages one at a time,” Bingle said.

Bingle said he sees little action from the major telecom providers on this front.

“Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and others — why are they allowing this to happen? That’s something I’ve wondered a lot,” he said. “Surely they have customers complaining constantly about these unsolicited text messages they’re receiving. I would imagine the profits are too hard for them to pass on.”

It’s not clear whether political groups that spread text message disinformation will face any consequences. In the Kansas case, messages were delivered through Twilio, a San Francisco company that dominates the American bulk text-messaging market. A Washington Post investigation found that they came through an anti-abortion activist, Tim Huelskamp, who had used a Nevada digital campaign company, Alliance Forge, to send them. Neither Huelskamp nor Alliance Forge responded to requests for comment from NBC News, but Huelskamp told the Kansas Reflector that there was “no evidence” he was behind the texts.

A spokesperson for the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, the agency that oversees political campaigns in the state, declined to confirm or deny if anyone was under investigation for the texts, but said that state laws don’t require political groups to sign text messages if they weren’t supporting a candidate and that there’s no state law requiring such messages be accurate.

A Twilio spokesperson declined to comment on the record about the threat of its customers spreading political disinformation. But while Twilio had disabled the numbers used to spam Kansas after receiving complaints, the company, like the major phone carriers, doesn’t make a habit of pre-screening texts before they’re sent out. According to its policy, it depends on its customers to follow all relevant rules and regulations.

To date, there’s no evidence of a foreign country masterminding a large text message campaign against Americans, but Ukraine has accused Russia of repeatedly sending batch text messages to its citizens since the start of the invasion to spread panic and urge them to defect.

A declassified report on the 2020 election from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that countries like Russia and Iran spent little time trying to attack American election infrastructure and instead devoted resources toward influence operations. Two weeks before the 2020 election, the FBI accused Iran of masterminding a scheme that sent Florida voters intimidating emails telling them to switch their party registration. Iran denied the claims.

“It’s entirely reasonable to expect adversaries and those who want to undermine democracy to experiment with new tactics to divide us,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told NBC News in a statement. “We saw some efforts to send misleading information or outright misinformation by text in the U.S. during the 2020 election, and I would expect that problem to get worse in the future.”

Goodstein, the former Obama campaign staffer, said he expects misinformation campaigns to target minority and low-income voters, who historically face much higher rates of voter suppression.

“These are going to be marginal voters being marginalized, on purpose,” he said. “This is age-old.”

Kevin Collier

Kevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News.

nbcnews.com · September 13, 2022​

11. Clausewitz’s ‘Warlike Element’ and the War in Ukraine

Clausewitz' theory of war is timeless.

Profound conclusion that will hopefully stimulate critical thought and discussion.

By insisting war’s nature is constant—all serve political purposes, fluctuate with the ups and downs of human emotions, and turn more on probability than predictability—modern military professionals deprive armed conflict of its ability to transform from one creature to another. They are, however, not necessarily aware they are doing so. Ironically, military professionals might not genuinely believe war’s nature is as constant as they claim, since they tend to regard today’s “small wars” much like the half-things of Clausewitz’s day rather than as “real” wars. It is probably better this way. Only inept leaders would prepare for the world wars of the twentieth century, with their unparalleled destructiveness and unmatched levels of primordial hatred, in the same way as they would for one of the Banana wars. Clausewitz’s warlike element reminds us all wars may be of the same nature, yet truly different.

Clausewitz’s ‘Warlike Element’ and the War in Ukraine - Military Strategy Magazine

militarystrategymagazine.com

As the conflict in Ukraine unfolds, students of the famed Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz may wonder which of his concepts, aside from well-worn ones such as “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” still hold true. Of course, Clausewitz did the bulk of his thinking and writing some two hundred years ago. Since then, military hardware and fighting techniques, the likes of which he could not have imagined, have changed the character of war in both predictable and unpredictable ways. Fortunately, Clausewitz also said a great deal about war’s intangibles, those elements of conflict that exist in parallel to its changing character, but which have a timeless quality about them. One such concept, the “warlike element” (kriegerische Element) and its relationship to a people’s war or to the arming of an entire nation (Volksbewaffnung), can shed useful light on our observations of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Warlike Element

Clausewitz’s warlike element is all but invisible in the Michael Howard and Peter Paret translations of On War.[i] Yet the concept was of central importance to the Prussian’s overall theory of war and is evident in some of his earlier writings. An excellent dissertation by a Finnish officer, Anders Palmgren, equates it to an “enthusiasm for fighting.”[ii] Indeed, it represents a quality of fierceness in warfare brought about not by destructive technologies, but by human feelings of “hatred” (Haß) and “enmity” (Feindschaft), both of which Clausewitz equated to a “blind natural instinct” (ein blinder Naturtrieb).[iii] The warlike element appears in Clausewitz’s trinitarian conception of war’s nature as enmity or hostility, and it captures what he understood to be war’s true spirit or essence (Geist). He used the warlike element—the quality of fierceness or an enthusiasm for fighting—as an antithesis to the geometric rules and principles that Adam Dietrich von Bűlow and Antoine Henri de Jomini claimed were the true spirit of modern war. In this sense, Clausewitz’s thinking showed the intellectual biases of the cultural movement known loosely as German romanticism, which prized the authentic and the natural over the artificial, and eschewed mechanistic rules and prescriptions for placing form above spirit.[iv]

Contrary to what some interpreters have claimed over the years, On War is more about the warlike element than it is about absolute war. Absolute war is nothing more than the warlike element, the true spirit of war, taken to its ultimate expression and the enthusiasm for fighting is unencumbered by any external constraints. Since real war is never absolved of such restraints, however, absolute war could never occur in reality. Napoleon’s wars came close to it, Clausewitz argued, due to the participation of the entire nation (Volk), especially the populace, which transformed war’s nature from the limited conflicts that had preceded it.

The warlike element captured not only how warlike some wars were, but also how unwarlike others were. Clausewitz likened such conflicts to a “restricted, shriveled up form of war” (beschränkte, zusammengeschrumpfte Gestalt des Krieges) or “half-things” (Halbdinge) because customs and conventions had stifled the true spirit of war.[v] Prussia engaged in such a half-thing in 1812, for instance, when it was forced to contribute some 20,000 troops to the Grande Armée for the invasion of Russia. Most Prussians felt little enthusiasm for the French cause and readily defected when the opportunity arose later that year.[vi] But such half-things, Clausewitz had to acknowledge, were wars too. In fact, they were more numerous historically than warlike wars. As Palmgren rightly notes, the concept of Politik (meaning policy or political interaction, depending on the context) allows Clausewitz to retain the warlike element because Politik functions as a guiding intelligence that shapes (or endeavors to) how warlike a war will be. Put differently, Politik enables Clausewitz to acknowledge most wars would fall between the extremes of warlike and unwarlike.

The Warlike Element Plus Arming the Nation

Clausewitz originally expected a war of national liberation, “a war that a people wages on its home ground for liberty and independence,” to be more warlike in nature than most other wars.[vii] The term Volksbewaffnung can mean arming the people, thus a people’s war, or arming the entire nation. In fact, Clausewitz, his mentor Gerd von Scharnhorst, and others of the Prussian Military Reorganization Commission had begun discussing ways to bring the Prussian populace, the monarchy, and the army together into a unified entity, a total nation in arms, through some form of universal military service.[viii] Either on its own, or as part of a conventional army, or as a combination of both, Clausewitz believed a people fighting for its liberty against an invader would surely display a high enthusiasm for fighting, a fierceness. Partisan activities in Spain, in the Tyrol, and in the Vendee, involved fighting that was especially bloody and merciless. These cases confirmed his views that if a populace wanted to be unconquerable in its fight for freedom, it would be. Even initial defeats would simply inspire later generations to continue fighting and do so at little financial cost. Officers and soldiers waging such conflicts should be considered heroes and patriots, not pariahs. Indeed, the government must compel the populace to take up arms for the preservation of the nation’s independence and honor. The involvement of the populace in warfare as soldiers and as partisans meant both the nature and character of war (as we would describe them) had changed.[ix]

Unfortunately, Clausewitz’s own Prussia failed to launch an insurrection after its defeat at the hands of the French in 1806/1807. Queen Louise, General Gebhard von Blűcher, and other high-ranking officials may well have seethed with the desire for revenge against the French after the Treaty of Tilsit in 1807, which deprived Prussia of half its territory, imposed an indemnity of 155 million francs, and reduced its fighting forces to 44,000 troops.[x] But that animus had not spread to the larger populace. Prussian subjects were not fully enfranchised or invested in the state. Even some of the Prussian illuminati, such as Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who lived but twenty kilometers from each other near Jena, were eager for a French victory and had wished the “French army luck.”[xi] Both had embraced the popular narrative that Napoleon was not just a military genius but an agent of social and political change who would sweep away the stifling legal structures and practices of the “Ancien Régime” and replace them with more egalitarian ones.[xii] Hence, only a few local uprisings occurred, such as the one initiated by a cavalry officer by the name Major Ferdinand von Schill in May 1809, and those were quickly put down by the French and their allies. It would not be until 1813, after modest social, political, and economic reforms had taken effect and as a weakened Napoleon retreated from Russia, that Prussia’s populace showed any appetite for engaging in a war of liberation.

Clausewitz later analyzed the root causes of Prussia’s lack of fighting spirit in 1806 and 1807.[xiii] As he rightly observed, most of Prussia’s social classes expressed little desire to fight for the Prussian crown, especially against Napoleonic France. Moreover, Prussia’s strategists were divided over the best course of action to adopt as the French columns advanced. Save for a few enlightened souls, such as Clausewitz’s mentor Gerd von Scharnhorst, Prussia’s military leaders entertained antiquated ideas about fighting and campaigning. The rank and file were the product of mechanistic training devoid of spirit and neither organized nor psychologically prepared for a fast-paced, modern war. In short, the Prussians were decidedly unwarlike across every category of the Clausewitzian trinity. The French, by comparison, were fused together into a coherent, if not always cohesive, fighting machine. The French army, moreover, was led by one of history’s greatest commanders; its ranks were filled with citizen soldiers motivated by a keen nationalistic spirit, while the broader populace seemingly supported the war. Every element of the Clausewitzian trinity, in other words, was inclined in a warlike direction for the French; all three elements in alignment would prove too much for the divided and friction-filled Prussian state.

When Clausewitz wrote “The People in Arms,” chapter 26, book 6 of On War (presumably in the mid-1820s) his outlook had matured. He had experienced the grueling Russian campaign of 1812, had witnessed firsthand some of the brutality of partisan warfare, and had seen the ebb and flow of the fighting spirit of armies with citizen soldiers. Large numbers of Landwehr had deserted Blűcher’s forces during the heavy rainstorm that followed the Prussian defeat at Ligny, for instance. Fusing the government, the people, and the military together was not a panacea. For a people’s war or a nation in arms to succeed, Clausewitz maintained, it should be waged in conjunction with a conventional campaign conducted by a standing army. In addition, a people’s war must be waged (1) within the borders of the country, (2) not be decided by a single blow, (3) over a large expanse of territory, (4) by a defender with a suitable national character, and (5) across a rough and inaccessible countryside.[xiv] Clearly, these conditions are present in much of modern-day Ukraine. However, number 4, national character, derives from attitudes cultural chauvinism common among developed countries and may be dangerously misleading.

The Ukrainian Defense of Kyiv in 2022

The Ukrainian defense of Kyiv offers a modern example of Clausewitz’s warlike element and his notion of people’s war combined. Early reports indicate Ukrainian civilians, plus the 112th and 114th Territorial Defense Forces, as well as the 72nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade conducted a successful defense of Kyiv.[xv] Scores of YouTube videos and other media showed many Ukrainian civilians arming themselves with the most basic of weapons, from Kalashnikovs to Molotov cocktails, and preparing to defend their homes and neighborhoods against invasion. As two retired US Army officers, Colonel Liam Collins and Major John Spenser, both of whom interviewed Ukrainian civilians and military personnel after the battle of Kyiv, explain:

Collins: “On the 24th [of February] the Ukrainian forces definitely had a plan they were going to execute as soon as the Russians launched . . . but were not yet in position . . . [once the assault occurred] they quickly moved into position with the 72nd Mech defending Kyiv proper at the city limits . . . relying on this informal group of volunteer forces operating forward of that main defensive line outside of the city limits.”

Spencer: “Right . . . it was an irregular force that was part of this defense in depth . . .”

Collins: “Everyone had heard about the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Force before the war . . . the question is how important was their role and how organized were they? That was one of the surprises . . . the formal Territorial Defense Force was only officially established on the 1st of January . . . but they weren’t really organized until the 31st of March or the beginning of April . . . after the defense of Kyiv they were established into formal unites. Before that time, it was just a lot of civilians showing up, getting issued a rifle or an AK and couple of magazines with no one really giving them any direction . . . then moving out, self-organizing, to defend a bridge, or defend a position, doing what was necessary to defend their nation . . . Yet the volunteers were extremely effective.”

Spencer: “this is the theme in one of the articles we’ve written about, the role of volunteers in the defense of Kyiv. . . and in outlying cities . . . like Buca . . . literally ‘community defenders’ were part of this early defense in depth. . . some of them were veterans with prior experience. . . some had a few training events . . . and became leaders.”

Collins: “You almost had what I equate to a ‘county-level national guard’ and they turn their county seat or whatever into a headquarters.”[xvi]

Both officers went on to recommend combining regular and irregular forces into a total defense concept along the lines of the Ukrainian example.[xvii] As always, early observations must be confirmed through further research. Nonetheless, these insights are well enough supported to warrant opening a more deliberate dialogue on the topic.

To be sure, the Ukrainian defense of Kyiv serves well as a microcosm of Clausewitz’s related concepts of the warlike element and Volksbewaffnung in action. Yet we would do well to remember it was not fighting spirit with an integrated defense that proved decisive; a multiplicity of Russian mistakes also contributed to the successful defense of Kyiv. Russian columns moved without security forward or along the flanks or overhead, and thus drove into ambushes. The Russian airborne units were left unsupported, and hence were wiped out. By the accounts of Spencer and Collins, even Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces were unprepared for the Russian assault due to poor organization and planning. Fortunately, Ukrainian enmity toward the Russian invader aided the defenders in overcoming their shortfalls. But we cannot count on the Russians to make the same mistakes in the future. We must also keep in mind the warnings of Russian experts who argue the Kremlin is rarely, if ever, likely to be deterred on strategic matters dealing with Ukraine. Therefore, a fully vetted defensive concept, not just one based on deterrence, is necessary. Both concepts should be based on partnering regular and irregular units to achieve a conventional defense augmented by an unconventional insurrection.

Moreover, should another Russian invasion happen elsewhere, the defenders might not have the benefit of facing an ill-prepared and poorly led invading force. Therefore, best to prepare in advance. Accordingly, NATO’s member states must conduct rigorous defense reviews of their armed forces and their operational concepts. These reviews must ensure each nation’s regular and irregular components are well prepared; they must train together, become acquainted with each other’s leaders at all echelons and conduct periodic joint rehearsals of their defensive missions. Indeed, NATO’s interoperability challenges may increase greatly as regular armies from one member cross-train with irregular forces in another. Nonetheless, it may be crucial to ensuring the success of Article 5.

Conclusion

Clearly, the Clausewitz of eighteenth-century Prussia regarded armed conflict differently than we do today. His concepts of the warlike element and its relationship to a nation in arms, to the extent we can reconstruct them today, shed light on some of the events surrounding the defense of Kyiv. While competent military strategists have long appreciated the value of morale, it remains difficult to quantify. Nor is it qualitatively the same as primordial hatred or enmity. Nor is primordial hatred qualitatively the same as passion, which can have warlike and anti-warlike characteristics. In attempting to trace enmity in war to something primordial, Clausewitz might have erred. But his error still gives us food for thought.

Modern military professionals talk of war’s nature as chameleon-like. A chameleon’s skin may change color to fit its surroundings, but it remains a chameleon. In contrast, war’s character—the institutions that participate in war, the weapons, the doctrines, and indeed the whole process of warfare itself—is said to change over time and across cultures. According to military professionals, those changes do not alter war’s nature because war, at root, remains war. True. But Clausewitz said war was not like a chameleon. Its surface features change, yes; but, as he tried to say, so, too, do its inner forces. These expand and contract even as they rearrange themselves in ways that sometimes transform armed conflict from one type into another.[xviii] The so-called chameleon might transform into a dragon, for instance; or the dragon might become a lowly newt.

By insisting war’s nature is constant—all serve political purposes, fluctuate with the ups and downs of human emotions, and turn more on probability than predictability—modern military professionals deprive armed conflict of its ability to transform from one creature to another. They are, however, not necessarily aware they are doing so. Ironically, military professionals might not genuinely believe war’s nature is as constant as they claim, since they tend to regard today’s “small wars” much like the half-things of Clausewitz’s day rather than as “real” wars. It is probably better this way. Only inept leaders would prepare for the world wars of the twentieth century, with their unparalleled destructiveness and unmatched levels of primordial hatred, in the same way as they would for one of the Banana wars. Clausewitz’s warlike element reminds us all wars may be of the same nature, yet truly different.

References

[i] Compare: C. v. Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 592-93; C. v. Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, 19th Ed. (Berlin: Dűmmlers, 1980), 970-74.

[ii] Anders Palmgren, Visions of Strategy: Following Clausewitz’s Train of Thought (Helsinki: National Defense University, 2014), 401, and 183ff; this is the only work I have found that treats the concept in depth.

[iii] VK, Bk I, Chp 1, 213; On War, 89.

[iv] Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987).

[v] VK, Bk VIII, Chp. 6B, 968, 991-92; On War, 609.

[vi] By the Convention of Tauroggen, December 30, 1812, which Clausewitz facilitated.

[vii] C. v. Clausewitz, Historical and Political Writings, ed. and trans. Peter Paret and Daniel Moran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), Letter to German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, January 1809, 283.

[viii] William O. Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms 1786-1813 (New York: AMS Press, 1966), 127-49.

[ix] James Davis and Christopher Daase, Clausewitz On Small War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 170-96.

[x] Michael V. Leggiere, Blűcher: Scourge of Napoleon (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 96-97.

[xi] Letter to Niethammer, dated October 13, 1806, in Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 115.

[xii] “Thanks to the bath of her Revolution,” wrote Hegel in 1807, “the French Nation has freed herself of many institutions which the human spirit had outgrown like the shoes of a child. These institutions . . . continue to oppress other nations as so many fetters devoid of spirit.” Hegel: Letters, 302.

[xiii] Carl von Clausewitz, Preussen in seiner grossen Katastrophe (Wien and Leipzig: Karolinger 2001); the best translation is “Observations on Prussia in Her Great Catastrophe” (written between 1823 and 1825) in Historical and Political Writings, 75.

[xiv] Compare Howard and Paret, On War, 480; Davis and Daase, Clausewitz On Small War, 222.

[xv] In Ukraine will be formed more than 150 territorial defence battalions - Militarnyi

[xvi] Studying the Battle of Kyiv, Part 1 | Urban Warfare Project (castos.com)

[xvii] How volunteers can help defeat great powers (militarytimes.com)

[xviii] Vom Kriege, Bk I, 212-13; On War, 89.

militarystrategymagazine.com

12. Xi Jinping’s coming checkmate of Putin

Excerpts:

They met as expected, posed for photos and made a predictable announcement about energy trade and economic cooperation. The reality is that massive energy trade projects were ballyhooed years ago, and back in February, but won’t come to fruition for years, if ever, given sanctions.

There are no oil or gas pipelines linking Russia to China — a lapse that should have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine and blackmailing Europe. But he simply couldn’t help himself. Now Europe decouples from its dependency on Russian oil and gas and signs up other sources, including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, thanks to Chinese pipelines and infrastructure improvements.

As Russia’s war continues to fail, Xi will step back further. Then, if Russia falls into a heap, China will gradually take over Siberia and whatever other regions want to build railways, highways or pipelines to Europe and Western prosperity. Checkmate for Xi.

Xi Jinping’s coming checkmate of Putin

BY DIANE FRANCIS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 09/16/22 8:00 AM ET

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

The Hill · · September 16, 2022

Ukraine has Russian President Vladimir Putin’s armed forces on the run and has recaptured land the size of the state of Maine in a matter of days. But a more serious setback is the public distancing of Russia by his so-called “no limits” partner, Chinese President Xi Jinping. It seems there are limits, and Xi articulated these before and after a meeting with Putin in Uzbekistan. Beijing is distancing itself from Moscow as its war against Ukraine falters.

Putin acknowledged that Xi raised “concerns” about his war against Ukraine. He added that the Kremlin would clarify its position on Ukraine, without explaining further. “We understand your questions and your concerns,” he said in remarks broadcast on Russian state television from the meeting, which took place at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan.

The day before the two met, Xi warned Putin against meddling in Kazakhstan. This was significant because the Kazakhs have been in Putin’s crosshairs since their leader openly criticized the war in Ukraine, then announced that Kazakh oil exports would be diverted to help Europe. Russians blocked the exports, then some hinted it may be invaded too.

Xi pledged to protect the country in a private meeting with leaders that was leaked. “We [China] will resolutely support Kazakhstan in the defense of its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said. This was clearly a pre-emptive rebuke aimed at Putin’s imperialism designed to distance China from Russia as its invasion of Ukraine falters.

China has never endorsed the war against Ukraine. The 5,300-word Putin-Xi “no limits” partnership agreement made public on Feb. 4 made no mention of an invasion. Since then, China has kept its distance and stickhandled through the fallout without becoming a pariah like Russia.

This has been accomplished with duplicitous diplomacy. Beijing refuses to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or to call it a war, but it also has not abrogated Western sanctions against Russia or provided any military aid. China’s agenda aims to keep its trading relationships intact with its biggest customers, Europe and America, but also to cop cheap energy from its authoritarian pal Russia.

The partnership has been uneasy for years. China vies with Russia for hegemony over Central Asia, with its vast resources and growing markets serving a population of 72 million. Beijing has already outsmarted Moscow by spending billions to build railways, highways and pipelines through Kazakhstan and other Central Asian nations to bypass Russia completely. Called the Middle Corridor, these infrastructure projects now link China directly to Europe and the Middle East as well as to the resources and economies of the Turkic world. Besides being a “sugar daddy” for the region, China benefits from the residual hatred in Central Asia for its former masters in Moscow.

The Europeans decoupling, and China’s disassociation, from Russia began even before Xi’s no-nonsense Kazakh comment. For starters, the Chinese leader landed another symbolic blow against Russia last week by refusing to attend Putin’s recent conference in Vladivostok and suggesting they meet instead in Uzbekistan, on the sidelines. “It indicates that Beijing carefully calibrates its level of public support for Moscow,” commented a wry observer.

They met as expected, posed for photos and made a predictable announcement about energy trade and economic cooperation. The reality is that massive energy trade projects were ballyhooed years ago, and back in February, but won’t come to fruition for years, if ever, given sanctions.

There are no oil or gas pipelines linking Russia to China — a lapse that should have prevented Putin from invading Ukraine and blackmailing Europe. But he simply couldn’t help himself. Now Europe decouples from its dependency on Russian oil and gas and signs up other sources, including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, thanks to Chinese pipelines and infrastructure improvements.

As Russia’s war continues to fail, Xi will step back further. Then, if Russia falls into a heap, China will gradually take over Siberia and whatever other regions want to build railways, highways or pipelines to Europe and Western prosperity. Checkmate for Xi.

Diane Francis is a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington at its Eurasia Center. She is editor at large at National Post in Canada, a columnist with Kyiv Post, author of 10 books and specializes in geopolitics, white-collar crime, technology and business. She writes a newsletter about America twice weekly on Substack.

The Hill · by Brett Samuels · September 16, 2022

13. Russia is building a closer alliance with the world’s autocracies – the west should beware

A real axis of evil this time.

Russia is building a closer alliance with the world’s autocracies – the west should beware

theconversation.com · by Barbara Yoxon

Russia is planning to buy “millions” of Soviet-era weapons from North Korea, a recent US intelligence report revealed. Britain’s defence intelligence has also confirmed that Russia is already using Iranian-made drones in Ukraine.

The revelations follow a series of diplomatic exchanges between Russian president Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to celebrate North Korea’s Liberation Day on August 15. The two leaders proposed a new strategic and tactical cooperation, and stressed the tradition of friendship between them, part of a recent Putin offensive to create and strengthen alliances with key authoritarian states.

In just a few days Putin has met China’s president Xi Jinping and Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi, as well as promising a major trade delegation to Iran. Putin also promised to do everything he could to make Iran a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a political and security alliance that includes Russia, China, Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

As Russia becomes isolated from the west following its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is becoming more ideologically extreme, and is seeking to improve its cooperation with rogue regimes, particularly North Korea and Iran. This alliance, which is likely to include China, could pose a real threat to the west in the coming years.

Moscow enjoyed a close diplomatic relationship with Pyongyang during the cold war, and the Soviet Union was one of North Korea’s most important economic partners. The relationship changed dramatically in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia, no longer a communist country, focused on forging a positive relationship with western democracies.

It prioritised economic relations over ideological ones, and sought to develop closer ties with the United States and South Korea. This damaged its relations with Pyongyang, and North Korea shifted its focus to developing a closer relationship with China.

North Korea’s isolation

When Putin came to power in 2000, he made attempts to renew Russia’s diplomatic relationship with North Korea. Kim Jong-Il, Kim Jong-Un’s father, even visited Russia on a few occasions.

However, the relationship was hindered by Russia’s deeply pragmatic approach to foreign policy. To maintain friendly relations with the west, Kremlin continued to condemn Pyongyang’s nuclear program.

This made it impossible for the two states to develop meaningful diplomatic relations. Russia’s economic and political isolation following its invasion of Ukraine provided a fresh opportunity for the two regimes to renew their ties.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, North Korea has become increasingly reliant on Beijing, with the vast majority of its trade and energy coming from China.

However, this relationship is not free from political tension. China’s key goal in the Korean Peninsula is to avoid the collapse of North Korea’s autocratic regime and prevent a reunification with South Korea.

This would be unacceptable to China, because it fears that a united Korea would bring greater US involvement in the region. As a result, China has been pressuring Pyongyang to become more moderate, hoping to stabilise the regime.

Shutterstock

The strained relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang is one reason why Kim Jong-Un is likely to embrace the opportunity to get closer to Moscow and become more independent from Beijing. Another is that a closer relationship with Russia could result in subsidised energy and increased technological, scientific and commercial cooperation.

Some commentators argue that Russia’s turn to North Korea is a positive sign. They claim that Russia’s plea for weapons means that the military and economic sanctions against Kremlin are working. Unable to buy arms from other countries, Vladimir Putin is turning to North Korea and Iran, whose artillery is widely believed to be inaccurate and unreliable.

While this is true, a closer relationship between the world’s most dangerous autocracies should be a stark warning to the west. Russia’s interest in North Korea and Iran might be self-interested, it also signals that Moscow is no longer concerned with maintaining diplomatic relations with the west, and that it may be positioning the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation as a rival to Nato.

This autocratic bloc is almost certainly going to include China, whose relations with Russia deepened in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. There is some evidence that Putin’s strategy is already working. In June, both Russia and China vetoed a UN resolution to impose new sanctions on North Korea as a result of its nuclear activities.

This was an unprecedented move from two permanent members of the UN Security Council, who have condemned North Korea’s activities in the past. It signals a renewed effort to counter the global influence of the US and its allies who are, once more, seen as enemies rather than partners.

To counter a growing alliance of authoritarian regimes, the first step for the west is to acknowledge this is not necessarily a sign of Russian weakness, and not to rule out talks with the Kremlin.

While diplomatic engagement with these states might become increasingly difficult, engagement is preferable to a policy of isolationism, which risks encouraging more autocratic cooperation. The west must remain robust in its defence of democratic values and position itself as a necessary economic and strategic partner to autocratic regimes, or risk driving them further away.

theconversation.com · by Barbara Yoxon

14. ‘Wildfire of disinformation’: how Chevron exploits a news desert

‘Wildfire of disinformation’: how Chevron exploits a news desert

As the closures of newspapers leave Americans struggling for information, Chevron has swooped in to serve up a mixture of local news and propaganda

The Guardian · by Adam Gabbatt · September 12, 2022

The dire state of local journalism in the US has been well documented in recent years, as the closure of hundreds of local newspapers has created American “news deserts” where people struggle for information on local politics and happenings.

It has also created openings for companies and political groups to swoop in, serving up a mixture of local news and propaganda, with the latest being Chevron, in Texas’ news starved – and oil-rich – Permian Basin.

The launch of Chevron’s “Permian Proud” site, in August, was first reported by Gizmodo.

The banner at the top of Permian Proud does state that the site is “sponsored by Chevron”. But at first glance, the sponsorship seems like a benevolent grant. On Wednesday Permian Proud’s front page included stories about an upcoming air show and a storytelling workshop – typical local newspaper fare.

But interspersed with news of livestock sales and processions is a series of stories lauding Chevron’s achievements in the Permian Basin, a sprawling area covering parts of west Texas and east New Mexico, where the company operates numerous oil fields.

“New solar energy field in Permian Basin to lower Chevron’s carbon intensity” is one. Another headline reads: “Independent analysis gives Chevron highest environmental rating in Permian Basin.”

Gizmodo reported that content on the site has been written by Mike Aldax, who works for a San Francisco-based PR firm. Since 2014, according to Gizmodo, Aldax “has also written for a Chevron-funded newspaper in California called the Richmond Standard”.

Chevron’s Texas offering has echoes of other dubious “local news” sites that have emerged in recent years.

Locality Labs and Metric Media, both operated by the same ex-journalist, have opened hundreds of “news” sites, which purport to represent local communities, since 2019. The sites, which include the Great Lakes Wire and the Illinois Valley Times, masquerade as local news outlets, but in reality are funded by Republican and conservative groups.

Last November an investigation by Popular Information found that rightwing operatives had used the sprawling network of fake news sites to target crucial state elections, including the Virginia governor’s race in 2021. As the Virginia election loomed, 28 sites, all run by Metric Media, published almost 5,000 articles about critical race theory in schools, a frequently misrepresented issue that has become a call to arms, and to the ballot box, among the right wing.

The rise in fake sites coincides with a crisis for local journalism. Since 2005 the US has lost more than a quarter of its newspapers, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School, and is on track to lose more than a third by 2025.

The closures have created “news deserts” – where people have either limited access, or no access at all, to reliable local reporting.

“The local news desert situation is an absolute crisis, and it’s getting worse. It’s a crisis for communities and it’s a crisis for our democracy, I think, ultimately,” said Tim Franklin, the John M Mutz chair in local news at the Medill School.

“And so, what’s happening now is you’re seeing opportunists, whether they be political parties or companies, in some cases, coming in to try to fill that void with their own messaging.”

In an email Chevron told Gizmodo that Permian Proud is “aimed at providing regional communities with information that is important to them, specifically focused on highlighting the good work so many people are doing and showcasing why the Permian communities are a great place to live and work”.

It is unclear, however, how many people reading the site will be able to tell the difference between local information and Chevron’s PR fluff.

A message on Permian Proud reads: “Our focus will be on news and information that makes us all proud to live here. Permian Proud will highlight and uplift such efforts, not just for its community partners, but for anyone wanting to get the word out to the public on local events, fundraisers, initiatives and more.”

It’s a message that overlooks the fact that some of Permian Proud’s news content has been pasted, unchanged, from Chevron press releases.

“We’re already in a misinformation, disinformation wildfire in this country. What this is doing is fanning the flames of that wildfire of disinformation that is already infecting our civic debate,” Franklin said. He believes that as newspapers continue to close, more companies, or political groups, will move into the local news industry.

“In a self-governed democracy, accurate news and information is the oxygen for citizens to be able to make good decisions at the ballot box, or good decisions about how to live their daily lives.

“So I think the implications of this are very serious for our democracy and for the country.”

The Guardian · by Adam Gabbatt · September 12, 2022

15. A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company

A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company

Black Rifle Coffee seeks to help veterans, but finance and law firms deemed it a ‘reputational risk.’

By Megan Keller

Sept. 15, 2022 6:11 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-socially-conscious-but-politically-incorrect-company-black-rifle-coffee-initial-public-offering-finance-law-firms-reputational-risk-military-veterans-evan-hafer-11663258552?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

You might call Black Rifle Coffee Co. a socially conscious enterprise. “This is a veterans’ corporation,” founder and CEO Evan Hafer, a former Green Beret, says in a Zoom interview. More than half of Black Rifle’s employees have served in the military or are family of veterans. In 2021 the company put $5.3 million in shares toward starting the BRCC Fund, a charity dedicated to helping wounded or traumatized veterans and their families. That was on top of $1.2 million in charitable contributions and $3 million worth of coffee and related products to active-duty military and first responders.

But Mr. Hafer says Black Rifle struggled to find banks and law firms to help it arrange an initial public offering. Since he founded the company in 2014, companies have told him that it was “too irreverent” and poses “reputational risk.”

You can see why Black Rifle wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Its blends include AK-47 and Silencer Smooth, and its social media presence is colorful, to say the least. The company’s YouTube channel features a shooting contest that ends with Mr. Hafer trying to get a bull’s-eye after taking a direct shot of bear spray to the eyes and a video titled “Could You Be a Pregnant Man?” Mr. Hafer’s personal politics have also drawn outrage from the media—he voted for Donald Trump twice—as has the company’s popularity with some controversial figures on the right. Kyle Rittenhouse was photographed wearing a Black Rifle T-shirt. But none of this seems to have hurt the company’s revenue, which reached $233.1 million last year.

Mr. Hafer thinks the numbers should be evidence enough that Black Rifle’s reputation isn’t a material risk. But his company “started hitting a lot of resistance” from high-level finance companies and law firms, although they claimed they were interested in working with veteran-run corporations.

In 2019 and 2020, a Black Rifle spokeswoman says, company leaders were talking to Chase, Bank of America and Macquarie Group about raising capital. After initially showing interest, all three companies declined to work with Black Rifle, citing the company’s image. In 2018 Black Rifle had tried to open an account at a Chase branch in San Antonio and had been turned away over reputational concerns. The spokeswoman says that Macquarie was particularly fixated on the name of its in-house magazine, Coffee or Die, which covers military issues and won the Military Reporters & Editors Association’s 2022 journalism contest for overseas coverage.

Bank of America and Chase declined to comment. Macquarie said in an email: “We take into account a broad range of factors in making financing and investment decisions. We do not comment on confidential commercially sensitive discussions, including those that did not move beyond a very preliminary stage like this one.”

Black Rifle hit similar roadblocks in 2019 and 2020 with Skadden Arps, Latham & Watkins and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. All three law firms passed on working with the coffee company because of its image. According to the Black Rifle spokeswoman, Latham & Watkins said that its reputational risk committee thought no one from top law schools would be willing to work at the firm if it took on Black Rifle as a client, especially because its name included the word “rifle.” The name “is an homage to the service rifle,” Mr. Hafer says. Like the guns he taught special-operations soldiers to shoot, he says, coffee is “lifesaving equipment.”

Simpson Thacher declined to comment. Skadden Arps and Latham & Watkins didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Despite these obstacles, Black Rifle is thriving. The company went public in February through a special-purpose acquisition merger with SilverBox Engaged Merger Corp and this summer rolled out marketing partnerships with the Dallas Cowboys and Amazon Prime Video.

Yet Mr. Hafer worries what the seemingly arbitrary treatment he experienced will mean for other veterans. “I think it’s going to be really important for those guys—men and women both—to understand, these are the types of doors that are going to be slammed in your face if you’re not conforming to a very specific narrative,” he says. “I don’t want them to go through some of the same issues that we’ve had to go through to get access to capital.”

Ms. Keller is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.

WSJ Opinion: Disney Pays the Price for Woke Business Politics

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Appeared in the September 16, 2022, print edition as 'A Socially Conscious but Politically Incorrect Company'.

16. Ukraine and "The New Ministry of Truth"

Excerpts:

In his memoir The New Ministry of Truth (Hellgate Press, 2019), Naylon describes his work as a combat advisor, training and deploying with the Georgian army, as well as his experiences on-the-ground when America declared an “end to combat operations” in the final days of 2014. Though the book's subject is war, this is not a traditional war story. “If you’re looking for the daily grind of battle that so many Marines and soldiers faced during their time in Afghanistan, this isn’t it,” Naylon writes.

Instead, this is one man’s story of what it was like to fight a war without a clear political objective, where the rules of engagement changed on the whims of image-obsessed, dealmaking politicians in Washington, DC. We talked with Naylon about Afghanistan, the consequences of political doublespeak, and what his firsthand experience training a post-Soviet military can teach us about the war in Ukraine. This transcript has been modified for clarity. 

...

Supporting the Ukrainians is also an effective way to fight back against Russia, our clear adversary. The Ukrainian troops are a no-kidding buttress against Russian advances deeper into Europe. There is no doubt in my mind that, if not stopped in Ukraine, it’s just a matter of time before Russia pushes deeper into eastern Europe and the Baltics. We need to support Ukraine for the long-haul to avoid such an outcome.  

Ukraine and "The New Ministry of Truth"

By John Waters & Neil Hassler

September 17, 2022

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2022/09/17/ukraine_and_the_new_ministry_of_truth_853718.html

Maurice “Chipp” Naylon graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and commissioned as an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. In 2014, Naylon deployed as a combat advisor to Bagram, serving alongside soldiers from the Republic of Georgia as part of ISAF’s mission to provide “long-term security” to Afghanistan. Despite its small size, the Republic of Georgia deployed combat units to Afghanistan every year from 2010 until all troops were withdrawn at the end of August 2021.

In his memoir The New Ministry of Truth (Hellgate Press, 2019), Naylon describes his work as a combat advisor, training and deploying with the Georgian army, as well as his experiences on-the-ground when America declared an “end to combat operations” in the final days of 2014. Though the book's subject is war, this is not a traditional war story. “If you’re looking for the daily grind of battle that so many Marines and soldiers faced during their time in Afghanistan, this isn’t it,” Naylon writes.

Instead, this is one man’s story of what it was like to fight a war without a clear political objective, where the rules of engagement changed on the whims of image-obsessed, dealmaking politicians in Washington, DC. We talked with Naylon about Afghanistan, the consequences of political doublespeak, and what his firsthand experience training a post-Soviet military can teach us about the war in Ukraine. This transcript has been modified for clarity.    

Your book is a critical perspective on the War in Afghanistan circa 2014-15. What happened there and why did you write this memoir?

The book follows the timeline from the moment I found out I was going to be a combat advisor through traveling over to Georgia, training with the Georgians, going to Germany for a month to do a mission rehearsal exercise, and deploying with them for seven months.

I wrote this book to provide lessons from the combat advisor perspective but also reflections on the Afghan war experience. The skills we learned by screwing up should be relevant to military advisors because there will be more advisors in some future conflict. Selfishly, I also wrote the book for catharsis. I left Afghanistan with tremendous anger about America’s policy - or lack thereof - in that country.

Combat operations in Afghanistan technically ended on December 31, 2014. What changed between December 31, 2014 and January 1, 2015? Did you guys hang up your kit and kick back with Netflix and a hot canteen cup of tea?

No. Nothing changed in our day-to-day operations. But suddenly the rules had changed.

Meaning American forces could no longer close with and destroy the enemy. The sands had trickled through the hourglass. Your time was up. Your role was to teach and assist the Afghan forces as they fought. Do we have that right?

Yes, but my point is that the risks were still the same. The enemy was still the same. The IEDs and rockets were still the same. Nothing changed besides what we were calling our operations in the media and Washington, DC, and the fact that we were suddenly restricted from fighting back. That’s where the title of the book comes from.

The book is “New Ministry of Truth,” a phrase you cribbed from George Orwell. What’s it like for troops on the ground when the government engages in doublespeak?

Well, no punches pulled, it fucking sucks. Tremendously detrimental to the morale of the troops on the ground. The thoughts of the guys out there operating are: “I don’t have support from the leaders above me; I don’t know why I’m risking my life.” So much of what we had to do as officers was to justify the risk our guys were taking to train the Afghan army and help rebuild their country. How much harder does it get to justify the risks taken when your government suddenly changes how it speaks about your sacrifice? Yes, I have tremendous frustration about U.S. policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. I adhere to the philosophy that military force should achieve some greater political objective. If you have military force committed without a clearly defined political objective, then you are wasting time, lives, and resources. I think guys and gals on the ground were thrown into this cavalierly by our legislative and executive branch policymakers. For 20 years they failed to define clear and attainable political objectives to focus the military’s efforts in Afghanistan. Simply put, we were fighting for the sake of fighting, with no obvious outcome to achieve.

You're upset about American foreign policy in Afghanistan. Why did we fail?

Groupthink. Sunk costs. Confusing measures of performance with measures of effectiveness. If you count the number of wheat fields, you get one number. But measures of effectiveness are a way of quantifying whether those wheat fields achieved their intended gains, or whether they provided enough food to feed the village. We tracked the number of troops deployed. Years spent. Money spent. Schools built. Enemies killed. The harder analysis would have been to evaluate whether the performance measures we obsessed over actually achieved their intended effectiveness.

Let's switch gears. You trained and deployed with the Georgian Army. Describe the morale of the Georgians.

Georgians had even less reason to fight in Afghanistan than we did. Their presence had everything to do with NATO accession— “if we contribute to the ISAF mission, it is more likely we will be accepted.” That’s what it seemed they believed. Yes, it was frustrating enough being an American in Afghanistan. It would be even more demoralizing to be a Georgian.

And how did Georgian soldiers feel about Russia and the Russian army?

Complete and utter disdain for Russians. The Georgians disliked the Russians even more than the Ukrainians disliked the Russians at that time. Georgians got their punch in the nose from Russia back in 2008. But, Ukrainian animosity towards the Russian invaders is most certainly on par - if not greater - now. 

You’ve got recent, on-the-ground experience training a post-Soviet military. What was the biggest difference between the Georgians’ style of fighting and ours?

Lack of initiative and subordinate empowerment. The American military pushes leadership and decision-making down to the lowest levels of command. But the Soviets prefer to ask for permission. The Soviets instilled in their military leaders that you better ask “higher” for permission before making a decision, or else prepare to get punished when you screw up. There’s an old saying in Russian: “initiative fucks the initiator.” I think we’re seeing this model more so in Russia than Ukraine. Russia is top-down across the board. If something happens in Russia, it’s because the Kremlin allowed it. Ukraine is a much different model, much more horizontal, and I think it’s translating into military operations on the ground, where Ukrainians are more willing to seize fleeting opportunities when they arise. In the post-Soviet model, if you screw up as a subordinate, there is very little positive reinforcement or support—you will get thrashed. The Russians are currently dealing with this toxic climate, a reality clearly demonstrated by the many senior officers and generals dying on the battlefield. You have generals and colonels running to the front lines to try to get their troops to take action, an entirely different mindset than the initiative shown at all levels of the Ukrainian military. 

Can you give an example of this mindset, something you wrote about in your memoir?

We were in Germany and working with U.S. Army soldiers who ran an IED training lane for our Georgian counterparts. I remember watching a fire team of Georgians go through the lane, identifying and navigating IEDs and other obstacles to execute their patrol. After finishing the lane, I saw the Georgian team leader go back and sort of surreptitiously tell the next Georgian team leader, the one in the chute, where the IEDs were located. Then, the next team went through the lane and, obviously, had no trouble identifying the IEDs.

Georgians thought they were “winning” the training event, is that right?

Right. We noticed this was happening and told the U.S. Army lane leader that the Georgians were basically doing it the wrong way—“gaming the game,” as we say in the military. So, the lane leader moves the IED. When the next team heads straight for that previous IED location and—lo and behold—there’s nothing there, the team leader is surprised and upset. It became a teaching moment of the difference between the mindset “do we look at training as a chance to improve” or do we want to “win the training.” Once we paused training and explained to them that the training is supposed to be unpredictable to simulate real-life combat, they were bashful but understood what we were attempting to teach and applied themselves as instructed.

You have some expertise in instructing a foreign military, specifically a post-Soviet military. How do you see the fight in Ukraine?

I’m just observing like everyone else, but I do have a vested interest. My wife is Ukrainian and her family lives there. From what I see and hear, the Ukrainians’ performance is driven by necessity. We either fight or disappear as a country, is how they see it. If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.

How do you reconcile the war drive you seem to regret with the blitheness of American public support for a long war in Ukraine?

I volunteered to join the military. Even if you disagree with the bigger picture or root causes for a war, there’s still value in joining up to serve and lead and do your best to help people who are suffering. I was able to balance my frustrations and disagreements with my desire to serve. Coming back can reinforce the beauty of what America stands for, and it can cause cynicism. I came back from Afghanistan very cynical as a result of my service there. And yet, there was no fear that I was going to be prosecuted for criticizing the war. I was able to speak my mind. But look at this Russian paratrooper Pavel Filatyev who just released his memoir criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, how he had to flee to France or else be captured and probably murdered. In America, you can come back home and criticize what happened over there and not be afraid of retribution. That’s part of the beauty of this country.

On policy, I believe we should provide Ukraine as many weapons as possible for as long as they are willing to fight, but I do not think we should commit U.S. troops to this fight. I will be the first to admit that Ukraine is not perfect and is still tackling elements of corruption, but it’s moving the right direction. Ukraine seeks Western-style democracy, education, and economics - not the kleptocratic, post-Soviet model of rampant corruption. The Ukrainian people demonstrated this in Maidan in 2013 and 2014, and they’re demonstrating it on the battlefield now.

Supporting the Ukrainians is also an effective way to fight back against Russia, our clear adversary. The Ukrainian troops are a no-kidding buttress against Russian advances deeper into Europe. There is no doubt in my mind that, if not stopped in Ukraine, it’s just a matter of time before Russia pushes deeper into eastern Europe and the Baltics. We need to support Ukraine for the long-haul to avoid such an outcome.  

John Waters and Neil Hassler are writers in Nebraska.

17. Pope Francis Sought To Meet With Xi Jinping, But China Declined

Pope Francis Sought To Meet With Xi Jinping, But China Declined

eurasiareview.com · by CNA · September 16, 2022

By Jonah McKeown

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Pope Francis expressed his “availability” to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping while both men were in Kazakhstan this week, but China declined, according to a Reuters report citing an unnamed Vatican official.

Pope Francis was in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital formerly known as Astana, Sept. 13–15 for an interreligious meeting, while Xi was in the same city to meet with Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, one day after the pope did.

According to Reuters, the source said the Vatican made “an expression of availability,” and the Chinese side said they “appreciated the gesture” but that there was no free time in Xi’s schedule.

A meeting of the two leaders would have been momentous; there has never been a meeting between a pope and a president of China. Pope Francis has said he is willing to visit China, saying on the flight from Rome to Kazakhstan on Sept. 13: “I’m always ready to go to China.”

The coinciding visits of Francis and Xi also comes as the Holy See and China determine the renewal of a provisional agreement on the appointment of bishops in China and a cardinal is preparing to stand trial in Hong Kong for his role in a pro-democracy legal fund.

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Xi has been harshly criticized for overseeing the persecution of religious believers of many stripes in China, including Christians and the Uyghur Muslims of the Xinjiang region.

Kazakhstan and China, which are neighbors, have close ties, with large-scale Chinese investments in the Central Asian country’s natural resources through its Belt and Road Initiative. Xi announced his plan for a “new silk road” in the Kazakh capital in 2013. The Chinese leader met with Vladimir Putin in Uzbekistan on Thursday as part of Xi’s first trip outside China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pope Francis has said little about China’s human rights violations since the Vatican first entered into a provisional agreement with China in 2018. That deal was meant to unify the country’s 12 million Catholics, divided between the underground Church and the Communist-administered Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and clear a path for the appointment of bishops for Chinese dioceses. Despite the deal, persecution of the underground Church has continued and, according to some, intensified. That deal is expected to be renewed for another two years at the end of the month.

eurasiareview.com · by CNA · September 16, 2022

18. TikTok’s C.E.O. Navigates the Limits of His Power

I am sure there is a red phone on his desk that links him directly to the Chinese Communist Party so he can take its commands.

TikTok’s C.E.O. Navigates the Limits of His Power

Shou Zi Chew, TikTok’s chief executive, is balancing how to be an autonomous leader while juggling the demands of the app’s Chinese parent company.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/tiktok-ceo-shou-zi-chew.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist

By Ryan Mac and Chang Che

Ryan Mac reports on technology from Los Angeles, and Chang Che from Seoul.

• Sept. 16, 2022

TikTok recently tried to tamp down concerns from U.S. lawmakers that it poses a national security threat because it is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance. The viral video app insisted it had an arm’s-length relationship with ByteDance and that its own executive was in charge.

“TikTok is led by its own global C.E.O., Shou Zi Chew, a Singaporean based in Singapore,” TikTok wrote in a June letter to U.S. lawmakers.

But in fact, Mr. Chew’s decision-making power over TikTok is limited, according to 12 former TikTok and ByteDance employees and executives.

Decisions about the service — including moves to emphasize livestreaming and shopping on TikTok — are made by Zhang Yiming, ByteDance’s founder, as well as by a top ByteDance strategy executive and the head of TikTok’s research and development team, said the people, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals. TikTok’s growth and strategy, which are led by ByteDance teams, report not to Mr. Chew but to ByteDance’s office in Beijing, they said.

The arrangements illustrate the tightrope that Mr. Chew, 39, walks as the head of one of the world’s most popular social apps. Since being appointed TikTok’s chief executive in May 2021, he has had to navigate presenting himself to the West as the autonomous leader of a global service while fulfilling the demands of the app’s Chinese parent.

Image

Zhang Yiming, right, ByteDance’s founder, and Mr. Chew have known each other for years.Credit...ChinaTopix, via Associated Press

Mr. Chew faces mounting challenges. As TikTok has stormed its way onto people’s smartphones and accrued an estimated 1.6 billion monthly active users, its ByteDance ties have raised concerns that it may be siphoning off people’s data to Chinese authorities. In recent months, U.S. lawmakers and regulators have increasingly questioned TikTok’s data practices, reigniting a debate over how the United States should treat business relationships with foreign companies.

On Wednesday, TikTok’s chief operating officer testified in Congress and downplayed the app’s China connections. On Thursday, President Biden signed an executive order to sharpen the federal government’s powers to block Chinese investment in tech in the United States and to limit its access to private data on citizens.

In an email, TikTok said Mr. Chew was ultimately responsible for the app’s product and strategy decisions. ByteDance said he was familiar with the company’s business.

Little is known about Mr. Chew and how he operates TikTok. But the former TikTok and ByteDance employees said he had focused on bringing financial discipline to the app during a global downturn. He has tightened budgets, shuttered marketing experiments and laid off employees in North America as the app has moved more operations to Singapore, they said. Mr. Chew has also met with global business executives and European regulators.

In a meeting late last year, one TikTok employee asked where Mr. Chew saw the app in 100 years. “I just want to make money next year,” he said, according to three people who were on the call.

But ByteDance has more control, others said. “If he didn’t want to do something ByteDance wants him to do, he could be fired and someone else could be put in his place,” Salvatore Babones, the director of China and free societies at the Center for Independent Studies, an Australian think tank, said of Mr. Chew.

Mr. Chew has acknowledged a familiar relationship with ByteDance that dates to when he helped invest in the firm nearly a decade ago.

“I’ve stayed very close to the folks at ByteDance because of my early relationship with them,” he said in a March interview with the billionaire investor David Rubenstein, whose firm, the Carlyle Group, has a stake in the Chinese giant. Mr. Chew added that he had become familiar with TikTok as a “creator” and amassed “185,000 followers.” (He appeared to be referring to a corporate account that posted videos of him while he was an executive at Xiaomi, one of China’s largest phone manufacturers.)

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Mr. Chew helped take the Chinese phone maker Xiaomi public in 2018. He shook hands with a guest at the company’s listing ceremony at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.Credit...Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg

Born and raised in Singapore, Mr. Chew studied economics at University College London and earned an M.B.A. from Harvard. In 2010, after an internship at Facebook, he joined DST Global, a venture capital firm helmed by the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

Mr. Chew, who is fluent in Mandarin, became DST’s point man in China. He clinched some of the most lucrative deals in Chinese internet history, including investments in the e-commerce platforms JD.com and Alibaba and the ride-hailing service Didi. In 2011, he helped lead DST’s $500 million investment in Xiaomi.

What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.

Learn more about our process.

In 2013, Mr. Milner asked Mr. Chew to meet Mr. Zhang, who had founded a news aggregator app called Jinri Toutiao. The two built a rapport, and an investment vehicle associated with Mr. Milner led a $10 million financing in Mr. Zhang’s company that same year, three people with knowledge of the deal said.

The news aggregator eventually became ByteDance — now valued at around $360 billion, according to PitchBook — and owns TikTok; its Chinese sister app, Douyin; and various education and enterprise software ventures.

By 2015, Mr. Chew had joined Xiaomi as chief financial officer. He spearheaded the device maker’s 2018 initial public offering, led its international efforts and became an English-speaking face for the brand.

“Shou grew up with both American and Chinese language and culture surrounding him,” said Hugo Barra, a former Google executive who worked with Mr. Chew at Xiaomi. “He is objectively better positioned than anyone I’ve ever met in the China business world to be this incredible dual-edged executive in a Chinese company that wants to become a global powerhouse.”

In March 2021, Mr. Chew announced that he was joining ByteDance as chief financial officer, fueling speculation that the company would go public. (It remains privately held.)

Two months later, TikTok appointed Mr. Chew as chief executive, with Mr. Zhang praising his “deep knowledge of the company and industry.” Late last year, Mr. Chew stepped down from his ByteDance role to focus on TikTok.

TikTok had been without a permanent chief executive since August 2020, when Kevin Mayer, a former Disney executive, left after the Trump administration’s effort to sunder the app from its Chinese parent. China was also cracking down on its domestic internet giants, with Mr. Zhang resigning from his official roles at ByteDance last year. Mr. Zhang remains involved in decision making, people with knowledge of ByteDance said.

Mr. Chew moved to establish himself as TikTok’s new head during visits to the app’s Los Angeles office in mid-2021. At a dinner with TikTok executives, he sought to build camaraderie by keeping a Culver City, Calif., restaurant open past closing time, three people with knowledge of the event said. He asked attendees if he should buy the establishment to keep it open longer, they said.

Image

Mr. Chew attended the Met Gala in New York City in May with his wife, Vivian Kao.Credit...Mike Coppola/Getty Images

On trips to the United States, he has met with Ari Emanuel, the head of Endeavor, the talent and media company; Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive; and the commissioner of the National Basketball Association, Adam Silver, to build potential commercial relationships, according to four people with knowledge of the meetings.

ByteDance has kept optics in mind in choosing TikTok chief executives, five people with knowledge of Mr. Chew’s appointment said. Mr. Mayer, who was based in Los Angeles, was hired because he was an American at a time when TikTok wanted to look distinct from its Chinese parent, they said. Mr. Chew straddles the Western and Chinese business worlds, with Singapore offering a hedge against any potential crackdown from China or the United States, they said.

But both Mr. Mayer’s and Mr. Chew’s power as TikTok’s head has been circumscribed by ByteDance, five people with knowledge of the company said.

Changes to TikTok’s core app and its features run through Mr. Zhang; ByteDance’s chief executive, Liang Rubo, who was Mr. Zhang’s college roommate; Zhao Pengyuan, a ByteDance strategy executive; and Zhu Wenjia, the head of TikTok’s research and development team, the people said. ByteDance executives direct TikTok’s development by seeing what happens first on Douyin, its Chinese counterpart, they added.

Some who have worked with Mr. Chew said they were unclear about how well he understood the platform, which has continued growing. Some employees were brought in to teach Mr. Chew, who has 7,600 followers on his account, the latest TikTok trends to boost his presence, two people familiar with the plan said.

Mr. Chew has mostly been active around TikTok’s finances and operations, the people familiar with his activities said.

Last October, he shelved a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign for a TikTok NFT project involving the musical artists Lil Nas X and Bella Poarch. He reprimanded TikTok’s global head of marketing on a video call with Beijing-based leaders for ByteDance after some celebrities dropped out of the project, four people familiar with the meeting said. It showed that Mr. Chew answered to higher powers, they said.

Mr. Chew also ended a half-developed TikTok store off Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, three people familiar with the initiative said. TikTok briefly explored obtaining the naming rights of the Los Angeles stadium formerly known as the Staples Center, they said.

He has also overseen layoffs of American managers, two people familiar with the decisions said, while building up teams related to trust and safety. In its U.S. marketing, the app has shifted its emphasis from a brand that starts trends and conversations toward its utility as a place where people can go to learn.

In May, Mr. Chew flew to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, speaking with European regulators and ministers from Saudi Arabia to discuss digital strategy.

More recently, he has defended TikTok’s data practices. In the app’s June letter to U.S. lawmakers, he noted that ByteDance employees in China could gain access to the data of Americans when “subject to a series of robust cybersecurity controls.” But he said TikTok was in the process of separating and securing its U.S. user data under an initiative known as Project Texas, which has the app working with the American software giant Oracle.

“We know we’re among the most scrutinized platforms,” Mr. Chew wrote.

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Aug. 14, 2022

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Sept. 14, 2022

Ryan Mac is a technology reporter focused on corporate accountability across the global tech industry. He won a 2020 George Polk award for his coverage of Facebook and is based in Los Angeles. @RMac18

Chang Che is a reporter covering technology in Asia. @changxche

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 17, 2022, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: The New Search Engine?. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com