Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the day:

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

"There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth."

- Leo Tolstoy

"Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success."

- Brian Adams

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 30, 2023

2. Ukraine’s jet ski raiders strike at the heart of Crimea

3. In U.S. Fights Over Ukraine Aid, Allies Fear Deeper Global Harm

4. Opinion: To the Last Ukrainian — What We’ve Learned from Kyiv’s Counter-Offensive

5. China says US is the true 'empire of lies'

6. Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China

7. US warns of Chinese disinformation. China says that's disinformation

8. Four Seconds to Impact: On the Front Line With Ukraine’s Snipers

9. Japan’s plans have Taiwan focus

10. Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works.

11. How to Hamstring U.S. Intelligence on Section 702

12. 9/11 suspect ‘admitted White House was fourth target’

13. Why Consumers Are Mad About Inflation Even Though It Has Fallen

14. A U.S. Army hospital has quietly started admitting troops wounded in Ukraine.

15. Introduction of New China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert

16. Privacy watchdog recommends court approval for FBI searches of spy data

17. Soldiers worry that ROTC admin error could upend retirement plans

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 30, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-september-30-2023

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on September 30.
The Kremlin has seemingly not yet clarified what Ukrainian territories it claims that Russia has annexed, leading to continued confusion among Russian government and occupation officials a year after the illegal annexation of occupied territories.
Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes primarily targeting Vinnytsia Oblast on the night of September 29 to 30.
Russian milbloggers claimed on September 30 that the Russian military command removed the commander of the Russian 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade following recent outrage from milbloggers about the brigade’s command.
An organization with alleged ties to Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko is reportedly categorizing Russian internet user data in an effort to disseminate tailored information to specific domestic populations as part of a wider attempt to control the Russian information space.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Kupyansk, Kreminna, Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and marginally advanced along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian authorities have started to conscript citizens in occupied Ukraine who have Russian passports.
Russian authorities continue to forcibly deport children from occupied Ukraine to Russia in order to assimilate Ukrainian children into Russian culture.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 30, 2023

Sep 30, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, September 30, 2023

Nicole Wolkov, Christina Harward, Angelica Evans, Riley Bailey, and Frederick W. Kagan

September 30, 2023, 5:15pm ET

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

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

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 12:15pm ET on September 30. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 1 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on September 30. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol direction (western Zaporizhia Oblast) and near Bakhmut.[1] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut), Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut), Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), Novoprokopivka (13km south of Orikhiv), and Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[2] A fringe Russian milblogger reportedly affiliated with the Russian Airborne (VDV) forces implicitly recanted claims from September 24 that Ukrainian forces occupy half of Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[3] The fringe milblogger claimed on September 29 that elements of the 7th Guards VDV Division still hold Verbove despite suffering losses.[4]

The Kremlin has seemingly not yet clarified what Ukrainian territories it claims that Russia has annexed, leading to continued confusion among Russian government and occupation officials a year after the illegal annexation of occupied territories. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a speech in honor of the so-called “Day of Reunification of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Luhansk People’s Republic, Zaporizhia, and Kherson Oblasts with Russia” on September 30 in which he reiterated boilerplate rhetoric about the international legitimacy of the illegal Russian annexation referenda, the West’s alleged role in starting the war in Ukraine, and the unity between Russia and occupied Ukraine.[5] Sevastopol occupation governor Mikhail Razvozhaev posted a map on his Telegram channel in honor of the holiday that showed the entirety of Crimea and Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts as Russian territory.[6] The Kherson Oblast occupation administration posted a different map that showed Russian territory roughly extending to the current frontlines in the four most recently annexed territories.[7] Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev, a notable nationalist and extreme voice in the Russian government, ambiguously claimed that the war in Ukraine will continue until “the original Russian territories are liberated.”[8] Medvedev’s unclear statement and occupation officials’ disparate maps indicate that the Kremlin has yet to clarify what territories it claims to have annexed or intends to annex.

Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes primarily targeting Vinnytsia Oblast on the night of September 29 to 30. Ukrainian military sources reported on September 30 that Ukrainian forces downed 30 out of 40 Shahed-131/136 drones that Russian forces launched from occupied Crimea.[9] Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Captain First Rank Nataliya Humenyuk stated that Russian forces struck an infrastructure facility in Vinnytsia Oblast.[10] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian drones struck a Ukrainian military arsenal near Kalynivka (22km north of Vinnytsia) in Vinnytsia Oblast.[11] Russian sources also claimed that Russian drones struck Ukrainian port infrastructure in Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts on the night of September 29 to 30.[12] The Romanian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that its radar systems indicated a possible unauthorized entry into Romanian airspace during the Russian strike series on the night of September 29 to 30.[13] The Romanian MoD stated that Romanian authorities have not yet identified any objects that may have fallen into Romanian territory.[14]

Russian milbloggers claimed on September 30 that the Russian military command removed the commander of the Russian 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade following recent outrage from milbloggers about the brigade’s command.[15] The same group of Russian milbloggers extensively amplified reports about elements of the 205th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (49th Combined Arms Army, Southern Military District) suffering significant losses due to inadequate artillery support and poor leadership in the Kherson direction in late August.[16] One of the Russian milbloggers stated on September 30 that the removal of this commander is a “rare case” in which truth and justice prevailed.[17] The removal of the commander suggests that Russian ultranationalist outrage may still be able to pressure the Russian military command despite the apparent decline in such reactions in the wider Russian information space since the Wagner Group‘s June 24 rebellion.

An organization with alleged ties to Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko is reportedly categorizing Russian internet user data in an effort to disseminate tailored information to specific domestic populations as part of a wider attempt to control the Russian information space. Independent Belarusian outlet Vot Tak reported on September 29 that Russian non-profit organization Dialog is gathering Russian internet user data and information from Russian government agencies in order to categorize Russian media consumers and then feed tailored narratives to specific categories of users.[18] A former employee of Dialog told Vot Tak that Dialog’s database categorizes internet users by profession, interests, and political beliefs and specifically orients false news about the war in Ukraine and pro-war narratives toward Russian military personnel, relatives of military personnel, and civil servants.[19] The former Dialog employee also claimed that Dialog categorizes internet users as “loyal” and “disloyal” and shares its information with Russian security services.[20] The former Dialog employee claimed that Dialog has failed to make a significant ideological impact on the Russian information space because Dialog could not produce unified and clear narratives.[21] Dialog’s efforts to promote narratives to specific Russian populations are likely a more subtle part of the Kremlin’s effort to control the Russian information space and commensurate with the Kremlin’s more overt efforts to promote self-censorship.

Key Takeaways:

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and near Bakhmut on September 30.
The Kremlin has seemingly not yet clarified what Ukrainian territories it claims that Russia has annexed, leading to continued confusion among Russian government and occupation officials a year after the illegal annexation of occupied territories.
Russian forces conducted a series of drone strikes primarily targeting Vinnytsia Oblast on the night of September 29 to 30.
Russian milbloggers claimed on September 30 that the Russian military command removed the commander of the Russian 205th Motorized Rifle Brigade following recent outrage from milbloggers about the brigade’s command.
An organization with alleged ties to Russian First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko is reportedly categorizing Russian internet user data in an effort to disseminate tailored information to specific domestic populations as part of a wider attempt to control the Russian information space.
Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Kupyansk, Kreminna, Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, and in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area and marginally advanced along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian authorities have started to conscript citizens in occupied Ukraine who have Russian passports.
Russian authorities continue to forcibly deport children from occupied Ukraine to Russia in order to assimilate Ukrainian children into Russian culture.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Kupyansk and Kremmina on September 30 but did not make confirmed advances. A Russian milblogger claimed that positional battles are ongoing near Synkivka (9km northeast of Kupyansk) and in the Serebryanske forest area (11km south of Kreminna).[22] Another milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked Ukrainian positions near Bilohorivka (10km south of Kreminna).[23] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces resumed assault operations in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions and unsuccessfully tried to break through unspecified Ukrainian defenses twice over the past day.[24] Footage published on September 30 purportedly shows elements of the “Moscow” Volunteer Battalion assaulting and capturing a Ukrainian position near Kreminna.[25] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reportedly formed the “Moscow” Volunteer Battalion in January 2023, and the volunteer detachment consists of athletes and Russian soccer fans.[26] Footage published on September 30 purportedly shows elements of the 88th Motorized Rifle Brigade (2nd Luhansk People’s Republic Army Corps) operating in the Siversk direction (19km south of Kreminna).[27]

The Russian military has reportedly deployed elements of the newly created 25th Combined Arms Army (CAA) along the frontline in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction. Yevlash reported on September 30 that Ukrainian forces have observed a total of 12,000 25th CAA personnel along the frontline in the Kupyansk-Lyman direction and that the 25th CAA consists of mobilized personnel and personnel from heavily degraded units that have completely lost their combat capabilities.[28] Yevlash also stated that the 25th CAA has unspecified weapons, logistics, and personnel problems.[29]

The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Yampolivka (17km west of Kreminna), Torske (12km west of Kreminna), and Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna) on September 30.[30]

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 reportedly continued offensive actions near Bakhmut on September 30 but did not make any confirmed advances. A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attempted to break through to the railway east of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[31] A Russian news aggregator claimed on September 29 that Ukrainian forces control half of Klishchiivka and that the other half of the settlement is a contested “gray zone.”[32] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated on September 30 that Ukrainian artillery continues to target the T0513 (Bakhmut-Horlivka) highway, which is a key Russian logistics line.[33]

Russian forces continued ground attacks near Bakhmut on September 30 but did not make any confirmed gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Klishchiiivka.[34] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces pushed Ukrainian forces back from the railway east of Klishchiivka.[35] A Russian news aggregator claimed on September 29 that Russian forces were entrenched at the railway near Klishchiivka and counterattacked near Andriivka.[36] A Russian milblogger posted footage claiming to show elements of the Russian 106th Guards Airborne (VDV) Division operating in the Soledar (10km northeast of Bakhmut) direction.[37] Another Russian milblogger posted footage claiming to show elements of the 98th VDV Division operating near Bakhmut.[38] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov posted footage claiming to show elements of Chechen Akhmat Spetsnaz and the Russian 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade (Luhansk People’s Republic [LNR] 2nd Army Corps) operating near Klishchiivka.[39]

Russian forces continued offensive operations along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on September 30 and recently advanced. Geolocated footage published on September 27 indicates that Russian forces marginally advanced west of Marinka (on the southwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[40] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks east of Stepove (8km northwest of Avdiivka), southwest of Avdiivka, and near Novoselivka (17km northeast of Avdiivka), Tonenke (7km northwest of Avdiivka), Marinka, and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[41] A Russian milblogger also claimed that Russian forces attacked near Novomykahilivka and Marinka but did not specify an outcome.[42] Another Russian milblogger amplified claims on September 29 that Russian forces conducted successful assaults near Opytne (3km southwest of Avdiivka) and Vesele (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City).[43]

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

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited unsuccessful ground attacks along the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts on September 30. The Russian MoD claimed that elements of the Russian Eastern Grouping of Forces repelled two Ukrainian attacks near Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and Rivnopil (10km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked near Pryyutne in three small groups with 15 personnel each.[45] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted reconnaissance-in-force operations near Pryyutne and Novomayorske (18km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) on September 29.[46]

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on September 30 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive actions near Staromayorske (9km south of Velyka Novosilka) and Novodarivka (15km south of Velyka Novosilka).[47] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are conducting localized offensive operations from Pryyutne in the direction of Rivnopil and are counterattacking near Urozhaine (9km south of Velyka Novosilka).[48] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian aviation struck a bridge across the Shaytanka River in Velyka Novosilka.[49]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 30 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in the Melitopol (western Zaporizhia Oblast) direction.[50] Russian milbloggers claimed that small Ukrainian infantry groups without armored vehicle support continue assaults near Robotyne (10km south of Orikhiv), Novoprokopivka (13km south of Orikhiv), and Verbove (18km southeast of Orikhiv).[51] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces attacked in an area north of Verbove and conducted assaults in the direction of Kopani (11km southwest of Orikhiv).[52]

Russian forces continued counterattacks in western Zaporizhia Oblast on September 30 and recently made marginal gains. Geolocated footage published on September 29 indicates that Russian forces recaptured limited positions at a series of previously lost Russian defensive positions south of Robotyne.[53] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully tried to recapture lost positions near Robotyne and Verbove on September 30.[54] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces are also counterattacking near Novodanylivka (4km south of Orikhiv) and Mala Tokmachka (7km southwest of Orikhiv).[55] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces resumed activities southeast of Hulyaipole, likely referring to limited Russian offensive actions near Chervone (9km east of Hulyaipole).[56] Russian sources acknowledged that Russian air defenses downed a Russian Su-35 attack aircraft in a fratricide incident near Tokmak on September 29 as ISW previously reported.[57]

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

Russian authorities will reportedly conscript citizens in occupied Ukraine who have Russian passports. Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan stated on September 30 that Russian authorities have begun requiring residents in occupied territories with Russian passports to go to military registration and enlistment offices for the Russian conscription cycle that will begin on October 1.[58] Khlan stated that Russian authorities are threatening civilians with Russian passports eligible for conscription with fines and detention for not appearing. ISW has previously reported that Russian authorities and occupation administrations continue to conduct forced passportization and mobilization in occupied Ukraine.[59]

The Russian military is reportedly continuing to recruit Cuban citizens to fight in Ukraine, possibly as a part of relatively elite Airborne (VDV) formations. Russian opposition media outlet Mobilization News stated on September 29 that Vladimir Shkunov, a researcher at the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a member of the Russian Government Expert Council, recruited eight Cuban citizens to fight in the war in Ukraine.[60] Mobilization News stated that about 140 Cuban citizens arrived in Russia in the summer of 2023 and joined the 106th VDV Division headquartered in Tula City, further indicating that the 106th VDV Division is likely degraded from fighting in Ukraine. Reuters reported on September 30 that according to Cuban recruits, there are 119 Cubans training at a Russian military base outside of Tula City and that some Cuban recruits are already in Ukraine.[61] ISW previously reported on September 8 that Cuban officials reportedly arrested 17 individuals on charges related to a human trafficking ring that lured Cuban men to serve in the Russian military.[62] The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated on September 5 that “Cuba plays no role in the war in Ukraine” and that it will “act vigorously” against whoever participates in any form of human trafficking for the recruitment of mercenaries from Cuba.[63]

Russian companies are reportedly willing to break Russian laws surrounding military registration in order to retain IT employees. Russian outlet Kommersant reported on September 29 that some Russian companies would rather pay fines for not registering their employees’ military records than risk having employees, especially IT specialists, quit over the military registration requirement.[64]

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 authorities continue to forcibly deport children from occupied Ukraine to Russia in order to assimilate Ukrainian children into Russian culture. Russian Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Governor Dmitry Artyukhov stated on September 30 that the Yamalo-Nenets government is launching a three-year program that will bring children from occupied Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast to Russia to visit “cultural heritage centers” in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod; Russian universities; and the “Russia” exhibition in Moscow.[65] Artyukhov stated that 500 Ukrainian children will participate in the program in fall 2023.

Russian federal subjects continue to expand their patronage networks in occupied Ukraine. Russian Head of the North Ossetia-Alania Republic Sergey Menyaylo claimed on September 30 that the North Ossetia-Alania Republic sponsors occupied Chernihivka Raion, Zaporizhia Oblast.[66] Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) head Leonid Pasechnik stated that Russian Irkutsk Oblast has helped construct infrastructure facilities and factories in occupied Holubivka, Luhansk Oblast.[67] Artyukhov stated that Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug has built social and residential infrastructure in occupied Volnovakha, Donetsk Oblast.[68]

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)

Nothing significant to report.

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

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. Ukraine’s jet ski raiders strike at the heart of Crimea

I bet if the US military employed jet skis it would improve recruiting.

Ukraine’s jet ski raiders strike at the heart of Crimea

Ukrainian commandos reveal the storming of Russia’s naval stronghold

The Times · by Maxim Tucker, Odesa · October 1, 2023

Ten jet skis crept towards the coast in darkness, their engines barely audible over the slapping of waves. Each carried two Ukrainian frogmen, invisible against the night sky. The Russians never saw them coming.

Slipping ashore in Crimea, the soldiers readied their rifles, explosives and anti-tank weapons. They had already travelled 125 miles over sea from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory and would have to return another 140 miles at speed.

They were the first Ukrainian troops to set foot on the Crimean peninsula in nearly a decade.

A fortnight earlier, planners had counted and weighed every gram of equipment, reducing the load wherever possible. Their commander, Levan, spent two weeks running the route in the Black Sea before he concluded that the scheme could work.

He had travelled as far as 87 miles on one of the jet skis. It was exhausting and they would need to refuel twice, he had learnt, but he believed his men could make it.

His British military advisers were not so sure. “At sea, they know and understand a lot, but even for our British partners this looked like an almost impossible task,” Levan told The Times.

About 50 British special forces personnel, including members of the Special Air Service, have been deployed to Ukraine to advise and train on western weapons systems, according to US intelligence documents leaked to the Discord server. In addition, British intelligence officers are believed to have been working in Ukraine since the start of the invasion.

Levan, one of four men who shared details of their role in the audacious mission, is second in command of the Timur group, an elite special forces regiment named after its leader. It operates under the command of the Ukrainian military intelligence, the GUR, led by Lieutenant-General Kyrylo Budanov.

Budanov had asked them to find a way to raise the Ukrainian flag on the peninsula for the first time since its occupation in 2014. He wanted to send a blunt message to Russia, to his allies and to the Ukrainian troops embroiled in the bloody counteroffensive in the country’s south: that Ukrainian soldiers are capable of striking anytime, anywhere.

They had a month to plan and train.

The date set was set in stone: Ukraine’s Independence Day, August 24.

Ukraine special forces on jetskis carry out raid on Crimea

Twenty men would have to travel across the Black Sea undetected, infiltrate a Russian military base, fight the enemy, then make the long return journey, possibly pursued by aircraft and President Putin’s Black Sea fleet.

The Russians had spent the previous nine years turning Crimea into a fortress. It was defended by aircraft from six airbases as well as fast patrol boats, mines, submarine nets, drones and infrared cameras. “Neither the Americans nor the Brits gave us much chance of success,” Levan said.

He was told it would take a miracle to succeed, so it was perhaps fitting that the mission was entrusted to the Brotherhood Battalion, a deeply religious unit whose recruitment posters appeal for “battle swimmers”, with “belief in God” listed as the first requirement alongside “excellent physical condition, high motivation and extreme daring”.

“Our first target was an electronic warfare station so powerful not even a compass could work within 20 miles of the shore,” said Borghese, the battalion commander who co-ordinated the mission on the day. “It interfered with the work of our missile operators and the entire GPS system could not work. Our guys were working only by the stars.”

The battalion is named for its fervent faith that God is on its side

The station was thwarting Ukrainian drone strikes and efforts to reconnoitre targets for British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Neutralising Crimea is key to the success of Ukraine’s counteroffensive, with advancing Ukrainian troops being pounded by Russian aircraft flying sorties from the peninsula.

As Levan and his men moved inland towards the Russian base, moving in silence to avoid contact with the enemy, heavy-machinegun fire rattled through the night on the opposite side of the peninsula. Five Ukrainian support ships were racing along the coast, raking Russian positions with bullets and rockets to draw attention to themselves. Explosions lit up the night sky.

The frogmen silently wished their comrades luck — then turned their attention to the task at hand.

Members of the battalion prepare to become the first Ukrainian troops to set foot on the Crimean peninsula in nearly a decade

They headed for the base housing the electronic warfare station, which also contained surveillance equipment and radars. Their goal was to place explosives, depart and detonate, but as they got to within 200 metres of their target one of the teams was spotted.

A Russian machinegunner opened up in their direction, prompting a 30-minute exchange of fire. “We had to capture the control centre, plant explosives and blow it up, but because there was a battle going on we couldn’t approach quietly,” said Borghese.

Realising they could not reach their targets to place explosives, the team reverted to plan B: their anti-tank weapons and rocket-propelled grenades thumped into the building as well as three target vehicles.

“We decided to simply destroy the control centre from a distance with anti-tank weapons, damage the antennas and withdraw, which we succeeded in,” Borghese said.

Ten minutes later they were back at the beachhead, boarding their jet skis. By this point the Russians had scrambled warplanes and Raptor patrol boats. “They were really chasing us hard. Four enemy boats came out to intercept us, blocking the retreat to our coastline,” said Borghese.

As the Russians plotted an intercept course they came across the Ukrainians’ evacuation ship. They switched focus, targeting that instead and ignoring the jet skis sprinting back out to sea. The Ukrainian evacuation ship, forced to flee, beat a course for port, leaving the jet skiers to make their own way home.

Five Ukrainian support ships broke away at the same time, firing Stinger anti-aircraft missiles at the Russian warplanes and forcing them to disengage. Levan said: “It was a battle for several hours of all these modern defence systems and aviation. The naval vehicles were taken out of action, so we were able to get to a safe zone.

“The Russian aircraft were over us for four hours, maybe more because they were rotating. There were a certain number of enemy aircraft that would enter the area, circle, hit different points, then turn around. It was like that for four to five hours non-stop.”

Ukraine special forces on jetskis carry out raid on Crimea

Borghese said every man involved in the operation had made it back alive. “Our guys are very faithful and the whole operation went like a miracle. There were clouds at dawn, so enemy aviation and their drones couldn’t work well. When we were halfway home, the sun came out and we had good weather.”

He added: “An hour after the guys stepped ashore a hurricane began — which confirms, as always, that God is with us.”

The mission’s success has allowed Ukraine to turn Crimea from a Russian safe haven into a battleground. On September 13, British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles hit the Russian submarine Rostov-on-Don and the landing ship Minsk, guided by special forces operators from Timur group.

Admiral Viktor Sokolov, centre, was said to have died in the raid but the Kremlin denied his death

ALEXEY PAVLISHAK/REUTERS

On September 22 missiles hit Russia’s Black Sea Fleet command headquarters. Ukraine’s Special Operations Command claimed to have killed 34 senior officers — including the fleet commander Admiral Viktor Sokolov — and wounded 105. The Kremlin denied his death, airing video of him meeting Putin. It accused Britain of helping to plan the attacks.

“I’m proud of my guys, the courage of our fighters and their incredible physical training. You can see that after we landed on the peninsula a lot of interesting things started to happen there. I can tell you that this mission triggered all of this. It worked to make the enemy more vulnerable,” said Levan.

“A big nod and thank you to all the western partners who are involved in making sure that we are prepared and well staffed.

“We now have the means to plan and execute even larger operations. There’s a lot more to come.”

The Times · by Maxim Tucker, Odesa · October 1, 2023

3. In U.S. Fights Over Ukraine Aid, Allies Fear Deeper Global Harm

Let's see if I have this right. Since all politics is local I guess it is our local politics that will screw up our national security.

Indispensable nation and global power? We'll see.

In U.S. Fights Over Ukraine Aid, Allies Fear Deeper Global Harm

Washington has led the response to Russia, but domestic political spats raise worries about commitment

By Daniel MichaelsFollow

in Brussels, Lindsay WiseFollow

in Washington and Laurence NormanFollow

in Berlin

Updated Oct. 1, 2023 5:03 am ET

U.S. political fights and presidential-election campaign rhetoric are casting a shadow over battlefields in Ukraine.

Kyiv’s fight to beat back invading Russian troops depends on American equipment, training and intelligence. President Biden has led a global campaign to rally support for Ukraine and to impose sanctions on Russia.

Now a growing number of U.S. politicians, mainly Republicans led by former President Donald Trump, are criticizing U.S. backing for Ukraine. Aid to the country has been a focal point in House fights over averting a government shutdown Sunday.

Such arguments—and the prospect of Washington stepping back from its leadership role—are prompting unease among American allies, many of whom view helping Ukraine defend itself as critical to global security.

Biden signed a measure to avert a partial government shutdown in the U.S. late Saturday night that omitted Ukraine aid.

The West has stood together against Russia thanks to U.S. leadership, said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, but “in order to win, the demand for U.S. leadership is even greater, especially in the scope and speed of military assistance.”

A rift among Western allies would benefit Russian President Vladimir Putin, European officials argue, if it allows him to outlast the West in a war of attrition. “We have all invested a lot and must finish the job now by ensuring Ukraine’s victory,” Landsbergis said.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Nataliia Galibarenko, said her government is monitoring developments in Washington and so far doesn’t see any change in assistance.

Presidential candidates, including Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence, argued over Ukraine aid at the second Republican presidential primary debate Wednesday. PHOTO: ROBYN BECK/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

While armament deliveries are steady now, Ukraine and other U.S. allies are concerned by political trends. A Wall Street Journal poll in August found that 62% of Republican voters thought the U.S. was doing too much to support Ukraine, up from 56% in April.

In a major setback for pro-Ukraine lawmakers, Congress didn’t include any Ukraine aid in a short-term spending bill that passed Saturday, as the House and Senate raced to avert a partial government shutdown on Oct. 1.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) had been pushing to include $6 billion for Ukraine in the stopgap legislation, but dropped that effort after the House voted for a version without any aid in it.

Schumer said he and McConnell have agreed to continue fighting for more economic and security assistance for the country. “We support Ukraine’s efforts to defend sovereignty against aggression,” Schumer said.

“I’m confident the Senate will pass further assistance to Ukraine later this year,” McConnell said.

A White House official said Saturday that while the Defense Department has exhausted much of its security assistance funding for Ukraine, there is enough funding under the presidential drawdown authority available to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs for a bit longer.

“We will have another PDA soon on the normal cadence,” the official said. “However, we will need a Ukraine funding bill to pass soon and it’s imperative that Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine to ensure that happens.”

Recent House funding votes show broad bipartisan support for Ukraine aid—311 lawmakers in the 433-member House voted this week to pass a measure appropriating $300 million in security assistance for the embattled country—but the number of Republicans opposed is growing and now makes up more than half the GOP conference.

During the Republican primary debate Wednesday, views on Ukraine were split.

“We’re driving Russia further into China’s arms,” said biotech investor and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who opposes further aid to Ukraine. Former Vice President Mike Pence countered: “If you let Putin have Ukraine, that’s a green light to China to take Taiwan.”

Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has said he wants to end the war and would have it done in 24 hours, without specifying how. He has said further aid to Ukraine should be linked to inquiries into the Biden family’s business dealings.

“Ukraine will not lose as long as America remains committed to its defense,” said John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who teaches warfighting at the U.S. Army War College. “Ukraine faces its biggest threat now not from Russia but from political dysfunction in Washington.”

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado said she had no interest in events for Ukraine’s president when he was recently in Washington. PHOTO: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Biden administration officials say a central aspect of their foreign policy is harnessing a resilient economy and stable political system at home to counter the influence of Russia and China. Congressional deadlocks and fights around the 2024 presidential election could allow international rivals to paint a very different picture of the U.S.

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly recently, diplomats from countries that look to the U.S. for leadership said they worry that domestic pressures are prompting Biden to pull back from wholehearted support for Ukraine’s fight. Some noted that in his half-hour U.N. address he mentioned Ukraine only near the end.

Allies’ concern goes beyond wanting Kyiv to prevail. The deeper anxiety is that if the U.S.—having thrown significant political and military weight behind Ukraine—doesn’t emerge on the winning side, its credibility and power of persuasion will suffer grave damage with global consequences.

Faith in U.S. dedication to its allies and its international pledges has been shaken in recent years by its chaotic exit from Afghanistan, threats to quit NATO and several other sharp shifts in U.S. foreign policy.

Ambassador Oksana Markarova and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appealed to U.S. lawmakers in Washington, D.C., in September. PHOTO: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Uncertainty about Washington’s commitment to Ukraine is rising despite Congress having approved more than $100 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance since Russia’s large-scale invasion.

In recent days, American M1 Abrams tanks—among the world’s most advanced—have started arriving in Ukraine. President Biden has promised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver a small number of long-range ATACMS missiles, which he had requested repeatedly.

U.S. military assistance has helped Kyiv stave off and beat back a Russian invasion that many initially thought would quickly succeed. Western assistance has helped significantly degrade Russia’s military, the world’s second-largest, which boasted a formidable reputation before the war.

Still, allies worry that current U.S. military assistance isn’t sufficient for Ukraine to defeat and eject Russian forces occupying roughly 20% of its country.

European allies of the U.S. and Ukraine also have provided extensive military and financial support to Kyiv, at times offering more advanced weapons than those from the U.S. But Europe’s armories are far smaller than the Pentagon’s and couldn’t fill the gap if Washington retreats from its current support levels, say European and U.S. officials.

Criticism of support for Ukraine is also rising in some corners of Europe, though opposition isn’t as virulent or having as much impact as in the U.S. Still, a trade row between Ukraine and Poland has threatened the support for Kyiv of one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, and elections in Slovakia this weekend have offered a forum for critical voices.

Slovakia on Saturday elected politicians who are threatening to cut support and military aid for Ukraine, the first time this has happened in Europe since the war began.

In the U.S., harsh critics of Ukraine aid are digging in. When Zelensky visited Washington in September, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R., Colo.) said she had no interest in events for him.

“Is Zelensky here to pick up another check?” she snapped.

When asked if she would meet with him, she said no, then reconsidered. “Yeah, I’d ask him for a refund!”

Other Republicans, particularly in the Senate, strongly support Ukraine and warn against U.S. wavering. Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Ukraine’s allies in the U.S. need to make a better case to the American people, starting by reminding them that America gave Ukraine security assurances in 1994 in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal.

“If indeed we breached that agreement with Ukraine, what do you think every one of our enemies—and more importantly, our allies—are going to say about America? ‘We can’t count on America,’” Risch said. “That has a domino effect. It is greatly debilitating to the national security of the United States, not the least of which it’s going to set off a view by many countries that, ‘We can’t count on the United States. We need nuclear weapons.’”

Biden administration officials acknowledge political opposition to funding Ukraine but expect Americans broadly to continue supporting Kyiv. “In Congress, yes, there are some loud voices that are taking a different tack,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday. “We of course have to continuously try to focus our fellow citizens on the stakes.”

With fights over support for Ukraine becoming part of the U.S. funding battles and election-year politics, Kyiv’s supporters fear that Biden and others who have so far vocally backed Ukraine’s fight will temper or reduce their support out of concern that combatting Russia isn’t a winning campaign strategy.

Some Ukraine boosters had hoped that Biden would stake his political ground in contrast to Republicans by adamantly committing to support Kyiv and actively portraying the clash to voters as a war for all democracies and free countries against authoritarian regimes and repression. So far, he hasn’t done that.

Among the gloomier scenarios that diplomats are extrapolating from recent trends is a world where Washington struggles to cajole or compel other countries to back it. Some see signs of that already.

“Unfortunately, the current wave of instability spreading around the globe shows that our actions might not be seen as sufficiently persuasive,” said Lithuania’s Landsbergis, citing conflicts in the Sahel region of Africa, the South Caucasus and the Western Balkans.

America’s traditional allies in the Middle East—such as Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia—have over recent years grown wary of Washington’s willingness to protect their interests. That doubt has prompted them to pivot to seeking stronger relations with Russia and China alongside their Washington ties.

A further erosion of U.S. global sway would ultimately undermine the rules-based international order, which Washington spent years and vast political capital building after the Second World War.

As China has risen to world-power status over the last generation, the U.S. has moved progressively away from championing multilateral agreements and bodies to narrower bilateral and small-group deals, over which Washington can keep tighter control. Among these are a security pact among the U.S., U.K. and Australia announced in 2021 and the Quad, which is described as a security dialog among the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.

Biden has praised NATO, and Blinken has called the European Union America’s “partner of first resort” on security and economic issues. But U.S. frustration with NATO partners over their commitments to defense spending remains high, despite recent increases. Europeans, meanwhile, are uncertain of U.S. commitment to economic cooperation, particularly following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act last year, which many in Europe see as subsidizing the U.S. economy at the EU’s expense.

Watch: Zelensky Meets With Biden, Lawmakers to Discuss Military Aid

Opinion: To the Last Ukrainian — What We’ve Learned from Kyiv’s Counter-Offensive

kyivpost.com · by Oleksandr Moskalenko

Taking stock of Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive.

October 1, 2023, 11:31 am |

Ukrainian soldier stands on Kyiv's Maidan before flags honoring individuals killed by Russian invaders. Photo: CEPA

Ukraine’s counter-offensive has not swept the Russian occupiers from Ukrainian territory, but it has made some things clear.

First: There is a growing dissonance between the broad, international acceptance of Ukraine’s terms for a “just peace” and the understanding of how they can be delivered.

The counter-offensive has emphasized the limited resources Ukraine has to achieve its declared objectives militarily, so what happens on the battlefield should not be regarded as the predominant factor in attaining a just peace. On the contrary, international diplomatic and sanctions pressure should be seen as key to ending the war.

Putin’s Russia has evolved into an existential threat to the international community and it would be unfair to load Ukraine with the burden of bringing it down, even if Kyiv did have all the resources to do so.

Second: The counter-offensive was not adequately prepared nor equipped. Much has been written about the absence of F-16 combat aircraft as a factor impeding success, yet a lot of other equipment was needed, including mine-clearing machines, heavy tanks, long-distance missile systems, and artillery shells.

The relative success of the counter-offensive has demonstrated the motivation and commitment of the Ukrainians who have managed — and continue — to break through Russian lines. But mathematics and military science show an obvious need to supply Ukraine with the equipment necessary to achieve military success. Without it, the campaign will waste the lives of still more Ukrainian soldiers, and 200,000 are already either dead or seriously wounded.

The Human Factor – Dealing With the Trauma of War

The scale of Ukrainians’ trauma and suffering, caused by Russia’s brutal invasion, is enormous. It constitutes yet another reason for prompt Western military intervention.

Third: The Russians did not run away from Ukrainian territory, and there was no collapse of the frontline. In this connection, there are already voices discussing the next Ukrainian counter-offensive in the winter and spring. A high-ranking Western official was recently quoted saying there could be seven more years of war. If it does continue for so long, as a war of attrition on Ukrainian territory, the country will be completely destroyed.

What is clear is that Ukrainians have no choice but to fight, as it is a war of genocide. Russia’s stated policy is to destroy Ukraine as a nation, either by smashing its identity or killing everybody who remains loyal to that identity.

The only choice is whether my nation should die on its feet or on its knees. It is cynical to suggest Ukraine should stop military action and start negotiations. As has been emphasized many times, the surrender of Ukrainian territory will not stop Russian aggression but will raise Russia’s appetite for a pause followed by further military action.

Fourth: There are two options that may positively transform the counter-offensive: a qualitative leap in NATO’s involvement, through more and better weapons in war-winning numbers, and intensified pressure on Russia through diplomacy and sanctions (the so-called oil price cap on Russian crude is now openly failing, for example, and yet the G7 is refusing to take any corrective action.)

Should these steps be taken simultaneously, there is some chance that Russia will either step back and withdraw from Ukraine or be defeated. In this case, NATO’s follow-up in the peace negotiations is vital, to restore peace in Europe and re-establish the European security system, reasserting the old yet still relevant slogan “Never again!”

Oleksandr Moskalenko is an academic researcher focusing on European politics. He is an In-resident Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA, Washington, DC). He has a Ph.D. in European Law and previously lived in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

This article was first published by CEPA on Sep. 28, 2023. Read the original here.

The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.

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Oleksandr Moskalenko

kyivpost.com · by Oleksandr Moskalenko

5. China says US is the true 'empire of lies'

The PRC did not like the GEC's report. It struck a nerve. Does the CCP doth protest too much? Admit nothing. Deny everything. And make counter accusations.

China says US is the true 'empire of lies'

Reuters

BEIJING, Sept 30 (Reuters) - The United States is the true "empire of lies", the Chinese foreign ministry said on Saturday, lashing out at a U.S. State Department report that accused Beijing of ploughing billions of dollars annually into information manipulation efforts.

China is manipulating global media through censorship, data harvesting and covert purchases of foreign news outlets, the U.S. State Department said in the report on Thursday.

Despite the unprecedented resources devoted to the campaign, Beijing had hit "major setbacks" when targeting democratic countries, due to local media and civil society push-back, according to the report, which was produced under a congressional mandate to detail state information manipulation.

The report has disregarded facts, and is itself false information, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.

The agencies of the U.S. State Department that produced the report "were the source of false information and the command post of 'cognitive warfare'," the Chinese ministry said.

"Facts have repeatedly proven that the United States is the true 'empire of lies'," it added.

The U.S. report comes amid controversy over China's attempts in recent years to increase the global footprint of its government-controlled media. Beijing is seeking to combat the negative images of China it feels are propagated by global media.

Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Giles Elgood

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Reuters

6. Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China

Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China

As the war with Russia stretches on, so too does a contest to make more and deadlier flying machines. That means a fight over global electronics supply chains that run through China.

By Paul Mozur and Valerie Hopkins

Paul Mozur reported from Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa, Ukraine. Valerie Hopkins reported from near the front lines in Kupiansk, Ukraine.

The New York Times · by Valerie Hopkins · September 30, 2023

Ukrainian soldiers practiced using agricultural drones as combat weapons at a training site in Ukraine.Credit...Videos by Paul Mozur and Volodymyr Ivanov

As the war with Russia stretches on, so too does a contest to make more and deadlier flying machines. That means a fight over global electronics supply chains that run through China.

Ukrainian soldiers practiced using agricultural drones as combat weapons at a training site in Ukraine.Credit...Videos by Paul Mozur and Volodymyr Ivanov

Paul Mozur reported from Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa, Ukraine. Valerie Hopkins reported from near the front lines in Kupiansk, Ukraine.

Sept. 30, 2023

Surrounded by rooms filled with stacks of cluster munitions and half-made thermobaric bombs, a soldier from Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade recently worked on the final part of a deadly supply chain that stretches from China’s factories to a basement five miles from the front lines of the war with Russia.

This is where Ukrainian soldiers turn hobbyist drones into combat weapons. At a cluttered desk, the soldier attached a modified battery to a quadcopter so it could fly farther. Pilots would later zip tie a homemade shell to the bottom and crash the gadgets into Russian trenches and tanks, turning the drones into human-guided missiles.

The aerial vehicles have been so effective at combat that most of the drone rotors and airframes that filled the basement workshop would be gone by the end of the week. Finding new supplies has become a full-time job.

“At night we do bombing missions, and during the day we think about how to get new drones,” said Oles Maliarevych, 44, an officer in the 92nd Mechanized Brigade. “This is a constant quest.”

More than any conflict in human history, the fighting in Ukraine is a war of drones. That means a growing reliance on suppliers of the flying vehicles — specifically, China. While Iran and Turkey produce large, military-grade drones used by Russia and Ukraine, the cheap consumer drones that have become ubiquitous on the front line largely come from China, the world’s biggest maker of those devices.

That has given China a hidden influence in a war that is waged partly with consumer electronics. As Ukrainians have looked at all varieties of drones and reconstituted them to become weapons, they have had to find new ways to keep up their supplies and to continue innovating on the devices. Yet those efforts have faced more hurdles as Chinese suppliers have dialed back their sales, as new Chinese rules to restrict the export of drone components took effect on Sept. 1.

A soldier in Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade. The unit, like many others, uses hobbyist drones as weapons of war.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

“We’re examining every possible way to export drones from China, because whatever one may say, they produce the most there,” said Mr. Maliarevych, who helps source drone supplies for his unit.

For the better part of a decade, Chinese companies such as DJI, EHang and Autel have churned out drones at an ever-increasing scale. They now produce millions of the aerial gadgets a year for amateur photographers, outdoor enthusiasts and professional videographers, far outpacing other countries. DJI, China’s biggest drone maker, has a more than 90 percent share of the global consumer drone market, according to DroneAnalyst, a research group.

Yet in recent months, Chinese companies have cut back sales of drones and components to Ukrainians, according to a New York Times analysis of trade data and interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian drone makers, pilots and trainers. The Chinese firms still willing to sell often require buyers to use complicated networks of intermediaries, similar to those Russia has used to get around American and European export controls.

Some Ukrainians have been forced to beg, borrow and smuggle what’s needed to make up for the gadgets being blown out of the sky. Ukraine loses an estimated 10,000 drones a month, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British security think tank. Many fear that China’s new rules restricting the sale of drone components could worsen Ukrainian supply chain woes heading into the winter.

These hurdles widen an advantage for Russia. Direct drone shipments by Chinese companies to Ukraine totaled just over $200,000 this year through June, according to trade data. In that same period, Russia received at least $14.5 million in direct drone shipments from Chinese trading companies. Ukraine still obtained millions in Chinese-made drones and components, but most came from European intermediaries, according to official Russian and Ukrainian customs data from a third-party provider.

Ukrainians are working overtime to build as many drones as possible for reconnaissance, to drop bombs, and to use as guided missiles. The country has also earmarked $1 billion for a program that supports bootstrapping drone start-ups and other drone acquisition efforts.

Ukrainian soldiers, forced to become electronic tinkerers from the first days of the war, now must be amateur supply chain managers, too. Mr. Maliarevych recounted how members of his unit recently scrounged to buy new antennas for reconnaissance drones to prevent Russian radio jamming. One friend, who lives in Boston, brought back two on a trip.

“We have to reinvent more and more complicated supply chains,” said Maria Berlinska, a longtime combat drone expert and the head of the Victory Drones project in Ukraine, which trains troops in the use of technology. “We have to convince Chinese factories to help us with components, because they are not happy to help us.”

Winning the war has become “a technological marathon,” she said.

Drone pilots from the Ukrainian military train to use the Kazhan rotary drone, which is loaded with plastic bottles filled with sand as weights.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

The training took place in a field where the drones had space to soar and dive.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Rotary drones at a testing site during a training for pilots.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

A war of innovation

On a hot morning in August, two dozen Ukrainian soldiers from four units trained on a new weapon of war: a repurposed agricultural drone known as “the bat.”

Flying over a cornfield outside the eastern city of Dnipro, the devices dropped bottles filled with sand onto tarps that served as targets. The soldiers later returned to their units across the front with the drones, which carry 20-kilogram shells that can be aimed at tanks.

The hulking rotor-powered bombers were made by Reactive Drone, a Ukrainian company that owes its existence to Chinese industrial policy. The firm was founded in 2017 by Oleksii Kolesnyk and his friends after Chinese subsidies led to a glut of drone components being made there. Mr. Kolesnyk took advantage of that to source parts for his own agricultural drones, which he then sold to farmers who used them to spray pesticides in eastern Ukraine.

When the war began, everything changed. Mr. Kolesnyk, who was in Romania for business, rushed back to his hometown, Dnipro. Within days, he and his team repurposed their agricultural drones for battle.

A similar frenzy took place across Ukraine. Ingenuity born of necessity pushed many to repurpose consumer technology in life-or-death scenarios. Drones emerged as the ultimate asymmetric weapon, dropping bombs and offering bird’s-eye views of targets.

In the war’s first weeks, Ukrainian soldiers relied on the Mavic, a quadcopter produced by DJI. With its strong radio link and easy-to-use controls, the Mavic became as important and ubiquitous as the Starlink satellites made by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which help soldiers communicate.

Oleksii Kolesnyk, the founder of Reactive Drone, at the company’s office in Dnipro, Ukraine. He sources parts from China to make agricultural drones, which have been repurposed for the war.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

In April 2022, DJI said it would discontinue its business in Russia and Ukraine. The company shut its flagship stores in those countries, and halted most direct sales. Instead, volunteers backed by online fund-raisers brought in the copters by the thousands to Ukraine, often from Europe. Russia found new channels through friendly neighbors while continuing to receive the drones through Chinese exporters.

Russian and Ukrainian soldiers also began using non-drone DJI products, including one called AeroScope. An antenna-studded box, it can be set up on the ground to track drone locations by detecting the signals they send. The system’s more dangerous feature is its ability to find the pilots who remotely fly DJI drones.

A rush ensued to hack DJI’s software to disable the tracking feature. By the end of last year, a mix of software workarounds and hardware fixes, such as more powerful antennas, had mostly solved the problem.

“The efficiency of the AeroScopes is not the same as it was a year ago,” said Yurii Shchyhol, the head of Ukraine’s State Special Communications Service, responsible for cybersecurity.

DJI’s products continued to have a life-or-death impact on the front. Each time the company updated its software, pilots and engineers raced to break its security protections and modify it, sharing tips in group chats.

In an email, DJI said it has repeatedly notified its distributors that they were prohibited from selling products or parts to customers in Russia and Ukraine.

Now the biggest issue is the quantity of drones and production capacity. At Reactive Drone’s facility in Dnipro, where technicians work on drones for the front line, Mr. Kolesnyk said he was getting components from China for now because of personal connections with Chinese factories. He has hit just one major snag — when an online video of his drones caught the attention of the Chinese authorities and the company that made the camera he used publicly cut ties.

But Mr. Kolesnyk worried about the Chinese rule changes, which he said could make it harder to get the night-vision cameras needed for a new drone that would strike in the dark.

“Even when you see labels like America or Australia on a component, it’s still all manufactured in China,” he said. “To make something that could effectively replace China, it’s really close to impossible.”

A Ukrainian drone pilot, call sign Darwin, operates a first-person-view, or F.P.V., drone on a test flight near Kupiansk in Ukraine.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

A 3D-printed bomb to be dropped from a drone, at a drone workshop in Kupiansk.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

Making adjustments to drone components at the workshop in Kupiansk.Credit...Emile Ducke for The New York Times

‘More like fishing than hunting’

As the war has stretched on, Ukrainian soldiers have worked to make cheap Chinese drones more deadly. One advancement that flooded the front this year: hobbyist racing drones strapped with bombs to act as human-guided missiles.

Known as F.P.V.s, for first-person view — a reference to how the drones are remotely piloted with virtual-reality goggles — the devices have emerged as a cheap alternative to heavy-duty weapons. The machines and their components are sold by a small number of mostly Chinese companies like DJI, Autel and RushFPV.

In eastern Ukraine, soldiers from the 92nd Mechanized Brigade recently tested an F.P.V. In a field near their workshop, a 19-year-old former medical student in the unit, who goes by the call sign Darwin, leaned against a truck and slipped on virtual-reality goggles. Nearby, his spotter, call sign Avocado, flew a DJI Mavic high above to guide him.

“People wish us luck with hunting, but this is more like fishing than hunting,” Darwin said. “It can take a long time.”

Tandems like Darwin and Avocado have become a regular feature of the war. Avocado, the Mavic pilot, gets a higher-altitude view so she can talk the F.P.V. pilot, Darwin, along the path to a target. With a virtual-reality headset, Darwin sees little more than the landscape speeding below him. Often he must fly eight kilometers or more by sight, evading Russian jammers. Successful missions, where a $500 F.P.V. takes out a $1 million weapon system, are trumpeted across social media. Yet less than one-third of attacks are successful, pilots said.

Members of a special forces group of the Ukrainian National Guard gathered kamikaze drones to use for a drill.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

A dummy shell attached to a kamikaze drone. The drones act as human-guided missiles.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Members of the special forces group prepared a kamikaze drone for use. The machines and their components are sold by a small number of mostly Chinese companies.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Far from the front, volunteers and companies work to acquire as many F.P.V.s as possible, with Ukrainian suppliers saying soldiers probably need as many as 30,000 a month. Ukraine’s government has plans to secure 100,000 of the devices for the rest of the year, said Mr. Shchyhol, the Ukrainian official.

Ukrainians compete with Russians to buy F.P.V.s from Chinese firms that are willing to sell directly. Russians often have the advantage because they can bid higher and order larger batches. Selling to Russians is also politically safer for Chinese companies.

Escadrone, a Ukrainian drone supplier, has long sourced components from China to assemble the flying vehicles. The company’s founder, who gave only his first name, Andrii, for fear of being targeted by Russia, said the profit incentives for Chinese companies lead them to sell to both sides.

“I have Chinese companies tell me they hate the Russians, Ukraine is the best,” he said. “Then I see their engines on Russian drones, too.”

Andrii who gave only his first name, is the founder of Escadrone, which transforms racing drones into kamikaze drones for the Ukrainian military. He said Chinese companies sell to both Ukraine and Russia.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

A drone industry of its own

In an office building barricaded with sandbags, the man behind Ukraine’s efforts to build a drone-industrial complex slid his phone forward. On it was a photo of the newest addition to a secretive Ukrainian program to strike deep inside Russia: a long-range drone with a pointy nose and swept wings.

“Yesterday the new Bober, modernized, flew to Moscow,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, referring to a class of heavy kamikaze drone that had struck Moscow the day before.

All summer, the long-range drone program had terrorized Moscow. In an interview in August, Mr. Fedorov, 32, took credit.

He has led the effort to revamp Ukraine’s military-technology base since late last year, using deregulation and state funding to build a remote-control strike force that the country can call its own. That includes helping fund the Bober program, as well as seeding a new generation of Ukrainian companies to build a drone fleet. Part of the idea is to diversify away from foreign suppliers like China.

“The state must create the best conditions, provide funding, so we will win the technological war against Russia,” said Mr. Fedorov, whose Ministry of Digital Transformation is overseeing the government project to spend $1 billion on drones this year.

He acknowledged that some smaller companies faced issues from Chinese suppliers, but said that overall it had not been a major holdup.

“Of course, they are facing problems,” he said. “But to say that there are some supercritical problems that prevent development — there is no such thing.”

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, in his office in Kyiv. “The state must create the best conditions, provide funding, so we will win the technological war against Russia,” he said.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Around Kyiv, the activity is palpable. Young companies are inventing homespun flying craft in hidden workshops. Ranges surrounded by fields of sunflowers and rapeseed are abuzz with new contraptions, which undergo a battery of tests before being cleared for the war.

The start-up spirit has its limits. Makers complain about small-scale contracts from the government, shortages of funds and a lack of planning. Skeptics said the government was running a high-risk experiment that business would come through in the lurch, even though there was no replacement for Chinese drones.

Replacing China as the source for drones like F.P.V.s and Mavics may be difficult, but tentative signs show Ukraine finding parts from Europe, the United States and others like Taiwan for some advanced drones.

Ukrspecsystems, a company in Kyiv that makes fixed-wing reconnaissance drones, said in a statement that supply chain issues with China had led it to look beyond the country.

“Today, we virtually do not use any Chinese components because we see and feel how China deliberately delays the delivery of any goods to Ukraine,” it said.

Racing drones purchased and modified by Escadrone to function as kamikaze weapons.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

A rotary drone sent back to Reactive Drone for repair. Ukraine loses an estimated 10,000 drones a month.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Reactive Drone’s manufacturing workshop.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

Olha Kotiuzhanska contributed reporting from Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa; Aaron Krolik from London; and Dzvinka Pinchuk and Evelina Riabenko from Kupiansk. Mark Boyer contributed video production.

Paul Mozur is the global technology correspondent for The Times, based in Taipei. Previously he wrote about technology and politics in Asia from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul. More about Paul Mozur

Valerie Hopkins is an international correspondent for The Times, covering the war in Ukraine, as well as Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. More about Valerie Hopkins

The New York Times · by Valerie Hopkins · September 30, 2023

7. US warns of Chinese disinformation. China says that's disinformation

China is not happy.

US warns of Chinese disinformation. China says that's disinformation | CNN

CNN · by Mengchen Zhang,Teele Rebane,Heather Chen · October 1, 2023

CNN —

A US State Department report that accuses the Chinese government of expanding disinformation efforts is “in itself disinformation,” Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Saturday.

The ministry shot back after the State Department issued a striking report this week in which it accused the Chinese government of expanding efforts to control information and to disseminate propaganda and disinformation that promotes “digital authoritarianism” in China and around the world.

The US report, issued by the Global Engagement Center on Thursday, alleged that China spends billions of dollars a year on foreign information manipulation and warned that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “significantly expanded” efforts to “shape the global information environment.”

It also underlined US concerns about China as a main military competitor and key rival in the battle over ideas and global disinformation.

The Chinese flag flutters in Tiananmen Square, after the sacking of politician Bo Xilai from the countries powerful Politburo, in Beijing on April 11, 2012.

AFP/Getty Images

US issues stark warning about China's information efforts

Two days later, China hit back.

“The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of ‘global engagement’ – it is a source of disinformation and the command center of ‘perception warfare’,” the ministry said on Saturday.

Referring to wars in Iraq and Syria as well as US reports alleging human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang as examples, the ministry claimed that the US is “an ‘empire of lies’ through and through.”

“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’s ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ‘emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the ministry said.

CNN · by Mengchen Zhang,Teele Rebane,Heather Chen · October 1, 2023

8. Four Seconds to Impact: On the Front Line With Ukraine’s Snipers

I have commented about TM Gibbons-Neff's excellent reporting before. But he has quickly become one of our nation's best war reporters. There are few who have the breadth and depth of experience that he has in both serving in combat and in reporting. I know there are a lot of great journalists out there but none can match this kind of reporting.

This report should be posted on all the bulletin boards at SOTIC (SOF "sniper school"), the Marine Scout Sniper School and the Army Sniper School.

Four Seconds to Impact: On the Front Line With Ukraine’s Snipers

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia YermakPhotographs by David Guttenfelder

Reporting from the southern front line in Ukraine

The New York Times · by Natalia Yermak · October 1, 2023

A Ukrainian sniper with the call sign Bart at a position known as a “hide” in an abandoned building in southern Ukraine.

In a war built around artillery, tanks, drones and cruise missiles, the role of the sniper, unseen and lethal, occupies an often overlooked but essential part of the battlefield.

A Ukrainian sniper with the call sign Bart at a position known as a “hide” in an abandoned building in southern Ukraine.Credit...

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and

Photographs by David Guttenfelder

Reporting from the southern front line in Ukraine

Oct. 1, 2023

The Russian position was marked with the blue flag of Moscow’s elite airborne units but the fabric looked almost translucent through the Ukrainian sniper’s scope.

The flag, atop a Russian-occupied building in southern Ukraine, was just over a mile away. If a Russian soldier appeared, it would take roughly four seconds for the sniper’s large-caliber bullet to reach the man’s chest.

“They move around in the morning and in the evening,” said Bart, the leader of the four-man sniper team.

They had arrived in darkness after navigating pitch-black roads, crammed into a pickup truck with its lights off. With hurried steps on broken glass, they set up their rifles at their position, known as a “hide.”

Bart relaxed, stretching his arms out behind his 20-pound rifle, concealed among the rubble of a half-destroyed building. It was dawn and it was going to be a long day.

Snipers packing their gear and weapons as they leave their base, traveling in darkness to their sniper positions

Ukrainian snipers leaving their base in the early hours to reach their sniper positions before sunrise.

If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been defined as a grueling artillery war bolstered by tanks, drones and cruise missiles, then the role of the sniper, unseen and lethal, occupies an often-overlooked part of the battlefield.

Overshadowed by high-tech killing tools and the blunt power of howitzers and mortars, Ukraine’s snipers are part of a more rudimentary force: the infantry. There are comparatively few, but they are no less essential than they were more than a century ago, when a World War I marksman could terrorize a hundred men with a single shot.

But modern technology, especially the proliferation of small drones that serve as lethal observation tools above the front lines, has made sniping from concealed positions far more difficult. That has forced Ukrainian snipers to change tactics or risk a quick death.

A team from The New York Times spent a week embedded with a Ukrainian sniper team in the country’s south. We read reports on snipers’ missions, and interviewed snipers, instructors and trainees across Ukraine to understand this behind-the-scenes war waged by a cadre of well-trained shooters.

Basic Skills

Roughly 400 miles from where Bart’s team waited, Volodymyr, 54, an infantryman with 19th Separate Rifle Battalion, was preparing for his first day of sniper instruction at a rifle range.

In front of him were paper targets plastered with an array of bull’s-eyes. There are few official Ukrainian sniper schools, and much of the instruction comes from ad hoc classrooms, private training and volunteers scattered around the country.

An instructor, left, assisting Volodymyr, 54, an infantryman who was attending his first day of sniper training at a shooting range.

A bullet-riddled mannequin used as one of the targets for sniper marksmanship training.

Some snipers have complained that the focus on assaulting trenches, a necessary tactic to reclaim territory, has made sniper training less of a priority among some commanders.

“It is a personal desire of me and my comrades to become snipers,” said Volodymyr. “I need to develop basic skills, because at the front there will be no time for this.”

Snipers interviewed for this article asked to be identified by only their call signs or first names, to protect their identities.

The number of snipers in Ukraine’s military is not publicly known but instructors estimate there are a few thousand, separated into two main categories. The majority are known as marksmen, capable of shooting people at around 300 yards. They are often in the trenches, supporting their comrades.

An instructor at an ad hoc sniper school, training volunteers from an army brigade fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Practicing a long-range shot at a shooting range in western Ukraine.

The second category are the scout snipers, known among the snipers as “long-range shooters.” These are the few infantrymen who can shoot accurately from a mile away and beyond, able to read the wind, temperature and barometric pressure (with help from a spotter) before slightly depressing the trigger.

On a recent September day, Volodymyr’s instructor was teaching him just that: how to pull the trigger.

“The trigger should be pulled straight down the barrel channel,” the instructor said. “If you pull it to one side, you will miss the target. If you pull it downward, you will provoke a jerk, which will also affect the aim of the shot.”

Volodymyr listened intently, easing himself behind the .338 caliber rifle arrayed in front of him.

“Many people are afraid to become snipers because there is a perception that snipers are one of the enemy’s priority targets,” he said.

Priority Targets

“At around 2400 our sniper at position 2 observed an enemy machine-gun nest,” read the report. It was written after a sniper mission that took place near the eastern city of Bakhmut earlier this year.

“Our sniper engaged the enemy machine-gun position,” the report continued, “resulting in two confirmed enemy” killed in action, “and one possible enemy” killed.

In military circles snipers are called a “force multiplier,” meaning they can have an outsized impact on the battlefield.

But pulling the trigger comes at a cost, especially in the age of drones and thermal sights, which ensure that no matter how well snipers are camouflaged, their body heat is likely toxflarge expose them (absent hard-to-acquire anti-thermal apparel). The dust, smoke and sometimes the flash discharged by a large caliber round as it exits the barrel at more than 2,700 feet per second can also be seen easily.

That means that not just any Russian soldier who appears in the cross hairs is a good candidate for a kill. The potential reward has to outweigh the risk. So the likelihood of taking a shot increases if that soldier is a “priority target” like a machine-gunner, an officer or an anti-tank guided missile crew member.

Or more important: Russian snipers.

“They have some fine guys, efficient ones,” said Marik, a Ukrainian sniper with an infantry battalion called the Da Vinci Wolves. “A few, but there are some. I think that one should never underestimate an enemy.”

A Ukrainian sniper in a battalion known as the Da Vinci Wolves arranging his rifles before heading east this summer.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

A sniper in the Da Vinci Wolves battalion storing one of his rifles before heading east.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

His team had managed to kill a group of them earlier in the war, he said, not with their rifles, but with artillery to ensure none escaped. The Russians try to do the same when they spot Ukrainian snipers.

“We probably saw them purely by chance,” he said.

A well-trained sniper team makes its presence known on the front line by harassing and killing until it withdraws — or is discovered and either suppressed or eliminated. It’s often a delicate dance for snipers as they pick their positions and choose either to fire or observe.

Killing another human with a high-powered rifle and scope is a calculated and occasionally intimate experience, unlike the up-close, frantic carnage of trench battles. Especially at long range, snipers often have to wait hours, using weather apps, ballistic calculators and notebooks to set their sights before they pull the trigger.

The bullets, specific to lethal long-range shooting, and their casings are often assembled by the snipers themselves — known as “handloading” — to ensure they are weighed perfectly for the task. High-end sniper ammunition is difficult to acquire given the many calibers used by Ukrainian forces, so volunteers often buy it privately, as well as sniper rifles, to help supply the ranks.

And unlike Western troops dealing with the moral complexity of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where insurgents blended in seamlessly with local populations, Ukrainian snipers, defending their country from invasion, see a clear imperative for pulling the trigger.

The sniper with the call sign Bart taking up a position. The advent of drones in modern warfare has made the sniper’s role more dangerous.

Bart, left, and other members of a Ukrainian sniper team testing their weapons and ammunition at a firing range before the next morning’s predawn operation.

“I think of people on the other side — they might not want to be here, but they are here,” said Raptor, another sniper on Bart’s team. “It is unnatural to kill someone but that’s our job.”

Indeed, kills are currency for snipers, who are often competing for resources with drone units and others on the battlefield. That’s one reason that Bart’s sniper team uses a powerful camera to record their shots.

“We have a saying: no video, no kill,” said the commander of Bart’s team.

But snipers do far more than shoot people at long range. In reality, killing an adversary is often the final step in a long list of other priorities, such as scouting, protecting assaulting units and locating targets for artillery.

Wind Change

At around two in the afternoon, the wind changed. It was no longer coming from the left, but instead blowing directly in front of the team’s position, spurring quick adjustment on their rifles.

Around this time a dreaded “FPV” drone — a cheap racing drone strapped with explosives — appeared in the skies, and three mortar rounds landed nearby. But no Russian soldiers appeared, just the incoming and outgoing artillery rounds that rattled doors in their frames and pushed the snipers into the building’s interior. The gusts howled through the wreckage, blowing the camouflage netting that helped conceal their positions.

Toward dusk as the ground cooled and the setting sun shone into the windows of the Russian building, the team spotted something in the back of a distant room. Was it a machine-gun position or something else?

With no clear answer there was little reason to shoot. They’d state that in the report when they returned and a unit would send an exploding drone.

Slowly, in that period between early evening and darkness, the team packed their bags and zipped up their rifles. They darted to the truck and drove away, the skeletons of the destroyed homes along the road now illuminated by the light of the rising moon.

Camouflage netting over a Ukrainian sniper’s rifle in an abandoned building overlooking a Russian position.

Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Day of the Unsung Ukrainian Sniper: Hiding and Waiting to Shoot

The New York Times · by Natalia Yermak · October 1, 2023

9. Japan’s plans have Taiwan focus

Excerpts:

These airports could be used as bases for the Japan Self-Defense Forces to deploy troops and supply Taiwan with fuel and food in case of a contingency, the newspaper said.

Yonaguni, New Ishigaki and Miyako airports with their 2,000m-long runways are difficult places to take off or land for heavy military transport aircraft including Japan’s Kawasaki C-2, capable of moving 100 people, it said.

The capability to accommodate heavy cargo planes would enable the evacuation of local residents if necessary, the newspaper said.

Other airports are being considered for runway extensions and installation of a variety of improvements encompassing new parking lots, taxiways and hangars that would allow their utilization by the Japan Self-Defense Forces and Coast Guard, according to the Nikkei.

A civilian runway of 2,500m or more that is easy to use for defense purposes is a security asset for Japan, a senior Japan Self-Defense Force official was quoted as saying.

Japan is eyeing Yonaguni Island for a new port capable of accommodating escort and patrol vessels, while the docks at Ishigaki, Hirara and Naha ports in Okinawa, Kumamoto port and Hakata port in Fukuoka are to be overhauled, Nikkei said.

Sun, Oct 01, 2023 page2

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2023/10/01/2003807039

Japan’s plans have Taiwan focus

RUNWAY UPGRADES: Airports and ports mainly scattered around southwestern Japan are being given major overhauls, primarily serving as civilian-use facilities

By Lin Tsuei-yi and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter in TOKYO, with staff writer
Japan has chosen 33 airports and ports as candidates for improvement to enhance military capabilities, with a particular focus on infrastructure that could be utilized in a Taiwan emergency, according to a recent report in Japan’s Nikkei Shimbun.
Citing the Japanese government’s fiscal budget proposal for next year, the newspaper said Toyko is to name some facilities as essential bases and receive funding for upgrades in line with the revamped national security strategy published last year.
According to an unofficial policy document drafted last month and reviewed by the Nikkei, the Japanese government designated 14 airports and 19 ports for improvement, including 16 facilities in the Ryukyu Islands encompassing Okinawa, as well as Kyushu and Shikoku.

The main entrance to the Japanese Ministry of Defense in Tokyo is pictured in an undated photograph.

Photo: CNA
The selection of the sites suggests a concern with areas near China, a country of surging military capabilities that analysts say could become the focal point of a major conflict in Asia, it said.
New Ishigaki, Miyako and Naha in Okinawa, Kagoshima and Miyazaki in Kyushu, and Kochi in Shikoku are among the airports listed in the government’s plan, the Nikkei said.
These airports could be used as bases for the Japan Self-Defense Forces to deploy troops and supply Taiwan with fuel and food in case of a contingency, the newspaper said.
Yonaguni, New Ishigaki and Miyako airports with their 2,000m-long runways are difficult places to take off or land for heavy military transport aircraft including Japan’s Kawasaki C-2, capable of moving 100 people, it said.
The capability to accommodate heavy cargo planes would enable the evacuation of local residents if necessary, the newspaper said.
Other airports are being considered for runway extensions and installation of a variety of improvements encompassing new parking lots, taxiways and hangars that would allow their utilization by the Japan Self-Defense Forces and Coast Guard, according to the Nikkei.
A civilian runway of 2,500m or more that is easy to use for defense purposes is a security asset for Japan, a senior Japan Self-Defense Force official was quoted as saying.
Japan is eyeing Yonaguni Island for a new port capable of accommodating escort and patrol vessels, while the docks at Ishigaki, Hirara and Naha ports in Okinawa, Kumamoto port and Hakata port in Fukuoka are to be overhauled, Nikkei said.
Facilities in Hokkaido and Fukui prefectures, which respectively have to deal with Russian and North Korean threats, are also to be upgraded, the Nikkei said.
The list of airports and ports to receive improvements is classified and its content is subject to change, it said.
Japan has begun briefing local officials on its plans and ranking members of the government already visited Miyako over the matter of refurbishing Miyako Airport and the Port of Hirara, Nikkei said.

10. Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works.

This article will not go over well with certain factions (perhaps even all factions!)

Excerpts:

There is one more reason the problem of unauthorized immigration has become so intractable. Over the past 20 years, incendiary rhetoric about migrants has become a powerful and popular political tool, and many elected officials now or recently in office have built their careers by wooing voters with such rhetoric. This path to power makes it difficult for them to compromise on any issue related to immigration, no matter how rational such flexibility might be given the facts of global migration and the demands of American businesses and consumers. For many of these politicians, blocking all or nearly all immigration to the United States is a top priority.

And though the Biden administration and congressional Democrats have cast themselves as more realistic on matters of global migration, they are also unlikely to spearhead much significant reform. Over the past three years, they have prioritized objectives that affect a larger portion of the electorate, like infrastructure and education bills. This also makes sense. Most voters, even Latino voters, rank immigration below the economy, education, gun policy and health care as a top concern. By definition, voters are already citizens. For most of them, rationalizing our immigration system is not a bread-and-butter issue.

Democrats like to blame Republicans for their own inaction on reform, but that’s only part of the story. The day Biden took the oath of office, his administration introduced a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, one designed to secure the borders, keep communities safe and “better manage migration across the Hemisphere.” Legislation based on that plan was introduced in the House weeks later as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, with 80 co-sponsors. The Oval Office, the Senate and the House were all under Democratic control. But the act died in subcommittee, along with several more modest immigration bills.

The only immigration policies that Congress can bring itself to enact, it seems, are funding more border security and ICE raids. But these actions alone will never fix America’s immigration problems. No matter what anyone says on Capitol Hill, migrants know that if they can just make it inside the United States, they will find relative safety — and plenty of work.

Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works.

Our broken immigration system is still the best option for many migrants — and U.S. employers.

The New York Times · by Marcela Valdes · October 1, 2023

Credit...Photo illustration by Lauren Peters-Collaer

Our broken immigration system is still the best option for many migrants — and U.S. employers.

Credit...Photo illustration by Lauren Peters-Collaer

Marcela Valdes, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, has reported on immigration for almost 10 years.

Oct. 1, 2023

‘We’re getting no support on this national crisis,’ Mayor Eric Adams said in September at a town-hall-style gathering on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He was talking about the influx of transnational migrants who have landed in the city’s shelter system: more than 118,000 since the spring of last year, with about 10,000 more arriving each month. There are now about 115,000 people in the city’s care, and more than half of them are migrants. In August, the city projected that it would spend $5 billion caring for migrants during this fiscal year.

“This issue will destroy New York City,” Adams told his audience. “Every service in this city is going to be impacted.”

Responding to the sense of crisis in New York and around the nation, the Department of Homeland Security recently announced that it would grant temporary protected status to about 472,000 Venezuelans, allowing them 18 months to live and work in the United States. This measure may help New York because many of the migrants there have traveled to the state from Venezuela (via Texas). But as Adams pointed out on the Upper West Side, New York now also shelters migrants from “all over the globe,” including Ecuador, Eastern Europe and West Africa — so the Biden administration’s decision on temporary protected status is, at best, a partial and fleeting solution.

The three most recent presidents have tried and failed to fix the problem of mass unauthorized migration into the United States. President Obama tried to balance empathy with enforcement, deferring the deportation of those who arrived as minors and instructing immigration officers to prioritize the arrest of serious criminals, even as he connected every jail in the nation to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). President Trump emphasized enforcement at all costs: revoking deferred action for minors, declaring the arrest of every undocumented person a priority, separating migrant families and trying to terminate temporary protected status for about 400,000 people — though Trump also extended deferred action to about 200,000 Venezuelans during his last full day in office.

So far, President Biden has revived the empathy-and-enforcement strategy: resuming deferred action for minors and helping Venezuelans while also making it more difficult to qualify for asylum.

But these variations in policy have had almost no effect on the number of migrants trying to enter the United States through the Southern border. Obama and Trump chose mostly opposing strategies, but each prioritized the arrest of unauthorized migrants in the Rio Grande Valley. Yet in 2019, before the pandemic gave Trump legal standing to force asylum seekers back into Mexico, Customs and Border Protection (C.B.P.) arrested about 82,000 more migrants there than they had at the peak of migrations in the Obama years.

Already, a new group of presidential candidates promises that things will be different if they’re elected. But barring a major reorganization of America’s immigration system, these problems are unlikely to improve over the long term. That’s because the “solutions” rarely address the root cause: Unauthorized immigration, for all the obstacles America throws at it, remains a boon for countless U.S. employers and a reasonable bet for migrants who seek a better life.

To begin with, it’s important to recognize that our world is simply a more mobile place than it ever has been before. The number of people who leave their homes to seek better lives in foreign nations has been rising, in absolute and proportional terms, for decades. According to the United Nations, 281 million people were living outside their birth countries in 2020. That’s 3.5 percent more than in 2019 — despite the travel restrictions imposed in response to Covid-19 and before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The U.N.’s report lumps together all kinds of international migrants. It includes professionals with visas working abroad, asylum applicants seeking to permanently change residence and undocumented laborers doing seasonal work. But its figures are useful, nevertheless. They demonstrate both the world’s increasing fluidity and America’s unique status as a favored destination. Though only about a fifth of international migrants head to North America, the United States has attracted more migrants than any other nation for the past 50 years. In 2020, the U.N. notes, the United States held about 51 million international migrants. The runner-up, Germany, had about 16 million.

Migrants dream of America because they are an entrenched part of our economy. This is nothing new; America’s economy has always relied upon a mass of disempowered, foreign-born laborers, whether it was enslaved Africans picking cotton, Chinese building railroads, Irish digging coal, Italians sewing garments or Mexicans harvesting fruit. Even today, some sectors in the U.S. economy seem almost reserved for workers who have been deliberately kept vulnerable. When Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, establishing a minimum wage, they excluded most farmworkers and domestic workers from its protections. These workers were largely excluded again when Congress passed the Occupational Health and Safety Act in 1970. “These spaces that were once filled by slaves are now filled by immigrants,” Anita Sinha, a professor of law at American University told me. “They are exploitative by design.”

Other sectors use foreign-born labor as a more recent strategy. When the anthropologist Angela Stuesse investigated the history of the poultry industry in Mississippi, for example, she found that when African American workers organized for better wages and working conditions in the 1970s, businessmen cultivated an alternative work force of Latin Americans, whom they found in Texas and Florida. As they recruited and transported these migrants, she demonstrates, they catalyzed the demographic transformation of central Mississippi and the poultry industry across the South.

Today migrants are routinely employed in almost every blue- and pink-collar industry in America. Recent Times investigations by Hannah Dreier found unaccompanied minors packing Cheerios, washing hotel sheets and sanitizing chicken-processing plants. The United States has laws banning these and other abusive labor practices, but many companies have found a workaround: staffing agencies. “They’re all designed to skirt litigations,” Kevin Herrera, the legal director of Raise the Floor Alliance, in Chicago, once explained to me. Many of these agencies specialize in hiring people who will suffer any number of degrading or dangerous conditions because they are desperate for work. Their offices are sometimes inside the company factories. But if one of their employees files a complaint, is injured on the job or is caught working illegally, the agency runs interference so that the company avoids legal responsibility.

A migrant worker on a farm in Homestead, Fla., earlier this year.

American consumers benefit from these systems every time they find exceptionally inexpensive ways to get their lawns cut, their bathrooms cleaned, their houses built, their apples picked, their nails painted and their young and old cared for. The prices we pay for these services have been subsidized for generations by transnational migrants. In 2015, economists at Texas A&M concluded that if immigrant labor were eliminated from the dairy industry, the retail price of milk would nearly double. More recently, in Florida, construction projects stalled and their costs rose after the state passed new laws targeting undocumented residents. Economists say that recent migrants have also blunted the worst effects of post-pandemic inflation.

In the United States, versions of these economic dynamics have always been in play, but what has changed over the past 100 years is the way that immigration policy has created a permanent class of disenfranchised “illegal” workers.

Until the 1920s, America received migrants with an almost open border. Our policies emphasized regulation, not restriction. A few general categories were barred from entry — polygamists and convicted criminals, for example — but almost everyone else was permitted to enter the United States and reside indefinitely. The move toward restriction began in 1882 with laws that targeted the Chinese then evolved to exclude almost every other national group as well.

Legal immigration today is close to impossible for most people. David J. Bier of the Cato Institute recently estimated that around 3 percent of the people who tried to move permanently to the United States were able to do so legally. “Legal immigration is less like waiting in line and more like winning the lottery: It happens, but it is so rare that it is irrational to expect it in any individual case,” he wrote in a comprehensive review of the current regulations. He concludes that “trying the legal immigration system as an alternative to immigrating illegally is like playing Powerball as an alternative to saving for retirement.”

In other words, illegal immigration is the natural consequence of the conflict between America’s thirst for foreign labor and its strict immigration laws. The world’s increasing connectedness and fluidity have just supercharged this dynamic. There are now more than 11 million undocumented immigrants inside the United States, three times the number that lived here in 1990. And during the last fiscal year, the number of C.B.P. arrests in the Rio Grande Valley hit a record: more than half a million.

Congress tends to invest heavily in immigration enforcement but not in the enforcement of labor laws that could dissuade businesses from exploiting unauthorized workers in the first place.

Periodically, American presidents have tried to release pressure from these systems by granting amnesty or temporary protection from deportation to large groups of migrants, as Biden recently did for Venezuelans. But these are short-term Band-Aids that do little to affect the ongoing causes of illegal immigration and still leave millions of workers vulnerable to abuse.

Congress, for its part, has proved itself incapable of passing the kind of legislation necessary to recalibrate the economic incentives. Though five major immigration reform bills have been brought to a vote since 2006, none of them made it through both the House and the Senate. To be fair, perhaps no single legislative act or executive order could ever change these dynamics. But some people have suggested targeted measures that could make unauthorized migration less chaotic, less exploitative and less profitable to unscrupulous actors.

The National Association of Immigration Judges has made a strong case for increasing the funding for immigration courts. There are now more than 2.5 million cases pending in these courts, and their average processing time is four years. To handle this backlog, the nation has fewer than 700 immigration-court judges. According to Mimi Tsankov, president of the association, this disparity between manpower and caseload is the primary reason many immigration cases, especially complex asylum cases, take years to resolve. To speed processing times, Tsankov explained, the courts need more judges but also more interpreters, legal assistants and law clerks. Improved efficiency would benefit those who merit asylum. Others say that it would also decrease the incentive to submit frivolous asylum claims in order to reside legally in the United States while waiting for an application to be denied.

Among academics, another idea keeps resurfacing: a deadline for deportations. Most crimes in America have a statute of limitations, Mae Ngai, a professor of history at Columbia University, noted in an opinion column for The Washington Post. The statute of limitations for noncapital terrorism offenses, for example, is eight years. Before the 1924 Immigration Act, Ngai wrote in her book about the history of immigration policy, the statute of limitations for deportations was at most five years. Returning to this general principle, at least for migrants who have no significant criminal record, would allow ICE officers and immigration judges to focus on the recent influx of unauthorized migrants. A deadline could also improve labor conditions for all Americans because, as Ngai wrote, “it would go a long way toward stemming the accretion of a caste population that is easily exploitable and lives forever outside the polity.”

One of the most curious aspects of American immigration politics is that Congress tends to invest heavily in immigration enforcement but not in the enforcement of labor laws that could dissuade businesses from exploiting unauthorized workers in the first place. Congress more than doubled the annual budgets for ICE and C.B.P. from 2006 to 2021. At the same time, it kept the budgets for the three federal agencies most responsible for preventing workplace abuse — OSHA, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board — essentially flat. There are now only 750 Department of Labor investigators responsible for the country’s 11 million workplaces. “As absurd as it sounds, the enforcement of labor standards is a very controversial thing to do in this country,” David Weil, the former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division, told me earlier this year. The laws needed to protect the interests of workers are already on the books, he said; the Department of Labor just needs funding adequate to enforce them.

There is one more reason the problem of unauthorized immigration has become so intractable. Over the past 20 years, incendiary rhetoric about migrants has become a powerful and popular political tool, and many elected officials now or recently in office have built their careers by wooing voters with such rhetoric. This path to power makes it difficult for them to compromise on any issue related to immigration, no matter how rational such flexibility might be given the facts of global migration and the demands of American businesses and consumers. For many of these politicians, blocking all or nearly all immigration to the United States is a top priority.

And though the Biden administration and congressional Democrats have cast themselves as more realistic on matters of global migration, they are also unlikely to spearhead much significant reform. Over the past three years, they have prioritized objectives that affect a larger portion of the electorate, like infrastructure and education bills. This also makes sense. Most voters, even Latino voters, rank immigration below the economy, education, gun policy and health care as a top concern. By definition, voters are already citizens. For most of them, rationalizing our immigration system is not a bread-and-butter issue.

Democrats like to blame Republicans for their own inaction on reform, but that’s only part of the story. The day Biden took the oath of office, his administration introduced a plan for comprehensive immigration reform, one designed to secure the borders, keep communities safe and “better manage migration across the Hemisphere.” Legislation based on that plan was introduced in the House weeks later as the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, with 80 co-sponsors. The Oval Office, the Senate and the House were all under Democratic control. But the act died in subcommittee, along with several more modest immigration bills.

The only immigration policies that Congress can bring itself to enact, it seems, are funding more border security and ICE raids. But these actions alone will never fix America’s immigration problems. No matter what anyone says on Capitol Hill, migrants know that if they can just make it inside the United States, they will find relative safety — and plenty of work.

Top Image: Source photograph from Getty Images.

Marcela Valdes is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. She specializes in writing about Latino and Latin American politics and culture. More about Marcela Valdes

A version of this article appears in print on , Page 48 of the Sunday Magazine

The New York Times · by Marcela Valdes · October 1, 2023

11. How to Hamstring U.S. Intelligence on Section 702

How to Hamstring U.S. Intelligence on Section 702

A federal civil liberties board has forgotten the lessons of 9/11.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/section-702-fisa-civil-liberties-surveillance-terrorism-pclob-56903b24?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

By The Editorial Board

Sept. 29, 2023 6:29 pm ET

Sharon Bradford Franklin, U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board Chair, testifies during the House Judiciary Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Subcommittee hearing on FISA in April. PHOTO: MARIAM ZUHAIB/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Congress is a mess these days, but can it at least act to protect U.S. security? That test will arrive soon as Congress considers whether to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The ideas in a report on the program released Thursday by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) would leave the U.S. vulnerable.

The 702 program lets the government surveil foreigners outside the U.S. for the purposes of national security. When foreigners communicate with people inside the U.S., the information is incidentally collected and those U.S. connections may later be queried by law enforcement. Judicious applications of that power shouldn’t be a problem, but recent abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation have called the surveillance into question.

Enter the PCLOB, a five-member executive branch agency established by Congress after 9/11 to help the intelligence community balance national security with privacy and civil liberties. The good news is that the board agrees that 702 should be renewed when it expires in December.

But the Democratic majority is pushing changes that would add bureaucratic delays in intelligence gathering and undermine 702’s utility. They say that when the government wants to run a query for a U.S. name that was incidentally collected under 702, the search should require approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They add that a U.S. person query should be allowed if deemed “‘reasonably likely to retrieve’ foreign intelligence or . . . evidence of a crime.”

Chair Sharon Bradford Franklin would have also required that the FISA court permit U.S. person queries only if they meet the high domestic legal standard of “probable cause.” That would gut the program. It would also make it easier for al Qaeda or ISIS to plant agents in the U.S. who could evade detection.

The board majority allows that there should be exceptions for “exigent circumstances” or when the FBI is searching the name to protect a potential victim. But exigent circumstances aren’t always clear. An overseas call from Afghanistan could be a domestic terrorist cell, or could be a relative in Minneapolis. Only the search itself can tell the difference.

Republicans and civil libertarians have been right to flag abuses like database queries for Black Lives Matter and Jan. 6 protesters, but it is possible to overstate the risks. The board’s majority claims that when the government queries U.S. persons, the investigation “is analytically equivalent to targeting.”

Not true. A query doesn’t collect new information. It searches existing information that was lawfully gathered in foreign intelligence. The National Security Agency and the FBI have compliance rates over 99% for that collection from foreigners overseas. The query is merely pulling from that existing data. They are not targeting Americans.

Any surveillance power has risks, and the FBI’s recent history calls for stronger safeguards. But a search warrant is no guarantee against abuse, as the lies to the FISA court by James Comey’s FBI showed. Republican board members Beth Williams and Richard DiZinno note that some of the majority’s recommendations would “force additional investigation of U.S. persons,” which would present greater infringements on privacy.

The board recommends that the Justice Department annually review FBI field offices for compliance, which sounds fine. It’s reasonable to expect that all 702 queries of U.S. persons be documented, and agents could be asked to certify annually that their searches have been in compliance. Criminal penalties for agents who abuse their powers or conduct improper searches should be significant enough to deter spelunking through the data.

Section 702 has proven to be a valuable tool to identify threats, and tying it up in new procedural knots would hamstring one of the only asymmetric advantages we have against terrorists in a still dangerous world.

12. 9/11 suspect ‘admitted White House was fourth target’

9/11 suspect ‘admitted White House was fourth target’

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed made ‘voluntary confession’ at Guantanamo, court told

The Times · by Michael Evans · October 1, 2023

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “voluntarily” admitted to an FBI agent that the plan had been to hit the White House or the Capitol as well as the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The “confession” by the man said to have been the operations director of al-Qaeda was given during an interrogation in 2007 at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, Frank Pellegrino, a retired FBI agent, told the latest pre-trial hearing for Mohammed and the other 9/11 accused. A date has not been set for the full trial.

“When we went in to speak to him, we were very comfortable that he was speaking to us voluntarily, given every opportunity to walk away,” Pellegrino told the Guantanamo military courtroom. He said he had been unaware at the time that Mohammed had been detained by the CIA in secret “black” prisons in Poland and Romania since 2003 and subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including being waterboarded 183 times.

The Empty Sky 9/11 Memorial in Jersey City on the 22nd anniversary of the attack

GARY HERSHORN/GETTY IMAGES

However, he insisted the 13-hour interrogation he took part in was carried out on a voluntary basis, although he admitted to the court that Mohammed, now 58, was not granted a lawyer when he asked for one. With an FBI colleague taking notes, Mohammed freely described the three targets of the 9/11 hijacked-plane attacks, Pellegrino said: the World Trade Center, as America’s economic symbol; the Pentagon, as the military symbol; and either the White House or the Capitol as the political symbol.

Passengers on United Airlines flight 93 confronted the hijackers when they realised where they were heading and forced the plane to crash into a field in Pennsylvania. All 44 people on board, including the four hijackers, died.

Underlining the easygoing atmosphere of the interrogation at Guantanamo, Pellegrino said he told Mohammed he was envious of the laptop he was using before he was captured. Mohammed responded: “Frank, if you join al-Qaeda, I can get you a good computer.”

The issue of Mohammed’s treatment at the hands of the CIA in the three years before he was moved to Guantanamo lies at the core of his defence case.

In August a military judge ruled that a confession made to federal agents by Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of orchestrating the attack on the destroyer USS Cole which killed 17 sailors in Aden, Yemen, in 2000, was inadmissible because of the torture he had suffered during CIA interrogations.

Mohammed has been held at the centre since 2006. He and four other detainees are charged with several offences, including the murder of 2,977 people. They all face the death penalty if convicted. The trial has been delayed by years of legal arguments, principally linked to the torture they suffered. They are among 30 inmates still detained at Guantanamo, down from about 780 at one point.

The Times · by Michael Evans · October 1, 2023

13. Why Consumers Are Mad About Inflation Even Though It Has Fallen

Why Consumers Are Mad About Inflation Even Though It Has Fallen

Prices are rising more slowly, but consumers fixate on how much lower they were before the pandemic, a problem for Biden

https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/why-consumers-are-mad-about-inflation-even-though-it-has-fallen-ce39ca40?mod=hp_lead_pos3

By Amara Omeokwe

Oct. 1, 2023 5:30 am ET

The cost of milk has actually decreased from earlier this year, but remains higher than prepandemic. PHOTO: AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Inflation has fallen sharply in the past year. The economy remains strong. Yet Americans remain deeply unhappy about the economy, often citing inflation. It continues to weigh on President Biden’s approval and re-election hopes.

What gives?

One big reason: While economists and the Federal Reserve focus on inflation, which is the rate of change in prices, Americans in their everyday lives usually focus on the absolute price of the things they need and want.

On that front, prices for many items, though rising more slowly this year than last, remain well above their levels just before or at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and aren’t likely to return to where they were.

Inflation as measured by the Labor Department’s consumer-price index was 3.7% in August compared with a year earlier, down sharply from the 9.1% recent peak in June 2022, thanks in part to a series of aggressive interest-rate hikes from the Fed.

Using the Fed’s preferred gauge—the price index of personal-consumption expenditures—the Commerce Department said Friday that inflation was 3.5% in August, a slight uptick from 3.4% in July. Core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy, rose just 0.1%, and 2.2% at an annual rate in the past three months, providing the Fed evidence of continued cooling of price pressures.

Despite easing inflation, consumer confidence is low. U.S. consumer sentiment in September fell slightly compared with August, as Americans’ assessment of current economic conditions retreated, a University of Michigan survey found.

Milk, gasoline still up $1 since before pandemic

Behind the dichotomy: For consumers, prices at the grocery store, gas station and car dealership are noticeably higher than in recent memory. A gallon of whole milk in August cost $3.93 on average in the U.S., according to the Labor Department. Though lower than earlier in 2023, it was still nearly $1, or 29%, more than in August 2019.

A gallon of regular unleaded gasoline cost $3.84 on average in August, according to data provider OPIS, 46% higher than the roughly $2.63 a gallon four years earlier.

While the average price of a new vehicle declined over the summer from earlier in the year, it was $45,516 in September, initial estimates from J.D. Power show, compared with $33,822 the same month in 2019.

“The fact that inflation has come down doesn’t mean prices have come down,” said Tim Quinlan, senior economist at

Wells Fargo. “For consumers, as long as prices remain elevated, which is what they are from their perspective, it still kind of weighs on confidence.”

A gallon of gas costs more than it did four years ago. PHOTO: ROBYN BECK/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan survey, said Americans are still adjusting to higher price levels after enjoying roughly a decade of low inflation leading up to the pandemic.

“Consumers understand that we’re not going back to 2019, but they’re still trying to figure out what this new normal looks like,” Hsu said. “People are still trying to figure out, can their incomes keep pace with inflation or is inflation just going to keep eroding their living standards?”

Economists typically don’t view deflation, or outright declines in prices, as desirable for an economy, said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM. Still, consumers are “angry that the price level has reset higher on a permanent basis” for many items, he said.

Inflation as measured by the consumer-price index is down sharply from its peak last year. PHOTO: MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

Prices for some food items might fall back to near previous levels if they rose in response to a specific shock that resolves, said Jayson Lusk, dean of agricultural sciences at Oklahoma State University. For example, a dozen eggs jumped from about $1.93 in January 2022 to $4.82 in January 2023, reflecting an avian flu outbreak, but was down to $2.04 by August.

With labor costs up, prices aren’t likely to drop

Prices for groceries and dining out are likely to remain elevated for some time, Lusk said, as those industries deal with higher costs, such as workers’ pay. While wages are rising a bit more slowly in 2023 than 2022, in some industries, including leisure and hospitality, they continue to grow briskly as the demand for such workers remains high. And wages—unlike some prices, such as those for commodities—rarely ever go down.

“It is true that what happens on the farm affects food prices, but it generally is a small part of the overall cost of food,” Lusk said. “The labor market continues to be tight and that’s putting pressure on prices.”

Biden’s hopes for re-election next year rest in part on inflation fading as a concern. Yet the fall in inflation to date hasn’t helped him much. Roughly 63% of voters in a Wall Street Journal poll conducted at the end of August said they disapprove of Biden’s handling of inflation and nearly three in five said the U.S. economy has gotten worse over the last two years. That might reflect the failure of prices to actually decline, rather than simply rise more slowly.

Still, the downbeat mood hasn’t affected Americans’ willingness to spend, given plentiful jobs and low unemployment.

“That permanent shock to the price level has resulted in sour consumer sentiment. However, it does not exactly square with consumer behavior,” said Brusuelas.

At Martin Chevrolet Buick GMC, a car dealership in Cleveland, Texas, demand is especially strong for vehicles with price tags in the high $20,000s because of their relative affordability, said President Janet Martin-Clark.

“We actually have waiting lists on these low-price vehicles because people want them because the prices have gone up so much,” she said.

Martin-Clark said she doesn’t foresee that vehicle prices overall will go back near where they were before the pandemic, because supplies are still choppy. Another reason: She herself is dealing with higher costs of doing business, such as workers’ pay and insurance, that eat into the dealership’s profitability.

“I’m trying to think of one area where prices have eased and I can’t think of anything,” Martin-Clark said.

Write to Amara Omeokwe at amara.omeokwe@wsj.com

14. A U.S. Army hospital has quietly started admitting troops wounded in Ukraine.

Where else can you get the best combat trauma care in Europe?

A U.S. Army hospital has quietly started admitting troops wounded in Ukraine.

By Dave Philipps and Eric Schmitt

Sept. 29, 2023

The New York Times · by Eric Schmitt · September 29, 2023

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the U.S. Army’s flagship medical center in Germany, in 2021.Credit...Marcy Sanchez/U.S. Army, via Associated Press

Sept. 29, 2023

A group of Ukrainian Army soldiers pierced by Russian grenades and mortar shells arrived at a hospital recently in need of surgery. It would have been a familiar scene from the bloody war grinding on in Ukraine, except for two crucial differences: Most of the wounded soldiers were American, and so was the hospital — the U.S. Army’s flagship medical center in Germany.

The Army has quietly started to treat wounded Americans and other fighters evacuated from Ukraine at its Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. Though the number so far is small — currently 14 — it marks a notable new step in the United States’ deepening involvement in the conflict.

When the war erupted in 2022, hundreds of Americans — many of them military veterans — rushed to help defend Ukraine. Nineteen months later, perhaps a few hundred are still there, volunteering for local militias or serving under contract with the Ukrainian national army.

An unknown number of them have been shot, hit by artillery, blown up by mines or otherwise injured in combat. About 20 have been killed. Most of the wounded have had to rely on a patchwork of Ukrainian hospitals and Western charities for help. Now, though, the Pentagon has stepped in to offer some of them the same care it gives to American active-duty troops.

Dave Philipps writes about war, the military and veterans and covers The Pentagon. More about Dave Philipps

Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. More about Eric Schmitt

The New York Times · by Eric Schmitt · September 29, 2023

15. Introduction of New China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert

A good man.

Introduction of New China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert - United States Department of State

state.gov · by Office of the Spokesperson

Home Office of the Spokesperson Press Releases...Introduction of New China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert

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Media Note

September 29, 2023

Today, we welcome Mark Lambert as China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Mark will oversee the Office of China Coordination and the Office of Taiwan Coordination in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Mark is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service who most recently served as Deputy Assistant Secretary with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. He has deep experience working on issues related to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), forging aligned policies with our allies and partners, and protecting the integrity of the international system, and has served twice at Embassy Beijing. The Office of China Coordination is enabling the Department to deliver on the Administration’s “invest, align, compete” approach to the PRC and advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system. It is a key component of the Secretary’s modernization agenda, which is focused on equipping the Department to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities of the decade ahead. The Secretary and Department leadership are committed to ensuring we have the talent, tools, and resources to successfully execute U.S. policy and strategy towards the PRC as the most complex and consequential geopolitical challenge we face.

state.gov · by Office of the Spokesperson

16. Privacy watchdog recommends court approval for FBI searches of spy data

Privacy watchdog recommends court approval for FBI searches of spy data

The recommendations from the executive branch's privacy watchdog to reform Section 702 puts the panel at odds with the White House.

TONYA RILEY

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

cyberscoop.com · by Tonya Riley · September 28, 2023

The Democratic majority of a presidentially appointed privacy watchdog recommended in a report issued Thursday that Congress overhaul a controversial surveillance law to require court approval for searches of data belonging to U.S. persons.

The recommendation by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board may shape efforts in Congress regarding whether to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a powerful spying tool that expires later this year and allows intelligence agencies to collect the communications of non-U.S. persons abroad whose communications transit American telecommunications systems.

The Biden administration and members of the intelligence community describe the tool as essential to the nation’s security, including its use in combatting cyberattacks and combatting the fentanyl crisis. Civil liberties advocates argue that the law has granted far too much power to the government to collect communications and that data belonging to U.S. persons often end up being swept up by a law meant to authorize surveillance of foreign targets.

Thursday’s report recommends that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a secret judicial body that reviews intelligence requests, use current FBI search standards stating that agents are only allowed to search for data on U.S. persons if they reasonably suspect it may generate foreign intelligence information or evidence of a crime to consider and approve the bureau’s requests to search data collected under Section 702 for information belonging to U.S. persons.

Currently, the FISC reviews compliance with these standards after searches for data belonging to U.S. persons, which include all legal U.S. residents, are carried out. Requiring court approval to carry out these searches would likely reduce the amount of U.S. person data made available to the FBI via Section 702.

PCLOB has recommended that reforms for court approval come with two exemptions, including if a substantial portion of FBI queries are related to victims and if law enforcement has victim consent to carry out searches. These exemptions seemingly address long-held complaints from the intelligence community that a court approval requirement would impede investigating ransomware attacks.

Speaking Thursday in Washington, Sharon Bradford Franklin, the veteran privacy expert who chairs the PCLOB, described the reforms as “critically important to ensure the query aspects of the Section 702 program are on sound constitutional footing and protects Americans’ right to privacy in their communications” and urged Congress to incorporate the board’s suggestions in re-authorizing the law.

The report was passed along a 3-2 vote, demonstrating a deep divide over the issue of court approval. The two Republican members of the PCLOB sharply dissented from the report, including the recommendation to require court approval and called the measure “contrary to the evidence and unmoored from the law.”

“We strongly disagree with the majority of the Board, which has not focused on the actual risks at hand,” board members Beth Williams and Richard DiZinno said in a statement. “Nevertheless, the Section 702 program is so valuable that not one Member of this Board believes Congress should allow it to lapse.”

The White House also expressed concerns about the recommendation.

A senior White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity called the suggestion for court approval “deeply concerning” and described such a requirement “as the worst of both worlds,” leaving agencies sitting on national security information used to “protect lives, protect companies, guard against espionage” for weeks while waiting for court approval.

The official declined to say what other reforms the White House is weighing beyond codifying the 2021 FBI reforms but said that the discussion with lawmakers “needs to be a conversation that happens in good faith communication.”

Thursday’s report was welcomed by civil liberties groups, who argued it validated their long-standing arguments about the need for reform. “The message of the Board’s report is clear: individualized judicial review of U.S. person queries is critical to protect Americans’ rights and prevent further abuses,” a coalition of rights groups including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Demand Progress, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Free Press Action and the Brennan Center wrote in a statement. “The report flatly rejects the government’s self-serving claim that individualized judicial review is unworkable.”

The FBI’s well-documented misuse of data collected through Section 702 has put the law in the crosshairs of lawmakers and critics, who argue that it should only be renewed with significant reforms. In May, the court tasked with overseeing America’s foreign surveillance released a heavily redacted 2022 opinion detailing more than 278,000 violations in 2020 and 2021 by the FBI of rules for accessing FISA intelligence.

The violations included the use of Section 702 intelligence against Black Lives Matter protestors and January 6 participants, which has fueled a desire for reform on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

In theory, requiring court approval of searches could limit misuse.

“Although Section 702 is touted as a foreign intelligence tool, it is apparent that a key feature is domestic intelligence and criminal law enforcement,” Board Member Travis LeBlanc said in a statement. “Such a program warrants court approval of individual U.S. person queries, which would reduce compliance errors, promote accountability, and build public trust in a surveillance program long beleaguered by a wide range of privacy and civil liberties threats.”

At the heart of the debate over reforming Section 702 is whether to require pre-authorization for searching data collected under the law. A number of members of Congress as well as civil liberties advocates have expressed support for a warrant requirement calling for probable cause in queries of U.S. persons data, a step beyond what the PCLOB is recommending.

But Franklin, the board’s chair, said in a statement accompanying the release of Thursday’s report that she supported adding a warrant requirement to searches of U.S. persons data, though the broader board did not back that recommendation.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement that reforming U.S. surveillance authorities requires overhauling more than just Section 702 and consideration of other, broader surveillance authorities. Welcoming the report, Wyden said that “Section 702 can be reformed while also ensuring that Americans are protected from threats, whether from terrorism or in cyberspace.”

The intelligence community and White House officials have said a warrant requirement would be detrimental to national security, and the White House has thrown its support behind codifying internal reforms by the FBI to curb abuse, which the bureau claims resulted in a 96% drop in 2022 of queries to 702 data.

The majority report sharply contrasts with a report from the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in July, which concurred with the White House in supporting codifying new FBI compliance standards. The Presidential Intelligence Advisory Board also recommended removing the FBI’s authority to conduct queries for non-national security-related crimes.

However, it rebuked calls for a warrant requirement, calling it “not only impractical” but “unjustified.”

Other recommendations from PCLOB’s Thursday report include requiring the NSA to examine methods for estimating the incidental collection of U.S. persons data, something both Congress and civil liberties advocates have long demanded. The board also recommended that Congress codify a White House executive order from last year outlining twelve legitimate objectives for signals intelligence collection.

The board’s recommendations also include calls for reform at the FBI, including codifying the 2021 compliance reforms, requiring ongoing training, and additional review by the DOJ and ODNI of compliance.

Recommendations from the dissenting members of the board include that Congress enact a criminal statute for those who leak protected Section 702 data and that the intelligence community adopt new rules to protect against misuse of Section 702 data for “political purposes.”

Jeramie Scott, a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Thursday’s report “puts to rest any debate over requiring judicial review approval before accessing American’s communications acquired without a warrant” but cautioned that “reforming Section 702 alone will not address the broader warrantless surveillance ecosystem that affects Americans and their communities every day.”

The report arrives as the clock winds down for Congress to decide whether to renew the surveillance authority, which is set to expire at the end of the year. Lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation to reform the authority in the coming weeks, and Thursday’s report is likely to help frame debates on the issue.

Some Republican lawmakers have expressed resistance to renewing the authority at all, while others including House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, have joined with Democrats, including Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in opposing renewal without significant reforms.

The PCLOB report is a potential blow to the White House, which has positioned the failure to renew the authority as a significant intelligence failure that would put American lives at risk.

PCLOB was established by Congress in 2004 in response to a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission Report and made an independent agency in 2007. Franklin, the board’s chair, was confirmed in February 2022, restoring the board to a full quorum after it went more than a year without one.

PCLOB has played an essential role in raising privacy and civil liberties concerns about intelligence programs, providing the public with a rare view into some of the intelligence community’s most closely guarded work. In addition to reviewing Section 702, it notably conducted a comprehensive review of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program in 2014, finding that the program lacked a “viable legal foundation” and had failed to meaningfully contribute to any specific terrorism investigations.

Updated, Sept. 28, 2023: This article has been updated with comments from a coalition of rights groups, with remarks from Sharon Bradford Franklin at a Washington event, and a statement from Sen. Ron Wyden.

cyberscoop.com · by Tonya Riley · September 28, 2023

17. Soldiers worry that ROTC admin error could upend retirement plans

Go figure. We have long believed this in this "benefit" and anyone who has counseled someone about going green to gold has used this "benefit" as a talking point.

Excerpts:

For years, soldiers in the Green to Gold Active Duty Option (G2GADO) program have counted their time in school as “time in service” — the months and years spent in uniform that, over time, yield increasingly lucrative pay raises and retirement benefits. Earlier this month, to the shock of program alumni interviewed by Army Times, the U.S. Army Cadet Command’s inspector general published guidance noting that federal law “strictly prohibits” members of G2GADO and other ROTC initiatives from counting the years they spent as cadets towards their official time in service.

The prohibition, if applied retroactively, could require soldiers to spend at least two more years in the Army if they hope to meet important service milestones, upending post-military personal and professional plans. An additional year of active service can also yield promotions and pay bumps. G2GADO graduates who received service wages while participating in the program fret that the Army may claw back thousands of dollars in potentially misappropriated funds.

Soldiers worry that ROTC admin error could upend retirement plans

armytimes.com · by Jaime Moore-Carrillo · September 29, 2023

Former participants in a popular Army education program worry they may be forced to delay their retirement plans and repay thousands of dollars in wages after the recent discovery of a long-running statutory oversight.

For years, soldiers in the Green to Gold Active Duty Option (G2GADO) program have counted their time in school as “time in service” — the months and years spent in uniform that, over time, yield increasingly lucrative pay raises and retirement benefits. Earlier this month, to the shock of program alumni interviewed by Army Times, the U.S. Army Cadet Command’s inspector general published guidance noting that federal law “strictly prohibits” members of G2GADO and other ROTC initiatives from counting the years they spent as cadets towards their official time in service.

The prohibition, if applied retroactively, could require soldiers to spend at least two more years in the Army if they hope to meet important service milestones, upending post-military personal and professional plans. An additional year of active service can also yield promotions and pay bumps. G2GADO graduates who received service wages while participating in the program fret that the Army may claw back thousands of dollars in potentially misappropriated funds.

The inspector general notice claimed the Army’s Integrated Personnel and Pay System, a streamlined human resources network debuted last fall, uncovered the improper time in service calculations. The error’s discovery, and its potential fallout for soldiers, is the latest instance of new military personnel management programs exposing years-old HR errors — and leaving rank-and-file to deal with the consequences.

The Green to Gold program grants enlisted soldiers the opportunity to complete two years of university schooling and, upon receiving their degree, commission as an officer. Whereas some Green to Gold scholarship programs require participants to pause their service while in school, the active duty option allows soldiers to maintain active duty status and receive commensurate pay and allowances.

The Army authorized G2GADO in June 2004, according to an internal Department of the Army memo shared with Army Times. The program accepted up to 200 soldiers annually for the first four years of its existence before upping the cap to 400, according to a separate memo dated by officials to 2008. The latter memo directed the Army Human Resources Command, in coordination with USACC, to notify candidates “that for the purpose of computing length of service for any purpose, an officer appointed under this section may not be credited with enlisted service for the period covered by his advanced training.”

Roughly 2,100 soldiers participated in G2GADO between 2014 and 2023, according to Maj. Dan Lessard, the lead spokesperson for U.S. Army Cadet Command.

In recent weeks, soldiers have vented their frustrations in popular Reddit channels and G2GADO alumni Facebook groups with thousands of members. Army Times spoke directly with three past G2GADO participants about their experiences and concerns.

The graduates told Army Times they’d applied for the program with the understanding that their time in school — during which they’d often juggle classroom and active duty responsibilities — would count as time in service. No higher-up told them otherwise before, during, or after the program, they said. Indeed, those who reached the time-in-service milestones while in the program said they received their scheduled pay raises.

“Myself, and all of the ADOs that I’m friends with and I’ve talked to — all of them were told the same thing: that nothing would change if we were Green to Gold ADO,” 2nd Lt. Reuben Peck, an Army cyber officer who used G2GADO to complete his master’s degree, told Army Times. “Nothing would change. The retirement benefits, pension, medical pay — none of that would change while they were in the program.”

Peck enlisted as an infantryman in 2014. As things stand, he’s in his ninth year of service, about halfway to the 20-year mark, when soldiers can separate and reap the full crop of retirement benefits.

“I personally really enjoy the military,” he said. “[But] am I willing to commit an extra two years in order to get the retirement that I want?”

The possibility of being forced to tough out another two years of Army life to secure post-service financial stability is especially grating for soldiers closer to the two-decade mark.

One ADO participant who deployed twice to Afghanistan over his 15 years of service — who spoke to Army Times under the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to speak to the press — has already plotted the next steps in post-military life with his wife and two kids. Another two years in uniform could derail those plans.

“My wife and I’s plan was for me to hit my 20 years — which would technically be in five to six years — for me to retire, and for her to go get a working job,” he told Army Times. “Now I’m gonna have to go to her potentially and be like, ‘hey, that career that you want, now is gonna have to be put off for a couple more years.’”

“And that’s less time that I get to raise my kid, you know?” he added. “It makes me lose a lot of faith in the people running the show.”

None of the soldiers interviewed by Army Times had received any official notice about how the Army plans to proceed as of the evening of Sept. 29. Peck said he spoke with a member of the USACC’s inspector general office on Sept. 27.

According to Peck, the official said that barring a congressional rewrite of the regulation, the Army would most likely push back ADO participant retirement dates and take back time in service pay distributed to soldiers during their time in the program.

“Cadet Command is currently updating all instructions and applications for the G2GADO program so that soldiers applying to the program for the Fall Semester of Academic Year (AY) 24-25 are made aware prior to entering,” Lessard wrote to Army Times. “We are also ensuring that all current G2GADO program cadets are advised of the statute.”

In April, the Army updated its regulations governing ROTC programs to require that any prospective G2GADO participant be informed that federal law “does not allow any of their accrued service as a cadet participant in ROTC to count towards Regular Army retirement eligibility or benefits and/or Reserve Component retirement eligibility points,” Lessard added. Lessard also stressed that USACC “has no input to or oversight of the calculation for retirement benefits.”

The fate of the thousands of G2GADO alumni remains unclear.

About Jaime Moore-Carrillo

Jaime Moore-Carrillo is an editorial fellow for Military Times and Defense News. A Boston native, Jaime graduated with degrees in international affairs, history, and Arabic from Georgetown University, where he served as a senior editor for the school's student-run paper, The Hoya.

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

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

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

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

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RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, SEPTEMBER 30, 2023

Ukraine’s jet ski raiders strike at the heart of Crimea

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In U.S. Fights Over Ukraine Aid, Allies Fear Deeper Global Harm

Washington has led the response to Russia, but domestic political spats raise worries about commitment

Opinion: To the Last Ukrainian — What We’ve Learned from Kyiv’s Counter-Offensive

The Human Factor – Dealing With the Trauma of War

China says US is the true 'empire of lies'

Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China

A war of innovation

‘More like fishing than hunting’

A drone industry of its own

US warns of Chinese disinformation. China says that's disinformation | CNN

Four Seconds to Impact: On the Front Line With Ukraine’s Snipers

Basic Skills

Priority Targets

Wind Change

Japan’s plans have Taiwan focus

RUNWAY UPGRADES: Airports and ports mainly scattered around southwestern Japan are being given major overhauls, primarily serving as civilian-use facilities

The main entrance to the Japanese Ministry of Defense in Tokyo is pictured in an undated photograph.

Why Can’t We Stop Unauthorized Immigration? Because It Works.

Congress tends to invest heavily in immigration enforcement but not in the enforcement of labor laws that could dissuade businesses from exploiting unauthorized workers in the first place.

How to Hamstring U.S. Intelligence on Section 702

A federal civil liberties board has forgotten the lessons of 9/11.

9/11 suspect ‘admitted White House was fourth target’

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Why Consumers Are Mad About Inflation Even Though It Has Fallen

Prices are rising more slowly, but consumers fixate on how much lower they were before the pandemic, a problem for Biden

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With labor costs up, prices aren’t likely to drop

A U.S. Army hospital has quietly started admitting troops wounded in Ukraine.

Introduction of New China Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China and Taiwan Mark Lambert - United States Department of State

Privacy watchdog recommends court approval for FBI searches of spy data

Soldiers worry that ROTC admin error could upend retirement plans