Quotes of the Day:

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." 

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." 

- William Shakespeare

"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty." 

- Louis D. Brandeis

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 3, 2023

2. Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon of war - Israeli campaigner

3. Justifying Hamas’s barbarism at Georgetown Law

4. 3 university presidents to face grilling on campus antisemitism at House hearing

5. Who Is ICE’s Newest Chief of Staff, and Will He Promote the Agency’s Mission?

6. Opinion | Four national security measures that cannot wait until next year

7. Opinion | Speaking softly with big sticks: the reality of the US-China detente

8. Former Harvard disinformation scholar says she was pushed out of her job after college faced pressure from Facebook

9. Partisans 'Kill 24 Russian Soldiers with Poisoned Treats'

10. Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine (PART 1)

11. In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls (PART 2)

12. (Israel-Hamas War) Iran Update, December 4, 2023

13. Top U.S. general still waiting to hear from China on military ties

14. The 7 Reasons Iran Won’t Fight for Hamas

15. Israel’s Impossible Dilemma

16. Amid Ukraine and Israel conflicts, Pentagon acquisition chief sees counter-drone 'crisis'

17. China coy on support for rebels fighting guerrilla war on border

18. Israel, Hamas Engage in Some of Fiercest Fighting of War

19. France, Australia Plan Military Base Access Pact in the Pacific

20. Accounts of Sexual Violence by Hamas Are Aired Amid Criticism of U.N.

21. How to Take Apart the Axis of Revisionists by Michael R. Pompeo and Peter Rough

22. Under the Radar: Weaponizing Maritime Transponders in Strategic Competition

23. US Weighing Red Sea 'Task Force' to Protect Commercial Ships Following Attacks by Iran-backed Rebels

24. Gaza and the Future of Information Warfare By P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 3, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-3-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 1 decree is likely a formal recognition of the Russian military’s current end strength and not an order to immediately increase the number of Russian military personnel.
• Ukrainian air defense coverage along the front line is reportedly incentivizing Russian forces to rely more heavily on remote strikes with glide bombs.
• Ukrainian officials appealed to international organizations to investigate video footage published on December 2 showing Russian forces killing surrendering and reportedly unarmed Ukrainian soldiers.
• Russian forces launched a series of missile and drone strikes on the night of December 2 and 3.
• The Russian government is likely continuing attempts to censor relatives of mobilized Russian military personnel on social media out of concern about their protests’ possible negative effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s still unannounced 2024 presidential campaign.
• A prominent Russian milblogger claimed to have given a “masterclass” to press heads and communications personnel at Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, likely in support of an effort that allows the Russian government to normalize the war without directly involving the Kremlin.
• The milblogger’s “masterclass” represents an avenue by which the Kremlin can further benefit from milbloggers and shows how possible financial incentives could temper milbloggers’ criticisms of the Russian leadership.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced near Avdiivka.
• Russia continues to use the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to indoctrinate Russian children into Russian nationalism and set conditions for long-term force generation efforts.
• Russian occupation officials continue to strengthen the Kremlin-backed United Russia party in occupied Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 3, 2023

Dec 3, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 3, 2023

Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, Riley Bailey, Grace Mappes, and Frederick W. Kagan

December 3, 2023, 5:25pm ET

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

Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on December 3. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the December 4 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 1 decree is likely a formal recognition of the Russian military’s current end strength and not an order to immediately increase the number of Russian military personnel. Putin signed a decree on December 1 increasing the official end strength of the Russian military from 2.039 million personnel to 2.209 million personnel and total Russian combat personnel from 1.15 million to 1.32 million.[1] The increase of 170,000 Russian combat personnel between Putin’s previous August 25, 2022 decree and the December 1, 2023 decree is likely a formal acknowledgement of a net increase of 170,000 combat personnel between August 25, 2022, and December 1, 2023, and not a call to immediately increase the current number of combat personnel by an additional 170,000.[2] Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev claimed on November 9 that the Russian military has recruited 410,000 contract, volunteer, and conscripted military personnel since January 1, 2023, then later claimed on December 1 that the Russian military has recruited over 452,000 personnel since January 1, 2023.[3] The Russian government announced in September 2022 that the Russian military would mobilize 300,000 personnel under Putin’s partial mobilization decree.[4] NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated on November 29 that Russian forces have suffered over 300,000 casualties (killed and wounded personnel) in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.[5] Ongoing widespread crypto-mobilization efforts (such as volunteer recruitment and the coercion of migrants into the Russian military), partial mobilization, the number of Russian personnel concluding military service, and Russian casualties in Ukraine plausibly account for a net 170,000-combat personnel increase between August 25, 2022, and December 1, 2023.[6] Putin’s December 1, 2023 decree is thus likely establishing 2.209 million personnel as the new official end strength rather than ordering a significant new increase in the total size of the Russian military.

Ukrainian air defense coverage along the front line is reportedly incentivizing Russian forces to rely more heavily on remote strikes with glide bombs. Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated on December 3 that Ukrainian forces shoot down Russian attack helicopters, such as Ka-52 and Mi-24 helicopters, as soon as they enter the range of Ukrainian air defense systems.[7] Shtupun stated that this Ukrainian air defense capability has prompted Russian forces to use Su-35 and Su-34 attack aircraft to launch remote strikes with glide bombs from 50 to 70 kilometers behind the line of combat engagement.[8] Russian forces effectively used helicopters to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast in summer 2023 but decreased the use of rotary wing aircraft following the downing of Ka-52 helicopters in the area in mid-August 2023.[9] Shtupun’s statements are consistent with these observations as well as with the increased Russian use of glide bombs throughout the frontline, particularly in southern Ukraine.[10]

Ukrainian Air Force Spokesperson Colonel Yuriy Ihnat stated on December 3 that Ukrainian air defenses are similarly prompting Russian forces to increase their use of KAB glide bombs because FAB glide bombs require Russian aircraft to fly within range of Ukrainian air defenses.[11] Ihnat added that KAB bombs are inaccurate and that Russian forces therefore launch a large number of the glide bombs to strike Ukrainian targets.[12] Ihnat stated that Russian aviation launches about 100 glide bombs on average at Ukrainian targets along the front line each day and stated that Ukraine needs long-range air defense systems and F-16 fighter jets to counter the current Russian aviation threat.[13]

The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (UK MoD) reported that Russian air defense systems are also constraining Ukrainian operations along the front, specifically Russian SA-15 TOR short-range surface-to-air missile systems (SAMs).[14] The UK MoD reported that Russian forces use the SA-15 SAMs to provide cover for Russian ground forces at the front line and have effectively employed them to counter Ukrainian drone operations.[15]

Ukrainian officials appealed to international organizations to investigate video footage published on December 2 showing Russian forces killing surrendering and reportedly unarmed Ukrainian soldiers. A Russian source published footage on December 2 showing Russian forces shooting two Ukrainian soldiers after they surrendered near Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka).[16] Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations to investigate this violation of international law, and Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated on December 3 that Ukrainian authorities will give the evidence of the war crime to the appropriate international institutions.[17] The Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office stated that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has begun a pre-trial investigation for criminal proceedings for violations of the Ukrainian Criminal Code.[18] A few Russian milbloggers dismissed the video and the accusations against the Russian forces.[19] Attacking soldiers recognized as hors de combat, specifically including those who have clearly expressed an intention to surrender, is a violation of Article 41 of the Geneva Convention on the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts.[20]

Russian forces launched a series of missile and drone strikes on the night of December 2 and 3. Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces launched 12 Shahed drones from Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai, and one Kh-59 missile from Belgorod Oblast and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 10 of the drones over Mykolaiv and Khmelnytskyi oblasts as well as the Kh-59 missile.[21] The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian forces launched the drones in waves.[22] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian aviation, drones, missiles, and artillery struck a Ukrainian command post in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast; fuel depots near Myrhorod, Poltava Oblast and Khmelnytskyi City; and an ammunition depot in Mykolaiv Oblast.[23]

The Russian government is likely continuing attempts to censor relatives of mobilized Russian military personnel on social media out of concern about their protests’ possible negative effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s still unannounced 2024 presidential campaign. BBC Russia reported on December 3 that online bots using fake names and profile pictures accused the relatives of mobilized Russian personnel in their “Way Home” Telegram channel of having connections to imprisoned Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation.[24] The “Way Home” group previously issued a manifesto on November 27 calling for the return of mobilized personnel and an end to “indefinite” mobilization.[25] Relatives of mobilized personnel have also repeatedly appealed to the Russian government and military for the release of their relatives from military service and for better treatment of mobilized servicemen in the Russian military, and the Russian government has made efforts to censor these demands and complaints and prevent relatives of mobilized personnel from protesting publicly.[26] Putin‘s presidential campaign will reportedly not focus on the war in Ukraine, and the Kremlin likely considers the relatives of mobilized personnel to be a social group that may pose one of the greatest threats to his campaign.[27]

A prominent Russian milblogger claimed to have given a “masterclass” to press heads and communications personnel at Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, likely in support of an effort that allows the Russian government to normalize the war without directly involving the Kremlin. The Rybar Telegram channel claimed that its founder, Mikhail Zvinchuk, gave the “masterclass,” which involved an analysis of 23 Telegram accounts of Russian enterprises and a discussion on the importance of Telegram and other social media to achieve results.[28] Zvinchuk recommended that Rostec increase coverage of its production processes, modernize its approaches to publicizing their products, and humanize the corporation. Many of Rostec’s subsidiaries are involved in the Russian Ministry of Defense’s efforts to ramp up DIB production to support Russia’s long war effort in Ukraine.[29] Rostec and its subsidiaries using Telegram to promote DIB products would help normalize the revitalization of Russia’s DIB and the Russian long war effort to the Russian public without directly attributing this normalization to the Kremlin. The Kremlin has consistently failed to bring Russian society to a wartime footing and is unlikely to do so in the near term as the Kremlin reportedly seeks to downplay the war as it prepares for the 2024 Russian presidential elections.[30]

The milblogger’s “masterclass” represents an avenue by which the Kremlin can further benefit from milbloggers and shows how possible financial incentives could temper milbloggers’ criticisms of the Russian leadership. The Kremlin has sought to appeal to select milbloggers, including Rybar, and Zvinchuk is the only prominent Russian milblogger to receive a state award from Russian President Vladimir Putin for war reporting.[31] The Kremlin has consistently struggled to conduct effective information operations inside Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion and may seek to use more milbloggers to help improve the Kremlin’s conduct of its information operations directed at domestic audiences.[32] Rybar publishes calls for donations multiple times per week and has also advertised companies affiliated with Russian Presidential Administration First Deputy Head Sergei Kiriyenko and Russian media.[33] ISW previously assessed that milbloggers’ reliance on advertisements for an income provides a financial incentive to refrain from criticizing the Kremlin as attempted censorship and legal issues may deter advertisement deals.[34] Consultations with Russian officials on public messaging and information operations could become an additional source of income for select milbloggers, which would likely lead to further self-censorship.

Key Takeaways:

• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 1 decree is likely a formal recognition of the Russian military’s current end strength and not an order to immediately increase the number of Russian military personnel.
• Ukrainian air defense coverage along the front line is reportedly incentivizing Russian forces to rely more heavily on remote strikes with glide bombs.
• Ukrainian officials appealed to international organizations to investigate video footage published on December 2 showing Russian forces killing surrendering and reportedly unarmed Ukrainian soldiers.
• Russian forces launched a series of missile and drone strikes on the night of December 2 and 3.
• The Russian government is likely continuing attempts to censor relatives of mobilized Russian military personnel on social media out of concern about their protests’ possible negative effect on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s still unannounced 2024 presidential campaign.
• A prominent Russian milblogger claimed to have given a “masterclass” to press heads and communications personnel at Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, likely in support of an effort that allows the Russian government to normalize the war without directly involving the Kremlin.
• The milblogger’s “masterclass” represents an avenue by which the Kremlin can further benefit from milbloggers and shows how possible financial incentives could temper milbloggers’ criticisms of the Russian leadership.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, near Avdiivka, west and southwest of Donetsk City, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced near Avdiivka.
• Russia continues to use the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to indoctrinate Russian children into Russian nationalism and set conditions for long-term force generation efforts.
• Russian occupation officials continue to strengthen the Kremlin-backed United Russia party in occupied Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line on December 3 but did not make confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks northeast of Petropavlivka (7km east of Kupyansk) and near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk), Ivanivka (20km southwest of Kupyansk), Stelmakhivka (15km northwest of Svatove), and the Serebryanske forest area (10km south of Kreminna).[35] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces advanced toward Ivanivka, near Torske (15km west of Kreminna), and in the Serebryanske forest area on December 2 and 3.[36] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces continue attacking near Synkivka and Kyslivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) but have not made substantial progress in the past several months.[37] The Russian “Russkiy Legion" (BARS-13) irregular armed formation claimed that Russian forces attacked south of Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna).[38] Footage published on December 3 purportedly shows elements of the 123rd Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR] Army Corps) operating near Berestove (30km south of Kreminna).[39]

Ukrainian forces continued localized ground attacks near Kreminna on December 3 and recently made a confirmed advance. Footage published on November 29 and geolocated on December 2 indicates that Ukrainian forces recently advanced west of Dibrova.[40] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and other Russian sources claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Synkivka, Yampolivka (17km west of Kreminna), Torske, and the Serebryanske forest area.[41]

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

Ukrainian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut on December 3 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued assault actions south of Bakhmut.[42] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut).[43]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Bakhmut but did not make any confirmed advances on December 3. Russian sources claimed on December 2 that Russian forces advanced south of the Berkhivka reservoir (about 2km northwest of Bakhmut), towards Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut), east of Klishchiivka, and near Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[44] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Bohdanivka, Ivanivske, Klishchiivka, and Andriivka.[45] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also attacked from Dubovo-Vasylivka (6km northwest of Bakhmut) towards Hryhorivka (9km northwest of Bakhmut).[46] A Russian source claimed that elements of the Russian 58th Spetsnaz Battalion (Donetsk People’s Republic [DNR] 1st Army Corps) are operating in the Bakhmut direction.[47] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov claimed that the “Shustryi” detachment of the Chechen ”Akhmat” Spetsnaz and elements of the Russian 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade (Luhansk People‘s Republic [LNR] 2nd Army Corps) are operating near Klishchiivka.[48]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Avdiivka on December 3 and recently made confirmed advances. Footage published on November 28 and geolocated on December 2 indicates that Russian forces advanced west of the railway north of Stepove (3km northwest of Avdiivka).[49] Additional geolocated footage published on December 2 indicates that Russian forces advanced southwest of Pervomaiske (10km southwest of Avdiivka).[50] Russian milbloggers claimed on December 2 and 3 that Russian forces advanced south and southeast of Stepove, with some Russian milbloggers claiming that Russian forces advanced 300 meters near the settlement.[51] Russian milbloggers also claimed on December 2 and 3 that Russian forces advanced south of Novokalynove (13km northeast of Avdiivka) and west of Krasnohorivka (5km northwest of Avdiivka) on Avdiivka’s northern flank as well as on the southern flank near Pervomaiske and Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka).[52] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked east of Novobakhmutivka (9km northwest of Avdiivka) and Novokalynove; south of Tonenke (5km west of Avdiivka); and near Stepove, Avdiivka, Sieverne, and Pervomaiske.[53] Russian sources claimed on December 3 that Russian forces also attacked on the northern flank from Kamianka (5km northeast of Avdiivka) and on the southern flank near the industrial zone southwest of Avdiivka.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed on December 2 that Russian forces are conducting reconnaissance-in-force operations and are regrouping to resume assault operations near the industrial zone southeast of Avdiivka.[55] Ukrainian Avdiivka Military Administration Head Vitaliy Barabash stated on December 3 that Russian forces opened two additional directions of attack on the industrial zone southeast of Avdiivka and from Spartak (4km south of Avdiivka) during the third wave of assaults on Avdiivka in order to distract Ukrainian forces.[56] Barabash also stated that Russian forces are waiting for weather conditions to improve in order to use heavy equipment in assaults again.

Russian forces conducted offensive operations west and southwest of Donetsk City but did not make any confirmed advances on December 3. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Marinka (on the western outskirts of Donetsk City) and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City) and southeast of Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[57] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked in Marinka but that there were no significant changes.[58] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces are pushing Ukrainian forces out of the outskirts of Marinka, and another Russian source claimed that Russian forces have almost taken control of the settlement but must still overcome long-prepared Ukrainian defenses in the area.[59] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated that claims about Russian advances in Marinka are not true.[60]

 A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces counterattacked west of Donetsk City in Marinka on December 2 but did not specify an outcome.[61]

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

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on December 3 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[62] A Russian milblogger posted footage purporting to show elements of the Russian 36th Combined Arms Army (Eastern Military District) striking Ukrainian forces in Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[63]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on December 3 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[64] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed that Russian forces repelled small Ukrainian infantry assaults near Robotyne and Novoprokopivka (3km south of Robotyne) and northwest of Verbove (9km east of Robotyne).[65] Russian milbloggers claimed on December 2 and 3 that Ukrainian forces retain the initiative in the Robotyne area and that Russian forces are still conducting an elastic defense.[66]

Russian forces continued to counterattack in western Zaporizhia Oblast on December 3 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian counterattacks south of Robotyne, northwest of Verbove, and near Novopokrovka (12km northeast of Robotyne).[67] A Russian milblogger amplified footage purporting to show elements of the Russian 76th Airborne (VDV) Division capturing a Ukrainian stronghold near Robotyne.[68] A Russian milblogger claimed on December 2 that VDV assault groups pushed Ukrainian forces out of unspecified positions north of Verbove.[69]

Ukrainian forces continued ground operations in east (left) bank Kherson Oblast on December 3 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces maintain positions on the east bank and are conducting counterbattery fire in the area.[70] Russian milbloggers claimed that meeting engagements continued near Krynky (30km northeast of Kherson City and 2km from the Dnipro River) but that the tempo of fighting has decreased due to fog and rain.[71] Russian milbloggers claimed on December 2 and 3 that Ukrainian forces continued attempts to transfer reinforcements and supplies to positions on the left bank of the Dnipro River.[72]

The consequences of the November 27 cyclone in the Black Sea continue to impact Russian military infrastructure in left bank Kherson Oblast and occupied Crimea. Ukrainian research group Center for Journalistic Investigations reported on December 2 that satellite imagery shows that recent storms washed away the spit connecting Dzharylhach Island to occupied Kherson Oblast in three places.[73] Ukrainian officials reported in May 2023 that Russian forces were filling the crossing to Dzharylhach Island with sand to create a more stable connection between occupied Kherson Oblast and the island, where Russian forces reportedly were forming a training ground for mobilized personnel.[74] Satellite imagery posted on December 2 shows that recent storms damaged several Russian fortifications at the entrance of the Sevastopol harbor in occupied Crimea.[75]

Russian sources claimed that Russian air defense intercepted two Ukrainian S-200 missiles targeting Krasnodar Krai over the Sea of Azov on December 2.[76] Krasnodar City Mayor Yevgeny Naumov claimed that there were two explosions in Krasnodar Krai far away from Krasnodar City.[77]

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

Russia continues to use the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) to indoctrinate Russian children into Russian nationalism and set conditions for long-term force generation efforts. The ROC’s Moscow Patriarchate Publishing House is selling a children’s novel To Live: To Serve the Motherland that prepares children to serve in the Russian military using nationalist and religious ideals.[78] The book includes chapters about: “Holy Fathers on War, Peace, and the Russian Military;” “There is No Life in War without Digging;” “Combat Training: Strength, Bravery, and Dexterity,” and “Russian Land is All under God.”[79]

Russian Technological Adaptations (Russian objective: Introduce technological innovations to optimize systems for use in Ukraine)

Russian MLRS manufacturer NPO Splav, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, has patented a new MLRS projectile that reportedly has an extended range and is supersonic. Russian state newswire TASS reported that it obtained the patent, which claims that the new projectile has improved aerodynamic characteristics, accuracy, and firing range.[80] TASS did not report the exact specifications or name of the new projectile.

Russian forces on the frontline are likely employing new adaptations to protect themselves from Ukrainian drones and loitering munitions. Ukrainian journalist Yuriy Butusov and a Russian milblogger amplified images on December 3 of Russian soldiers using mobile frame “cocoons” of thermal blankets camouflaged with grass, dirt, and tree branches in the Vuhledar direction in Donetsk Oblast.[81] Butusov and the milblogger claimed that the “cocoons” hide soldiers’ thermal signatures and protect against drone strikes.

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

Russian occupation officials continue to strengthen the Kremlin-backed United Russia party in occupied Ukraine ahead of the March 2024 Russian presidential elections. Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo participated in a conference for Kherson Oblast’s United Russia branch in occupied Henichesk on December 2 and claimed that there are 6,500 United Russia members and supporters in occupied Kherson Oblast, including 200 oblast-level and local-level officials.[82] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 3 that Russian occupation officials are attempting to use United Russia activities in occupied Ukraine to generate support among locals and legitimize the Russian occupation.[83]

The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on December 3 that Russian occupation authorities forcibly deported 100 Ukrainians from occupied Kherson Oblast to Russia under evacuation schemes in November 2023.[84] Russian occupation officials routinely use the guise of evacuations, medical treatment, vacation opportunities, and educational programs to deport residents from occupied Ukraine to Russia.[85]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Pro-Kremlin actors are amplifying reports of Ukrainian social and governmental division, specifically those involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to discredit Ukrainian leadership and weaken Western support for Ukraine. The Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) and Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) warned about renewed Russian efforts to spread propaganda to reduce support for Ukraine and split Ukrainian society from within by fostering mistrust between government officials and between civilians and the government.[86] This effort is congruent with the erroneous pre-war Kremlin understanding of the Ukrainian government, namely that Ukrainians did not support their government and would welcome Russia’s attempt at regime change, that likely influenced Russian decision-making to conduct the 2022 full-scale invasion.[87] This new wave of Russian information operations is therefore part of an existing narrative line that Russian actors are promoting towards a new aim. The GUR and SBU reported that Russian sources specifically intend to sow mistrust in Ukrainian state bodies that organize prisoner of war exchanges (POWs) and hope to garner Ukrainian support for a negotiated settlement with Russia to freeze the frontlines. Domestic tensions are not unusual while sustaining a war effort, particularly in a free country with a robust civil society facing a protracted and difficult conflict like the one in Ukraine.

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

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko arrived in Beijing, China on December 3 and will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on December 3 and 4 to discuss trade, economic investment, and international cooperation.[88]

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

2. Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon of war - Israeli campaigner

These acts were not perpetrated by some ill-disciplined fighters. This was a planned crime against humanity. we cannot let this slip from the headlines. There can be no excuses, no pass, not whataboutism. Hamas must be held accountable for these atrocities. and no human being should come to Hamas' defense.

Hamas planned sexual violence as weapon of war - Israeli campaigner

BBC

By Marita MoloneyBBC News

EPA

Israeli soldiers hug as they look at pictures of the festival victims from the 7 October attacks

Hamas had a premeditated plan to use sexual violence as a weapon of war, an Israeli women's rights campaigner and lawyer has said.

Prof Ruth Halperin-Kaddari said she saw footage of women in several locations whose condition left her in "no doubt" that they had been raped.

There has been anger over the delay of some UN bodies to acknowledge claims of Hamas's sexual atrocities on 7 October.

Israel has been exploring evidence of sexual crimes during the attacks.

Warning: This article contains graphic details which some readers may find upsetting

Israeli police say they have so far gathered more than 1,500 testimonies from witnesses and medics. Hamas has denied the group carried out sexual violence during the 7 October attacks.

Pictures and live footage streamed by the militants pointed to the gruesome nature of the attacks at the Supernova festival.

A range of violence from gang rape to the sexual mutilation of murdered victims are being investigated by police.

"I saw a number of first-hand, eyewitness accounts, for example of one survivor who hid in the bushes and saw a woman next to her being raped by several men," Prof Halperin-Kaddari told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

She said she also spoke to a paramedic who treated a woman who lost a life-threatening amount of blood after reporting being raped by four men.

"I saw footage and pictures from numerous locations of bodies whose condition were all exhibiting the same pattern of mutilation and leaving no doubt that rape was performed on these women before they were executed," she said.

"This leaves no doubt that such a concentration of cases in a relatively short span of time - less than a day - in numerous locations, it could not have been unless there had there not been a plan, premeditation, to use sexual violence as a weapon of war."

• Israel army 'in all areas of Gaza' as new evacuations ordered - follow live updates
• Stories of the hostages taken by Hamas from Israel
• Released Palestinians allege abuse in Israeli jails

Hamas said it "rejected and strongly denounced" the reports of abuses. In a post on the messaging app Telegram, it said that such claims were "lies" by Israel that sought to distort the "humane" way Hamas has treated Israeli hostages. Hamas took some 240 people hostage on 7 October - 110 were released last week as part of a truce with Israel.

Israeli women's rights and legal activists had been calling on key international organisations to publicly acknowledge reports of gender-based violence, including sexual violence, in the wake of Hamas's attacks.

On Monday, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the UN headquarters in New York, protesting over what they said was its inaction over the rape, abduction and mistreatment of Israeli women.

Prof Halperin-Kaddari, who spent 12 years as a member of a UN convention on discrimination against women, said she and others have been calling on UN bodies to acknowledge these "crimes against humanity".

"Regrettably, until a week ago, none of them said the explicit word 'sexual violence'. It took them more than seven weeks," she said. The UN has yet to respond to accusations of a delay, but Prof Halperin-Kaddari visited the UN in Geneva just a week ago to draw attention to the violence.

UN Women issued a statement - eight weeks after the attacks - acknowledging accounts of gender-based atrocities.

"This took them too long, much too long," Prof Halperin-Kaddari added.

Yael Sherer from the Lobby to Combat Sexual Violence advocacy group told Today that men were also victims of sexual violence on 7 October.

She said evidence is being gathered from some survivors of the attacks, as well as eyewitnesses and first responders, who have been detailing the violence.

"Hamas terrorists made sure to disgrace these people and dishonour them in many ways," she said.

This included violence carried out on the victims' bodies after they had died, Ms Sherer added.

"We also saw people who were bleeding... [and] people who were tied down to furniture with zip-ties, and were not clothed, of many ages."

An ongoing UN commission of inquiry investigating alleged war crimes on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict will include a focus on sexual violence carried out during the attacks on 7 October. However, Israel has not so far co-operated with the commission, viewing it as biased.

Navi Pillay, who chairs the inquiry, said if Tel Aviv did not want to co-operate, her team could still take evidence from survivors and witnesses outside the country.

"All they [Israel] have to do is let us in," she told the BBC, adding that survivors of the attacks should be able to get a UN hearing.

Ms Pillay also rejected claims that the UN delayed acknowledging that sexual violence had taken place during Hamas's attacks and said "every effort" was being made as part of her team's investigations.

The Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October killed 1,200 people.

Since then, Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 15,500 people have been killed in Israel's military campaign which it launched in response.

BBC

3. Justifying Hamas’s barbarism at Georgetown Law

I strongly recommend a close reading of this. This really provides a very sober analysis of what is happening. We must be united against the hate of Hamas and those that support the terrorists.

Justifying Hamas’s barbarism at Georgetown Law

BY M. GREGG BLOCHE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 12/04/23 8:00 AM ET

https://thehill.com/opinion/4337687-justifying-hamass-barbarism-on-the-sly-at-georgetown-law/

On Halloween night, a few dozen Georgetown law students gathered stealthily to listen in rapt silence to a live-streamed defense of Hamas’s Oct. 7 mass slaughter of Jews.

The speaker, a fashionably scruffy, dark-haired 25-year-old named Mohammed El-Kurd, wore a tight black T and a leather jacket. He celebrated Hamas as a “liberation movement” and called its Oct. 7 orgy of rape, murder and torture a “resistance tactic.” 

Outrage over Oct. 7, he said, was a “discursive crisis” created by “Zionist propaganda” to “disrupt” opposition to Zionist colonization of Palestine.

Hamas’s hostage-taking had good “political reasons,” he said. “Contrary to the western popular imagination,” he added, the hostages are “treated relatively well” — “giv[en] nice dresses and food.” Hostages have said so themselves, in Hamas-issued videos, he told his audience, but Western media aren’t reporting it.

Two years ago, Time Magazine named El-Kurd “one of the world’s 100 most influential people.” His Georgetown Law sponsor, “Students for Justice in Palestine” (which calls Israel a “settler colony”), billed him as a “journalist,” but he leaned in to more direct action. Condemning CNN and The New York Times for “aiding and abetting…genocide,” he urged students to “think of ways that we can tangibly destroy these organizations.” 

“We are at war,” he said, “and we have a duty to engage and participate in that war.”

I had learned about El-Kurd from his appearance at Georgetown Law a year and a half earlier. It set off a firestorm. He had previously written that “Zionists” are ”fascists” and “terrorists,” “harvest organs” from Palestinian “martyrs,” and have “an unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood.” Our dean, William Treanor, had allowed his appearance. Dozens of my colleagues joined in a statement calling out the dean for failing to condemn “the vilest of antisemitic hate.”

So on Halloween night, I expected rhetorical ferocity, but El-Kurd didn’t deliver. On a big screen, streamed from New York City, he was soft-spoken, self-effacing and chill.

What should his listeners say when queried about what happened on Oct. 7? How are they to explain the beheaded children? “You don’t have to answer the question,” El-Kurd said. “The best approach to these kinds of things…is to be dismissive of these claims outright, is to ridicule these claims, is to not give them the time of day, is to treat them as outrageous.”

“The average viewer of the news has a distrust for the news,” he reassured his audience. “Some people believe Pizzagate.”

Our dean also approved El-Kurd’s October appearance, this time keeping it on the down-low. My colleagues who had raised alarms about his “antisemitic hate” a year earlier weren’t told. Nor was El-Kurd’s appearance announced to students. Word spread informally, via social networks. A moderator told attendees that they’d be subject to “discipline” if they recorded him. To my knowledge, no news outlet reported on the event.

But several hours before the start time, someone tipped me off. I showed up uninvited. The only colleague I saw was the dean’s representative, who had praised El-Kurd a year and a half earlier for having “condemned racism and colonialism.”

The next day, I asked this colleague his impressions. El-Kurd, he said, was “wholly appropriate,” even “endearing.” El-Kurd’s (and the event moderators’) euphemisms for Israel’s eradication — “from the river to the sea,” Jews as “settler-colonialists,” and Israel as the “Zionist entity” — were “standard academic jargon,” he assured me.

Unfortunately, he’s right — they have become commonplace. Hours before El-Kurd spoke, Georgetown’s Centers for “Muslim-Christian Understanding” and “Contemporary Arab Studies” had co-sponsored a “Collaborative Teach-In” that promised “the unearthing of a multitude of essentialist and reductionist discursive tropes that depict Palestinians as the culprits” for Oct. 7, “despite a context of structural subjugation and Apartheid.” Middle Eastern Studies programs at Harvard, Brown, and the University of Chicago co-sponsored the event.

Then there’s this tweet, from the holder of an endowed professorship at the University of Michigan: “From the Jordan to the Coast, Apartheid will be toast”

How did this “jargon” become “standard,” despite its call for a people’s destruction? And how did the dean of an elite law school come to condone, by his silence, an apologist for the slaughter of Jews, in sharp contrast to his quickness to condemn faculty and staff for mere words perceived as hurtful to other minorities?

Antisemitism, some say — ancient hatred. But this misses America’s crucial and contradictory narratives of Jewish weakness and strength.

Jews have experienced hiring discrimination, college-admissions quotas, the threat of violence, and, of course, the Holocaust. Israel, born as our post-Holocaust redoubt against annihilation, has survived serial attempts to destroy it, and faces a new menace in the form of Iran and its heavily-armed proxies. 

And Oct. 7 brought our nightmares to life.

This makes it difficult for some of us to see another narrative — that of Jewish safety or even power. By the mid-20th century, American Jews had, as some scholars put it, “become White” — able to “pass” well enough to escape relentless discrimination. Jews advanced in the arts and sciences, business, and public affairs. And Israel’s image morphed, in the eyes of many, from imperiled underdog to “startup nation” and regional superpower.

So it is understandable that some who aren’t outright antisemites — who aren’t seized by tropes of Jewish malevolence — nevertheless disregard Jewish vulnerability. Israel’s far-right leaders haven’t helped: Their anti-Arab bigotry and efforts to stymie a two-state solution invite perceptions of the country as an abuser of its power. For some, so has the carnage wrought by Israel’s fierce military response to Oct 7.

I get this. But the condoning of Hamas’s mass-slaughter, rape and kidnapping of hundreds is a morally revolting response. 

Academic leaders should not quietly accept such savagery. They should instead rise to the challenge of recognizing both Palestinian and Jewish peril and loss, and of creating opportunities for all on their campuses to see both.

Disregard for “the other’s” experience of loss is powering the Israel-Palestine tragedy. Universities can contribute to stopping the tragic cycle by pushing back against this disregard. That’s the work they should do — to nurture acceptance for the shared humanity of all who live “from the river to the sea.”

M. Gregg Bloche is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at Georgetown University.

4. 3 university presidents to face grilling on campus antisemitism at House hearing

Will anyone be held accountable? How should they be held accountable? 

3 university presidents to face grilling on campus antisemitism at House hearing

BY LEXI LONAS - 12/04/23 5:00 PM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4341336-university-campus-antisemitism-house-hearing/

The presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Pennsylvania will be called to the mat Tuesday after weeks of backlash over their schools’ responses to surging antisemitism. 

“Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen countless examples of antisemitic demonstrators on college campuses,” House Education Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said in a statement announcing the hearing titled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.” 

The administrators, Foxx said, “have largely stood by, allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow.” 

The hearing will examine incidents of antisemitism on each of the campuses, with Republicans and probably Democrats chastising the presidents for their actions both before recent events and in response. 

GOP lawmakers have already called two other hearings to discuss the rise in antisemitism at American schools, bringing in experts who have said schools have not done enough and Jewish students who testified they did not feel safe on campus.

Harvard and Pennsylvania both had billionaire donors cut their funding to the schools because of their responses.

Harvard first came under criticism in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack after 30 student-led groups posted a letter that blamed the attack on Israel. University President Claudine Gay at first hesitated to condemn the letter, leading to anger and accusations the school did not care for its Jewish students. 

The Anti-Defamation League reported 312 antisemitic incidents from Oct. 7-23 in the U.S., which is up from 64 such incidents the group found in the same period in 2022.  

And antisemitism was on the rise even before the attack in October: The FBI found antisemitic hate crimes went up 25 percent from 2021 to 2022. 

In November, UPenn had to alert the FBI about emails that were sent to university staff that were “threatening violence against members of our Jewish community, specifically naming Penn Hillel and Lauder College House,” according to President Liz Magill.

The MIT Israel Alliance wrote a letter to the university alleging that Jewish and Israeli students were at one point “physically prevented” from going to class by a “pro-Hamas” group.

At the end of November, the Department of Education announced it was investigating Harvard after complaints it did not respond to reports of harassment against Jewish and Israeli students since Oct. 7. The department was already investigating complaints of antisemitism and Islamophobia against seven other schools, including UPenn.

“The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low. Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate,” former U.S. Ambassador and longtime UPenn donor Jon Huntsman said in a letter to Magill. 

An MIT student recently told The Hill the school’s administration has ignored the calls for more protection for students. 

“You have administrators and people in power making students feel so scared and unsafe on campus, and the MIT administration is fully aware of every single one of these cases,” said Talia Khan, a 25-year-old grad student. 

Republicans were on the offense at the previous hearings, saying administration leadership and diversity, equity and inclusion offices have made the situation on college campuses worse. 

“College and university presidents have a responsibility to foster and uphold a safe learning environment for their students and staff. Now is not a time for indecision or milquetoast statements,” Foxx said ahead of the Tuesday hearing. “By holding this hearing, we are shining the spotlight on these campus leaders and demanding they take the appropriate action to stand strong against antisemitism.” 

All the schools are likely to point toward the resources they have provided for students and statements they have released condemning antisemitism. 

MIT President Sally Kornbluth launched a “Standing Together Against Hate” commission to combat discrimination on campus and stepped up security. 

There has also been “special outreach” on campus, according to a university spokesperson. 

“In addition, folks across a host of offices have been actively engaged, including the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life, which encompasses MIT Hillel; the campus police, and members of our committed faculty (including those with long-time ties to Israel and the region), among others,” the spokesperson added. 

Democrats and Republicans have been united in the concerns of the rise of antisemitism but have split on how to fix it. 

In the last hearing on the subject, Education Committee ranking member Bobby Scott (D-Va.) went after Republicans for trying to cut funding from the Department of Education and Office for Civil Rights, which would handle cases of discrimination such as antisemitism.  

Democrats are also likely to highlight the rise in Islamophobia on campuses, especially after three Palestinian students were shot in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend, leaving one of them paralyzed.  

5. Who Is ICE’s Newest Chief of Staff, and Will He Promote the Agency’s Mission?

Michael D. Lumpkin, BUD/S 162

Who Is ICE’s Newest Chief of Staff, and Will He Promote the Agency’s Mission?

Or will he follow his fellow Biden appointees in abolishing ICE from within?

By Jon Feere on November 28, 2023

https://cis.org/Feere/Who-ICEs-Newest-Chief-Staff-and-Will-He-Promote-Agencys-Mission

The Biden administration has appointed a new chief of staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Michael D. Lumpkin, who has more than 20 years of active duty military service as a U.S. Navy SEAL, where he served in various leadership positions. His appointment means ICE is now led by two officials with a Navy background, as the agency’s de facto director, Patrick J. Lechleitner, also served as a Navy signals intelligence specialist.

Lumpkin replaces Deborah Fleischaker, who previously worked in the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) office in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The question is whether Lumpkin will be a champion of ICE’s mission — unlike the Biden appointees who came before him — and work to put a stop to the ongoing release of countless criminal aliens into our communities. He has no immigration background, but he presumably understands the importance of national security and will hopefully take issue with the threats now under his watch.

When I worked in ICE’s Office of the Director, I worked to raise standards, create transparency, and focus the agency on threats that were being ignored, such as the mass fraud in the foreign student program. My colleagues and I worked to rebuild the agency after years of degradation under the Obama administration. It was clear to us that our predecessors weren’t trying to leave the agency in a better condition than they found it.

Lumpkin joins the agency amid ongoing destruction inflicted by the Biden administration. How many ICE officers will retire under his watch? What effort will he make, if any, to build the agency up? How will he make it more effective and more efficient in carrying out arrests and removals? Lumpkin will soon learn that his fellow political appointees are actively working to make ICE less effective and less efficient and that they’re getting quick results. He’ll also soon realize that without a quick change of course, he will be directly responsible for endangering the lives of countless Americans across the nation.

Why Was Lumpkin Appointed to ICE? Lumpkin has no immigration background, no policy experience related to immigration, and would seem to be an odd political appointment. It may be that Biden administration officials have quietly concluded that the open-border activists they’ve previously appointed to run the nation’s immigration system have created a horrific national security threat and one that threatens President Biden’s re-election. While the administration would not admit to these concerns publicly, Lumpkin’s background suggests national security and public messaging are the key issues that led to Lumpkin’s appointment.

Lumpkin was the assistant secretary of Defense for special operations / low-intensity conflict and describes himself as part of the “the special operations force (SOF) community”. He has advised the secretary of Defense “on special operations, counterterrorism, and counter threat finance activities and capabilities”. In 2015 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Lumpkin explained that between the SOF and conventional forces, the United States is able to “execute missions across the full-spectrum of combat and non-combat related activities” and that “beyond major contingencies, SOF remain the force of choice for those security force assistance missions in non-permissive and politically-sensitive areas, and missions where the host nation demands a small footprint”.

Though he hasn’t testified before Congress on immigration matters, Lumpkin noted in that 2015 hearing that “there exists a nexus between criminal enterprises and terrorist activities”. He explained:

More and more, we are seeing the convergence between criminal networks that facilitate the movement of people, weapons, drugs, and funding within conflict zones and violent extremists who take advantage of those channels as well.

Lumpkin would seem to understand that the expansive criminal activity occurring across our nation’s borders, at worksites, and in the foreign student program, for example, are creating serious threats that must he must address in his new role.

Lumpkin also has a background in “anti-propaganda” management, from his experience as the special envoy and coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, where he worked to “counter extremism online in real time”, having been appointed by President Obama in 2016. In this role, he led “efforts to coordinate, integrate, and synchronize Government-wide communications activities directed at foreign audiences abroad for the purpose of countering violent extremism and terrorism”.

His focus was members of ISIS and people who “may be vulnerable to recruitment” and he has background in use of social media, as he explains here:

Using Facebook ads, I can go within Facebook, I can go grab an audience, I can pick Country X, I need age group 13 to 34, I need people who have liked — whether it’s Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi or any other set — I can shoot and hit them directly with messaging.

Perhaps Lumpkin has been instructed to use his experience and focus on getting other countries to stop encouraging illegal immigration to the United States. Perhaps he’s been instructed to develop a messaging campaign aimed at foreigners considering entering the United States illegally. In the past, DHS has made an effort to discourage illegal immigration through messaging campaigns in foreign countries. Lumpkin’s explanation of how his messaging efforts on terrorism worked would seem to be adaptable:

We have a wide range of partners. We have nation-states standing up messaging centers, working with the Global Engagement Center. We’re working with them to make sure that they have the technical skills to do effective messaging. We’re working with non-governmental organizations ... who work with these different audiences of susceptible populations.

In a recent podcast, Lumpkin spoke of how he can influence behavior and decision-making of individuals through messaging:

There’s all kinds of things you can do with a message to influence behavior, both positively and negatively, if you understand the audience and you understand the tools that are in front of you.

He explained further how broadly focused campaigns can be less effective than targeted social media campaigns:

The way government largely does things, they do things on scale, they think about, “let’s do some information operations, let’s drop fliers from an airplane, or let’s put something on TV,” so you end up with this big message trying to hit a bunch of people in a generic kind of way, hoping that it lands on those one or two or three people that are potential recruits. Historically that’s the way it’s happened. With social media, what it is today, I can buy audiences.

It's interesting to contemplate how Lumpkin views the efforts by the Biden administration to discourage illegal immigration through social media — efforts that are clearly not working as the U.S. border continues to see explosive, record-breaking levels of illegal immigration from all over the world, including from countries that are hotbeds of extremism. Take, for example, the frequent social media posts from ICE like this one:

In his new role, Lumpkin will have to consider the effect of law enforcement — actual arrests and removals — as a means of changing behavior. Social media posts have little effect when the U.S. government rewards people who ignore the messaging. In the immigration context, the federal government is abusing parole, ICE’s legal division is cancelling thousands of pending immigration cases against deportable illegal aliens, DHS is very liberally granting entry to aliens with illegitimate asylum claims, work permits are being handed out like candy, and arrests and removals have gone down so dramatically over the past few years that foreign nationals have little reason to believe they’ll ever be held accountable for violating our nation’s immigration laws. No amount of social media posts can overcome this type of open-border messaging.

Lumpkin will have to contrast what’s happening under the Biden administration with the type of messaging that occurred under the Trump administration, which was so effective that even the generally open-border media helped send the right message. Take this report from the New York Times in the summer of 2017:

CHOLOMA, Honduras — His bags were packed, and the smuggler was ready. If all went well, Eswin Josué Fuentes figured he and his 10-year-old daughter would slip into the United States within days.

Then, the night before he planned to leave, he had a phone conversation with a Honduran friend living illegally in New York. Under President Trump, the friend warned, the United States was no longer a place for undocumented migrants.

Shaken, Mr. Fuentes abruptly ditched his plans.

...

From February through May, the number of undocumented immigrants stopped or caught along the southwest border of the United States fell 60 percent from the same period last year, according to United States Customs and Border Protection — evidence that far fewer migrants are heading north, officials on both sides of the border say.

[Illegal aliens] in the United States ... have sent a warning back to relatives and friends in their homelands: Don’t come.

The message is loud and clear here in Honduras. Manuel de Jesús Ríos Reyes, 55, stood in the unforgiving sun outside a reception center for deportees from the United States. His wife, who tried to cross the American border illegally in March, was on an incoming flight.

Mindful of the warnings from the United States, Mr. Ríos had urged her not to go. “She didn’t pay attention,” he recalled. “Now she’s here. Thank God, she’s alive.”

If his wife talks about trying to cross again, he said, he will redouble his pleas. “Ah, my love,” he planned to tell her. “Stay here.”

Many in the Central American countries known as the Northern Triangle — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — appear to be doing just that.

...

Migrant smugglers in Honduras say their business has dried up since Mr. Trump took office. Fewer buses have been leaving the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula bound for the border with Guatemala, the usual route for Honduran migrants heading overland to the United States. In hotels and shelters along the migrant trail, once-occupied beds go empty night after night.

Marcos, a migrant smuggler based near San Pedro Sula, said that last year he had taken one or two groups each month from Honduras to the United States border. Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, however, he has had only one client. He blames Mr. Trump.

“People think he’s going to kick everyone out of the country,” Marcos said, asking that his full name not be published because of the illegal nature of his work. “Almost nobody’s going.”

Pro-enforcement messaging is only effective if combined with actual enforcement, but actual enforcement will require Lumpkin to push back on the administration’s anti-enforcement agenda that has permeated nearly every part of the agency.

Is Lumpkin Expected to Focus on Terrorism? With two military veterans in the top spots at ICE, it’s possible that the Biden administration is intending an increased focus on terrorism. Perhaps Lumpkin has been appointed because his background in national security and counterterrorism is meant to assist ICE in locating and arresting the large numbers of terrorism-linked illegal aliens who have entered the country under the Biden administration. DHS is aware of the severe national security threats they’ve allowed to unfold and though there’s been a lot of discussion of the number of terrorist threats identified along the U.S. border, what’s less public is a pressing concern regarding terrorists who are rumored to have been smuggled into the United States. If Lumpkin is putting his experience to work on this troubling issue, perhaps lives will be spared. But it will require Lumpkin to get ICE to significantly ramp up arrests, removals, and enforcement operations generally.

On the other hand, Lumpkin may be tasked by the administration with facilitating the immigration of more poorly vetted refugees from countries with serious national security threats.

Will Lumpkin Put ICE Back on Mission? Working at ICE will be a new experience for Lumpkin in that this appears to be the first time he will be running an agency with a mission that is routinely politicized and where his fellow political appointees are actively working to undermine the agency’s mission.

In a recent podcast, host Jon Becker lamented what he perceived as an effort by the Trump and Obama administrations to undermine bureaucracy:

One of things I’ve told people ... the last couple of administrations that’s bothered me is kind of the undermining of the bureaucracy, because to some degree the bureaucracy is the continuity, it’s the stability.

Lumpkin responded:

It is, very much so. ... If you’re gonna walk in there and say “I’m gonna do wholesale change to this operation”, okay, you’re delusional, you’re not gonna, it doesn’t matter if you’re Secretary of Defense or a GS-13 rolling in as a political appointee, it doesn’t matter, you’re not going to do wholesale change to the organization. They will fight you every step of the way.

Lumpkin claimed that policy changes are “done by consensus and it’s incremental”. The host responded that the “upside to the system resisting change is it prevents tyranny, it prevents somebody coming in and losing their mind and trying to undermine all of the institutions”.

That may be the case in a military environment, but that certainly hasn’t been the case inside ICE. The Biden appointees overseeing the management of our nation’s immigration laws have very clearly worked to undermine all of the institutions that Congress has tasked with carrying out enforcement of immigration laws. And the result has been a dramatic decrease in all enforcement metrics; under the Biden administration, ICE is making fewer arrests, carrying out fewer removals, and has dramatically reduced the number of criminal aliens being arrested. The result has been mass illegal immigration at a level never before experienced by the United States.

This has occurred while the Biden administration has spread misinformation aimed at the American public. While claiming their policies are designed to focus ICE on criminal aliens, the Biden administration has arrested significantly fewer criminal aliens than the Trump administration. For example, in FY 2018, the second year of the Trump administration, ICE arrested 138,117 illegal aliens with criminal records; in FY 2022, the second year of the Biden administration, ICE arrested only 46,396 illegal aliens with criminal records — a 66 percent decrease.

Lumpkin apparently doesn’t yet understand the mindset of the political appointees at DHS. He will soon learn that Kerry Doyle, his lead lawyer running ICE’s legal division, the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA), said that “ICE is an agency that is currently out of control” prior to her appointment and that she has been described by media as “an outspoken critic of the agency [who] has led many lawsuits against it”. He will learn that Doyle supports sanctuary-city policies that exist explicitly to frustrate ICE’s mission, leaving thousands of criminal aliens to run free. He will learn that Doyle is an open opponent of ICE’s critical 287(g) program, which creates partnerships between ICE and local law enforcement, and that her opposition to the program is in support of the release of criminal aliens arrested for a litany of crimes, including manslaughter, armed carjacking, armed robbery, aggravated assault and battery, child rape, strangulation of a pregnant woman, assault and battery of a 60-plus disabled person, kidnapping, home invasion, burglary, fentanyl trafficking, cocaine trafficking, carrying an unlicensed firearm, credit card and identity fraud, and drunk driving, to name a few crimes on the records of aliens arrested in Massachusetts, where she testified against the program. Lumpkin should also take a look at Doyle’s canceling of thousands of pending immigration cases.

Lumpkin will also learn that Claire Trickler-McNulty is effectively the top political appointee at ICE, and that she’s busily consolidating decision-making under herself on all parts of ICE’s mission. Media explain that Trickler-McNulty “previously worked for a nonprofit organization that demanded an end to deportations and was affiliated with an 'Abolish ICE' movement during her tenure”. Most recently, Trickler-McNulty issued a memorandum requiring that any new contracts for detention or the so-called Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program must be approved by her. It reads, in part, “Moving forward, the Office of Acquisition Management will not accept any ATD or detention procurement packages without the attached completed and signed form.” As I explained to the Daily Caller:

”This is unnecessary bureaucracy specifically designed to remove the ICE director from the decision-making process on detention matters, and give a Biden appointee veto power. It also makes the process to expand or change detention more cumbersome, effectively discouraging officers from doing anything to improve efficiency in carrying out the agency’s mission,” former ICE Chief of Staff Jon Feere, who served during the Trump Administration, told the DCNF about the memo.

The goal of this new bureaucracy is to prevent the increase in detention space, which is clearly needed as thousands of illegal aliens pour across the border and thousands more are ordered removed by immigration judges. But the goal of the anti-ICE activists working inside ICE alongside Lumpkin is to hobble the immigration system and prevent ICE from playing its critical law enforcement role.

If Lumpkin is concerned about “undermining the bureaucracy” he should take a hard look at his fellow political appointees and ask how their activities are impacting ICE’s mission.

In the recent podcast, Lumpkin said, “Some ineffective leaders put their ego too close to their position, they think they are that position; they are not. They just happen to be the incumbent, and they are the keeper of the standards.”

I can assure Lumpkin that the Biden appointees at ICE are not interested in keeping any standards and have no interest in leaving the agency in a better condition than they found it. A lot of work had to be done by myself and other Trump administration appointees to rebuild ICE after years of degradation by the Obama administration, which, like the Biden administration, had no interest in efficient and effective immigration enforcement. If Lumpkin doesn’t invoke his new authority and push his belief on why it’s important for political appointees to be good stewards of government, ICE will continue on its downward trajectory, endangering many Americans in the process.

Lumpkin Should Talk with Officers. As a person who served in Lumpkin’s role, I had the opportunity to learn from many ICE officers and special agents. They have first-hand experience, good recommendations, and can provide a detailed look at how policies and practices are working — or not working — in the field. All too often, ICE headquarters makes decisions without sufficient input from people with their boots on the ground. But because ICE is a law enforcement agency with a hierarchical structure, the field carries out the orders from headquarters as directed. In order to put the best immigration policies forward, Lumpkin should build relationships with field offices and seek direct feedback from staff within Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Through this direct dialogue, Lumpkin will learn how the Biden administration’s policies are harming the agency and undermining public safety. Officers will likely explain to him how Secretary Mayorkas’ so-called “enforcement priorities” have allowed most foreign nationals to ignore the State Department’s visa requirements and remain in the United States for as long as they’d like, ignore court orders from immigration judges to return home, engage in asylum fraud without consequence, and commit a host of crimes without fear of removal.

Lumpkin will also learn how ICE is losing detention space rented from friendly sheriffs due to burdensome and uncoordinated audits that are designed to discourage cooperation with ICE. He’ll learn how this is resulting in the release of countless criminal aliens into our communities.

Lumpkin will also learn how the 287(g) program is identifying thousands of removable criminal aliens but is telling sheriffs to release these criminals back into the community because the Biden administration no longer supports this critical federal program and is choosing to harm the public rather than use the program as Congress intended.

Lumpkin will also learn how thousands of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) are being subjected to abuse and exploitation at worksites across the nation — as reported by the New York Times in multiple exposés — because the Biden administration isn’t letting ICE assist Health and Human Services (HHS) with the vetting and arrest of sponsors, and has largely ended worksite investigations.

Lumpkin will also learn how the Biden administration has turned most parts of every community in the country into a “protected space” for criminal aliens, prohibiting ICE officers from even conducting surveillance near playgrounds even when an illegal-alien child abuser is suspected in the area. I’ve mapped out the ridiculously overbroad and pro-crime policy here.

There’s ample opportunity for Lumpkin to get an earful on what’s really happening on the ground. Officers will be hesitant to speak with a high-level appointee who is associated with the Biden administration’s lawless approach to law enforcement, but if he can ensure them that the conversation is off the record, he’d learn a lot about the horrific public safety threats that are occurring under his watch.

How Long Will Lumpkin Last? The Biden administration has seen a lot of turnover among its political appointees at ICE. The administration’s first appointment to ICE’s legal division, John Trasvina, only lasted about seven months. ICE’s chief of staff position under Biden was held by Jason Houser for a while and then by Deborah Fleischaker for about a year. The Biden administration’s appointment of Scott Shuchart, an anti-enforcement activist who said, "there has never been any problem of terrorists crossing illegally the southern border”, may be ongoing (as terrorists cross our borders), but what he’s up to is unknown at this point. And the Biden administration’s plan to appoint a sanctuary city-advocating sheriff to the director’s position fell apart after a year.

Lumpkin has some time to begin to clean up the dangerous mess created by his fellow appointees. Will he take the opportunity to do so, or will he simply add to ongoing devastation?

https://cis.org/Feere/Who-ICEs-Newest-Chief-Staff-and-Will-He-Promote-Agencys-Mission

6. Opinion | Four national security measures that cannot wait until next year

The four:

Help Ukraine

Reauthorize a vital intelligence tool

Pass defense funding

Break the military promotions blockade

Opinion | Four national security measures that cannot wait until next year

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · December 4, 2023

The House and Senate both plan to break for Christmas at the end of next week. But four urgent national security matters require congressional action before lawmakers can head home for the holidays.

Help Ukraine

Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young warned Monday that the U.S. government will be unable to provide any more resources or equipment to Ukraine if Congress fails to appropriate fresh funding by the end of the year. The Pentagon has used 97 percent of the $62.3 billion it received to help Ukraine.

Giving up on Ukraine would undermine the 22-month U.S. effort, embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin and erode Kyiv’s leverage in any future settlement talks. On the other hand, funding Ukraine as its soldiers — not U.S. troops — degrade the Russian army would weaken the Kremlin as a global menace and deter aggression elsewhere.

But President Biden’s request for a $106 billion package, including $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel, has stalled. House Republicans paired a stand-alone bill for Israel with Internal Revenue Service cuts that would cost more than they save, and that Democrats will not accept. Senate Republicans are holding out for major changes to immigration law. Democratic negotiators have made meaningful concessions to limit asylum claims and strengthen border security, but talks appear to be at an impasse over GOP desires to restrict the president’s ability to grant humanitarian parole. A compromise will require Senate Democrats to concede more than they’re comfortable with and House Republicans to drop their demands to defund the IRS.

Reauthorize a vital intelligence tool

If Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act isn’t reauthorized by Dec. 31, the government will lose one of its most important tools for keeping the United States safe. According to the National Security Agency, 59 percent of the items in the President’s Daily Brief last year cited signals intelligence obtained via 702. The authority, enacted in 2008 and reauthorized in 2012 and 2017, has foiled terrorist attacks, spy rings, assassination plots, cyber intrusions, illegal technology exports and fentanyl imports. But a coalition of civil libertarians on the left and right is trying to require investigators to get warrants before searching information the government has already lawfully obtained.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) introduced a reasonable compromise last week to extend the program through 2035. It would codify into law major changes that agencies have made since audits showed FBI agents improperly searched NSA data, modifications that have already resulted in a more than 90 percent drop in FBI queries of 702 data. The proposal would also ban the FBI from querying the 702 databases for evidence of a crime — rather than to detect foreign plots — unless it’s to prevent loss of life, serious bodily injury or a cyberattack on critical infrastructure.

One additional provision could win over holdouts: requiring the FBI to add an additional layer of review, including requiring sign-off from someone in the general counsel’s office, before running any search, not just those affecting politicians, journalists and academics. This would help minimize improper searches, inadvertent or intentional, by junior analysts, and it would be more feasible than requiring warrants during fast-moving operations.

Pass defense funding

Congress has passed the National Defense Authorization Act with bipartisan support every year since 1961. Both chambers passed a version of the $886 billion Pentagon policy and funding package in July that would give troops a 5.2 percent pay increase.

The problem is that House Republicans packed their version with provisions on divisive cultural issues, with amendments to block support for service members who must travel out of state to obtain abortions and prohibitions on specialized health care sought by transgender troops. Republicans should stop trying to use their three-seat House majority to reverse the Biden administration’s abortion policy.

Break the military promotions blockade

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has stopped more than 400 military promotions and nominations over 10 months in his own bid to coerce the Pentagon into reversing reproductive care policies. Blocking officers who do not make policy has undermined force readiness.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is promising to bring to the floor a bill that would adjust the chamber’s rules and end Mr. Tuberville’s abuse of Senate prerogatives. Fortunately, there are indications that a rules change might not be necessary; Mr. Tuberville appears to be looking for an off-ramp to spare his GOP colleagues a tough vote and himself a humiliating defeat on the Senate floor. No senator should leave town until the promotion backlog has been cleared.

The Washington Post · by Editorial Board · December 4, 2023

7. Opinion | Speaking softly with big sticks: the reality of the US-China detente

Excerpts:

The reality is that both sides seem ready to communicate and to try to ease tensions, but they also do not renounce their right to arm their militaries to the teeth. And to China’s chagrin, this dynamic involves not just the US and its allies. Vietnam, among a number of Southeast Asian countries disputing China’s claims to the South China Sea, is a case in point.

After recent talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Ho Chi Minh City, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said Beijing was ready to boost trade ties with Hanoi. But Vietnam has also reportedly been ramping up its expansion of the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea island and negotiating to buy BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles from India that can, potentially, be installed on those islands.

Increasingly, it’s starting to look like armed thaw could be the new normal in the Indo-Pacific power play.

Opinion | Speaking softly with big sticks: the reality of the US-China detente

• Like the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War, China and the US-led bloc are engaged in wide-ranging dialogue but also armed competition
• While both sides seem ready to communicate and ease tensions, they do not renounce their right to arm their militaries to the teeth

Listen to this article

Emanuele Scimia

+ FOLLOWPublished: 5:30am, 5 Dec, 2023

South China Morning Post · December 5, 2023

That same month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr met Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in San Francisco and said both sides would work to lower tensions in the South China Sea. Weeks before, Australia and China resumed an annual leaders’ dialogue when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Xi in Beijing, stabilising commercial ties after about three years of de facto trade war.

What is emerging in the Western Pacific is similar to the situation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the two Cold War blocs were engaged in a wide-ranging dialogue that included cultural exchanges. But the standard conduct was also armed competition and proxy confrontations – like today, in the Indo-Pacific.

Despite the Xi-Biden summit, Beijing’s military activities near Taiwan have continued unabated. Indeed, since September 2020, the mainland has reportedly amplified its “grey zone” operations around the island by increasing the deployment of air and naval assets, and expanding their range.

On its part, the US last month launched air and sea joint patrols with the Philippines across the Luzon Strait and South China Sea in a display of support for Manila, which has competing claims against China in the sea. The Chinese reacted with two days of live-fire drills near Hainan island.

Soon after, the Philippines embarked on its first air and sea joint patrols in the South China Sea with Australia. And it took place mere days after an Australian warship sailed through the Taiwan Strait.

All of these moves, including the joint transit of US and Canadian warships through the Taiwan Strait in recent years, could be seen as a response to Beijing’s increasing expansion of its air and naval operations near Taiwan, and appear to be taking shape as the embryo of US-led multilateral freedom of navigation operations (fonops) in waters claimed by Beijing and its neighbours.

In strategic terms, multilateral fonops run by the US create a nightmare scenario for Beijing, aggravated by the US redesignation of a key military unit based in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture as the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment. Such expeditionary troops are meant to contain Beijing’s naval forces within the so-called first island chain – which includes the Philippines and Taiwan – in an attempt to deny them access to the broad Pacific in a crisis.

That an armed thaw is the current geopolitical condition in the West Pacific is also illustrated by Japan’s planned acquisition of 400 Tomahawk missiles from the US. And there is more on the missile front. Washington reportedly has plans to field ground-based intermediate-range missiles in unspecified locations across the Asia-Pacific to dissuade the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) from attacking Taiwan.

Such an initiative is a practical consequence of the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia in 2019. In addition, the Pentagon has transferred MQ-9 Reaper drones to Okinawa. The eight unmanned vehicles were relocated to better monitor Chinese naval units in the East China Sea.

So it appears the US is responding to China’s military assertiveness in kind. In connection with its allies, Washington is pressuring mainland Chinese forces in the South China Sea, the Luzon and Taiwan Strait, and the island chain south of Japan, as the PLA continues to test and possibly strain the defences of Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan.

As long as US stokes China’s Indo-Pacific fears, there will be no peace

The US is forcing the Chinese to be constantly on the alert, obliging them to send vessels and aircraft to shadow its military assets and those of its friends. As Australia’s ambassador to the US, former prime minister Kevin Rudd, emphasised on November 21, “ integrated deterrence” ensured peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and East Asia.

The reality is that both sides seem ready to communicate and to try to ease tensions, but they also do not renounce their right to arm their militaries to the teeth. And to China’s chagrin, this dynamic involves not just the US and its allies. Vietnam, among a number of Southeast Asian countries disputing China’s claims to the South China Sea, is a case in point.

After recent talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Ho Chi Minh City, Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said Beijing was ready to boost trade ties with Hanoi. But Vietnam has also reportedly been ramping up its expansion of the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea island and negotiating to buy BrahMos supersonic cruise missiles from India that can, potentially, be installed on those islands.

Increasingly, it’s starting to look like armed thaw could be the new normal in the Indo-Pacific power play.

Emanuele Scimia is an independent journalist and foreign affairs analyst

South China Morning Post · December 5, 2023

8. Former Harvard disinformation scholar says she was pushed out of her job after college faced pressure from Facebook

I wonder what Harvard thought would happen with their action against this professor?

Former Harvard disinformation scholar says she was pushed out of her job after college faced pressure from Facebook

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/04/tech/facebook-disinformation-whistleblower/

By Donie O'Sullivan and Clare Duffy, CNN

 4 minute read 

Updated 4:49 PM EST, Mon December 4, 2023

Joan Donovan, a disinformation researcher at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 16, 2021.

Cody O'Loughlin/The New York Times/Redux

CNN — 

A nationally recognized online disinformation researcher has accused Harvard University of shutting down the project she led to protect its relationship with mega-donor and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

The allegations, made by Dr. Joan Donovan, raise questions about the influence the tech giant might have over seemingly independent research. Facebook’s parent company Meta has long sought to defend itself against research that implicates it in harming society: from the proliferation of election disinformation to creating addictive habits in children. Details of the disclosure were first reported by The Washington Post.

Beginning in 2018, Donovan worked for the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and ran its Technology and Social Change Research Project, where she led studies of media manipulation campaigns. But last year Harvard informed Donovan it was shutting the project down, Donovan claims.

Ad Feedback

In a disclosure sent last week to Harvard leaders and US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and made public on Monday, Donovan alleges that the University began restricting her research after the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative donated $500 million to fund a new university-wide center on artificial intelligence. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is the philanthropy run by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, who both attended Harvard.

Harvard is strongly disputing Dr. Donovan’s claims. James Francis Smith, a spokesperson for the university said in a statement to CNN Monday, “allegations of unfair treatment and donor interference are false. The narrative is full of inaccuracies and baseless insinuations, particularly the suggestion that Harvard Kennedy School allowed Facebook to dictate its approach to research.”

“By longstanding policy to uphold academic standards, all research projects at Harvard Kennedy School need to be led by faculty members. Joan Donovan was hired as a staff member (not a faculty member) to manage a media manipulation project. When the original faculty leader of the project left Harvard, the School tried for some time to identify another faculty member who had time and interest to lead the project. After that effort did not succeed, the project was given more than a year to wind down. Joan Donovan was not fired, and most members of the research team chose to remain at the School in new roles,” he said.

Ad Feedback

He added that Harvard continues to research misinformation and social media’s role in it, pointing out Harvard hosts and made available to the public the Facebook documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen in a separate whistleblower complaint in October 2021, known as the “Facebook Papers.” Harvard also runs an academic journal on misinformation.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative said it had no involvement in Donovan’s departure from Harvard.

“CZI … was unaware of that development before public reporting on it,” a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative spokesperson said in a statement.

Meta declined to comment. CNN has also reached out to the US Department of Education. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office said it had received the disclosure and was reviewing it.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative donation came shortly after Haugen’s blockbuster complaint, the disclosure states. Following the release of the Facebook Papers, Donovan was involved in an effort to help archive the documents and make them publicly available to researchers, students, policymakers and journalists.

“This is a shocking betrayal of Harvard’s academic integrity and the public interest,” Libby Liu, the CEO of Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit legal group that previously worked with the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

The disclosure, which was sent on Donovan’s behalf by Whistleblower Aid and is addressed to Harvard President Claudine Gay, Harvard General Counsel and Vice President Diane Lopez and Cardona, seeks an investigation into the Kennedy School’s activity and “all appropriate corrective action” to protect academic freedom.

“We’ve seen in the past how Big Tobacco, Big Energy and Big Pharma have succeeded in influencing, undermining, and co-opting research to protect their lies, their profits and evade accountability. Now Meta, with the complicity of a powerful ally, is following the same playbook,” Liu said. “Whether Harvard acted at the company’s direction or took the initiative on their own to protect Meta’s interests, the outcome is the same: corporate interests are undermining research and academic freedom to the detriment of the public.”

Donovan joined the Shorenstein Center in 2018. During Donovan’s time at Harvard, the center released research reports about online Covid-19 and other medical misinformation campaigns; Donovan published the book “Meme Wars” about how far-right actors use online memes to undermine American democracy; and Donovan testified before House and Senate subcommittees about online misinformation and how social media algorithms can shape societal discourse. Donovan has also frequently been cited as an expert in online information manipulation in news reports, including by CNN.

In February, the student-led Harvard Crimson reported that the Kennedy School was ending Donovan’s Technology and Social Change Project and restricting Donovan from raising new funding or conducting additional hiring. At the time, the school pointed to a rule that required such projects to be led by faculty members, which Donovan was not.

In August, Donovan announced that she would join Boston University’s College of Communication as an assistant professor, officially ending her affiliation with Harvard Kennedy School. She told the Crimson that she “had to leave” because she felt the Kennedy School “didn’t back me as a scholar.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

9. Partisans 'Kill 24 Russian Soldiers with Poisoned Treats'

Partisans 'Kill 24 Russian Soldiers with Poisoned Treats'

kyivpost.com

Ordnance is not the only way Ukrainians have been eliminating Russian occupation troops. A spate of poisonings by suspected partisans has taken its toll on Moscow’s forces as well.

by Kateryna Zakharchenko | December 4, 2023, 3:25 pm |

Russian servicemen patrol a territory of the sea port in the city of Mariupol on June 12, 2022, amid the ongoing Russian military action in Ukraine. (Photo by Yuri KADOBNOV / AFP)

• War in Ukraine

Twenty-four Russian troops were killed after being given poison-laced food by “two nice girls” at a military checkpoint in Simferopol, Crimea, according to reports.

Unverified reports on Russian media channels said two partisans approached the soldiers with vodka, fish, sausage, bread, and cheese.

“They told the guards that they wanted to thank our boys for everything, for protecting them,” a source told the Telegram channel Kremlin Snuffbox, which posted the information on Dec. 1.

“The guys took vodka and food, drank with their colleagues, and ate. And many were poisoned.”

The Ukrainian partisan group Crimean Combat Seagulls later confirmed the news, saying that in addition to the 24 Russian soldiers killed, 11 more were hospitalized.

In a post on Telegram, the group said that “nice girls” welcomed the soldiers with “goodies” to eat. “The arsenic and strychnine tasted unforgettable.”

They added: “You could die of pleasure! Which was just what 24 occupants did, and 11 more were hospitalized.

“We continue to work and urge everyone to exterminate rusnya (Russians) on the peninsula like cockroaches.”

According to Russian media, the partisans have not been found, but the investigation is ongoing.

Russian forces in occupied Ukraine have frequently fallen victim to partisan poisoning plots.

Four Russian FSB officers were poisoned after ordering food and alcoholic beverages to be delivered from a restaurant in occupied Melitopol last month.

Kateryna Zakharchenko

Born and lives in Kyiv. A journalist for Kyiv Post. Writes exclusive articles and interviews.

kyivpost.com

10. Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine (PART 1)

A long and fascinating read. And this is just part one. Please go to the link to view the photos and graphics and proper formatting.

So much to digest.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-us-planning-russia-war/

STALEMATE: UKRAINE’S FAILED COUNTEROFFENSIVE

Miscalculations, divisions marked offensive planning by U.S., Ukraine

By Washington Post Staff

December 4, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

(Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post; Gavriil Grigorov/AFP/Getty Images; Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty Images; Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

Listen

33 min

Share

Comment

1999

Add to your saved stories

Save

On June 15, in a conference room at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, flanked by top U.S. commanders, sat around a table with his Ukrainian counterpart, who was joined by aides from Kyiv. The room was heavy with an air of frustration.

Austin, in his deliberate baritone, asked Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov about Ukraine’s decision-making in the opening days of its long-awaited counteroffensive, pressing him on why his forces weren’t using Western-supplied mine-clearing equipment to enable a larger, mechanized assault, or using smoke to conceal their advances. Despite Russia’s thick defensive lines, Austin said, the Kremlin’s troops weren’t invincible.

Skip to end of carouselHow we reported on Ukraine’s counteroffensive

arrow left

arrow right

This is the first of two parts examining the Ukrainian counteroffensive that launched in June. Read the second part, describing how the counteroffensive unfolded, here.

Part one:

Reported by Michael Birnbaum, Karen DeYoung, Alex Horton, John Hudson, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Mary Ilyushina, Dan Lamothe, Greg Miller, Siobhan O’Grady, Kostiantyn Khudov, Serhii Korolchuk, Ellen Nakashima, Emily Rauhala, Missy Ryan and David L. Stern.

Written by Missy Ryan.

Over three months, reporters in Washington, London, Brussels and Riga, Latvia, as well as in Kyiv and near the front lines in Ukraine, spoke to more than 30 senior officials from Ukraine, the United States and European nations to examine the military planning behind the counteroffensive and how that contributed to the operation failing to achieve its goals. The Post spoke to former Russian service members who had fought in the war, as well as Russian war bloggers and analysts.

Washington Post reporters, photographers, news assistants and security advisers drove hundreds of miles throughout Ukraine to speak to soldiers and government officials for this series. Journalists made numerous front-line visits in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, including in embeds with combat units within five miles of Russian forces.

1/3

End of carousel

Reznikov, a bald, bespectacled lawyer, said Ukraine’s military commanders were the ones making those decisions. But he noted that Ukraine’s armored vehicles were being destroyed by Russian helicopters, drones and artillery with every attempt to advance. Without air support, he said, the only option was to use artillery to shell Russian lines, dismount from the targeted vehicles and proceed on foot.

“We can’t maneuver because of the land-mine density and tank ambushes,” Reznikov said, according to an official who was present.

Oleksii Reznikov, center, then Ukraine's defense minister, flanked by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at a conference in Brussels on June 15. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP/Getty Images; iStock)

The meeting in Brussels, less than two weeks into the campaign, illustrates how a counteroffensive born in optimism has failed to deliver its expected punch, generating friction and second-guessing between Washington and Kyiv and raising deeper questions about Ukraine’s ability to retake decisive amounts of territory.

As winter approaches, and the front lines freeze into place, Ukraine’s most senior military officials acknowledge that the war has reached a stalemate.

This examination of the lead-up to Ukraine’s counteroffensive is based on interviews with more than 30 senior officials from Ukraine, the United States and European nations. It provides new insights and previously unreported details about America’s deep involvement in the military planning behind the counteroffensive and the factors that contributed to its disappointments. The second part of this two-part account examines how the battle unfolded on the ground over the summer and fall, and the widening fissures between Washington and Kyiv. Some of the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations.

Key elements that shaped the counteroffensive and the initial outcome include:

● Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan. But Washington miscalculated the extent to which Ukraine’s forces could be transformed into a Western-style fighting force in a short period — especially without giving Kyiv air power integral to modern militaries.

● U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing. The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and training.

● U.S. military officials were confident that a mechanized frontal attack on Russian lines was feasible with the troops and weapons that Ukraine had. The simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov and cut off Russian troops in the south in 60 to 90 days.

● The United States advocated a focused assault along that southern axis, but Ukraine’s leadership believed its forces had to attack at three distinct points along the 600-mile front, southward toward both Melitopol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov and east toward the embattled city of Bakhmut.

Detail

RUSSIA

Kyiv

Russian-controlled

area

Kharkiv

Kupyansk

Front line

on June 7

UKRAINE

LUHANSK

Luhansk

Bakhmut

Dnipro

Kirovohrad

Donetsk

Nuclear power plant

at Enerhodar

RUSSIA

Zaporizhzhia

DONETSK

Nikopol

Mariupol

ZAPORIZHZHIA

Melitopol

Mykolaiv

Berdyansk

Kherson

KHERSON

Since the invasion, Russia controls this road,

which creates a “land bridge” to Crimea.

A goal of the Ukrainian counteroffensive

is to sever this connection.

50 MILES

CRIMEA

Kerch

Illegally annexed

by Russia

in 2014

Crimean Bridge

(Opened in 2018)

RUSSIA

Simferopol

Sevastopol

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project

● The U.S. intelligence community had a more downbeat view than the U.S. military, assessing that the offensive had only a 50-50 chance of success given the stout, multilayered defenses Russia had built up over the winter and spring.

● Many in Ukraine and the West underestimated Russia’s ability to rebound from battlefield disasters and exploit its perennial strengths: manpower, mines and a willingness to sacrifice lives on a scale that few other countries can countenance.

● As the expected launch of the offensive approached, Ukrainian military officials feared they would suffer catastrophic losses — while American officials believed the toll would ultimately be higher without a decisive assault.

The year began with Western resolve at its peak, Ukrainian forces highly confident and President Volodymyr Zelensky predicting a decisive victory. But now, there is uncertainty on all fronts. Morale in Ukraine is waning. International attention has been diverted to the Middle East. Even among Ukraine’s supporters, there is growing political reluctance to contribute more to a precarious cause. At almost every point along the front, expectations and results have diverged as Ukraine has shifted to a slow-moving dismounted slog that has retaken only slivers of territory.

“We wanted faster results,” Zelensky said in an interview with the Associated Press last week. “From that perspective, unfortunately, we did not achieve the desired results. And this is a fact.”

Together, all these factors make victory for Ukraine far less likely than years of war and destruction.

The campaign’s inconclusive and discouraging early months pose sobering questions for Kyiv’s Western backers about the future, as Zelensky — supported by an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians — vows to fight until Ukraine restores the borders established in its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union.

“That’s going to take years and a lot of blood,” a British security official said, if it’s even possible. “Is Ukraine up for that? What are the manpower implications? The economic implications? Implications for Western support?”

The year now stands to end with Russian President Vladimir Putin more certain than ever that he can wait out a fickle West and fully absorb the Ukrainian territory already seized by his troops.

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, center, Ukraine’s top military commander, with other key officials at an Aug. 24 ceremony in Kyiv to commemorate Ukraine's 32nd Independence Day. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Global Images Ukraine/Getty Images; iStock)

Gaming out the battle plan

In a conference call in the late fall of 2022, after Kyiv had won back territory in the north and south, Austin spoke with Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top military commander, and asked him what he would need for a spring offensive. Zaluzhny responded that he required 1,000 armored vehicles and nine new brigades, trained in Germany and ready for battle.

“I took a big gulp,” Austin said later, according to an official with knowledge of the call. “That’s near-impossible,” he told colleagues.

In the first months of 2023, military officials from Britain, Ukraine and the United States concluded a series of war games at a U.S. Army base in Wiesbaden, Germany, where Ukrainian officers were embedded with a newly established command responsible for supporting Kyiv’s fight.

The sequence of eight high-level tabletop exercises formed the backbone for the U.S.-enabled effort to hone a viable, detailed campaign plan, and to determine what Western nations would need to provide to give it the means to succeed.

“We brought all the allies and partners together and really squeezed them hard to get additional mechanized vehicles,” a senior U.S. defense official said.

During the simulations, each of which lasted several days, participants were designated to play the part either of Russian forces — whose capabilities and behavior were informed by Ukrainian and allied intelligence — or Ukrainian troops and commanders, whose performance was bound by the reality that they would be facing serious constraints in manpower and ammunition.

Russia held these Ukrainian teens captive. Their testimonies could be used against Putin.

The planners ran the exercises using specialized war-gaming software and Excel spreadsheets — and, sometimes, simply by moving pieces around on a map. The simulations included smaller component exercises that each focused on a particular element of the fight — offensive operations or logistics. The conclusions were then fed back into the evolving campaign plan.

Top officials including Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, attended several of the simulations and were briefed on the results.

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of Ukrainian ground forces, who attended several of the war games in Germany used to plan the Ukrainian counteroffensive. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Anastasia Vlasova for The Washington Post; iStock)

During one visit to Wiesbaden, Milley spoke with Ukrainian special operations troops — who were working with American Green Berets — in the hope of inspiring them ahead of operations in enemy-controlled areas.

“There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night,” Milley said, according to an official with knowledge of the event. “You gotta get back there, and create a campaign behind the lines.”

Ukrainian officials hoped the offensive could re-create the success of the fall of 2022, when they recovered parts of the Kharkiv region in the northeast and the city of Kherson in the south in a campaign that surprised even Ukraine’s biggest backers. Again, their focus would be in more than one place.

But Western officials said the war games affirmed their assessment that Ukraine would be best served by concentrating its forces on a single strategic objective — a massed attack through Russian-held areas to the Sea of Azov, severing the Kremlin’s land route from Russia to Crimea, a critical supply line.

The rehearsals gave the United States the opportunity to say at several points to the Ukrainians, “I know you really, really, really want to do this, but it’s not going to work,” one former U.S. official said.

At the end of the day, though, it would be Zelensky, Zaluzhny and other Ukrainian leaders who would make the decision, the former official noted.

Officials tried to assign probabilities to different scenarios, including a Russian capitulation — deemed a “really low likelihood” — or a major Ukrainian setback that would create an opening for a major Russian counterattack — also a slim probability.

“Then what you’ve got is the reality in the middle, with degrees of success,” a British official said.

The most optimistic scenario for cutting the land bridge was 60 to 90 days. The exercises also predicted a difficult and bloody fight, with losses of soldiers and equipment as high as 30 to 40 percent, according to U.S. officials.

Skip to end of carouselKey findings from our reporting on Ukraine’s counteroffensive

arrow left

arrow right

The United States was deeply involved in the military planning behind the operation. Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing.

The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and more training. The counteroffensive began in June.

U.S. military officials were confident that a mass, mechanized frontal attack along one axis in the south of Ukraine would lead to a decisive breakthrough. Ukraine attacked along three axes, believing that would stretch Russian forces. Ukraine abandoned large, mechanized assaults when it suffered serious losses in the first days of the campaign.

The wargame simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov in the south of Ukraine and cut off Russian troops in 60 to 90 days. Ukrainian forces have advanced only about 12 miles. The Sea of Azov is still far out of reach. Ukraine’s top commander now acknowledges that the war has reached a “stalemate.”

1/4

End of carousel

American military officers had seen casualties come in far lower than estimated in the major battles of Iraq and Afghanistan. They considered the estimates a starting point for planning medical care and battlefield evacuation so that losses never reached the projected levels.

The numbers “can be sobering,” the senior U.S. defense official said. “But they never are as high as predicted, because we know we have to do things to make sure we don’t.”

U.S. officials also believed that more Ukrainian troops would ultimately be killed if Kyiv failed to mount a decisive assault and the conflict became a drawn-out war of attrition.

But they acknowledged the delicacy of suggesting a strategy that would entail significant losses, no matter the final figure.

“It was easy for us to tell them in a tabletop exercise, ‘Okay, you’ve just got to focus on one place and push really hard,’” a senior U.S. official said. “They were going to lose a lot of people and they were going to lose a lot of the equipment.”

Those choices, the senior official said, become “much harder on the battlefield.”

On that, a senior Ukrainian military official agreed. War-gaming “doesn’t work,” the official said in retrospect, in part because of the new technology that was transforming the battlefield. Ukrainian soldiers were fighting a war unlike anything NATO forces had experienced: a large conventional conflict, with World World I-style trenches overlaid by omnipresent drones and other futuristic tools — and without the air superiority the U.S. military has had in every modern conflict it has fought.

“All these methods … you can take them neatly and throw them away, you know?” the senior Ukrainian said of the war-game scenarios. “And throw them away because it doesn’t work like that now.”

The ruined eastern city of Bakhmut, which Ukrainian officials insisted on including in the counteroffensive, fearing that Russia would otherwise seize a wider advantage there. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

Disagreements about deployments

The Americans had long questioned the wisdom of Kyiv’s decision to keep forces around the besieged eastern city of Bakhmut.

Ukrainians saw it differently. “Bakhmut holds” had become shorthand for pride in their troops’ fierce resistance against a bigger enemy. For months, Russian and Ukrainian artillery had pulverized the city. Soldiers killed and wounded one another by the thousands to make gains measured sometimes by city blocks.

The city finally fell to Russia in May.

Before-and-after images of the destroyed Ukrainian city of Bakhmut

Zelensky, backed by his top commander, stood firm about the need to retain a major presence around Bakhmut and strike Russian forces there as part of the counteroffensive. To that end, Zaluzhny maintained more forces near Bakhmut than he did in the south, including the country’s most experienced units, U.S. officials observed with frustration.

Ukrainian officials argued that they needed to sustain a robust fight in the Bakhmut area because otherwise Russia would try to reoccupy parts of the Kharkiv region and advance in Donetsk — a key objective for Putin, who wants to seize that whole region.

“We told [the Americans], ‘If you assumed the seats of our generals, you’d see that if we don’t make Bakhmut a point of contention, [the Russians] would,’” one senior Ukrainian official said. “We can’t let that happen.”

In addition, Zaluzhny envisioned making the formidable length of the 600-mile front a problem for Russia, according to the senior British official. The Ukrainian general wanted to stretch Russia’s much larger occupying force — unfamiliar with the terrain and already facing challenges with morale and logistics — to dilute its fighting power.

Western officials saw problems with that approach, which would also diminish the firepower of Ukraine’s military at any single point of attack. Western military doctrine dictated a concentrated push toward a single objective.

The Americans yielded, however.

“They know the terrain. They know the Russians,” said a senior U.S. official. “It’s not our war. And we had to kind of sit back into that.”

Production of 155mm artillery shells in February at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Pennsylvania. American production couldn't keep up with Ukraine's projected needs. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post; iStock)

The weapons Kyiv needed

On Feb. 3, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, called together the administration’s top national security officials to review the counteroffensive plan.

The White House’s subterranean Situation Room was being renovated, so the top echelons of the State, Defense and Treasury departments, along with the CIA, gathered in a secure conference room in the adjacent Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Most were already familiar with Ukraine’s three-pronged approach. The goal was for Biden’s senior advisers to voice their approval or reservations to one another and try to reach consensus on their joint advice to the president.

The questions posed by Sullivan were simple, said a person who attended. First, could Washington and its partners successfully prepare Ukraine to break through Russia’s heavily fortified defenses?

And then, even if the Ukrainians were prepared, “could they actually do it?”

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, who led top administration officials in reviewing the counteroffensive plan in preparation for briefing the president. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; iStock)

Milley, with his ever-ready green maps of Ukraine, displayed the potential axes of attack and the deployment of Ukrainian and Russian forces. He and Austin explained their conclusion that “Ukraine, to be successful, needed to fight a different way,” one senior administration official closely involved in the planning recalled.

Ukraine’s military, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, had become a defensive force. Since 2014 it had focused on a grinding but low-level fight against Russian-backed forces in the eastern Donbas region. To orchestrate a large-scale advance would require a significant shift in its force structure and tactics.

The planning called for wider and better Western training, which up to that point had focused on teaching small groups and individuals to use Western-provided weapons. Thousands of troops would be instructed in Germany in large unit formations and U.S.-style battlefield maneuvers, whose principles dated to World War II. For American troops, training in what was known as “combined arms” operations often lasted more than a year. The Ukraine plan proposed condensing that into a few months.

Instead of firing artillery, then “inching forward” and firing some more, the Ukrainians would be “fighting and shooting at the same time,” with newly trained brigades moving forward with armored vehicles and artillery support “in a kind of symphonic way,” the senior administration official said.

The Biden administration announced in early January that it would send Bradley Fighting Vehicles; Britain agreed to transfer 14 Challenger tanks. Later that month, after a grudging U.S. announcement that it would provide top-line Abrams M1 tanks by the fall, Germany and other NATO nations pledged hundreds of German-made Leopard tanks in time for the counteroffensive.

A far bigger problem was the supply of 155mm shells, which would enable Ukraine to compete with Russia’s vast artillery arsenal. The Pentagon calculated that Kyiv needed 90,000 or more a month. While U.S. production was increasing, it was barely more than a tenth of that.

“It was just math,” the former senior official said. “At a certain point, we just wouldn’t be able to provide them.”

As Ukraine flies through artillery rounds, U.S. races to keep up

Sullivan laid out options. South Korea had massive quantities of the U.S.-provided munitions, but its laws prohibited sending weapons to war zones. The Pentagon calculated that about 330,000 155mm shells could be transferred by air and sea within 41 days if Seoul could be persuaded.

Share this article

No subscription required to read

Share

Senior administration officials had been speaking with counterparts in Seoul, who were receptive as long as the provision was indirect. The shells began to flow at the beginning of the year, eventually making South Korea a larger supplier of artillery ammunition for Ukraine than all European nations combined.

The more immediate alternative would entail tapping the U.S. military’s arsenal of 155mm shells that, unlike the South Korean variant, were packed with cluster munitions. The Pentagon had thousands of them, gathering dust for decades. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken balked.

Inside the warhead of those cluster weapons, known officially as Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, or DPICMs, were dozens of bomblets that would scatter across a wide area. Some would inevitably fail to explode, posing a long-term danger to civilians, and 120 countries — including most U.S. allies but not Ukraine or Russia — had signed a treaty banning them. Sending them would cost the United States some capital on the war’s moral high ground.

In the face of Blinken’s strong objections, Sullivan tabled consideration of DPICMs. They would not be referred to Biden for approval, at least for now.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had boasted in February that 2023 would be a “year of victory. By May, when this photo was taken, the counteroffensive had not yet begun, despite U.S. hopes. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

Can Ukraine win?

With the group agreeing that the United States and allies could provide what they believed were the supplies and training Ukraine needed, Sullivan faced the second part of the equation: Could Ukraine do it?

Zelensky, on the war’s first anniversary in February, had boasted that 2023 would be a “year of victory.” His intelligence chief had decreed that Ukrainians would soon be vacationing in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia had illegally annexed in 2014. But some in the U.S. government were less than confident.

U.S. intelligence officials, skeptical of the Pentagon’s enthusiasm, assessed the likelihood of success at no better than 50-50. The estimate frustrated their Defense Department counterparts, especially those at U.S. European Command, who recalled the spies’ erroneous prediction in the days before the 2022 invasion that Kyiv would fall to the Russians within days.

Some defense officials observed caustically that optimism was not in intelligence officials’ DNA — they were the “Eeyores” of government, the former senior official said, and it was always safer to bet on failure.

“Part of it was just the fact of the sheer weight of the Russian military,” CIA Director William J. Burns later reflected in an interview. “For all their incompetence in the first year of the war, they had managed to launch a shambolic partial mobilization to fill a lot of the gaps in the front. In Zaporizhzhia” — the key line of the counteroffensive if the land bridge was to be severed — “we could see them building really quite formidable fixed defenses, hard to penetrate, really costly, really bloody for the Ukrainians.”

Perhaps more than any other senior official, Burns, a former ambassador to Russia, had traveled multiple times to Kyiv over the previous year, sometimes in secret, to meet with his Ukrainian counterparts, as well as with Zelensky and his senior military officials. He appreciated the Ukrainians’ most potent weapon — their will to fight an existential threat.

“Your heart is in it,” Burns said of his hopes for helping Ukraine succeed. “But … our broader intelligence assessment was that this was going to be a really tough slog.”

President Biden with his national security team in October. U.S. intelligence officials, less enthusiastic than the Pentagon, had assessed the likelihood of success in the counteroffensive at no better than 50-50. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; iStock)

Two weeks after Sullivan and others briefed the president, a top-secret, updated intelligence report assessed that the challenges of massing troops, ammunition and equipment meant that Ukraine would probably fall “well short” of its counteroffensive goals.

The West had so far declined to grant Ukraine’s request for fighter jets and the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which could reach targets farther behind Russian lines, and which the Ukrainians felt they needed to strike key Russian command and supply sites.

“You are not going to go from an emerging, post-Soviet legacy military to the U.S. Army of 2023 overnight,” a senior Western intelligence official said. “It is foolish for some to expect that you can give them things and it changes the way they fight.”

U.S. military officials did not dispute that it would be a bloody struggle. By early 2023, they knew that as many as 130,000 Ukrainian troops had been injured or killed in the war, including many of the country’s best soldiers. Some Ukrainian commanders were already expressing doubts about the coming campaign, citing the numbers of troops who lacked battlefield experience.

Yet the Pentagon had also worked closely with Ukrainian forces. Officials had watched them fight courageously and had overseen the effort to provide them with large amounts of sophisticated arms. U.S. military officials argued that the intelligence estimates failed to account for the firepower of the newly arriving weaponry, as well as the Ukrainians’ will to win.

“The plan that they executed was entirely feasible with the force that they had, on the timeline that we planned out,” a senior U.S. military official said.

Austin knew that additional time for training on new tactics and equipment would be beneficial but that Ukraine didn’t have that luxury.

“In a perfect world, you get a choice. You keep saying, ‘I want to take six more months to train up and feel comfortable about this,’” he said in an interview. “My take is that they didn’t have a choice. They were in a fight for their lives.”

Gen. Sergei Surovikin, left, known as “General Armageddon,” was named to lead Russia’s fight in Ukraine after key losses in late 2022. Here he is seen with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, center. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Gavriil Grigorov/AFP/Getty Images; iStock)

Russia gets ready

By March, Russia was already many months into preparing its defenses, building miles upon miles of barriers, trenches and other obstacles across the front in anticipation of the Ukrainian push.

After stinging defeats in the Kharkiv region and Kherson in the fall of 2022, Russia seemed to pivot. Putin appointed Gen. Sergei Surovikin — known as “General Armageddon” for his merciless tactics in Syria — to lead Russia’s fight in Ukraine, focusing on digging in rather than taking more territory.

In the months after the 2022 invasion, Russian trenches were basic — flood-prone, straight-line pits nicknamed “corpse lines,” according to Ruslan Leviev, an analyst and co-founder of the Conflict Intelligence Team, which has been tracking Russian military activity in Ukraine since 2014.

But Russia adapted as the war wore on, digging drier, zigzagging trenches that better protected soldiers from shelling. As the trenches eventually grew more sophisticated, they opened up into forests to offer better means for defenders to fall back, Leviev said. The Russians built tunnels between positions to counter Ukraine’s extensive use of drones, he added.

The trenches were part of multilayered defenses that included dense minefields, concrete pyramids known as dragon’s teeth, and antitank ditches. If minefields were disabled, Russian forces had rocket-borne systems to reseed them.

Unlike Russia’s offensive efforts early in the war, these defenses followed textbook Soviet standards. “This is one case where they have implemented their doctrine,” a senior Western intelligence official said.

Konstantin Yefremov, a former officer with Russia’s 42nd motorized rifle division who was stationed in Zaporizhzhia in 2022, recalled that Russia had the equipment and grunt power necessary to build a solid wall against attack.

“Putin’s army is experiencing shortages of various arms, but can literally swim in mines,” Yefremov said in an interview after fleeing to the West. “They have millions of them, both antitank and antipersonnel mines.”

The poverty, desperation and fear of the tens of thousands of conscripted Russian soldiers made them an ideal workforce. “All you need is slave power,” he said. “And even more so, Russian rank-and-file soldiers know they are [building trenches and other defenses] for themselves, to save their skin.”

In addition, in a tactic used in both World War I and II, Surovikin would deploy blocking units behind the Russian troops to prevent them from retreating, sometimes under pain of death.

Their options were “either to die from our units or from their own,” said Ukrainian police Col. Oleksandr Netrebko, the commander of a newly formed police brigade fighting near Bakhmut.

Yet, while Russia had far more troops, a deeper military arsenal and what one U.S. official said was “just a willingness to endure really dramatic losses,” U.S. officials knew it also had serious vulnerabilities.

By early 2023, some 200,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded, U.S. intelligence agencies estimated, including scores of highly trained commandos. Replacement troops who were rushed into Ukraine lacked experience. Turnover of field leaders had hurt command and control. Equipment losses were equally staggering: more than 2,000 tanks, some 4,000 armored fighting vehicles and at least 75 aircraft, according to a Pentagon document leaked on the Discord chat platform in the spring.

The assessment was that the Russian force was insufficient to protect every line of conflict. But unless Ukraine got underway quickly, the Kremlin could make up its deficits inside of a year, or less if it got more outside help from friendly nations such as Iran and North Korea.

It was imperative, U.S. officials argued, for Ukraine to launch.

NATO's Stoltenberg and Zelensky speak at a joint news conference in Kyiv after Stoltenberg made an announced trip to the Ukrainian capital in April. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images; iStock)

More troops, more weapons

In late April, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made an unannounced trip to see Zelensky in Kyiv.

Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, was in town to discuss preparations for the NATO summit in July, including Kyiv’s push to join the alliance.

But over a working lunch with a handful of ministers and aides, talk turned to preparation for the counteroffensive — how things were going and what was left to be done.

Stoltenberg — due the next day in Germany for a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a consortium of roughly 50 countries providing weaponry and other support to Kyiv — asked about efforts to equip and train Ukrainian brigades by the end of April, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Zelensky reported that the Ukrainian military expected the brigades to be at 80 or 85 percent by the end of the month, the people said. That seemed at odds with American expectations that Ukraine should already be ready to launch.

The Ukrainian leader also stressed that his troops had to hold the east to keep Russia from shifting forces to block Kyiv’s southern counteroffensive. To defend the east while also pushing south, he said, Ukraine needed more brigades, the two people recalled.

The Russian-controlled city of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov. With its counteroffensive, Ukraine aimed to take back swaths of the country's south. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; AFP/Getty Images; iStock)

Ukrainian officials also continued to make the case that an expanded arsenal was central to their ability to succeed. It wasn’t until May, on the eve of the fight, that Britain announced it would provide longer-range Storm Shadow missiles. But another core refrain from Ukraine was that they were being asked to fight in a way no NATO nation would ever contemplate — without effective power in the air.

As one former senior Ukrainian official pointed out, his country’s aging MiG-29 fighter jets could detect targets within a 40-mile radius and fire at a range of 20 miles. Russia’s Su-35s, meanwhile, could identify targets more than 90 miles away and shoot them down as far away as 75 miles.

“Imagine a MiG and a Su-35 in the sky. We don’t see them while they see us. We can’t reach them while they can reach us,” the official said. “That’s why we fought so hard for F-16s.”

American officials pointed out that even a few of the $60 million aircraft would eat up funds that could go much further in buying vehicles, air defenses or ammunition. Moreover, they said, the jets wouldn’t provide the air superiority the Ukrainians craved.

“If you could train a bunch of F-16 pilots in three months, they would have got shot down on day one, because the Russian air defenses in Ukraine are very robust and very capable,” a senior defense official said.

Biden finally yielded in May and granted the required permission for European nations to donate their U.S.-made F-16s to Ukraine. But pilot training and delivery of the jets would take a year or more, far too long to make a difference in the coming fight.

Ukrainian soldiers prepare to remove an antitank mine during a July exercise in the Dnipro region, even as troops were struggling to navigate Russian minefields in the counteroffensive farther south. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

Kyiv hesitates

By May, concern was growing within the Biden administration and among allied backers. According to the planning, Ukraine should have already launched its operations. As far as the U.S. military was concerned, the window of opportunity was shrinking fast. Intelligence over the winter had shown that Russian defenses were relatively weak and largely unmanned, and that morale was low among Russian troops after their losses in Kharkiv and Kherson. U.S. intelligence assessed that senior Russian officers felt the prospects were bleak.

But that assessment was changing quickly. The goal had been to strike before Moscow was ready, and the U.S. military had been trying since mid-April to get the Ukrainians moving. “We were given dates. We were given many dates,” a senior U.S. government official said. “We had April this, May that, you know, June. It just kept getting delayed.”

Meanwhile, enemy defenses were thickening. U.S. military officials were dismayed to see Russian forces use those weeks in April and May to seed significant amounts of additional mines, a development the officials believed ended up making Ukrainian troops’ advance substantially harder.

Washington was also getting worried that the Ukrainians were burning up too many artillery shells, primarily around Bakhmut, that were needed for the counteroffensive.

As May ground on, it seemed to the Americans that Kyiv, gung-ho during the war games and the training, had abruptly slowed down — that there was “some type of switch in psychology” where they got to the brink “and then all of a sudden they thought, ‘Well, let’s triple-check, make sure we’re comfortable,’” said one administration official who was part of the planning. “But they were telling us for almost a month … ‘We’re about to go. We’re about to go.’”

Some senior American officials believed there wasn’t conclusive proof that the delay had altered Ukraine’s chances for success. Others saw clear indications that the Kremlin had successfully exploited the interim along what it believed would be Kyiv’s lines of assault.

Austin testifies at an Oct. 1 Senate hearing about further U.S. aid to Ukraine. Before the counteroffensive, the Ukrainians raised concerns about the quantity and quality of equipment provided; U.S. officials disagreed. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; iStock)

In Ukraine, a different kind of frustration was building. “When we had a calculated timeline, yes, the plan was to start the operation in May,” said a former senior Ukrainian official who was deeply involved in the effort. “However, many things happened.”

Promised equipment was delivered late or arrived unfit for combat, the Ukrainians said. “A lot of weapons that are coming in now, they were relevant last year,” the senior Ukrainian military official said, not for the high-tech battles ahead. Crucially, he said, they had received only 15 percent of items — like the Mine Clearing Line Charge launchers (MCLCs) — needed to execute their plan to remotely cut passages through the minefields.

And yet, the senior Ukrainian military official recalled, the Americans were nagging about a delayed start and still complaining about how many troops Ukraine was devoting to Bakhmut.

U.S. officials vehemently denied that the Ukrainians did not get all the weaponry they were promised. Ukraine’s wish list may have been far bigger, the Americans acknowledged, but by the time the offensive began, they had received nearly two dozen MCLCs, more than 40 mine rollers and excavators, 1,000 Bangalore torpedoes, and more than 80,000 smoke grenades. Zaluzhny had requested 1,000 armored vehicles; the Pentagon ultimately delivered 1,500.

“They got everything they were promised, on time,” one senior U.S. official said. In some cases, the officials said, Ukraine failed to deploy equipment critical to the offensive, holding it in reserve or allocating it to units that weren’t part of the assault.

Then there was the weather. The melting snow and heavy rains that turn parts of Ukraine into a soup of heavy mud each spring had come late and lasted longer than usual.

In the middle of 2022, when the thinking about a counteroffensive began, “no one knew the weather forecast,” the former senior Ukrainian official said.

That meant it was unclear when the flat plains and rich black soil of southeastern Ukraine, which could act as a glue grabbing hold of boots and tires, would dry out for summer. The Ukrainians understood the uncertainty because they, unlike the Americans, lived there.

As the preparations accelerated, Ukrainian officials’ concerns grew more acute, erupting at a meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany in April when Zaluzhny’s deputy, Mykhailo Zabrodskyi, made an emotional appeal for help.

“We’re sorry, but some of the vehicles we received are unfit for combat,” Zabrodskyi told Austin and his aides, according to a former senior Ukrainian official. He said the Bradleys and Leopards had broken or missing tracks. German Marder fighting vehicles lacked radio sets; they were nothing more than iron boxes with tracks — useless if they couldn’t communicate with their units, he said. Ukrainian officials said the units for the counteroffensive lacked sufficient de-mining and evacuation vehicles.

Austin looked at Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the top U.S. commander for Europe, and Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto, head of the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, both sitting next to him. They said they’d check.

The Pentagon concluded that Ukrainian forces were failing to properly handle and maintain all the equipment after it was received. Austin directed Aguto to work more intensively with his Ukrainian counterparts on maintenance.

“Even if you deliver 1,300 vehicles that are working fine, there’s going to be some that break between the time that you get them on the ground there and the time they enter combat,” a senior defense official said.

By June 1, the top echelons at U.S. European Command and the Pentagon were frustrated and felt like they were getting few answers. Maybe the Ukrainians were daunted by the potential casualties? Perhaps there were political disagreements within the Ukrainian leadership, or problems along the chain of command?

The counteroffensive finally lurched into motion in early June. Some Ukrainian units quickly notched small gains, recapturing Zaporizhzhia-region villages south of Velyka Novosilka, 80 miles from the Azov coast. But elsewhere, not even Western arms and training could fully shield Ukrainian forces from the punishing Russian firepower.

When troops from the 37th Reconnaissance Brigade attempted an advance, they, like units elsewhere, immediately felt the force of Russia’s tactics. From the first minutes of their assault, they were overwhelmed by mortar fire that pierced their French AMX-10 RC armored vehicles. Their own artillery fire didn’t materialize as expected. Soldiers crawled out of burning vehicles. In one unit, 30 of 50 soldiers were captured, wounded or killed. Ukraine’s equipment losses in the initial days included 20 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and six German-made Leopard tanks.

Those early encounters landed like a thunderbolt among the officers in Zaluzhny’s command center, searing a question in their minds: Was the strategy doomed?

A Ukrainian soldier stands in a trench in the Zaporizhzhia region about a month into the counteroffensive. Despite some early gains, Kyiv's forces would soon find their advance stymied. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

Stalemate: Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive. This is part one of a two-part series. Read part two here.

Story editing by Peter Finn and David M. Herszenhorn. Project editing by Reem Akkad. Graphics by Laris Karklis. Graphics editing by Samuel Granados. Photo illustrations by Emily Sabens. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Copy editing by Martha Murdock.

11. In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls (PART 2)

Again, a long and fascinating read in Part 2. There are so many lessons in these two articles I cannot pull out any excerpts - there are so many that I would have the whole article excerpted.

Please go to the link to view the graphics. maps, and photos and proper formatting. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/04/ukraine-counteroffensive-us-planning-russia-war/

STALEMATE: UKRAINE’S FAILED COUNTEROFFENSIVE

In Ukraine, a war of incremental gains as counteroffensive stalls

By Washington Post Staff

December 4, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

(Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post; Staff Sgt. Jordan Sivayavirojna/U.S. National Guard; Sasha Maslov for The Washington Post; iStock)

Listen

26 min

Share

Comment

178

Add to your saved stories

Save

ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — Soldiers in the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade waited for nightfall before piling — nervous but confident — into their U.S.-provided Bradley Fighting Vehicles. It was June 7 and Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive was about to begin.

The goal for the first 24 hours was to advance nearly nine miles, reaching the village of Robotyne — an initial thrust south toward the larger objective of reclaiming Melitopol, a city near the Sea of Azov, and severing Russian supply lines.

Nothing went as planned.

Skip to end of carouselHow we reported on Ukraine’s counteroffensive

arrow left

arrow right

This is the second of two parts examining the Ukrainian counteroffensive that launched in June. Read the first part in the series, which looks at the military planning for the operation, here.

Part two:

Reported by Michael Birnbaum, Karen DeYoung, Kamila Hrabchuk, Alex Horton, John Hudson, Mary Ilyushin, Kostiantyn Khudov, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Dan Lamothe, Kostiantyn Khudov, Serhii Korolchuk, Greg Miller, Serhiy Morgunov, Siobhán O’Grady, Emily Rauhala, David L. Stern, and Missy Ryan.

Written by Isabelle Khurshudyan.

Over three months, reporters in Washington, London, Brussels and Riga, Latvia, as well as in Kyiv and near the front lines in Ukraine, spoke to dozens of Ukrainian officers and troops and over 30 senior officials from Ukraine, the United States and European nations to examine how the counteroffensive unfolded on the ground, and the widening fissures between Kyiv and Washington. The Post spoke to former Russian service members who fought in the war, as well as Russian war bloggers and analysts.

Washington Post reporters, photographers, news assistants and security advisers drove hundreds of miles throughout Ukraine to speak to soldiers and government officials for this series. Journalists made numerous front-line visits in the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, including in embeds with combat units within five miles of Russian forces.

1/3

End of carousel

The Ukrainian troops had expected minefields but were blindsided by the density. The ground was carpeted with explosives, so many that some were buried in stacks. The soldiers had been trained to drive their Bradleys at a facility in Germany, on smooth terrain. But on the mushy soil of the Zaporizhzhia region, in the deafening noise of battle, they struggled to steer through the narrow lanes cleared of mines by advance units.

The Russians, positioned on higher ground, immediately started firing antitank missiles. Some vehicles in the convoy were hit, forcing others behind them to veer off the path. Those, in turn, exploded on mines, snarling even more of the convoy. Russian helicopters and drones swooped in and attacked the pileup.

Troops, some experiencing the shock of combat for the first time, pulled back to regroup — only to attack and retreat, again and again on successive days, with the same bloody results.

“It was hellfire,” said Oleh Sentsov, a platoon commander in the 47th.

By day four, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, had seen enough. Incinerated Western military hardware — American Bradleys, German Leopard tanks, mine-sweeping vehicles — littered the battlefield. The numbers of dead and wounded sapped morale.

The plan to take Robotyne

Ukraine’s push to retake Robotyne at the start of the counteroffensive comprised two goals: On the first day,

to advance to the northern edge of the town, and by the fourth day, to control the entire community and territory

farther south. Because of extensive minefields and fortifications built by the Russians, the operation ultimately

took 12 weeks to achieve.

Kyiv

Orikhiv

Robotyne

Mala Tokmachka

Novodanylivka

47th Separate

Mechanized

Brigade

advances

Novopokrovka

June 7

front line

Antitank

mines

Just across the front line

the 47th begins to

suffer heavy losses.

Verbove

Kopani

Robotyne

3 MILES

The 47th claimed the liberation

of Robotyne on Aug. 28—82 days

after the counteroffensive started.

Novoprokopivka

Ilchenkove

Sources: Institute for the Study of War and staff reports

Zaluzhny told his troops to pause their assaults before any more of Ukraine’s limited weaponry was obliterated, a senior Ukrainian military official said.

Rather than try to breach Russian defenses with a massed, mechanized attack and supporting artillery fire, as his American counterparts had advised, Zaluzhny decided that Ukrainian soldiers would go on foot in small groups of about 10 — a process that would save equipment and lives but would be much slower.

Months of planning with the United States was tossed aside on that fourth day, and the already delayed counteroffensive, designed to reach the Sea of Azov within two to three months, ground to a near-halt. Rather than making a nine-mile breakthrough on their first day, the Ukrainians in the nearly six months since June have advanced about 12 miles and liberated a handful of villages. Melitopol is still far out of reach.

This account of how the counteroffensive unfolded is the second in a two-part series and illuminates the brutal and often futile attempts to breach Russian lines, as well as the widening rift between Ukrainian and U.S. commanders over tactics and strategy. The first article examined the Ukrainian and U.S. planning that went into the operation.

This second part is based on interviews with more than 30 senior Ukrainian and U.S. military officials, as well as over two dozen officers and troops on the front line. Some officials and soldiers spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe military operations.

Key findings from reporting on the campaign include:

● Seventy percent of troops in one of the brigades leading the counteroffensive, and equipped with the newest Western weapons, entered battle with no combat experience.

● Ukraine’s setbacks on the battlefield led to rifts with the United States over how best to cut through deep Russian defenses.

● The commander of U.S. forces in Europe couldn’t get in touch with Ukraine’s top commander for weeks in the early part of the campaign amid tension over the American’s second-guessing of battlefield decisions.

● Each side blamed the other for mistakes or miscalculations. U.S. military officials concluded that Ukraine had fallen short in basic military tactics, including the use of ground reconnaissance to understand the density of minefields. Ukrainian officials said the Americans didn’t seem to comprehend how attack drones and other technology had transformed the battlefield.

● In all, Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western military aid in 2023 alone.

Nearly six months after the counteroffensive began, the campaign has become a war of incremental gains. Damp World War I-style trenches lace eastern and southern Ukraine as surveillance and attack drones crowd the skies overhead. Moscow launches missile assaults on civilian targets in Ukrainian cities, while Kyiv is using both Western missiles and home-grown technology to strike far behind the front lines — in Moscow, in Crimea and on the Black Sea.

Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia

But the territorial lines of June 2023 have barely changed. And Russian President Vladimir Putin — in contrast to the silence he often maintained in the first year of the war — trumpets at every opportunity what he calls the counteroffensive’s failure. “As for the counteroffensive, which is allegedly stalling, it has failed completely,” Putin said in October.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, meets on Jan. 16 with U.S. Army leaders responsible for the training of Ukrainian soldiers at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Staff Sgt. Jordan Sivayavirojna/U.S. National Guard; iStock)

Training for battle

On Jan. 16, five months before the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, Gen. Mark A. Milley, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited soldiers with the 47th, just days after the unit arrived at the Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany.

Milley, trailed by staff and senior military officials based in Europe, zigzagged across a muddy, chilly training range, bantering with Ukrainian soldiers and watching as they fired on stationary targets with rifles and M240B machine guns.

The installation had been used to train small groups of Ukrainian soldiers since 2014, when Russia invaded and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula. In anticipation of the counteroffensive, the effort was scaled up with one or more battalions of about 600 Ukrainian soldiers cycling through at a time.

In a white field tent, Milley gathered with U.S. soldiers overseeing the training, who told him they were trying to replicate Russian tactics and build some of the trenches and other obstacles the Ukrainians would face in battle.

Skip to end of carouselKey findings from our reporting on Ukraine’s counteroffensive

arrow left

arrow right

The United States was deeply involved in the military planning behind the operation. Ukrainian, U.S. and British military officers held eight major tabletop war games to build a campaign plan.

U.S. and Ukrainian officials sharply disagreed at times over strategy, tactics and timing.

The Pentagon wanted the assault to begin in mid-April to prevent Russia from continuing to strengthen its lines. The Ukrainians hesitated, insisting they weren’t ready without additional weapons and more training. The counteroffensive began in June.

U.S. military officials were confident that a mass, mechanized frontal attack along one axis in the south of Ukraine would lead to a decisive breakthrough. Ukraine attacked along three axes, believing that would stretch Russian forces. Ukraine abandoned large, mechanized assaults when it suffered serious losses in the first days of the campaign.

The wargame simulations concluded that Kyiv’s forces, in the best case, could reach the Sea of Azov in the south of Ukraine and cut off Russian troops in 60 to 90 days. Ukrainian forces have advanced only about 12 miles. The Sea of Azov is still far out of reach. Ukraine’s top commander now acknowledges that the war has reached a “stalemate.”

1/4

End of carousel

“The whole thing … for them to be successful with the Russians is for them to be able to both fire and maneuver,” Milley said, describing in basic terms the essence of the counteroffensive’s “combined arms” strategy, which called for coordinated maneuvers by a massed force of infantry, tanks, armored vehicles, engineers and artillery. If this were the United States or NATO, the operation also would have included devastating air power to weaken the enemy and protect troops on the ground, but the Ukrainians would have to make do with little or none.

The 47th had been selected to be a “breach force” at the tip of the counteroffensive and would be equipped with Western arms. But as Milley made his rounds and chatted with Ukrainian soldiers — from young men in their 20s to middle-aged recruits — many they told him that they had only recently left civilian life and had no combat experience.

Milley kept silent. But later, in the meeting with U.S. trainers, he seemed to acknowledge the scale of the task ahead. “Give them everything you’ve got here,” he said.

The 47th was a newly created unit tabbed for the training in Germany. Ukraine’s military leadership had decided that more-experienced brigades would hold off the Russians during the winter, while fresh soldiers would form new brigades, receive training abroad and then lead the fight in the spring and summer. More than a year of war — with up to 130,000 troops dead or wounded, according to Western estimates — had taken a heavy toll on Ukraine’s armed forces. Even the most battle-hardened brigades were now largely composed of drafted replacements.

About 70 percent of the soldiers in the 47th didn’t have any battlefield experience, according to one senior commander in the brigade.

Soldiers of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade at an undisclosed location in Ukraine on May 17, not long after returning from U.S.-run training in Germany. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Heidi Levine for The Washington Post; iStock)

The 47th’s leadership was also strikingly young — its commander, though combat-hardened, was just 28 years old and his deputy was 25. Their youth had been billed as an advantage; young officers would absorb NATO tactics unaffected by the Soviet way of war that still infused parts of the Ukrainian military.

Some of the Ukrainian soldiers thought the American trainers didn’t grasp the scale of the conflict against a more powerful enemy. “The presence of a huge number of drones, fortifications, minefields and so on were not taken into account,” said a soldier in the 47th with the call sign Joker. Ukrainian soldiers brought their own drones to help hone their skills, he said, but trainers initially rebuffed the request to integrate them because the training programs were predetermined. Drone use was later added following Ukrainian feedback, a U.S. official said.

The U.S. program had benefits, Joker said, including advanced cold-weather training and how to adjust artillery fire. But much was discarded once real bullets flew. “We had to improve tactics during the battle itself,” he said. “We couldn’t use it the way we were taught.”

U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they never expected that two months of training would transform these troops into a NATO-like force. Instead, the intention was to teach them to properly use their new Western tanks and fighting vehicles and “make them literate in the basics of firing and moving,” a U.S. senior military official said.

Soldiers and mechanics in the 47th test-drive a U.S.-made Bradley Fighting Vehicle at a secret workshop in the Zaporizhzhia region in mid-July. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

No order to attack

When soldiers from the 47th returned to Ukraine in the spring, they expected the counteroffensive to start almost immediately. In early May, the brigade relocated closer to the front line, hiding their Bradleys and other Western equipment in the tree lines of rural Zaporizhzhia. The 47th’s insignia on vehicles was covered up in case locals sympathetic to Russia might reveal their location.

But weeks passed with no order to attack. Many in the unit felt the element of surprise had been lost. The political leadership “shouldn’t have been announcing our counteroffensive for almost a year,” said one unit commander in the 47th. “The enemy knew where we’d be coming from.”

Milley and other senior U.S. military officers involved in planning the offensive argued for the Ukrainians to mass forces at one key spot in Zaporizhzhia, to help them overcome stiff Russian defenses and ensure a successful breakthrough in the drive to Melitopol and the Sea of Azov. The Ukrainian plan, however, was to push on three axes — south along two distinct paths to the Sea of Azov, as well as in eastern Ukraine around the besieged city of Bakhmut, which the Russians had seized in the spring after a nearly year-long battle.

Ukrainian military leaders decided that committing too many troops to one point in the south would leave forces in the east vulnerable and enable the Russians to take territory there and, potentially, in Kharkiv to the northeast.

Detail

RUSSIA

Kyiv

Russian-controlled area

41,846 square miles

Kharkiv

Front line

on Nov. 28

Kupyansk

LUHANSK

UKRAINE

In 2022, Ukraine reclaimed

roughly 8,610 square miles

of territory with two major

counteroffensives in the

Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

Three main points

where Ukraine focused its

counterattacks

this year

Luhansk

Bakhmut

In 2023, Ukraine has been

able to reclaim only about

200 square miles of territory.

Dnipro

DONETSK

Donetsk

Velyka

Novosilka

Zaporizhzhia

Nuclear power plant

at Enerhodar

Nikopol

Robotyne

Mariupol

ZAPORIZHZHIA

Melitopol

Mykolaiv

Berdyansk

Kherson

RUSSIA

KHERSON

50 MILES

CRIMEA

Kerch

Illegally annexed

by Russia

in 2014

Crimean Bridge

(Opened in 2018)

Simferopol

Sevastopol

Sources: Institute for the Study of War, AEI’s Critical Threats Project

To split the Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia, Ukrainian marine brigades at the western edge of the neighboring Donetsk region would push south toward the coastal city of Berdyansk. That left the 47th and other brigades, part of what Ukraine referred to as its 9th Corps, to attack along the counteroffensive’s main axis, toward Melitopol.

The plan called for the 47th, and the 9th Corps, to breach the first Russian line of defense and take Robotyne. Then the 10th Corps, made up of Ukraine’s paratroopers, would join the fight in a second wave pushing south.

“We thought it was going to be a simple two-day task” to take Robotyne, said the commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle who goes by the call sign Frenchman.

A commander of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle who goes by the call sign Frenchman, with his crew in August in the Zaporizhzhia region. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Heidi Levine for The Washington Post; iStock)

Mining all approaches

Days after the counteroffensive launched, Oleksandr Sak, then the 47th’s commander, visited a Russian position his troops had captured. He noted anti-drone guns, thermal imagery scopes and small surveillance drones, among other abandoned materiel. “I realized the enemy had prepared,” he said. “We didn’t catch them off-guard; they knew we were coming.”

Also left behind were posters with Russian propaganda. One showed an image of men kissing in public with a red “X” over it, next to an image of a man and woman with two children. “Fighting for traditional families,” the poster said.

Sak also found a map that the Russians had used to mark their minefields. For just one part of the front — about four miles long and four miles deep — more than 20,000 mines were listed.

Ukraine is now the most mined country. It will take decades to make safe.

“I wouldn’t say it was unexpected, but we underestimated it,” Sak said. “We conducted engineering and aerial reconnaissance, but many mines were masked or buried. In addition to those by the front line, there were mines deeper into enemy positions. We passed enemy positions and encountered more mines where we thought there were none anymore.”

A chief drone sergeant in the 47th said that only on foot did they find remote-detonation traps, describing their discovery as a “surprise.”

U.S. military officials believed that Ukraine could have made a more significant advance by embracing greater use of ground reconnaissance units and reducing its reliance on imagery from drones, which weren’t able to detect buried mines, tripwires or booby traps.

The Zaporizhzhia region is largely composed of flat, open fields, and the Russians had chosen what high ground there was to build key defenses. From there, soldiers and officials said, Russian units armed with antitank missiles waited for convoys of Bradley Fighting Vehicles and German Leopard tanks. A mine-clearing vehicle always led the pack — and was targeted first with the help of reconnaissance drones.

“We constantly faced antitank fire and destroyed up to 10 Russian antitank guided missile systems per day,” Sak said. But, he added, “day after day, they pulled in more” of the systems.

Some 60 percent of Ukraine’s de-mining equipment was damaged or destroyed in the first days, according to a senior Ukrainian defense official. “Our partners’ reliance on armored maneuver and a breakthrough didn’t work,” the official said. “We had to change tactics.”

Share this article

No subscription required to read

Share

Within a week of the start of the counteroffensive, teams of sappers would work in twilight hours, when it was light enough for them to de-mine by hand but not so bright that the Russians could spot them. Once they cleared a small pathway, infantry would follow — a slow, grueling advance one wood line at a time.

Ukrainian soldiers prepare to remove an antitank mine during a July exercise in the Dnipro region, even as troops were struggling to navigate Russian minefields in the counteroffensive farther south. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Ed Ram for The Washington Post; iStock)

Often, when Ukrainian soldiers reached a Russian outpost, they would find that it too had been booby-trapped with mines. And rather than withdraw, Russian forces held their positions even under heavy artillery bombardment, meaning the Ukrainians would have to engage in close combat with small arms to advance.

Throughout the Zaporizhzhia region, the Russians had deployed new units, called “Storm Z,” with fighters recruited from prisons. The former inmates attacked in human waves called “meat assaults” and were used to preserve more-elite forces. Around Robotyne — the village the 47th was supposed to reach on the first day of the counteroffensive — they were mixed in with Russia’s 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade and other regular army formations.

“Robotyne was one of the toughest assignments,” a member of the 810th engineering unit said in an interview with a pro-war Russian blogger. “We had to go all out to prevent the enemy from breaking through. As sappers and engineers, we had to mine all approaches both for infantry and their vehicles.

“The famous Leopards are burning, and we tried to make sure they burn bright.”

A drone pilot with the call sign Sapsan, part of a unit within the 47th, flies a first-person-view drone, or FPV, from a forward bunker position in the south in September. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post; iStock)

Fleets of drones

Early in the assault on Robotyne, a Russian machine-gun nest carved into a building was preventing Ukrainian infantry from advancing. A drone company within the 47th sent up two modified racing drones strapped with explosives. One glided through a window and exploded. Another, guided by a pilot with the call sign Sapsan, spiraled into another room and detonated the ammunition inside, he said, also killing several enemy soldiers.

It was an early high point in the use of small drones like pinpoint artillery. Drone operators — wearing a headset that receives a video feed from the drone in real time — hunted for armored vehicles using first-person-view drones, known as FPVs. FPVs are so precise and fast that they can target the weak parts of vehicles, such as engine compartments and tracks, operators say.

Video from Ukraine's 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade shows highly maneuverable racing drones strapped with explosives hitting targets. (Video: The Washington Post)

But Russia is also deploying fleets of the same hand-built attack drones, which cost less than $1000 each and can disable a multimillion-dollar tank. Unlike artillery ammunition, which is a precious resource for both Russia and Ukraine, the low-cost, disposable FPV drones can be used to hit small groups of infantry — navigated directly into trenches or into troops on the move.

Evacuating the wounded or bringing fresh supplies to a front-line position also became harrowing and potentially deadly tasks, often saved for nighttime because of the threat of drones.

“At first, our problem was mines. Now, it’s FPV drones,” said Sentsov, the platoon commander in the 47th. “They hit the target precisely and deal serious damage. They can disable a Bradley and potentially even blow it up. It’s not a direct explosion, but they can hit it in a way to make it burn — not only stop the vehicle but destroy it.”

U.S. military officials, drawing on their own doctrine, called for artillery to be used to suppress the enemy while mechanized ground forces advanced toward their objective.

“You’ve got to move while you’re firing the artillery,” a senior U.S. defense official said. “That sounds very fundamental, and it is, but that’s how you’ve got to fight. Otherwise, you can’t sustain the quantity of artillery and munitions that you need.”

But Ukrainian officials have said the ubiquity and lethality of different types of drones on both sides of the front line has been the biggest factor preventing the Ukrainians or the Russians from gaining significant ground for months.

“Because of the technical development, everything came to a standstill,” a high-ranking Ukrainian military official said. “The equipment that appears on the battlefield lives for a minute at the most.”

A Ukrainian soldier walks by a destroyed Ukrainian tank near Robotyne on Aug. 25, three days before the 47th would declare the village liberated. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters; iStock)

Chaotic battlefield conditions

The 47th claimed the liberation of Robotyne on Aug. 28. Air assault units in Ukraine’s 10th Corps then moved in, but have been unable to liberate any other villages.

The front line has also grown static along the parallel drive in the south, where Ukrainian marines led the push toward the Azov Sea city of Berdyansk. After retaking the villages of Staromaiorske and Urozhaine in July and August, there have been no further gains, leaving Ukrainian forces far from both Berdyansk and Melitopol.

Territory reclaimed in Ukrainian counteroffensive this year

ZAPORIZHZHIA

DONETSK

Velyka

Novosilka

Front line

DONETSK

80 square

miles

Front line

Orikhiv

35 square miles

Bakhmut

Staromaiorske

Urozhaine

Robotyne

Front line

Russian-

controlled

area

Russian-controlled

area

Klishchiivka

ZAPORIZ.

26 square

miles

Russian-built

fortifications

5 MILES

Throughout the summer, some of the fiercest fighting took place in a few square miles outside the eastern city of Bakhmut, along the third axis of the counteroffensive. Ukrainian war planners saw regaining control of the tiny village of Klishchiivka as key to attaining firing superiority around the southern edges of the city and disrupting Russian supply routes.

In July, police officers belonging to the newly formed Lyut, or “Fury,” Brigade — one of the brigades created last winter ahead of the counteroffensive — were deployed to the area. The brigade, made up of a mix of experienced police officers and recruits, was tasked with storming Russian positions in Klishchiivka, largely using gunfire and grenades.

Video footage of the Lyut Brigade’s operations, which was provided to The Washington Post, and interviews with officers who participated in the fighting reveal the intense and at times chaotic battlefield conditions.

Ukrainian police in the Lyut Brigade clear Russian positions in eastern Ukraine. The brigade provided the video to The Washington Post. (Video: The Washington Post)

In one bodycam video, from September, soldiers weave in and out of the ruins of homes as heavy shelling booms around them. Moving from one bombed-out house to another, the Ukrainian forces search the wreckage for any remaining Russian troops — screaming out for them to surrender before lobbing grenades into basements.

Days later, on Sept. 17, Ukraine announced that it had retaken Klishchiivka. But its recapture has not moved the lines around Bakhmut in any significant way since.

“Klishchiivka is actually a cemetery of equipment and Russian troops,” said the Lyut Brigade’s commander, police Col. Oleksandr Netrebko. But he also conceded: “Every square meter of liberated land is covered with the blood of our men.”

The chief sergeant of a drone unit within the 47th walks down a road at the southern front in September to check the unit's surroundings. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Wojciech Grzedzinski fot The Washington Post; iStock)

Frustration builds

With no big breakthrough, U.S. officials became increasingly agitated over the summer that Ukraine was not dedicating enough forces to one of the southern axes, given the American view of its strategic value.

In the north and the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky controlled half of Ukraine’s brigades, which ran from Kharkiv through Bakhmut down to Donetsk. Meanwhile, Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky controlled the other half of active brigades, fighting along the two main axes in the south.

U.S. officials viewed the roughly 50-50 split of Ukrainian forces as the wrong mix and wanted more forces shifted to the south. “Of course the enemy is going to try to destroy your mine-clearing vehicles,” the senior U.S. military official said, adding that there were methods to camouflage them, including the use of smoke.

Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavsky controlled half of the brigades in the counteroffensive, fighting along the two main axes in the south. In the north and the east, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky controlled the other half. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; The Joint Press Center of the Tavriia Defense Task Force; iStock)

But assessing Kyiv’s approach and urging changes was a delicate task. One officer who did so was Gen. Christopher Cavoli, who as head of the U.S. European Command oversaw much of the Pentagon’s effort to train and equip Ukraine’s army. Milley, by contrast, often struck a more optimistic, motivational tone.

As partners in Ukraine’s fight for survival, two generals forged a bond

Cavoli, however, couldn’t reach Zaluzhny during part of the summer, a critical phase of the counteroffensive, three people familiar with the matter said. Cavoli declined to comment on the issue. A senior Ukrainian official noted that Zaluzhny spoke to Milley, his direct counterpart, throughout the campaign.

By August, Milley too had begun to air some frustration. He “started saying to Zaluzhny: ‘What are you doing?’” a senior Biden administration official said.

Gen. Christopher Cavoli, center, head of U.S. European Command, and Lt. Gen. Antonio Aguto, right, head of the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, visit Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany on July 7. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Sgt. 1st Class Kevin A. D. Spence/U.S. Army; iStock)

The Ukrainians were insistent that the West simply wasn’t giving them the air power and other weapons needed for a combined arms strategy to succeed. “You want us to to proceed with the counteroffensive, you want us to show the brilliant advances on the front line,” said Olha Stefanishyna, deputy prime minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine. “But we do not have the fighter jets, meaning that you want us to throw our soldiers, you know, and accept the very fact that we cannot protect them.”

When allies said no, she said, “we heard ... ‘We are fine that your soldiers will be dying without support from the sky.’”

In an August video conference, soon followed by an in-person meeting near the Poland-Ukraine border, U.S. military officials pressed their case. They said they understood the logic of preoccupying Russian forces at different points on the front, but argued that deep advances would not come unless the Ukrainians massed more forces at a single point to move quickly and decisively.

Zaluzhny, in response, laid out the challenges in stark terms: no air cover, more mines than expected, and a Russian force that was impressively dug in and moving its reserves around effectively to plug gaps.

“I would not characterize that meeting as a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting and some massive drama — go left, go right,” Milley said in an interview. “I wouldn’t say that. I would say this is the normal course of business where professional leaders … routinely meet to assess the situation and adjustments going on, on the ground.”

In July, as Ukraine ran low on artillery shells and the counteroffensive faltered, the Biden administration shifted position on providing Ukraine with artillery cluster munitions, with the president overruling State Department concerns that the reputational risks were too high given the weapon’s history of killing or wounding civilians. The final key decision on weapons transfers came in September, when the administration agreed to provide a variant of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS. The missiles were not the deep-strike variant Kyiv had requested, with the United States instead opting for a shorter-range weapon that drops cluster submunitions.

The moral dilemma of sending cluster munitions to Ukraine

While useful, Ukrainian officials said, neither the ATACMS launchers nor the cluster weapons have broken the battlefield deadlock.

Nor have other strategies. Throughout the counteroffensive, Ukraine has continued striking far behind enemy lines in an effort to weaken Russian forces and sow panic within Russian society. Kyiv isn’t permitted to use Western weapons for strikes on Russia, so a fleet of homegrown drones have been used instead. Some have been able to reach targets in Moscow, while others have damaged Russian oil depots along the Black Sea. Naval drones have also successfully hit ships in Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.

Ukraine has recently gained ground in the southern Kherson region, establishing troop positions on the eastern bank of the Dneiper River, but it’s unclear how much weaponry — artillery especially — has been moved across the river to threaten Russian supply lines stemming from Crimea.

Ukraine has stopped asking for more tanks and fighting vehicles, despite intensely lobbying for them throughout the first year of the war.

“A lot of the weapons,” a high-ranking Ukrainian military official said, “they were relevant last year.”

Members of Ukraine's 93rd Mechanized Brigade, or "Kholodny Yar," on the eastern front on June 2, just days before the counteroffensive would launch. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Sasha Maslov for the Washington Post; iStock)

Frozen lines

In late September, in a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was asked why his military continued to commit so many forces to the east rather than the south. Zelensky said that if the Russians lost the east, they would lose the war, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Zelensky acknowledged differing views among some of his commanders, the person said. But most senior Ukrainian military officials continued to believe that throwing more troops at one part of the front would not force a breakthrough.

Then in mid-October, the Russians tried just that in a fierce assault on the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, which sits in a geographically strategic pocket close to the Russian-occupied city of Donetsk. Now it was the Russians on the offensive, with four brigades moving in columns of tanks and personnel carriers, and descending on one narrow strip of the front.

Engineering vehicles with mine sweepers led the charge. It was exactly how the Ukrainians had started their counteroffensive. And similarly, the Russians suffered severe losses — Ukrainian officials claimed that more than 4,000 Russian troops were killed in the first three weeks of the assault — before switching to a dismounted approach, just as the Ukrainians had done.

In early October, the 47th Brigade, after a brief respite from the fighting, was rotated back into the counteroffensive. Zelensky had publicly vowed that Ukraine would continue its push through the winter, when the weather would make any advances even more difficult.

By the end of October, however, the troops of the 47th were suddenly moved east, to defend the northern flank of Avdiivka. The brigade’s Western weapons — German Leopard tanks and American Bradley Fighting Vehicles — went with them.

The relocation to Avdiivka was a surprise for the brigade, but it was also a signal that the operation in Zaporizhzhia was frozen along largely fixed lines. And behind their lines, the Russians had continued to build defensive fortifications over the summer and fall, according to satellite imagery. Around the village of Romanivske, southeast of Robotyne, antitank ditches and concrete pyramids were installed three-deep to blunt any further Ukrainian attempts to advance.

On Nov. 1, in an interview with the Economist, Zaluzhny acknowledged what had been previously unutterable — the war had reached “a stalemate.”

“There will most likely, he said, “be no deep and beautiful breakthrough.”

Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top commander, arrives on Nov. 25 to place a candle at the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in Kyiv. The Holodomor was a man-made famine resulting from Soviet policies under Joseph Stalin in the early 1930s. (Illustration by Emily Sabens/The Washington Post; Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock; iStock)

Stalemate: Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive. This is part two of a two-part series. Read part one here.

Story editing by Peter Finn and David M. Herszenhorn. Project editing by Reem Akkad. Maps by Laris Karklis. Graphics editing by Samuel Granados. Photo illustrations by Emily Sabens. Photo editing by Olivier Laurent. Copy editing by Martha Murdock.

Map sources: The Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project; OpenStreetMap. Brady Africk, who analyzed satellite imagery from Copernicus Open Access Hub, provided fortifications data, which does not include all fortifications in Ukraine; some defenses predate Russia’s full-scale invasion.

12. (Israel-Hamas War) Iran Update, December 4, 2023

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-december-4-2023

Key Takeaways:

1. Israel continued conducting clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip to encircle Hamas in Shujaiya neighborhood and Jabalia city.
2. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian militias in the central and southern Gaza Strip along the Salah al Din Road.
3. Israel continued clearing operations in Beit Hanoun to destroy Palestinian militia infrastructure.
4. Palestinian fighters conducted ten attacks targeting Israeli forces across the West Bank. Lebanese Hezbollah claimed 11 attacks into northern Israel targeting Israeli forces and civilians.
5. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for two attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria on December 3.
6. US Central Command confirmed that the US military conducted a self-defense strike against five Iraqi militants planning a one-way drone attack on US forces near Kirkuk, Iraq, on December 3.
7. Iranian Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri discussed expanding intelligence cooperation with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) during a meeting with PMF Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh in Baghdad on December 4.

IRAN UPDATE, DECEMBER 4, 2023

Dec 4, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, December 4, 2023

Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Kathryn Tyson, Amin Soltani, and Brian Carter

Information Cutoff: 2:00 pm EST 

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates regularly based on regional events. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the Israel-Hamas war. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance. We do not report in detail on war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We utterly condemn violations of the laws of armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions and crimes against humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

Click here to see CTP and ISW’s interactive map of Israeli ground operations. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Key Takeaways:

1. Israel continued conducting clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip to encircle Hamas in Shujaiya neighborhood and Jabalia city.
2. Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian militias in the central and southern Gaza Strip along the Salah al Din Road.
3. Israel continued clearing operations in Beit Hanoun to destroy Palestinian militia infrastructure.
4. Palestinian fighters conducted ten attacks targeting Israeli forces across the West Bank. Lebanese Hezbollah claimed 11 attacks into northern Israel targeting Israeli forces and civilians.
5. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for two attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria on December 3.
6. US Central Command confirmed that the US military conducted a self-defense strike against five Iraqi militants planning a one-way drone attack on US forces near Kirkuk, Iraq, on December 3.
7. Iranian Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri discussed expanding intelligence cooperation with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) during a meeting with PMF Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh in Baghdad on December 4.

Gaza Strip

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Erode the will of the Israeli political establishment and public to launch and sustain a major ground operation into the Gaza Strip
• Degrade IDF material and morale around the Gaza Strip.

Israel continued to conduct clearing operations in the northern Gaza Strip to encircle Hamas in Shujaiya neighborhood and Jabalia city. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant observed Israeli forces in Shujaiya and Jabalia on December 4 and noted that the forces have returned there to “close the circle.”[1] The Wall Street Journal reported that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have cornered Hamas fighters in the last two strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip.[2] An IDF spokesperson issued a warning to Hamas commanders in Shujaiya that they are targets and that Israel will use extreme force in the neighborhood to dismantle Hamas military infrastructure on December 3.[3]

Palestinian militias claimed several attacks along Israeli lines of advance along the al Fallujah Road in Jabalia. The al Qassem Brigades—the militant wing of Hamas—targeted Israeli forces and military vehicles near the al Fallujah Road with rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), including tandem-charged RPGs and small arms.[4] The al Quds Brigades—the militant wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—fired tandem-charged RPGs and an anti-armor grenade.[5] Hamas- and PIJ-affiliated media reported that the al Nasser Salah al Din Brigades—the militant wing of the Palestinian Resistance Committees (PRC)—engaged in clashes with Israeli forces in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood southwest of Jabalia.[6] The PRC is a loose grouping of armed factions in the Gaza Strip that is strong allies with Hamas and PIJ.[7]

Hamas and PIJ-affiliated media reported clashes between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces in Shujaiya neighborhood.[8] A Palestinian journalist noted that Israeli forces are advancing into Shujaiya neighborhood from several axes.[9]

Israel forces clashed with Palestinian militias in the central and southern Gaza Strip along the Salah al Din Road. Israel announced on December 2 that it is resuming and expanding ground operations gains Hamas’ strongholds across the whole Gaza Strip and confirmed that ground forces are operating north of Khan Younis.[10] Witnesses told AFP that dozens of Israeli tanks entered the southern part of the Gaza Strip and are operating on the Salah al Din Road.[11] The IDF Arab media spokesperson announced on December 2 civilians cannot use the Salah al Din Road north and east of Khan Younis due to Israeli military operations in the area.[12]

A Palestinian journalist said local rescue teams advised residents to avoid windows, balconies, and exterior building walls in Deir al Balah where Israeli forces are present.[13] Hamas- and PIJ-affiliated media reported that Palestinian fighters clashed with Israeli forces in Deir al Balah on December 4, which is the second consecutive day of fighting in the area.[14] The al Quds Brigades mortared groups of Israeli soldiers in Deir al Balah.[15] The National Resistance Brigades—the militant wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—clashed with Israeli forces in al Qarar northeast of Khan Younis.[16] CTP-ISW is not expanding map layers given that the Israeli direction of advance is unspecified, as is the extent of their advance.

Israel continued clearing operations in Beit Hanoun to destroy Palestinian militia infrastructure. Israeli forces found two tunnel shafts in a school including a booby-trapped one as well as an IED and weapons in Beit Hanoun.[17] The IDF attacked 200 Hamas-affiliated targets across the Gaza Strip on December 4, including anti-tank weapons, tunnels, and personnel.[18] Israeli ground forces directed airstrikes to destroy infrastructure used for anti-tank ambushes and a weapons depot.[19] The al Qassem Brigades targeted Israeli forces behind the Israeli forward line of advance in Beit Hanoun, which is consistent with the nature of clearing operations. The militants used tunnels to ambush Israeli forces and used anti-personnel munitions and small arms in four separate attacks.[20] The al Qassem Brigades also claimed to use a Shawaz explosively formed penetrators (EFP) to target an IDF tank.[21] Hamas and other Palestinian militias have used EFPs six times since December 1.[22] This is consistent with Hamas’ use of increasingly sophisticated tactics against Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip after the end of the humanitarian pause.[23] The al Qassem Brigades claimed four attacks on Israeli forces and vehicles east of Beit Lahiya using RPGs and anti-personnel munitions.[24]

The IDF Arabic-language spokesperson did not post any new specific evacuation orders in the Gaza Strip on December 4. The IDF Arab media spokesperson repeated evacuation orders covering areas of the northern Gaza Strip including al Mahatta, al Katiba, Hamad, al Satar, Bani Suheila, and Maan.[25] The spokesperson directed residents in the Khan Younis area to use the coastal road to avoid Israeli military operations.[26] The IDF temporarily suspended military activity in the Rafah camp area for humanitarian purposes.[27]

The entire Gaza Strip is experiencing a near-total internet blackout. Palestine-based communications companies announced a blackout of services in Gaza City and the Northern Gaza Strip on December 4.[28] NetBlocks later confirmed that most residents will experience a total loss of communications.[29] The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said it has lost contact with its teams in the Gaza Strip due to the blackout.[30]

Palestinian militias in the Gaza Strip conducted 18 rocket and mortar attacks into Israel on December 4. The al Qassem Brigades claimed responsibility for 10 rocket attacks.[31] The al Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for six rocket attacks.[32] The National Resistance Brigades claimed one rocket attack into southern Israel.[33] The al Nasser Salah al Din Brigades fired mortars at Kissufim.[34]

Recorded reports of rocket attacks; CTP-ISW cannot independently verify impact.

West Bank

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward the West Bank and fix them there

Palestinian fighters conducted ten attacks targeting Israeli forces across the West Bank on December 4. Palestinian fighters engaged Israeli forces in five small arms clashes and detonated five IEDs targeting Israeli forces.[35] The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said on December 4 that it would escalate attacks in response to Israeli forces killing Palestinian fighters in Qalqilya on the same day.[36] The PFLP has repeatedly incited attacks and demonstrations in response to Israeli actions in the West Bank in recent weeks, but these calls have not generated increased attacks or demonstrations.[37]

Iranian state media claimed on December 4 that that Palestinian fighters “control” part of a town in the West Bank, which is an information operation. Iranian state media outlets al Alam and IRIB News said that a new Palestinian militia group called the Biddya Brigades have “taken control” over Biddya in northern West Bank.[38] Al Alam said that the Biddya Brigades recently announced its establishment and seeks to ”repel the attacks of the Israeli occupation.” Pro-Hamas and Iranian social media pages said that the Biddya Brigades reshared a video of an alleged Biddya Brigades fighter ”roaming the streets” in Biddya.[39] LH-affiliated outlet al Mayadeen said on December 3 that the Biddya Brigades "paraded through the streets” in Biddya.[40] The IDF has not commented on the Biddya Brigades or the groups’ presence in Biddya. CTP-ISW has not observed evidence that support the Iranian claims that the Biddya Brigades ”control” the town.

This map is not an exhaustive depiction of clashes and demonstrations in the West Bank.

Southern Lebanon and Golan Heights

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Draw IDF assets and resources toward northern Israel and fix them there

• Set conditions for successive campaigns into northern Israel

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) claimed 11 attacks into northern Israel on December 4, targeting Israeli forces and civilians.[41] Unspecified fighters conducted three other attacks into northern Israel.[42] The IDF acknowledged two of these attacks.[43]

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Axis of Resistance campaign objectives:

• Demonstrate the capability and willingness of Iran and the Axis of Resistance to escalate against the United States and Israel on multiple fronts

• Set conditions to fight a regional war on multiple fronts

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias—claimed responsibility for two attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria on December 3. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq resumed its attacks on US forces on December 3, two days after the humanitarian pause in the Gaza Strip ended on December 1.[44] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq and its affiliated groups have claimed 78 attacks against US forces in the Middle East since October 18.

• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a single one-way drone attack targeting US forces at Green Village in northeastern Syria on December 3.[45] The group has claimed eight attacks on Green Village since October 18.

• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a single one-way drone attack targeting US forces at Ain Asad Airbase on December 3.[46] The group has claimed 22 attacks on Ain Asad Airbase since October 18.

Unspecified actors are conducting an information operation to obfuscate Russian assistance to Iran and its proxies in an effort to prevent Israel from escalating in Syria. Anonymous unspecified diplomatic sources told Syrian-regime opposition media that Russia is attempting to avoid any escalation with Israel inside Syria by attempting to limit Iranian influence in southwestern Syria and by limiting Russian weapons transfers to Iran and Iranian-backed groups. These sources claimed that Russia, the Assad regime, and the United Arab Emirates seek to remove Iranian-backed militias from the Syrian border with the Golan Heights.[47] The anonymous sources also said that Russia decided not to transfer military equipment to Iran and Iranian-backed groups.

Russia has provided support to Iran and Iranian-backed forces in Syria during the Israel-Hamas War, however. An IRGC-linked Mahan Air flight purportedly transporting shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles landed at the Russian Hmeimim military airport in northern Syria from Tehran on November 2.[48] Multiple US officials told Western media on November 3 that the Wagner Group planned to transfer air defense systems to Lebanese Hezbollah.[49] The White House declassified intelligence on November 21 that corroborated these reports.[50]

Russia and Israel have a complex relationship in Syria, as Israel has historically relied on Russia to curb Iranian activities in Syria.[51] Israel has stopped giving Russian forces advanced warning of its strikes into Israel, however.[52]

US Central Command confirmed on December 4 that the US military conducted a self-defense strike against five Iraqi militants planning a one-way drone attack on US forces near Kirkuk, Iraq, on December 3.[53] The Islamic Resistance in Iraq—a coalition of Iranian-backed militias—announced that five of its fighters died in battle on December 3. Iranian-backed Iraqi militia Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba (HHN), which is a member of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, said specifically that the fighters were HHN members.[54] HHN Secretary General Akram al Kaabi threatened on December 4 to retaliate against US forces for the airstrike.[55] Kaabi stated that the deaths of the fighters “kindles the flame of revenge in our hearts” and warned the United States that it “will pay a heavy price for [its] crime.”

Iranian officials warned that Israeli attacks on Iranian interests in Syria “will not go unanswered” on December 4.[56] Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani stated that Iran will respond to any attacks on its interests, particularly its “advisory forces” in Syria during one of his regular press conferences on December 4. Strategic Foreign Relations Council Chairman Kamal Kharrazi echoed Kanani, saying that Israeli attacks on Iranian bases in Syria will “never remain unanswered” during an interview with Al Jazeera. Kharrazi is a foreign policy advisor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Both officials were referring to a purported Israeli airstrike on Iranian positions in Syria that killed two IRGC general officers on December 2.[57]

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Cuban President Miguel Diaz Ganel on December 4 in Tehran.[58] Khamenei emphasized the need for a united global front against Western and Israeli oppression of Palestinians. President Ebrahim Raisi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf echoed Khamenei’s remarks during their separate meetings with Canel.[59]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian met with his Omani counterpart Sayyid Badr al Busaidi on December 4 in Tehran to discuss the Israel-Hamas war.[60] The two officials emphasized the need for ending Israeli action in the Gaza Strip. Abdollahian previously discussed the Israel-Hamas war with al Busaidi on December 1.[61]

Iranian Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri discussed expanding intelligence cooperation with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) during a meeting with PMF Chairman Faleh al Fayyadh in Baghdad on December 4.[62] The PMF is an umbrella security organization largely composed of Shia militias.[63] The US Department of the Treasury sanctioned Fayyadh in January 2021 for serious human rights abuses.[64] Greater intelligence cooperation between Iran and the PMF would likely grant Iran increased access to intelligence on US forces on Iraq, which would increase threats to US forces in Iraq. Bagheri and Fayyadh also discussed combatting terrorism and strengthening bilateral security cooperation. Former Kataib Hezbollah Secretary General and PMF Chief of Staff Abdul Aziz al Mohammadawi (also known as Abu Fadak) also attended the meeting. Iranian Law Enforcement Commander Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Radan recently met with Fayyadh in Baghdad on November 13.[65] Bagheri separately met with Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid on December 4.[66]

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber discussed the Israel-Hamas war with Iraqi interim Parliamentary Speaker Mohsen al Mandalawi in Tehran on December 4.[67] Abdollahian called for greater cooperation between Iran and Iraq to facilitate “peace and stability” in the region. Mokhber praised the Iraqi government for approving a law that “criminalizes relations with Israel.”

• Mandalawi is a member of the Shia Coordination Framework—a loosely aligned coalition of pro-Iranian political parties—and was appointed as deputy parliamentary speaker in September 2022.[68] He has been serving as acting parliament speaker since the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court issued a ruling to remove former Parliamentary Speaker Mohammed al Halbousi from parliament on November 14.[69] Mandalawi is a Feyli Shia Kurd from Diyala Province in northeastern Iraq.[70] Mandalawi is a member of the Independent Iraq Alliance, which is headed by Iraqi MP Abdul Hadi al Hasnawi.[71] Mandalawi has previously met with Axis of Resistance officials such as former Kataib Hezbollah Secretary General and PMF Chief of Staff Abdul Aziz al Muhammadawi and Asaib Ahl al Haq Secretary General Qais Khazali.[72]
• Halbousi, an important Sunni politician and the leader of the Taqqadum Movement, claimed that the Federal Supreme Court’s November 14 ruling was unconstitutional and that the ruling was a move by unspecified parties to create political divisions within society.[73] CTP-ISW previously hypothesized that Halbousi was removed from his post as part of political efforts to reduce the US presence in Iraq.[74]

13. Top U.S. general still waiting to hear from China on military ties

Unrequited love in the national security realm. China just will not pick up the phone. It is certainly playing hard to get,

Top U.S. general still waiting to hear from China on military ties

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/12/03/asia-pacific/politics/us-china-military-charles-brown/

Charles Q. Brown | REUTERS

BLOOMBERG

 SHARE

Dec 3, 2023

The United States' top general said he’s still waiting to hear back from China about resuming military-to-military ties as the two countries seek to stabilize their fraught relationship.

"I’m standing by,” Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at the Reagan National Defense Forum at Simi Valley, California on Saturday.

"The opportunity to have dialog, whether it’s with our allies and partners or with our adversaries is really important,” Brown said. "With our adversaries, it’s to prevent miscalculation.”

At a summit in November, President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, promised to restore military communications severed after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last year.

Before that meeting, Brown said he’d written to his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Liu Zhenli, to establish lines of communication but hadn’t yet interacted with him directly.

Brown said he believes the U.S. still has an edge over China when it comes to cybercapabilities and artificial intelligence.

"As I read our intel, I feel pretty confident about our capabilities across not only cyber but AI and other technologies,” Brown said, adding that the U.S. can’t afford to "rest on its laurels.”

Asked whether the U.S. has responded strongly enough to attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, Brown said the U.S. is focused on responding without sparking a broader regional conflict after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas fighters.

"We’ve been focused on striking at a time and place of our choosing,” Brown said. "One of the key goals after the 7th of October was to not let the conflict expand and so we’re being very thoughtful about the approach we take.”

Brown also said the U.S. is working to shape the outcome of the war in Ukraine by providing aid to Kyiv, but said that military means alone won’t decide the outcome.

"With any military conflict, you don’t solve it completely with military means,” he said. "It ends up with a diplomatic solution.”

14. The 7 Reasons Iran Won’t Fight for Hamas

The seven:

First, the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot rally society to engage in a new war as it did during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. 

Second, the moderate faction in the Iranian government has been warning against Iran’s direct intervention in the war.

Third, Israel’s apparent failure in deterring Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 does not alter Tehran’s strategic calculation toward Israel.

Fourth, contrary to the conventional wisdom, neither Hamas nor even Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy; it would be more accurate to think of them as Iran’s nonstate allies.

Fifth, Iran’s strategic partners in Moscow and Beijing have not declared their full support for Hamas.

Sixth, there exists a deep belief among influential decision-makers in Iran that the Arab sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf would welcome a large-scale war between Iran and Israel. 

These seven interconnected reasons explain the Islamic Republic’s reluctance to involve itself in the war on behalf of Hamas. The war in Gaza may, however, accelerate Iran’s nuclear program. There are strong voices in Iran, predominantly in the hard-liner camp, arguing that the country’s most significant tool to prevent the destruction of Hamas hinges on its decision to fully pursue nuclear capabilities. They believe that Iran’s trump card lies in its threat to develop nuclear weapons, showcasing vital support for its allies—similar to its past support for the Assad government of Syria. This reasoning gained substantial momentum when Israeli ultranationalist Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu advocated for the dropping of “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone” as “an option.”

None of this implies that Iran is willing to abandon Hamas, its strategic asset in Gaza. Rather than standing idly by, Tehran is likely to continue applying pressure on both Israel and the U.S.—through Hezbollah and its Shiite proxies in Iraq and Syria—without escalating the conflict to a full-scale regional war.

The 7 Reasons Iran Won’t Fight for Hamas

A close look at Tehran’s thinking about escalating the war in Gaza.

By Arash Reisinezhad, a visiting fellow of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Foreign Policy · by Arash Reisinezhad · November 27, 2023

December 4, 2023, 4:34 AM

Since its start, the war in Gaza has been thought of as potentially foreshadowing a direct conflict between Iran and Israel. Hezbollah continues to threaten to open a new front in the war, and Iranian hard-liners have welcomed their country’s direct intervention. Last month, Iran’s former foreign minister, Javad Zarif, mentioned a letter written by hard-line officials to Iran’s supreme leader attempting to persuade him to engage in the conflict with Israel on behalf of Hamas.

Since its start, the war in Gaza has been thought of as potentially foreshadowing a direct conflict between Iran and Israel. Hezbollah continues to threaten to open a new front in the war, and Iranian hard-liners have welcomed their country’s direct intervention. Last month, Iran’s former foreign minister, Javad Zarif, mentioned a letter written by hard-line officials to Iran’s supreme leader attempting to persuade him to engage in the conflict with Israel on behalf of Hamas.

The likelihood of an expanded regional war, however, is low. Despite the slogans echoed by Iranian hard-liners, the reality of Iran’s strategic thinking is more circumspect. There are at least seven reasons Tehran is likely to avoid starting a war with Israel on behalf of Hamas.

First, the Islamic Republic of Iran cannot rally society to engage in a new war as it did during the war with Iraq in the 1980s. It was the relentless mobilization of human waves, among other factors, that resisted the Iraqi army and forced Baghdad to withdraw from Iran’s territory. However, several decades later, society’s support for the political system has significantly declined. Following last year’s protests, coupled with the economic crisis caused, in part, by U.S.-led sanctions, discontent among the youth and the urban middle class has surged.

Second, the moderate faction in the Iranian government has been warning against Iran’s direct intervention in the war. Indeed, the war in Gaza has deepened political cleavages in Tehran. In the threat assessment of Iranian hard-liners, the destruction of Hamas is automatically associated with the subsequent collapse of Hezbollah and, ultimately, a military attack on Iran. That is why they support targeting American bases in Iraq and Syria by Iran’s Shiite proxies. This view stands in stark contrast with that of moderate officials, particularly Zarif, who has consistently warned about the destructive consequence of Iran’s potential involvement in a war with the U.S. According to Zarif, if Iran takes a more radical stance on Gaza, it could trigger a deadly conflict with the U.S., which Israel would welcome. And despite being marginalized by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, Zarif still holds significant influence among the political elites of the Islamic Republic and even its society.

Third, Israel’s apparent failure in deterring Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7 does not alter Tehran’s strategic calculation toward Israel. Despite Israel’s reliance on high-tech defense technology like the Iron Dome missile defense system, Hamas inflicted a significant military and intelligence blow against it, thereby shattering its deterrence policy. But that does not shift Iran’s perspective on Israel or the power dynamics in the region. Though the Hamas operation rattled Israel’s long-standing credible deterrence strategy, it does not provide Iran with the opportunity to challenge Israel using missile power. Conversely, Iran may believe that Israel feels that reestablishing deterrence is an existential priority for which it’s worth taking extraordinary military or political risks.

Fourth, contrary to the conventional wisdom, neither Hamas nor even Hezbollah is Iran’s proxy; it would be more accurate to think of them as Iran’s nonstate allies. There is no top-down relationship between Tehran and Hamas. Even as Hamas aligns its actions with Iran, its approaches could diverge, as they notably did during the Syrian civil war when Hamas supported the Sunni anti-Assad rebels. American and Israeli intelligence has suggested that Iran’s top officials were not aware of the Hamas operation. In mid-November, Reuters claimed that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, that because the Iranian government was given no warning of the attack on Israel, it will not enter the war on the Palestinian group’s behalf.

Fifth, Iran’s strategic partners in Moscow and Beijing have not declared their full support for Hamas. Iran has sought alignment with China and Russia under its Look East policy and would be loath to spoil its relationships with those countries. Tehran is, in fact, following a similar policy in Gaza to the one it adopted after observing the Sino-Russian wait-and-see approach to the capture of Kabul by the Taliban two years ago. The goal for Iran is to avoid being isolated in major international crises.

Sixth, there exists a deep belief among influential decision-makers in Iran that the Arab sheikhdoms of the Persian Gulf would welcome a large-scale war between Iran and Israel. Iran may hope that Arab countries would sever their ties with Israel as a result of a wider war, but that is unlikely. Arab public opinion holds little sway over their countries’ foreign policies. And Arab leaders have long perceived Hamas as a disruptive Iranian proxy that they would be happy to see Israel dismantle once for all.

The last and the most significant factor influencing Iran’s apparent reluctance to engage in war is Khamenei’s specific point of view toward regional conflicts. Contrary to the mainstream view in the West, Iran’s supreme leader approaches responses to regional conflicts from a realist standpoint rather than an ideological one. Having served as the president of the Islamic Republic during the devastating war with Iraq, he is acutely aware of the consequences of war, especially with the U.S. This awareness led Iran to choose a relatively measured response following the assassination by the United States of Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the former leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. Such behavior aligns with his overall strategy in handling regional crises. More than two decades earlier, when Iranian diplomats in northern Afghanistan were killed by the first Taliban emirate and public sentiment in Iran leaned heavily toward a major intervention, Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani, head of the Supreme National Security Council at the time, helped prevent escalation.

These seven interconnected reasons explain the Islamic Republic’s reluctance to involve itself in the war on behalf of Hamas. The war in Gaza may, however, accelerate Iran’s nuclear program. There are strong voices in Iran, predominantly in the hard-liner camp, arguing that the country’s most significant tool to prevent the destruction of Hamas hinges on its decision to fully pursue nuclear capabilities. They believe that Iran’s trump card lies in its threat to develop nuclear weapons, showcasing vital support for its allies—similar to its past support for the Assad government of Syria. This reasoning gained substantial momentum when Israeli ultranationalist Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu advocated for the dropping of “some kind of atomic bomb” on the Gaza Strip “to kill everyone” as “an option.”

None of this implies that Iran is willing to abandon Hamas, its strategic asset in Gaza. Rather than standing idly by, Tehran is likely to continue applying pressure on both Israel and the U.S.—through Hezbollah and its Shiite proxies in Iraq and Syria—without escalating the conflict to a full-scale regional war.

Foreign Policy · by Arash Reisinezhad · November 27, 2023

15. Israel’s Impossible Dilemma

Excerpt:

Israel and the international community can do much to determine whether Hamas really will enjoy a sustained October 7 political jackpot, largely based on how they treat the organization’s rivals in the West Bank. But if the Israelis stay in Gaza out of determination to deny Hamas a hollow win, they will instead ensure that Hamas gets a political victory that is actually worth something—one that will play out over months and years of further warfare.

Israel’s Impossible Dilemma

The IDF can hand Hamas either a Pyrrhic victory or a real one

By Hussein Ibish

The Atlantic · by Hussein Ibish · December 4, 2023

To no one’s surprise, Israel and Hamas have resumed fighting in Gaza after almost a week of temporary truces and prisoner exchanges. Despite American and other entreaties to limit civilian casualties, Israel appears determined to push into the south of Gaza, but its strategic thinking seems to end there, and to hold no plausible endgame in sight. As a consequence, the next phase of this vicious conflict will almost certainly lead Israel to an unenviable dilemma: whether to grant Hamas a small and ultimately hollow victory or a much larger and all-too-real one.

The next stages of the fighting seem clear. Israel will likely seize all of the significant aboveground urban areas in Gaza’s south, just as it did in the north. After that will come a major battle for control of Hamas’s extensive underground tunnel network, where most of the group’s fighters, leaders, equipment, and remaining hostages are presumed to be located. Ultimately, Israel may seek to destroy the tunnels themselves, perhaps by flooding them with seawater. In doing so, Israel will expect to have inflicted irreparable harm on Hamas, rendering it unable to govern Gaza or pose a threat to southern Israel for the foreseeable future.

Read: Israel is walking into a trap

All of those goals are plausibly achievable. But Israel’s larger stated aim—of utterly eradicating Hamas—is impossible. Hamas is a brand name, not a list of individuals and objects. Israel could destroy its leaders and all of its equipment, declare victory, and leave Gaza to its fate. Hamas, in some form, would still crawl out of the rubble and declare a “divine victory” of its own.

Not only that: Hamas has cadres all over the Middle East, including the group’s de facto diplomatic branch in Qatar, as well as significant pockets of fighters in the West Bank, Lebanon, and elsewhere. Israel could assassinate them all—and still, at the end of this round of fighting, somebody, in the name of Hamas, will declare victory over Israel, even if only by pointing to October 7 and claiming to have destroyed Israel’s veneer of invincibility, sense of impunity, and insufferable arrogance, while reviving the Palestinian issue on the international stage.

For Israel, leaving Gaza comes with this risk, no matter how severe the physical devastation. Not only could Hamas declare victory, but it could resurrect its governing structures in Gaza if Israel leaves. Israel would then continue its de facto siege and fortify its buffer zone, while Hamas would declare that Israel had retreated in humiliation and defeat.

But a deeper truth will be unmistakable to everyone, everywhere, in this scenario: that Gaza lies in ruins because of a cataclysmic confrontation Hamas deliberately engineered for its own political purposes. What has happened to the people of Gaza because of Hamas’s actions will, for many, begin to speak for itself.

A pyrrhic “divine victory” over Israel can, when the dust settles, become a political debacle for Hamas, whose purpose has been to establish its primacy over its Palestinian rivals. The sequence has happened before: During its last war with Israel, in 2006, Hezbollah received enormous support from Lebanese society, including many communities that normally took a very dim view of it. The rally-around-the-flag effect was powerful during the fighting, especially because Hezbollah performed far better than expected, and because Israel took care to ensure that almost every part of the Lebanese social mosaic felt its wrath.

But after the fighting stopped, the Lebanese were left to survey the wreckage and came to the conclusion that Hezbollah had heedlessly dragged the country into a costly and unnecessary conflict. The Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had to go on television and apologize, ludicrously claiming that he’d had no idea Israel would react so violently to an attack on its soldiers in the border area and that, if he had, he never would have authorized the operation. Everyone in Lebanon had known for decades, intimately and personally, about Israel’s commitment to disproportionality as a cornerstone of deterrence. In effect, Nasrallah was pleading pathetic incompetence to deflect the charge of cavalier recklessness. A politician has to be in very serious trouble to do such a thing.

The extent of Hamas’s responsibility for what’s happening in Gaza is vital for Palestinians to debate, but they can’t be expected to do so while Israel dominates their individual and collective amygdalae as the focus of anger, resentment, and raw terror. If Israel leaves Gaza, Hamas will declare victory, which will be galling. But getting out—especially if it does so while taking the initiative to prop up the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and revive serious peace negotiations—could be the best way for Israel to turn that victory into a political fiasco for Hamas.

The alternatives are worse. Israeli fantasies about United Nations peacekeepers, Arab expeditionary or police forces, or an ad hoc multinational stabilization brigade stepping in to govern or even police Gaza are all chimeras. No one is going to rescue Israel from the disaster in Gaza. Therefore, the only other option is for Israel to stay in Gaza, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has several times indicated that he favors doing, in hopes of ensuring that Hamas cannot declare victory or reestablish control.

Hamas favors this outcome too. The October 7 attack was supposed to produce a state of “perpetual war” with Israel by provoking an Israeli invasion that Hamas would meet with a sustained insurgency. Such an effort would not be hard to mount: Effective insurgencies can be developed quickly, on a shoestring, and under onerous conditions. Anyone who is willing to die, as many Hamas fighters are, can use simple means to kill patrolling troops, especially in urban settings where insurgents enjoy widespread public support.

An insurgent Hamas could then declare itself the leader of the Palestinian national movement—the lone force fighting occupation soldiers on a daily basis. It would accuse the Palestinian Authority, by contrast, of acting as the gendarmerie of the occupation in the West Bank, and the Palestine Liberation Organization of sitting at an empty negotiating table where talks rarely happen and achieve nothing when they do.

Graeme Wood: The theory of Hamas’s catastrophic success

Ever since its founding by the Muslim Brotherhood, in Gaza in 1987, Hamas has sought to marginalize the secular nationalists of Fatah and take over the Palestinian national movement, making it an Islamist cause dominated by Hamas. The ultimate prize is control of the PLO’s global diplomatic presence, which constitutes one of the few major achievements of the national movement since it was reconstituted in the late 1960s. Bringing Israel into a perpetual war in Gaza serves this purpose. But the biggest weakness of Hamas’s strategy is that it relies on Israel to take the bait. If instead Israel rapidly withdraws, leaving behind total desolation and allowing Hamas to declare its “divine victory,” Hamas will accept that outcome and trumpet its supposed success day and night. But the danger of a massive backlash will be obvious.

Israel and the international community can do much to determine whether Hamas really will enjoy a sustained October 7 political jackpot, largely based on how they treat the organization’s rivals in the West Bank. But if the Israelis stay in Gaza out of determination to deny Hamas a hollow win, they will instead ensure that Hamas gets a political victory that is actually worth something—one that will play out over months and years of further warfare.

The Atlantic · by Hussein Ibish · December 4, 2023

16. Amid Ukraine and Israel conflicts, Pentagon acquisition chief sees counter-drone 'crisis'

Excerpts:

Army leaders expect the need to defend against drones to only increase, and are even planning on counter-UAS curricula becoming a regular part of boot camp.

Meeting the UAS challenge, which LaPlante mainly described as stemming from Group 3 or medium-sized drones, needs to see UAS and defensive weapons transition from prototypes to production. Drones themselves will have to be built at a sustainable scale, feature adaptable hardware and software and be able to operate in comms-denied environments, he said, pointing to Replicator as a way to spur greater UAS production.

Moreover, counter-UAS solutions need to be relatively inexpensive compared to the threats they’re facing. The Pentagon is working on cheaper solutions like directed energy, “but that’s not quite here yet,” according to LaPlante.

“So you take that all together, that’s the problem of our time,” he said.

Amid Ukraine and Israel conflicts, Pentagon acquisition chief sees counter-drone 'crisis' - Breaking Defense

“It is an urgent issue. ... We need counter UAS capabilities at scale,” said Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante. “We need lots of money, we need production lines to go up fast.”

By  MICHAEL MARROW

on December 04, 2023 at 3:40 PM

breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · December 4, 2023

Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby and Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Dr. William A. LaPlante hold a press brief at the Pentagon, May 6, 2022. (DoD Photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class James K. Lee)

REAGAN NATIONAL DEFENSE FORUM — Both Israel and Ukraine are facing an operational “crisis” with the proliferation of drone warfare, according to the Pentagon’s top acquisition official, who pushed for more funding for the two US partners and for the Defense Department to speed its own fielding of unmanned and counter-unmanned systems.

“The other thing I’d say about the supplemental is both for Israel, as well as Ukraine, is there’s a crisis actually happening right now, an operational one, I would say, in the UAS [uncrewed aerial system] and counter-UAS situation,” Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante said Saturday during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum, emphasizing that the counter-UAS side is the most vital.

“It is an urgent issue… We need counter UAS capabilities at scale,” he continued. “We need lots of money, we need production lines to go up fast.”

LaPlante was referencing the supplemental spending package with billions in aid for Ukraine and Israel requested by the Biden administration that would fund a host of critical objectives, key among them uncrewed systems that can survive contested electromagnetic environments and weapons that the Ukrainians and Israelis could use to take out enemy drones.

The requirement is so urgent that LaPlante compared the need to surge production “through the roof” to the Army’s move to greatly expand manufacturing of 155 millimeter artillery shells, which have been used extensively in Ukraine and are now being transferred to Israel as well.

“We need those supplementals to get on this,” he added.

LaPlante’s remarks also carried implications for the US military, which he said “will need it [unmanned and counter-unmanned capabilities] all across the board” as it seeks to deter China through drone

Countries reliant on US support like Ukraine and Israel have high demand for counter UAS systems, but US forces far from home need them as well. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault, US troops in Iraq and Syria have been attacked more than 70 times by what the Pentagon says are Iranian-backed groups using rockets and drones. No American soldiers have been reported killed in those attacks, and the US has responded with multiple strikes that the Pentagon says has killed more than a dozen people.

The Army has been pioneering some ways to defend against the drone threat, recently standing up a Joint Counter Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office (JCO). At the Association of the US Army conference in October, JCO Director Maj. Gen. Sean Gainey said 30mm cannons have proven very effective against smaller drones, but “no silver bullet” exists. Another JCO official also said at the conference that electronic warfare will likely play a key role in fending off swarms, which the Army plans to demo next year.

Army leaders expect the need to defend against drones to only increase, and are even planning on counter-UAS curricula becoming a regular part of boot camp.

Meeting the UAS challenge, which LaPlante mainly described as stemming from Group 3 or medium-sized drones, needs to see UAS and defensive weapons transition from prototypes to production. Drones themselves will have to be built at a sustainable scale, feature adaptable hardware and software and be able to operate in comms-denied environments, he said, pointing to Replicator as a way to spur greater UAS production.

Moreover, counter-UAS solutions need to be relatively inexpensive compared to the threats they’re facing. The Pentagon is working on cheaper solutions like directed energy, “but that’s not quite here yet,” according to LaPlante.

“So you take that all together, that’s the problem of our time,” he said.

breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · December 4, 2023

17. China coy on support for rebels fighting guerrilla war on border

China coy on support for rebels fighting guerrilla war on border

Newsweek · by Aadil Brar · December 3, 2023

China's involvement in Myanmar's internal conflict, particularly with certain ethnic rebel groups, may have become a strategic tool for Beijing to counter online scam operations originating from the country.

While China does not officially support these groups, their alliance has been instrumental in Beijing's crackdown on scams targeting Chinese citizens. Chinese officials, however, have not been forthcoming about their aims.

"Myanmar's most powerful ethnic armed organization, the United Wa State Army, has expelled two top officials wanted by Beijing for involvement in online scams targeting Chinese citizens," according to AFP.

The move by a significant rebel group in Myanmar indicated a level of cooperation with Chinese authorities against cybercrimes.

Morgan Michaels, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank outlined advancements made by rebel groups in their offensive against the country's military junta.

"On 27 October, three ethnic armed groups, known as the Brotherhood Alliance, launched a large-scale, coordinated offensive against military, police, and militia targets across northern Shan State," Michaels wrote.

The offensive marked their involvement in the post-coup conflict—begun as a response to the overthrow in 2021 of Aung San Suu Kyi's democratically elected government—challenging Myanmar's military government.

"Beijing may also be behind the rise of some new armed groups, such as the People's Liberation Army, an apparent reboot of the former Communist Party of Burma," Michaels said of China's potential backing of new armed groups.

The involvement suggests a more complex relationship between China and the rebel groups in Myanmar than had previously been understood, one in which Beijing had a broader strategic calculus.

"China appears willing to endure increased border instability in the short term to secure its long-term economic and strategic interests," Michaels said.

"Within just two weeks, the alliance, which includes the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, Ta'ang National Liberation Army, and Arakan Army, captured over 100 regime positions and gained control of several towns, including key border crossings with China," he wrote.

It was unclear, however, whether Beijing considered the groups' significant and rapid gains.

Avinash Paliwal, a Reader in International Relations at SOAS, University of London, told Newsweek in a recent interview that Myanmar's civil war began as a "parochial interest" for neighboring China, but that it had since become more complex—not necessarily in the Chinese leadership's favor.

Chinese navy personnel aboard the the Chinese frigate Xiangtan, belonging to the People's Liberation Army Navy 23rd Escort Task Group, stand at attention during a departure ceremony at Thilawa port in the outskirts of Yangon on October 4, 2016. A 700-strong force from the PLA Navy called on Myanmar in late November, in a visit Beijing said was unrelated to the neighboring country's internal conflict. ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty

China's own People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy deployed naval assets to Myanmar late last month. The destroyer Zibo, frigate Jingzhou and supply ship Qiandaohu arrived with about 700 sailors on November 27.

Beijing said the four-day visit was unrelated to the neighboring country's internal conflict.

The Chinese military recently carried out military drills near the southern border with Myanmar, according to images released last week. China's Defense Ministry said the exercises were routine.

"The recent combat training activity by Southern Theater Command aims to test the troops' rapid maneuverability, border sealing and control, and firepower strike capabilities to maintain security and stability in border areas," said Beijing's defense spokesperson Col. Wu Qian.

"The Chinese military has always maintained a high degree of alert and will always be prepared to respond to various emergencies," Wu said.

On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin was asked about Beijing's support for the rebel offensive. He said: "China has always respected Myanmar's sovereignty and territorial integrity, sincerely hoped for stability and development, and firmly supported Myanmar in advancing the peace process."

"Any attempt to sow discord" or undermine the relationship wouldn't succeed, Wang said.

Update 12/3/23, 5:00 a.m ET: This article was updated with additional context.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek · by Aadil Brar · December 3, 2023

18. Israel, Hamas Engage in Some of Fiercest Fighting of War

Israel, Hamas Engage in Some of Fiercest Fighting of War

Israeli military strikes targets across enclave and expands ground attacks to the south

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-hamas-engage-in-some-of-fiercest-fighting-of-war-30edb859?mod=hp_lead_pos1

By Benoit FauconFollow

 and Dov LieberFollow

Updated Dec. 4, 2023 7:41 pm ET

TEL AVIV—Israeli and Hamas are locked in some of their fiercest fighting of the two-month-old war, including at close quarters, as Israel launched its offensive in the south while trying to finish its operations in and around Gaza City.

The Israeli military has essentially cornered Hamas fighters in two of their last strongholds in the northern Gaza Strip—the Shajaiya neighborhood of Gaza City and the city of Jabalia, immediately to the north. 

Israel has conducted heavy airstrikes in those areas since the fighting resumed over the weekend, including one strike that Israeli officials said killed Hamas’s battalion commander in Shajaiya, and which Palestinian officials said caused hundreds of civilian casualties.

At the same time, Israel is turning its attention to the southern city of Khan Younis, the home of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and where Israeli analysts believe he and other senior Hamas officials are hiding underground. Israel also believes Khan Younis is probably where hostages are being held.

Israel Ramps Up Gaza Airstrikes, Prepares for Ground Attacks in South

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

Israel Ramps Up Gaza Airstrikes, Prepares for Ground Attacks in South

Play video: Israel Ramps Up Gaza Airstrikes, Prepares for Ground Attacks in South

Israel conducted heavy airstrikes across Gaza on Monday, as it prepared to move its ground offensive south. Houthi forces in Yemen claimed responsibility for drone and ballistic-missile attacks against a U.S. destroyer and three commercial ships on Sunday. Photo: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images

The fight for Khan Younis, the second largest city in Gaza, is seen by analysts in Israel as the last great battle for control of Gaza, and probably the toughest fight Israeli forces will face. The city, already densely packed in its center in regular times, now hosts many of the hundreds of thousands of people who fled from northern Gaza, creating an additional challenge for Israeli forces. 

Israel’s military for days has been calling on those living in eastern areas of Khan Younis to evacuate, and many already have, indicating a ground incursion is forthcoming. 

“We are now pursuing Hamas in southern Gaza,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Monday. “We are pursuing Hamas wherever they are hiding. In the north and the south,” he said.

Hagari said Israeli troops were moving from building to building, and tunnel to tunnel, careful to avoid booby-trapped sites. 

He said the battles in northern Gaza involve “close-quarter fighting.” In one instance, Israeli troops encountered Hamas militants inside a building who opened fire, killing two soldiers before they were killed by Israeli fire, the Israeli military said.

Israeli commanders have said they are working against a political clock to complete their objectives of removing Hamas from power and freeing more than 100 hostages, worrying that U.S. support will dry up if the war drags on and civilian casualties continue to mount. 

Palestinians mourn and pray over the bodies of relatives killed in Israeli bombing in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Monday. PHOTO: MAJDI FATHI/NURPHOTO/ZUMA PRESS

A Palestinian is taken to a hospital following Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis.  PHOTO: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/REUTERS

More than 15,000 Palestinians have died during Israel’s offensive, authorities in the Hamas-run enclave said, mostly women and children. The figure doesn’t distinguish between militants and civilians. Palestinian militants still hold hostages from the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel in which Israeli officials say more than 1,200 people were killed.

On Monday morning Israel said that its air force had hit roughly 200 Hamas targets across Gaza, with more strikes throughout the day.

“The next battles in the north are going to be deadlier than the previous battles,” said Michael Horowitz, the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a security and risk management consulting firm based in the Middle East.

Ne’ama Hazem, a resident in the center of Gaza City, said bombings late Sunday had been the worst since the beginning of war. “We heard shelling of tanks, warplanes, rockets, armed clashes and sounds of windows breaking all over the neighborhood,” she said.

The Israeli military said the Kfir brigade, which is usually based in the West Bank, is now operating in the northern Gaza Strip, indicating how the military is redeploying and retraining its forces for the current war in Gaza. The military said the brigade was engaged in destroying Hamas’s tunnels, a skill it wouldn’t have used in the West Bank, where militants don’t use tunnels. The military also said soldiers from the brigade were engaged in close combat with militants, indicating a new round of fierce battles in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israelis fire toward Gaza as fighting between Israel and Hamas escalates. PHOTO: JACK GUEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Israeli soldiers trained to operate in the West Bank have much more experience carrying out one-off operations such as arrests or targeted raids, rather than engaging in combat maneuvers like they now face in the Gaza Strip, which Israel pulled out of nearly two decades ago.

The expansion of fighting to the south promises to aggravate what is already a dire humanitarian crisis. Renewed fighting has cut the transit of humanitarian aid—such as flour and water—from the South to Gaza’s central areas, a United Nations agency overseeing the distribution said Monday.

Much of northern Gaza’s population moved south to escape fighting over recent weeks. Roughly 70% of the strip’s population of 2.2 million people is now in the south, with overcrowding and poor living conditions threatening disease outbreaks, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the U.S. will continue to press for the safety of civilians. “One of the key lessons from the North was to ensure that as you commence a ground operation, you have got to give civilians the time and capacity and real opportunity to leave,” Sullivan told reporters Monday.

Schools

ISRAEL

Palestinian Authority

Private

Restricted Zone

UNRWA

Other Infrastructure

Universities

Active

evacuation

notices

Hospitals

Evacuation Zones

1 mile

Algerian hospital

Dar es-Salam hospital

Khan Younis

Al-Amal hospital

Nasser hospital

European hospital

N

JORD.

GAZA

Salah al-Din Road

EGY.

Area of

detail

ISRAEL

Note: Evacuation zones as of 7 a.m. local time Monday

Sources: Israel Defense Forces (evacuation zones);

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (schools, restricted zone)

Carl Churchill/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The death toll of the war has now risen to 15,899 since the start of the Israeli aggression on the sector, said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza.

On Monday, a senior Israeli official said at least 5,000 militants have been killed in the fighting.

Fighting in Gaza resumed over the weekend after talks between Israel and Hamas over potential hostage releases stalled. The talks, which also covered the potential release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, broke down after the militants refused to free more hostages unless Israel agreed to a pause in fighting. 

In an attempt to break the deadlock, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said her national security adviser, Phil Gordon, would travel to Israel and the West Bank this week for additional discussions. On Monday, Sullivan said that intensive discussions were still under way with Israel, Qatar and Egypt for the release of hostages.

“Hamas continues to hold women—civilian women—and will not release them, and Israel is not prepared to close the book on those women or to give them up,” Sullivan said.

Diplomats from Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and possibly other countries are expected to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington on Friday, according to officials.

Arab nations and other Muslim-majority countries that are supportive of the Palestinians are pressing Blinken to intervene with Israel to renew a cease-fire, potentially slowing or halting fighting.

Sullivan said that while U.S. and Arab leaders agree on many issues, including aiming for regional stability, they disagree about calling for a cease-fire because of the hostages being held and Israel’s right to go after Hamas.

Palestinians who fled from Khan Younis build makeshift shelters in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. PHOTO: MAHMUD HAMS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Israeli military chief of staff Herzi Halevi said Sunday that Israel’s military would operate in southern Gaza as it did in the northern part of the enclave. That included a massive ground incursion backed by air, naval and artillery support and an emphasis on killing Hamas’s senior militant commanders. Le Beck said it had identified the presence of Israeli tanks in southern Gaza in footage posted by Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera.

Fighters for the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular Hamas ally, said Monday they had clashed with the Israeli army east of al-Qarara, a town near Khan Younis.

Fighting is next expected to move to Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, bordering Egypt. Seven people were killed in an airstrike on Rafah late Sunday, a U.N. humanitarian agency said. The dead included local journalist Shaima Al-Jazzar, according to local outlet Quds Channel and London-based broadcaster Alghad TV.

“Even in Rafah, where people are being forced to flee, the sound of airstrikes punctuates the day,” said Thomas White, the director of affairs in Gaza for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. “People are pleading for advice on where to find safety. We have nothing to tell them.”

In a sign of the intensity of new fighting, the level of destruction in Gaza since the war restarted this weekend is higher than during the first month and a half of war, a senior U.N. official told The Wall Street Journal. 

Infrastructure, property and other investments valued at roughly $50 billion have been destroyed in fighting since October, equivalent to roughly two decades of development support to Gaza, said Abdallah Al Dardari, the Arab States director at the U.N. Development Program. 

Abeer Ayyoub and Vivian Salama contributed to this article.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com and Dov Lieber at dov.lieber@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

The last name of Abdallah Al Dardari was incorrectly given as Abdallah Al Dardar in a previous version of this article. (Corrected on Dec. 4)

19. France, Australia Plan Military Base Access Pact in the Pacific

France, Australia Plan Military Base Access Pact in the Pacific

• Agreement will enhance Australia’s reach across the region
• Deal is a sign of improvement in relations post Aukus feud
• https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-04/france-australia-plan-military-base-access-pact-in-the-pacific?sref=hhjZtX76

By Ben Westcott

December 4, 2023 at 3:23 AM EST

France plans to allow Australia’s naval forces to operate out of its military facilities in the Pacific, the latest sign of a return to warmer relations after a feud over Aukus two years ago.

The two countries revealed a roadmap to boost economic, research and defense cooperation during a visit to Australia by France’s foreign minister Catherine Colonna on Monday. The development will also boost Canberra’s reach in the Pacific.

Under the deal, the two countries have agreed to enhance “reciprocal access” for their respective military, with the roadmap document saying access to France’s installations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans will “facilitate a more sustained Australian presence in priority areas of operation.”

Speaking in Canberra on Monday alongside Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Colonna said the agreement was a “huge achievement” and a step toward the kind of relationship the two countries had prior to the announcement of a wide-ranging security deal among Australia, the US and the UK in September 2021.

When then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the Aukus pact to build a fleet of nuclear submarines for Canberra, he scrapped a billion-dollar contract with France to construct conventionally-powered submarines for Australia. President Emmanuel Macron said his government had not been consulted on the arrangement.

Read more on AukusAustralian PM Visits France to Repair Ties After Sub Fight

Australia Seeks Rapid Passage of AUKUS Laws to Spur US Congress

What to Know About Australia’s Aukus Nuclear Sub Deal: QuickTake

Meanwhile, the Pacific has seen increased geopolitical competition in recent decades, as the Chinese government has expanded its influence at the expense of traditional partners such as Australia.

France has a long involvement in the Pacific with three territories in the region, including New Caledonia and French Polynesia.

20. Accounts of Sexual Violence by Hamas Are Aired Amid Criticism of U.N.

Accounts of Sexual Violence by Hamas Are Aired Amid Criticism of U.N.

By Katherine Rosman and Lisa Lerer

Dec. 4, 2023

Updated 10:39 p.m. ET

The New York Times · by Lisa Lerer · December 4, 2023

A meeting at the U.N., organized in part by Sheryl Sandberg, charged the body with ignoring the rape and mutilation of women in the Oct. 7 assault on Israel, and heard gruesome details from witnesses.

Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive who, along with the Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, was among the event’s primary organizers.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Dec. 4, 2023Updated 10:39 p.m. ET

The body of one woman had “nails and different objects in her female organs.” In another house, a person’s genitals were so mutilated that “we couldn’t identify if it was a man or a woman.”

Simcha Greinman, a volunteer who helped collect the remains of victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel, took long pauses as he spoke those words on Monday at an event at the United Nations.

“Horrific things I saw with my own eyes,” he said, “and I felt with my own hands.”

Shari Mendes, a member of an Israeli military reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial, said her team saw several who were killed on Oct. 7 “who were shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others had mutilated faces, or multiple gunshots to their heads.

Since the Oct. 7 attack, during which more than 1,200 people were killed and some 240 people were kidnapped, Israeli officials have accused the terrorists of also committing widespread sexual violence — rape and sexual mutilation — particularly against women.

Yet those atrocities have received little scrutiny from human rights groups, or the news media, amid the larger war between Israel and Hamas — and until a few days ago, they had not been specifically mentioned or condemned by UN Women, the United Nations’ women’s rights agency, which has regularly spoken out about the plight of Palestinian women and girls.

Israelis and many Jews around the world say they feel abandoned by an international social justice community — women’s groups, human rights groups, liberal celebrities, among others — whose causes they have supported in crises around the world.

On Monday, some 800 people, including women’s activists and diplomats representing about 40 countries, crowded into a chamber at U.N. headquarters in New York for a presentation laying out the evidence of large-scale sexual violence, with testimony from witnesses like Ms. Mendes and Mr. Greinman.

“Silence is complicity,” Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta executive, told those assembled. She, along with Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, was among the event’s primary organizers. “On Oct. 7, Hamas brutally murdered 1,200 souls and in some cases, they first raped their victims,” Ms. Sandberg added. “We know this from eyewitnesses, we know this from combat paramedics, we would know this from some victims if more had been allowed to live.”

Hamas has denied that its fighters committed sex crimes, which it said would violate Islamic principles.

But ample evidence has been collected, like the bodies of women found partially or fully naked, women with their pelvic bones broken, the accounts of medical examiners and first responders, videos taken by Hamas fighters themselves, and even a few firsthand witnesses like a woman, in a video made public last month by police officials, who said she had watched Hamas terrorists take turns raping a young woman they had captured at a music festival, mutilate her and then shoot her in the head.

Meni Binyamin, the head of the International Crime Investigations Unit of the Israeli police, said in an interview that it had documented “violent rape incidents, the most extreme sexual abuses we have seen,” on Oct. 7, against women and some men. “I am talking about dozens.”

Israeli officials have not estimated how many women were sexually assaulted or mutilated. They say that overwhelmed forensic scientists had to focus at first on identifying bodies, rather than collecting perishable evidence of rape. Few victims or eyewitnesses survived, and fewer have spoken publicly.

Simcha Greinman, a member of ZAKA, an Israeli emergency response team, is embraced after speaking at the United Nations in Manhattan on Monday.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

At the United Nations on Monday, Yael Richert, a superintendent with the Israeli police, presented video of witness interviews, including with a paramedic who said, “Shooting was targeted at sexual organs, we saw that a lot.”

Outside, hundreds of protesters accused the United Nations of a double standard when it comes to sexual violence; some chanted, “Me too, unless you are a Jew.”

The United Nations, and UN Women in particular, have become a primary focus — though hardly the only one — of mounting anger for their silence. Secretary General António Guterres immediately condemned the Hamas massacre, but not until late November did he issue a statement that the related sex crimes specifically must be “vigorously investigated and prosecuted.”

Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy, an Israeli law professor and founder of a commission on Oct. 7 crimes against women and children, said that on Nov. 1, she sent a letter to UN Women, signed by dozens of scholars, calling for an “urgent and unequivocal condemnation of the massacre committed by Hamas,” including the use of rape as a tool of war. “They didn’t even respond,” she said.

Mr. Erdan, the Israeli ambassador, said he sent two letters about the use of rape by Hamas militants, appended with photographs of victims’ bodies, to Sima Sami Bahous, the executive director of UN Women. “I got no response whatsoever,” said Mr. Erdan, “not even, ‘We received your letter.’”

On Nov. 25, UN Women first addressed the issue on social media, saying it was “alarmed by reports of gender-based violence on 7 October,” but the post did not mention Hamas.

In a statement on Monday, UN Women condemned “the abhorrent attacks by Hamas against Israel” and said it had been “closely following reports of brutal acts of gender-based violence against women in Israel since they first came to light.”

The agency added, “We believe a full investigation is essential, so that perpetrators at all sides can be held accountable and justice can be served.”

Last week, a bipartisan group of more than 80 members of Congress released a letter calling the agency’s response “woefully unsatisfactory and consistent with the UN’s longstanding bias against Israel.”

Since the start of the war, UN Women has focused its advocacy on bringing attention and humanitarian relief to girls and women in Gaza, and to push for a cease-fire as Israeli airstrikes resulted in thousands of Palestinian casualties.

Several supporters of Israel in Congress expressed outrage at the silence from international and domestic organizations.

“I’ve been internally raging for about two months,” said Representative Lois Frankel of California, who heads the Democratic Women’s Caucus. “There is antisemitism involved and there are some folks who are more interested in portraying the loss of life in Gaza than highlighting the complete inhumanity and viciousness and brutality of Hamas.”

Ms. Frankel plans to introduce a House resolution later this week condemning the use of sexual violence in war and has been pushing for congressional hearings on the topic.

Senator Jacky Rosen, a Democrat from Nevada, called out UN Women for its “failure to immediately and unequivocally stand up for Israeli women.” She said that international organizations “including several on the far left, have chosen to dismiss, downplay or outright deny Hamas’s widespread use of sexual violence and rape against Israeli women on Oct. 7.”

At the United Nations Monday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, gave an emotional address, speaking of “raw footage” she had been shown that “takes your breath away with the sheer level of evil it depicts.”

“When I saw the list of women’s rights organizations that said nothing, I nearly choked,” Ms. Gillibrand said. “Where is the solidarity for women in this country and in this world to stand up for our mothers, our sisters and our daughters?”

After the event, in the U.N.’s Flag Hall, Ms. Sandberg stood in front of Israel’s white and blue banner, and as she talked about the devastating realization that most of the victims had been killed, her voice began to crack.

“I don’t know how to talk about this and not,” — she paused, taking a deep breath before apologizing. She never finished her sentence.

Reporting was contributed by Jeffrey Gettleman, Adam Sella and Anat Schwartz.

Katie Rosman is a reporter for the Metro desk, contributing narratives and profiles about people, events and dynamics in New York City and its outer reaches. More about Katherine Rosman

Lisa Lerer is a national political correspondent, covering campaigns, elections and political power. More about Lisa Lerer

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Amid Criticism of U.N., Reports of Sexual Violence By Hamas Are Presented

The New York Times · by Lisa Lerer · December 4, 2023

21. How to Take Apart the Axis of Revisionists by Michael R. Pompeo and Peter Rough

Status quo in Korea. (just exposing my bias).

Excerpts:

From security assistance to diplomatic support and economic sanctions, the Biden team should intensify its support for Kyiv and Jerusalem and turn the screws on Tehran and Moscow

The Biden administration’s attempts to appease Russia and Iran ended with war in both Europe and the Middle East. In this light, its recent courtship of the PRC should be cause for concern. A major war with the PRC in the Western Pacific would be the costliest conflict of all. A strong American posture in Asia that backs Taiwan fully and supports major allies like South Korea and Japan is the best way to preserve the peace.

That the world is now a much more chaotic place than it was at President Biden’s inauguration is a fact that is impossible to ignore. It’s time to get back to foreign policy basics before the chaos spreads even more.

How to Take Apart the Axis of Revisionists

Published 12/04/23 07:00 AM ET

Michael R. Pompeo and Peter Rough

themessenger.com · December 4, 2023

“You must look at facts, because they look at you,” Winston Churchill once observed. One unpleasant fact that the war in Ukraine has thrown into sharp relief is that a global axis of anti-American powers is forming to undermine the U.S.-led international order. America’s adversaries are aligning their moves on the global chessboard and undertaking a process of strategic convergence.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, he sensed in the White House a weak and ineffectual opponent. Like fine wine gone to vinegar, U.S. President Joe Biden’s outreach to Putin culminated in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — with Putin calculating that the Biden White House would simply swallow a bitter fait accompli as the Obama administration did with Putin’s seizure of Crimea. But Putin did not reckon with the tenacity of the Ukrainians. Against heavy odds, Ukraine repelled Russia’s initial attacks and remains in the fight to this day. Putin took aim at Biden’s glass jaw and struck Ukrainian steel instead.

Those losses have forced Putin to upgrade relations with three key allies: Iran, North Korea, and China. Last year, Iran began to supply Moscow with large numbers of Shahed kamikaze drones at a moment when Russia needed an affordable long-range strike weapon, culminating in last month’s biggest drone attack on Kyiv since the start of the war. Now, Russia and Iran are collaborating on a new drone production facility east of Moscow which will be able to produce thousands of drones each year. Worse, Iran is reportedly considering supplying Russia with ballistic missiles — a transfer made easier by the expiration of the missile embargo under the terms of the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA).

As the West scrambles to find adequate air defenses, Russia is pummeling Ukraine with weapons made in Iran and normalized under the JCPOA. The upshot is the start of a long and grueling winter for Ukraine.

In September, Putin welcomed North Korea’s Kim Jong Un for talks at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East. Pyongyang responded to the invitation by supplying Moscow with more than one million artillery shells, reportedly according to South Korean intelligence. Meanwhile, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius recently conceded that the European Union will not meet its target of supplying Ukraine with one million shells and missiles by March 2024. In an artillery-heavy war, Russia is rebuilding its stockpiles while Ukraine is suffering from shell hunger.

And Russia’s alliances are not a one-way street. As John Kirby, the White House spokesman, said last year, Russia is offering Iran “an unprecedented level of military and technical support that is transforming their relationship into a full-fledged defense partnership.” Iranian sources are now boasting that Tehran may soon receive Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets and Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters from Russia. Moreover, after U.S. officials warned last month that the Russian Wagner Group may provide the SA-22 air-defense system to Lebanese Hezbollah, U.S. and Israeli officials face the grim possibility of Russia transferring its advanced S-400 air-defense system to Iran as well.

The story for North Korea is much the same. At their September meeting, Putin pledged to help Kim overhaul his space program. Just two months later, North Korea overcame past failures to successfully send a reconnaissance satellite into orbit. Kim also took the time while in Russia to tour a Russian aircraft factory and review the Russian fleet at Vladivostok. It may be that significant military transfers from Russia to North Korea are in the offing, with dire consequences for the security of northeast Asia.

Of course, Russia’s most important partnership is with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC has helped Russia beat U.S. controls on semiconductors, access military and dual-use technologies, and circumvent the U.S. dollar in bilateral trade. Most of all, the PRC has helped replace the decline in Russian energy exports to Europe, leading to a record $190 billion in Sino-Russian trade in 2022. PRC leader Xi Jinping knows well that the collapse of the European order would bring the dawn of a Sino-centric age that much closer. As he told Putin in Moscow last March, “Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we are the ones driving these changes together.”

Whatever merit President Biden saw in appeasing Russia and Iran early in his presidency to focus on China has proven to be a dangerous illusion. The U.S. must now strengthen its own network of partners in response. Thankfully, we have partners in these key regions who are willing to shoulder the burden of front-line defense.

In 20 months of combat, Ukraine has inflicted on Russia an estimated 300,000 casualties, and has destroyed thousands of heavy armor and hundreds of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. Its attacks on the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and strikes on submarines and surface combatants, including the sinking of the Moskva, have forced the Kremlin to relocate major naval assets from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk.

In the Middle East, Israel is at war destroying Iran’s major proxies in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In Lebanon and Syria, Israel has also targeted the operations of Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful and important proxy.

Rather than restrain Ukraine or Israel, the U.S. should empower them to win their respective conflicts now to avoid an even broader and costlier fight later.

From security assistance to diplomatic support and economic sanctions, the Biden team should intensify its support for Kyiv and Jerusalem and turn the screws on Tehran and Moscow

The Biden administration’s attempts to appease Russia and Iran ended with war in both Europe and the Middle East. In this light, its recent courtship of the PRC should be cause for concern. A major war with the PRC in the Western Pacific would be the costliest conflict of all. A strong American posture in Asia that backs Taiwan fully and supports major allies like South Korea and Japan is the best way to preserve the peace.

That the world is now a much more chaotic place than it was at President Biden’s inauguration is a fact that is impossible to ignore. It’s time to get back to foreign policy basics before the chaos spreads even more.

Michael R. Pompeo, the 70th Secretary of State, is a distinguished fellow at Hudson Institute. Peter Rough is senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at Hudson Institute.

themessenger.com · December 4, 2023

22. Under the Radar: Weaponizing Maritime Transponders in Strategic Competition

Under the Radar: Weaponizing Maritime Transponders in Strategic Competition - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Umar Ahmed Badami · December 5, 2023

Throughout the summer and fall of 2023, People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and China Coast Guard (CCG) vessels have repeatedly blockaded Filipino shoals and naval outposts in the South China Sea, restricting freedom of movement and preventing resupply efforts. The CCG continues to employ water cannons, lasers, and floating underwater barriers against Filipino boats in order to usurp control over the Republic of the Philippines’ maritime territory. While PLAN vessels assume a standby role and the CCG acts as the aggressor, a third, lesser-known Chinese fleet is heavily involved in these naval operations: the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia, or PAFMM.

The PAFMM is a state-created maritime militia composed of “commercial” fishing vessels and their crews. It directly supports the PLAN by using swarming tactics to assert physical control over disputed maritime territory and physically block other naval vessels from reclaiming their waters. PAFMM fleets have also been implicated in causing massive environmental damage and economic losses via the destruction of Filipino coral reefs.

The presence of tens, if not hundreds, of vessels in a relatively small maritime domain seems hard to go unnoticed. However, PAFMM vessels disappear from or falsify their identities on global shipping trackers, making it incredibly difficult to locate PAFMM activity and prosecute involved parties. This new trend is enabled by manipulating their vessel signatures on Automatic Identification Systems.

Exploiting a weakness in maritime tracking

An Automated Identification System, or AIS, is a maritime transponder used to transmit a vessel’s identity and location to a worldwide network. While intended to be used to track vessels and maintain crews’ situational awareness, criminal actors manipulate their ships’ AIS signatures to hide or fake their locations and disguise illicit activities. Strategic competitors–specifically Russia, China, and Iran–are also beginning to use AIS manipulation, but with increasing technological complexity. Simpler forms of AIS manipulation are used as an economic tool for their commercial shipping fleets, letting them conduct trade in direct violation of international sanctions to fund their militaries and wartime activities. However, the vulnerabilities inherent in AIS make it easy for technologically advanced state-level actors to hack and weaponize AIS to fabricate a potential casus belli in disputed maritime regions. Artificial intelligence and technological surveillance are used to identify low-tech spoofing actors, but cannot be used to stop state-sponsored AIS manipulation, making AIS vulnerabilities a grave naval security concern.

AIS broadcasting is required by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) for all ships above 500 gross tonnage, any ship over 300 gross tonnage on an international voyage, or any passenger vessel (e.g., cruise ships and ferries). Individual countries and supranational entities can also mandate AIS for smaller ships within their waters. However, AIS data is transmitted over unprotected very high frequency (VHF) radio bands, making the system susceptible to exploitation by malefactors who want to circumvent maritime law and do not want to be tracked on the high seas. AIS vulnerabilities lead to four principal threats: going dark, spoofing, hijacking, and availability disruption.

Crews can turn off their ships’ AIS transponders, allowing them to “go dark” and roam the seas mostly undetected. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing fleets often disable their AIS transponders and “go dark” next to contested maritime boundaries or exclusive economic zones (EEZs), which they would not otherwise be able to legally enter. For instance, in 2019, the South Korea-flagged vessel Oyang 77 penetrated the Argentinean EEZ, turned its transponder off to avoid detection, and illegally caught over 310,000 pounds of seafood.

AIS spoofing or manipulation describes broadcasting an AIS message with fake position or identity data to disguise a ship’s identity or location. A prime example is the vessel Kingsway, which evaded international authorities for over four years while skirting U.N. Security Council-imposed sanctions and profiting from oil trade with North Korea. It repeatedly changed its vessel identification number, name, flag, and paint scheme, while spoofing its location via AIS to avoid being tracked as it continued to engage in sanctions evasion. Spoofing multiple false characteristics via AIS in this manner is an increasingly common strategy.

AIS hijacking occurs when a malefactor adjusts AIS data packets from another party’s vessel to display false information. This technique is similar to AIS spoofing, but spoofing is used to fake one’s own vessels’ information, while hijacking is used to fake someone else’s. For example, researcher Mario Balduzzi was able to hijack the AIS transponder of the U.S.-flagged Eleanor Gordon and faked its position to appear in the middle of Dallas, Texas.

Lastly, AIS availability can be disrupted by overwhelming rate-limited AIS receivers with random data. This approach would render AIS receivers onboard ships and at ground stations unusable, as they would be unable to distinguish real AIS reports amid the influx of fake signals. AIS availability disruption is technologically challenging to accomplish as it requires sophisticated programming skills; to the author’s knowledge, it has not been used maliciously at the time of this writing. However, Balduzzi et al. have performed multiple simulated availability disruption attacks to demonstrate their effectiveness.

While all four types of AIS deception can be used on the high seas, some are used more frequently than others. AIS disruption is the most technologically difficult to accomplish, as it requires advanced programming knowledge to spoof signals and an understanding of AIS receiver limitations. On the other hand, despite being the technologically simplest option, turning off one’s AIS transponder creates a gap in the vessel’s AIS transmission history, which can be easily found through AIS tracking services like MarineTraffic. Such an anomaly can put a dark ship and its crew under scrutiny. Thus, malign actors are gradually shifting away from going dark and towards AIS manipulation and hijacking.

AIS Manipulation Strategies

AIS spoofing is an effective method to disguise gray zone or illegal maritime activities, as it can be used to realistically fake one’s location and activities. According to Dr. Joshua Tallis at the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) in an interview for this piece, “If you can make it look like you’re somewhere else doing a credible or licit type of transaction or activity, it reduces scrutiny on you” from law enforcement, insurance companies, marine traffic sites, and other watchdogs. Three main subcategories of AIS manipulation strategies are being leveraged more widely: location tampering, the use of zombie vessels, and AIS handshakes.

Location tampering occurs when an actor generates fake GPS location data and applies it to its AIS signature to disguise its location. Vessels often spoof multiple GPS points to create a fake track, rather than just disguising a singular position. This can be accomplished via GPS tampering, done either onboard a vessel or from shore. Location tampering is the simplest and most common form of AIS spoofing, as it can be accomplished by any actor with access to AIS transponders or data streams, and it disguises one’s activities better than going dark. In 2023 over 50 oil tankers appeared on AIS trackers transiting to the Atlantic via the Cape of Good Hope and the West African coastline. However, Spire Maritime discovered that these vessels were actually entering the Venezuelan EEZ and likely taking on Venezuelan oil in breach of international oil sanctions, which they were able to do undetected by spoofing their AIS locations. These vessels would then return to Chinese or Malaysian ports while reporting their true positions and offload their illicit cargo as if it was a routine voyage. However, to an external observer solely viewing their AIS transmissions, it would look like the sanctions evasion never happened.

According to Windward, zombie vessels use “a scrapped vessel’s identity to perform illicit operations without legal repercussions.” When a vessel is scrapped, its identity is not always scrapped with it. A non-seaworthy ship’s identity can be “resurrected” by placing its Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) and other AIS identity characteristics on a floating vessel. For example, a Marshall Islands-flagged vessel was scrapped on April 21st, 2022; two months later, it appeared to be floating again, when its identity was assumed by a ship known for sanctions evasion.

AIS handshakes occur when two vessels with similar physical characteristics get physically close and temporarily exchange AIS identities. The vessel carrying cargo now has the AIS signature of the decoy vessel, letting it travel undercover while appearing to be the other vessel. Meanwhile, the decoy vessel maintains its position while pretending to be the original cargo-carrying vessel, allowing both ships to maintain mostly continuous AIS tracks. Once the two rendezvous again, they re-swap identities and carry on, making it appear like the original vessel never visited its secret destination. As AIS handshakes involve a swap and re-swap of identities at pre-arranged locations, handshakes must occur with the consent and knowledge of both vessels involved (hence the term “handshake”). For example, in the Gulf of Oman on April 26th, 2020, the Saint Kitts and Nevis-flagged Giessel temporarily swapped its identity with a slightly smaller vessel. The original Giessel likely then went to an Iranian port and loaded crude oil, while the “fake” Giessel maintained the pre-swap position of the original vessel. The original Giessel returned to the meeting point and identities were re-swapped, allowing the original Giessel to resume its travels like nothing had transpired – except that it now had a full draft.

Identifying AIS manipulators

With over 400,000 AIS broadcasting devices operating worldwide and thousands of ships on the seas at any given time, it is almost impossible to manually filter through AIS data to identify every AIS spoofing ship and operator. However, new technologies can help law enforcement agencies and insurance companies identify and track AIS manipulators. Websites like MarineTraffic track the AIS signatures of almost all broadcasting vessels worldwide and maintain vessel histories and tracks. Companies like Windward and HawkEye 360 use artificial intelligence and data processing algorithms to look for ships displaying unusual AIS tracks, such as stopping in the middle of the ocean for extended periods, zigzagging, or disappearing and reappearing somewhere completely different. They can then flag such vessels for further investigation. Radar monitoring and time difference of arrival (TDOA) analyses can also help identify spoofed ships or ones that display fake AIS data.

If a vessel is suspected of spoofing, its AIS tracks can be compared with satellite imagery or radio frequency detection in the region it reports its position from to confirm its presence or lack thereof. If the ship’s crew can be identified, tracking their social media posts can also reveal clues as to their true location. However, as noted above, it is technologically difficult to surveille the thousands of ships sailing the oceans daily, and these are primarily used as investigative tools if a specific ship exhibits suspicious behavior.

For instance, on Jan. 18th, 2023, over three tons of cocaine was seized off Western Sahara’s coast from Togo-flagged cargo vessel Blume. According to Windward, the Blume had changed its MMSI identifier multiple times and regularly altered flags, but also went dark immediately after a drastic change in course – all unusual activities for regular cargo vessels. Blume is an example of how AIS data manipulation can easily disguise vessels by changing their reported characteristics and flags, a vulnerability susceptible to exploitation by malefactors. However, it also showcases how easy it is to identify ships going dark, which immediately places them under suspicion. This explains the new trend of bad actors moving away from going dark towards more complex AIS spoofing.

AIS and strategic competition

While AIS manipulation has direct applications for criminal actors, strategic competitors – specifically Russia, China, and Iran – are beginning to rely on AIS spoofing as well. These countries’ usage of AIS spoofing can be placed in two broad categories: “low-tech” spoofing methods, such as going dark or faking one’s location, and “high-tech” methods, such as hijacking and network disruption. Much like criminal actors, Russia, China and Iran also rely on low-tech AIS manipulation, but specifically use these methods to subvert international sanctions. However, unlike criminal actors, Russia, China and Iran have the technological capability to use high-tech AIS spoofing strategies in direct support of offensive military activities, prompting dire maritime security concerns.

Low-tech spoofing to evade sanctions

According to Windward, over half of location tampering incidents between 2021 and 2023 occurred near Iran and were assessed to be associated with petrochemical transfers. Iranian-flagged oil tankers have also engaged in oil trade with Syria, exporting over $1 billion worth of oil in a six-month period. Similarly, throughout the war in Ukraine, increasing numbers of large vessels have been going dark or spoofing their locations in the Russian-controlled Kerch Strait, enabling the continuation of Russian maritime trade despite heavy sanctions on Russian shipping. Many ships conducting AIS manipulation in these regions or under the aforementioned countries’ flags do so to evade global sanctions, simultaneously bringing back profit to their governments through state-owned enterprises.

An example of state-sanctioned commercial shipping using AIS spoofing is the fleet of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), which charters vessels to trade with Venezuela’s sanctioned oil industry. The NIOC-linked tanker Calliop turned into a zombie vessel by adopting the identity of the scrapped vessel Ndros, while another ship switched AIS identities from Horse to Master Honey to enter the Venezuelan port of Jose and offload oil.

Like Russia and Iran, the Chinese government permits and engages in commercial AIS spoofing to trade with sanctioned entities. Sanctioned vessels like the Kingsway regularly travel between North Korean and Chinese ports and offload cargo like coal and oil. In an interview with naval expert Brent Sadler at The Heritage Foundation, he pointed out that the regularity of sanctioned vessels conducting business in Chinese ports results from China’s “nefarious intent” and intentional subversion of international law.

Thus, much like commercial AIS spoofing, state-sanctioned AIS manipulation is an economic tool for the commercial shipping fleets of Russia, Iran, and China, used to disguise violations of sanctions on the high seas. State actor-endorsed AIS spoofing can be directly linked to illegal military development. The United States Attorney’s Office indicted five Russian nationals and two oil traders as key parts of a global criminal conspiracy. Oil smuggling between Russia, China, and Venezuela – most likely relying on some form of AIS manipulation – was used to fund a German front company, which purchased sensitive U.S. military technologies and brought them back to Russia. Similarly, the U.S. Department of the Treasury has identified a network linking Iranian oil smuggling to the Russian government along with funding for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah. For Russia, China, and Iran, illegal shipping activities such as these directly fund war efforts and accelerate illegal military technology transfers.

High-tech spoofing as a political naval tool

In addition to using simpler forms of AIS manipulation to help illegally fund their war chests, Russia, China, and Iran also employ AIS spoofing as an offensive instrument of statecraft. With their continual development of advanced cyberwarfare capabilities, Russia, China, and Iran have the ability to employ AIS manipulation tactics in complex and harder-to-detect ways. Sanctions evasion relies on isolated ships going dark or faking their locations, which is relatively easy to accomplish. However, with advanced cyber capabilities, these states can hide or spoof the locations of entire flotillas in concert with each other to disguise massive naval activities, wreak havoc by disrupting AIS availability within a locale, or hijack and spoof the locations of ships for propaganda.

When conducted by state actors, AIS spoofing is a political activity designed to directly push and subvert recognized maritime boundaries while simultaneously projecting naval power. As CNA’s Dr. Joshua Tallis told the author, “AIS spoofing [and] disabling is an inherently political activity, because it assumes the implied sovereignty of existing maritime demarcations.” For instance, when a vessel fakes its location outside of an EEZ but secretly trespasses into it to fish, spoofing its AIS signature implies that the vessel’s crew acknowledges that they cannot legally enter the EEZ without permission, which means that they recognize the maritime boundaries of the country whose EEZ they illegally entered. It also shows that the crews (and, if conducting state-sanctioned activities, their governments) are intentionally disregarding and subverting the international rule of law governing EEZs.

Chinese fishing fleets frequently engage in this practice around EEZs in the Pacific, particularly in the Taiwan Strait and off the western coast of South America. Brent Sadler noted in an interview that these fleets often have a singular AIS account for all their ships and use it on hacked AIS transponders, allowing them to avoid the costs of setting up individual AIS systems and skirt around EEZ regulations. Many of these boats are also linked to the PAFMM. Chinese fishing fleets and the PAFMM are instrumental in securing China’s territorial claims around the Nine-Dash Line.

In addition to employing AIS spoofing en masse to hide one’s own naval activity, AIS spoofing and hijacking can also be applied to large numbers of non-owned vessels to disrupt shipping operations. For instance, in 2019, the Port of Shanghai employed AIS “crop circles,” a practical application of AIS availability disruption. By hacking AIS transponders to generate fake data (in the shape of a circle) and overload AIS receivers, Chinese state-sponsored hackers were able to distort commercial vessels’ AIS locations, generate false collision reports, and even disable ships’ AIS transponders remotely. Similarly, in May 2023, pro-Russian hackers hacked the AIS signatures of a number of merchant vessels to draw AIS tracks resembling the “Z” symbol associated with the Russian war effort. Though ultimately harmless, the exercise demonstrates the utility of AIS hacking for propaganda generation, and shows that with advanced technology, multiple ships can be AIS-hacked at once to produce a singular effect.

AIS spoofing as casus belli

While state-sponsored AIS spoofing can be used to create propaganda, it can also be used to target specific ships, whether commercial or military. A technologically savvy malefactor could hijack any vessel’s AIS and spoof its location into waters it should not be in, fabricating a casus belli.

To Russia, China, and Iran, spoofing the locations of ships – whether spoofing their own to safety, or spoofing others into a danger zone – is a political action used to enforce their ideas of maritime boundaries. As Dr. Tallis from CNA explains, “it’s about… either clarifying or muddying (depending on the objective) who has the right to be where.” Spoofing someone else’s ships into one’s territorial waters (either internationally recognized or claimed) helps to push a state narrative of state-claimed-rights, and can act as a perfect pretext for diplomatic incidents, fueling state propaganda, or even as a justification for direct assault or a declaration of war.

Iran has used this strategy to justify civilian cargo ship seizures, such as that of the Stena Impero in July 2019, leading the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration to warn vessels in the Arabian Gulf of the risks of “GPS interference, AIS spoofing,” and communications faking and jamming. Due to the lack of safeguards on AIS systems, the same strategy can be applied to military naval vessels as well, as demonstrated by Russia in 2021.

On June 23rd, 2021, HMS Defender sailed through Crimean waters. According to its AIS track, the Royal Navy vessel went 1.8 nautical miles inside disputed waters and continued on course. According to a BBC journalist onboard, over 20 Russian naval vessels and air assets shadowed and buzzed the Defender, fired warning shots, and supposedly dropped bombs near the ship, warning that it was in Russian territorial waters. If the Defender had switched off its AIS, or had its AIS spoofed from the disputed region a few miles further into internationally recognized Russian waters, the Russian military would have a pretext to declare a violation of its maritime territory and take offensive military action against the Defender and its crew. Thankfully, this did not happen. However, as shown by Iranian spoofing of commercial vessels and subsequent seizures, along with the likely Russian-sponsored spoofing of two NATO warships off the coast of Sevastopol and even the spoofing of a carrier strike group, spoofing an enemy navy vessel’s location and using it as a cause for offensive activity is a distinct possibility in maritime gray zone areas.

Combatting AIS weaknesses

Non-state actors use AIS spoofing to enable smuggling of illegal goods, trade with sanctioned entities, and other illegal activities. However, state actors – particularly Russia, China, and Iran – are starting to adopt the same techniques and use them for sanctions evasion along with offensive naval posturing. Commercial AIS spoofing directly supports Russia’s war effort, the IRGC, and the North Korean military. Additionally, the PLAN and its merchant marines regularly tamper with their AIS signatures to disguise illegal fishing activities, violate other countries’ EEZs, and exercise greater naval control over the Taiwan Strait. Similarly, Russia has used AIS manipulation of NATO ships, especially in the lead-up to and during its war with Ukraine, to provoke diplomatic conflict and generate propaganda, and Iran uses AIS manipulation to drive ships into its waters and seize them.

Identifying criminal actors and low-tech state-sponsored entities who use AIS spoofing can be done relatively easily, thanks to a combination of massive real-time global AIS datasets and artificial intelligence algorithms that can detect discrepancies within them. However, it is not sufficient to merely identify instances of high-tech state-sponsored AIS hacking, hijacking, and disruption. These activities drastically increase the danger of seizures and attacks on commercial shipping and other naval vessels operating near Russian, Iranian, and Chinese-claimed territorial waters. To eliminate a possible maritime casus belli against U.S. and partner naval forces worldwide, concrete action must be taken to make it difficult or impossible for state actors to hijack AIS.

The most direct way to combat AIS vulnerabilities to hacking is to secure AIS signals. AIS signals are currently transmitted over unencrypted channels, which, as discussed above, can be spoofed with ease using commercially-available tools. However, these channels can be secured through an authentication or encryption mechanism, which would be compatible with current AIS receivers without needing hardware adjustments. By encrypting AIS channels, it becomes more difficult for a malefactor to spoof a vessel’s location, and even more so to hack the AIS transponder of a ship.

The emergence of AIS spoofing and manipulation represents a significant and evolving trend with implications for maritime irregular warfare. By enabling state and non-state actors to conceal or falsify the locations and identities of vessels, these tactics introduce a complex layer of deception and strategic ambiguity in the maritime domain. This not only complicates the enforcement of international maritime law, but also heightens the risks of escalation and provocation of maritime conflicts.

The modern threat landscape is characterized by asymmetric warfare, emerging technology, and gray zones. AIS manipulation is a prime example of how these characteristics come together to make the line between deception and reality as elusive and shifting as the sea itself.

Umar Ahmed Badami is a sophomore at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and an intern for the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or Georgetown University.

​23. US Weighing Red Sea 'Task Force' to Protect Commercial Ships Following Attacks by Iran-backed Rebels

US Weighing Red Sea 'Task Force' to Protect Commercial Ships Following Attacks by Iran-backed Rebels

The plans were revealed a day after three commercial ships were hit by ballistic missiles fired by the Houthi rebel group

Published 12/04/23 05:13 PM ET|Updated 10 hr ago

Nikhil Kumar and Nicole Gaudiano

themessenger.com · December 4, 2023

The U.S. is involved in multinational talks to create a maritime force to escort commercial ships in the Red Sea, the White House said Monday, a day after three vessels were struck by missiles fired by Iranian-back Houthis based in Yemen.

“We are in talks with other countries about a maritime task force of sorts involving the ships from partner nations alongside the United States in ensuring safe passage,” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters, noting that similar operations exist to protect shipping vessels in other parts of the world, including the coastal waters off Somalia.

Sullivan said that the U.S. was consulting its regional partners about setting up such a force, adding that the conversations were “ongoing” and no formal maritime group had been created.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on December 4, 2023. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Sullivan spoke after ballistic missiles fired by the Houthi rebel group struck three commercial vessels in the Red Sea Sunday, in what the group said was an attack on Israel-flagged ships. Israel said it had no connection to the vessels. Soon after the Houthi attacks, a U.S. warship in the area shot down three drones that it said belonged to the Houthis.

Tensions in the Red Sea have been escalating since the start of the war in Israel and Gaza in October. This weekend’s attacks marked the sharpest escalation of Houthi strikes and U.S. counterstrikes, in a low-grade conflict that the U.S. says is the fault of the Houthi rebel group’s chief sponsor, Iran.

The group may be the “ones with their finger on the trigger,” Sullivan said Monday, but Iran was “the ultimate party responsible.”

Sullivan said it was against that backdrop of Iranian-backed maritime agression that the U.S. was speaking to its partners about setting up a task force.

themessenger.com · December 4, 2023

24. Gaza and the Future of Information Warfare By P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking

Excerpts:

The information strategies that Israel, Hamas, and the broader pro-Palestinian community are wielding today will almost certainly influence the wars of tomorrow. A key lesson is that, in these fights, virality can trump veracity. Online debates, including those with limited relation to the truth, will continue to shape the course of offline events by altering public perceptions and guiding official decisions. These information battles will not replace the traditional practices of war, but they are becoming central to how modern conflicts are fought and won.

Preparations for the next information conflict are already underway. As one of us (Singer) wrote recently in Defense One, researchers at China’s National Defense University have been studying how the People’s Liberation Army can prevail in so-called cognitive warfare on the way to winning a larger war. Effective tactics, the researchers argue, include engaging in a “discourse competition” that manipulates the emotions of a global audience; a push-pull process of “information disturbance” and “public opinion blackout” that involves seeding desired narratives and ensuring they go viral at critical moments; and “blocking information,” which refers to disrupting an adversary’s digital and physical communications and replacing them with China’s preferred messages. These proposed strategies mirror the ones at play in the current Israel-Hamas conflict. The Chinese military will almost certainly use them in any potential war in the Pacific.

Not too long ago, it was possible to plan military operations without giving much thought to a real-time social media and communication strategy, just as it was possible to scroll through Facebook without having to dodge first-person combat footage and depictions of wartime atrocities. Any doubt that online information would be a central concern in modern conflict disappeared on October 7. Wars of the future will be information conflicts that span the globe, sustained and aggravated by likes, shares, and lies.

Gaza and the Future of Information Warfare

The Digital Front of the Israel-Hamas Conflict Is a Preview of Fights to Come

By P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking

​ December 5, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking · December 5, 2023

The Israel-Hamas war began in the early hours of Saturday, October 7, when Hamas militants and their affiliates stole over the Gazan-Israeli border by tunnel, truck, and hang glider, killed 1,200 people, and abducted over 200 more. Within minutes, graphic imagery and bombastic propaganda began to flood social media platforms. Each shocking video or post from the ground drew new pairs of eyes, sparked horrified reactions around the world, and created demand for more. A second front in the war had been opened online, transforming physical battles covering a few square miles into a globe-spanning information conflict.

In the days that followed, Israel launched its own bloody retaliation against Hamas; its bombardment of cities in the Gaza Strip killed more than 10,000 Palestinians in the first month. With a ground invasion in late October, Israeli forces began to take control of Gazan territory. The virtual battle lines, meanwhile, only became more firmly entrenched. Digital partisans clashed across Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram, and other social media platforms, each side battling to be the only one heard and believed, unshakably committed to the righteousness of its own cause.

The physical and digital battlefields are now merged. In modern war, smartphones and cameras transmit accounts of nearly every military action across the global information space. The debates they spur, in turn, affect the real world. They shape public opinion, provide vast amounts of intelligence to actors around the world, and even influence diplomatic and military operational decisions at both the strategic and tactical levels. In our 2018 book, we dubbed this phenomenon “LikeWar,” defined as a political and military competition for command of attention. If cyberwar is the hacking of online networks, LikeWar is the hacking of the people on them, using their likes and shares to make a preferred narrative go viral.

Many of the world’s militaries have acknowledged the growing importance of the information space, although their strategies for navigating it bear different names. Iran’s leaders are investing in “soft war” capabilities. Chinese defense forces place “cognitive” warfare at the center of their planning. The U.S. military has begun to integrate what it awkwardly refers to as “operations in the information environment.”

In conflicts where weaponized information has already played a role, from Ukraine to Sudan, familiar patterns emerge. The first is a narrative competition to provoke outrage through a barrage of misinformation and deliberate disinformation. The second is a series of attempts to trivialize or co-opt an adversary’s framing of events. The third is a concerted effort by the materially stronger side, which is often at a disadvantage in the online space, to leverage its conventional sources of power (such as air superiority or influence within legal institutions) to take an adversary offline altogether.

Although the link between conflict and social media is not new, the digital fight has reached new heights in both scale and intensity during the Israel-Hamas war. Not even in Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was so much real-time data available about every move on the ground. Never has so much falsehood flooded the Internet so quickly, either. The result is a swirling information conflict that turns every act of violence, from a terrorist attack to an airstrike to a firefight on the street, into its own micro-battlefield where the online response from Internet users across the globe both fuels old grievances and drives new acts of violence.

ANGER GOES VIRAL

A torrent of false or misleading information has flooded social media platforms during the Israel-Hamas war. Images of atrocities and mass death, often decoupled from their original context, are shared so widely that their sources are impossible to trace. This virality is not purely a result of social media algorithm design. In a seminal 2013 study, detailed in the journal article “Anger Is More Influential Than Joy,” researchers from Beihang University tracked 70 million messages on the Chinese social media platform Weibo and found that posts eliciting anger reached a considerably greater audience than posts eliciting joy or sadness. Emotion alone was not enough to spur web users to action. But if a report of criminality or injustice left them feeling outraged, they would be compelled to share. In times of war, anyone with an Internet connection can harness this power to provoke.

Fury permeates the narrative battle today to a far greater degree than it did in conflicts between Israel and Hamas in 2012, 2014, or 2021. Part of the explanation comes down to the sheer scale of the violence: within days of October 7, combined Israeli and Palestinian deaths had surpassed that of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising that lasted from 2000 to 2005. Just as important is the deliberate cruelty of Hamas’s initial attack, whose horror was documented by both Israeli victims and, sickeningly, the Hamas infiltrators themselves. Perpetrators now routinely share proof of their crimes on social media; Hamas’s boastful posts of grisly murders mirrored broadcasting tactics used by the Islamic State, Mexican drug cartels, the Islamophobic Christchurch shooter in 2019, and American insurrectionists on January 6, 2021.

Take how both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian narratives heavily emphasize the deaths of children. Each side aims to wield a seemingly unimpeachable rhetorical weapon that justifies its actions on the ground. Amid the real tragedy of the loss of innocent lives, however, is font of false information. In the first month of the Israel-Hamas war, AI-generated images of child casualties circulated as if they were real evidence; an old, decontextualized photograph of a Thai child in a Halloween costume was used to accuse Palestinians of staging child casualties; and, most perversely, photos of real dead children were incorrectly presented as fakes, with comments alleging that the corpses looked too doll-like to be authentic.

Misinformation has emanated from all corners. In one case, the Israeli government falsely claimed on X, formerly known as Twitter, that a photo of a dead Palestinian child was fake, only to delete that post without comment or correction after international media pushed back against the claim. In another, Turkey and many Arab governments organized mass demonstrations over a supposed Israeli airstrike that, by the time the protests began, appeared to have been neither an airstrike nor the work of the Israeli military. As governments endorse false or misleading claims, and platforms such as X become sanctuaries for conspiracy theories, the truth becomes ever harder to find. In an interview with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh, who tracked dozens of false claims in the first weeks of the war, said “the volume of misinformation” on X “was beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

INFORMATION TACTICS

Amid this narrative tug of war, the combatants have used targeted influence campaigns, in many cases employing disinformation, to swing the contest in their favor. The goal is to weaken or invalidate the other side’s claims about the conflict. To this end, Hamas has worked to undermine the notion that the Israeli military is competent and capable of defending Israeli citizens. And it has gone beyond just celebrating its own wins and the other side’s losses. Right after the October 7 attacks, for example, Hamas sympathizers amplified false claims that the group had captured high-ranking Israeli generals. Hamas’s supporters simultaneously excused the group’s mass killings and denied its responsibility, asserting that Israel’s own military had killed the majority of Israeli citizens on October 7. As the war proceeded, Hamas produced propaganda videos of the apparent destruction of Israeli armor in close-quarters combat.

Israel’s information challenge is more difficult. Merely declaring that Hamas will lose a conventional military confrontation will help Israel little: Hamas’s military inferiority is already evident to everyone, including Hamas fighters themselves. Israel has also tried highlighting Hamas’s barbarity, including by screening its own supercut of the October 7 massacre for select audiences, including groups in the United States. Yet because Hamas itself documented and proudly shared much of this footage in the first place, both sides are effectively pushing the same message.

Hamas, for its part, has long taken advantage of strong sympathies for the Palestinian people by intermingling its military assets with crowded refugee camps and critical civilian infrastructure. As Israeli operations intensify, Palestinian deaths mount—and so does international anger at the Israeli military.

In response, Israel has aimed to soften the distinction between Hamas militants and Palestinian civilians. This is why Israel has consistently amplified claims that Hamas uses tunnel complexes beneath Palestinian hospitals and endorsed video and audio recordings that reveal coordination between Hamas militants and Palestinian aid workers. Official Israeli statements have also sought to weaken the credibility of the reported Palestinian death toll, emphasizing that Gaza’s Health Ministry, which provides these numbers, is Hamas-controlled.

TAKING THE FIGHT OFFLINE

Although the rise of digital technologies at first seemed to give nonstate actors an asymmetric advantage in war, states have learned new ways to fight back. Israel began to develop its own counter-strategies in earnest after it lost the “Twitter war” that accompanied its foray into Gaza from late 2008 to early 2009. During that bloody 22-day operation, the Israeli military sought to control conventional media access and coverage but largely ignored the online conversation. As widely shared testimonies of Palestinians in harm’s way drove headlines and sharpened international condemnation of the civilian death toll, U.S. pressure on Israel increased. The Israeli military learned that it had ignored the Internet at its own peril.

In the current war, Israel has adapted by using its conventional military superiority and vast organizational capacity to its advantage in the battle of information. Israel has strangled Gaza’s communication system, hindering Hamas’s command and control by targeting cellphone towers in airstrikes and denying electricity to Palestinian Internet service providers. By the end of October, Internet traffic across Gaza had dropped by 80 percent. During certain military offensives, Israel cut access entirely. The blackout strategy is not new; the Iraqi and U.S. militaries used both cyberattacks and traditional military strikes to block Islamic State militants’ access to the Internet during the campaign to take back Mosul in 2016–17, and the Russian military disrupted Ukrainian Internet access so effectively in its 2022 siege of Mariupol that journalists had to smuggle out photos and videos on memory cards.

Shutting down Gaza’s Internet hardly silences critical voices—many pro-Palestinian digital activists live outside the Middle East—but it does prevent a consistent flow of reliable information and firsthand accounts from the conflict zone. This enables Israel to better control the focus, if not the tenor, of online conversation. And when Israeli sources release attention-grabbing videos and images of purported Hamas military facilities, Palestinians on the ground in Gaza have no way to quickly dispute their claims.

The loss of connection has additional adverse effects in a world that has become reliant on the Internet. Witness accounts have underscored how losing contact with loved ones heightens the fear that people feel while under bombardment. And when they cannot access news and safety information online, civilians can end up fleeing toward violence instead of away from it, increasing their risk of injury and death.

In addition to targeting communication infrastructure, Israel has undertaken an extensive legal and political campaign to pressure social media companies to remove war-related content. In the first month of the fighting, Israel issued roughly 9,500 takedown requests to Meta, TikTok, X, Google, and other services for posts that Israeli authorities say promote terrorism. Some posts contained graphic imagery or violence that celebrates Hamas; others made the list because they featured a song associated with a Hamas faction. The companies complied with 94 percent of Israel’s requests. This success attests to Israel’s ability, as a state actor, to pressure digital platforms. Hamas, as a non-state actor and a proscribed terrorist organization, does not have the same capacity. Nor does the broader Palestinian diaspora, which lacks effective national-level representation.

THE FUTURE OF WAR

The information strategies that Israel, Hamas, and the broader pro-Palestinian community are wielding today will almost certainly influence the wars of tomorrow. A key lesson is that, in these fights, virality can trump veracity. Online debates, including those with limited relation to the truth, will continue to shape the course of offline events by altering public perceptions and guiding official decisions. These information battles will not replace the traditional practices of war, but they are becoming central to how modern conflicts are fought and won.

Preparations for the next information conflict are already underway. As one of us (Singer) wrote recently in Defense One, researchers at China’s National Defense University have been studying how the People’s Liberation Army can prevail in so-called cognitive warfare on the way to winning a larger war. Effective tactics, the researchers argue, include engaging in a “discourse competition” that manipulates the emotions of a global audience; a push-pull process of “information disturbance” and “public opinion blackout” that involves seeding desired narratives and ensuring they go viral at critical moments; and “blocking information,” which refers to disrupting an adversary’s digital and physical communications and replacing them with China’s preferred messages. These proposed strategies mirror the ones at play in the current Israel-Hamas conflict. The Chinese military will almost certainly use them in any potential war in the Pacific.

Not too long ago, it was possible to plan military operations without giving much thought to a real-time social media and communication strategy, just as it was possible to scroll through Facebook without having to dodge first-person combat footage and depictions of wartime atrocities. Any doubt that online information would be a central concern in modern conflict disappeared on October 7. Wars of the future will be information conflicts that span the globe, sustained and aggravated by likes, shares, and lies.

• P. W. SINGER is Strategist at New America, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, and Co-Founder of Useful Fiction.
• EMERSON T. BROOKING is a Resident Senior Fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. From 2022 to 2023, he served as Cyber-Policy Adviser in the Office of the U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
• They are the authors of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media.

Foreign Affairs · by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking · December 5, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com