Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“Truth in the final analysis, has proved to be America’s most important Cold War special operations instrument. It exposes Soviet falsehoods (if and when discovered) and publicizes U.S>. foreign policy/national defense positions in positive ways.

- The late COL John M. Collins, aka The Warlord.

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of the fire.”

- William Yeats

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

- Albert Einstein

1. Ukraine is the Modern-Day Sparta

2. Putin WON'T survive the war says Ukraine's spy chief

3. Exclusive: House Democratic Aide Fired after Ties to Chinese Embassy Revealed

4. 12,000 Russian Troops Were Supposed To Defend Kaliningrad. Then They Went To Ukraine To Die.

5. Advanced fighters to deploy to Kadena through phased F-15 withdrawal

6. The Attack on America’s Future - Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare

7. What causes armies to lose the will to fight? Here's what history tells us -- and what Putin may soon find out

8. IDF to deploy all-female tank crews after two-year trial deemed a success

9. Disinformation’s next frontier: your texts and private messages

10.How the 2022 midterms outcome could change U.S. foreign policy

11. Official Describes DOD’s Efforts to Bolster Ukraine’s Defense

12. Could Iran’s regime fall?

13. Why Is Joe Biden Sending U.S. Soldiers So Close to Ukraine?

14. Can the US Deter China? Lessons from Putin's Invasion of Ukraine - Interpret: China

15. Republicans sharpen knives for China with eye on House majority

16. Ukrainians use phone app to spot deadly Russian drone attacks

17. China censors searches for 'Hu Jintao,' the former president removed from congress

18. 'Massive' drone attack on Black Sea Fleet - Russia

19. China: 5 Questions

20. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 28 (Putin's War)

21. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (28.10.22) CDS comments on key events

1. Ukraine is the Modern-Day Sparta

A number of important themes and messages in this very short piece.

Ukraine is the Modern-Day Sparta

By Daniel Ricehttps://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/ukraine-modern-day-sparta

As I traveled into Ukraine for my fourth trip since the war began, I was again inspired by the resilience of the Ukrainian people. When I was a freshman at West Point (called a “Plebe”), Brigadier General Peter Boylan had a saying, “You can’t be a Spartan living in Athens”. Sparta was a warrior nation, every man served, and the entire nation was on a wartime footing. Whereas Athens was not. I recalled his words from many years ago as I observed the Ukrainian people, going about their lives, ignoring air raid sirens while sipping coffee at outdoor cafes.

It occurred to me that Ukraine is the closest we have to a modern-day Sparta. This war has affected every single member of Ukrainian society, for years, starting with the Russian invasion of 2014 and the illegal annexation of Crimea and Donbas.

Every member of the 38-million-person country has been touched by this war directly and deeply. At least 5.5 million refugees, mostly women and children, fled the country ahead of the on-coming Russian horde of rapists, looters and murderers. Twenty percent of the country was occupied at one point, representing another 8 million Ukrainian lives. Nearly a million are in uniform, either the military or security forces, including 40,000 women. Every Ukrainian has either been a refugee, suffered under occupation, served in the military or had a family member who served.

Russia on the other hand has 141 million inhabitants. The roughly 200,000 in Ukraine are a small percentage of their population. The war, fought from 2014 until now, is largely a distant war, not being fought on their own soil. Russia has not been on a wartime footing for eight years like Ukraine. Only in the last year, have sanctions and corporate pullouts (McDonald’s, Starbucks, Citi, etc.) impacted Russia. In hindsight, the global community should have put these sanctions in place in 2014, or even earlier when Putin’s aggression started in 2008 in Georgia, or in 1999 in Chechnya. The Russian culture is not a warrior culture like Ukraine. In fact, it is a dysfunctional and dying culture with a declining population, high alcoholism, and declining life expectancy.

Ancient Sparta fought the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war which lasted 27 years from 431 BC to 404 BC. It was only when Sparta formed an alliance with the Persian empire that Sparta won the war against the larger Athenian nation, much like Ukraine has formed an alliance with NATO to beat the much larger Russia. Ukraine has been on a wartime footing, at war for its very existence, for eight years. Russia has yet to experience this war at home. It is obvious that Russia will never conquer Ukraine. An alliance with the west helped save Ukraine. No matter what happens going forward, a strong defensive alliance against future Russia aggression will be needed prior to laying down any arms. We cannot have a mere piece of paper, like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum signed by the U.S., Russia and UK, to serve as Ukraine’s defense against another invasion. We need western air power, air defenses, and boots on the ground to protect Ukraine against future Russian aggression. Anything less is unacceptable, and Ukraine will continue to fight for its survival.

Over the course of eight years the Ukrainian military was deliberately converted from the old Soviet Style “command and control” model to a much more western model which pushes down authority and decision making to the lowest levels. U.S. special forces and NATO soldiers helped lead this transition, creating a learning Army, where soldiers are taught “how to think” not “what to think.” Militaries often lead their societies through great social changes. The returning Ukrainian soldiers will bring with them western style thinking and help continue to transform Ukrainian society to be part of the West and reject all aspects of the old Soviet Union once and for all.

The Russian army on the other hand is an amoral, immoral army. Those Russians who are lucky to return to Russia, return to a decaying empire. And those rapists, murderers and looters will lead their society through the continued moral decline of Russia. The difference between the two futures of Ukraine and Russia could not be starker.

When this war is won, and the Ukrainian soldiers return to civilian life, this modern-day Sparta will thrive. Life in uniform during wartime is difficult. But these soldiers have learned discipline. They have learned teamwork. They have learned how to lead, and when to follow, and they have learned to be incredibly innovative. When the war is won, and most of the refugees and soldiers return, there will be a construction boom. History suggests there will likely be a baby boom. The soldiers who were successful on the battlefield will return and want to be educated, and with western and American type universities. The world will help Ukraine get back on its feet with a Marshall Plan type of relief effort. Traditionally, Ukraine has sustained enormous agricultural and mining industries. Now Ukraine will lead a future with a major military industrial capacity in order to protect itself from further Russian aggression. Tourism will likely thrive as the Ukrainian brand has never been stronger globally and never more “top of mind” in the West.

The Spartan soldiers who won this war will return and lead Ukraine to a bright and prosperous future, integrated into the EU and NATO, and the First Army of Peace will have helped degrade and destroy Europe’s #1 threat, and be rewarded with peace and economic prosperity.

Author’s note: there are of course differences between Sparta/Athens and Ukraine/Russia comparison. Ukraine is a democracy and Sparta was ruled by two kings. Athens was a democracy and Russia has become a totalitarian regime. And no, there were no Nazis in Sparta for the Russian strategic communications team.

About the Author(s)

Daniel Rice

Dan is the President of Thayer Leadership and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served his commitment as an Airborne-Ranger qualified Field Artillery officer. In 2004, he voluntarily re-commissioned in the Infantry to serve in Iraq for 13 months. He has been awarded the Purple Heart, Ranger Tab, Airborne Badge and cited for ‘courage on the field of battle” by his Brigade Commander.

SCHOLARLY WORK/PUBLICATIONS/AWARDS

Dan has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Small Wars Journal, and Chief Executive magazine. In 2013, he published and co-authored his first book, West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage, which features 200 of West Point graduates who have helped shape our nation, including the authorized biographies of over 100 living graduates.. The book received 3 literary awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association plus an award from the Military Society Writers of America (MSWA). Dan has appeared frequently on various news networks including CNN, FOX News, FOX & Friends, Bloomberg TV, NBC, MSNBC, and The Today Show.

EDUCATION

Ed.D., ABD, Leadership, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education (graduation expected 2023)

MS.Ed., Leadership & Learning, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, 2020

M.S., Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill Graduate School, Northwestern University, 2018

M.B.A., Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 2000

B.S., National Security, United States Military Academy, 1988

Full bio here: https://www.thayerleadership.com/about/founders/daniel-rice

2. Putin WON'T survive the war says Ukraine's spy chief

Wishful thinking? What do we think comes next and are we prepared to deal with it and exploit it, if it comes to pass? Was this a topic in the recent discussion between the defense chiefs? (doubtful I know).

Putin WON'T survive the war says Ukraine's spy chief

Putin WON'T survive the war: Senior officials are in 'active discussions' about who will replace him says Ukraine's spy chief as mock headstone for Russian leader appears and nuclear plant again becomes missile target

Vladimir Putin could be toppled by the end of the war in Ukraine, the country's intelligence chief has said
Major General Kyrylo Budanov claimed there were 'active discussions' in Russia about replacing Putin
Ukrainian forces are continue to push Putin's army back in the east of the country, and could retake Kherson
Fears are growing about Russia's plans for Europe's nuclear plant, which it has occupied since March

By ALASTAIR LOCKHART FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 08:01 EDT, 29 October 2022 | UPDATED: 08:15 EDT, 29 October 2022

Daily Mail · by Alastair Lockhart For Mailonline · October 29, 2022

Vladimir Putin may not last to the end of the war in Ukraine as his forces suffer in the east of the country, Ukraine's spy chief has said.

The top Ukrainian official said there were 'active discussions' going on inside Russia about how Putin could be deposed as the country's ruling class grow frustrated with his invasion of Ukraine and he appears increasingly weak.

Russian forces are currently fleeing parts of eastern Ukraine as Ukrainian forces continue their huge counteroffensive, with a focus on recapturing the city of Kherson.

Ukrainian soldiers have openly mocked Putin as they regain territory his forces took early in the war. A fake gravestone for the Russian leader has even been put up in the Donetsk region as his army continues to suffer setbacks.

There have also been fears about Russia's occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which has been damaged by missile attacks.

Major General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's head of intelligence, said he believed Kherson could be retaken by the end of November.

Ukraine's spy chief has claimed Vladimir Putin could be ousted from power before the end of the war as senior officials in Russia move against him

Ukraine has been pushing back against Russia with a counteroffensive in the south and east of the country in recent weeks. Pictured: A drone strike in Crimea

Ukraine's army has been focusing its efforts on regaining territory lost at the start of the war. Pictured: Ukraine launches missiles against Russian forces

Around 40,000 Russian troops are regrouping around the region, with some of the 'most trained and most capable Russian units' involved, according to Maj Gen Budanov.

He added a counteroffensive to recapture Crimea, annexed by Putin in 2014, could come next year as Ukraine continues to gain ground from Russia.

In an interview with The War Zone, the spy chief also said pushing Russian forces back to Ukraine's 1991 borders - the year it won its independence - would create 'a good opportunity to end the war.'

He even claimed this could happen as early as next year.

Major General Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's head of intelligence, said he believed Kherson could be retaken by the end of November

Ukrainian troops have mocked Putin by putting up a fake gravestone of the Russian leader at a military checkpoint in Donetsk

Maj Gen Budanov added Putin was likely to be toppled by the war he started when he invaded Ukraine in February this year.

He said: 'It's unlikely that he survives it. And currently, there's active discussions happening in Russia about who'd be there to replace him.'

The intelligence boss also said the sustained attack by Russia on Ukraine's energy infrastructure was damagin but not 'critical'.

He also refused to confirm or deny whether Ukraine had been behind the devastating attack on the Kerch bridge - the only bridge between Russia and Crimea which is vital for Russian supply lines.

Massive explosions hit key naval port Sevastopol in Crimea that Russia says is being targeted in major Ukraine drone assault

By Arthur Parashar and Will Stewart for MailOnline

Massive explosions have been seen hitting a key naval port in annexed Crimea that Russia claim was targeted in a major Ukrainian drone assault.

Russian Black Sea warships were reportedly having to fight the attack off in Sevastopol, the largest city in Crimea which was annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

According to Ukrainian sources, several of the Russian ships from the fleet were blown up.

Local media are reporting that rescuers this morning are still attempting to put out a fire on one of the ships.

Residents claimed that the huge explosions 'shook' their homes and windows while black smoke was seen rising from the docks area.

Dramatic footage purportedly showed a Moscow attack helicopter destroying an 'underwater drone' in Omega Bay.

The video showed the helicopter hovering above the object in the water before it bursts into flames with smoke billowing out of it.

Residents claimed that the huge explosions 'shook' their homes and windows while black smoke was seen rising from the docks area

Dramatic footage showed a Moscow attack helicopter destroying an 'underwater drone' in Omega Bay

The underwater object thought to be a drone was said to be tailing a warship before it was reportedly destroyed by the Russian helicopter.

Missiles were fired from the helicopter which also unleashed volleys of machine gun fire.

Mikhail Razvozhayev, Russian governor of Sevastopol, said there was no damage to city infrastructure.

'Black Sea Fleet ships are fighting off a drone attack in Sevastopol Bay.' he said.

'No damage has been reported in the city. The situation is under control. All response services are at the ready.'

A student dormitory at an art college near the port saw 'one windowpane burst' but 'no harm was done', he added.

Russian sources claimed its air defenced deployed from naval warships were forced to repel a sustained Ukrainian attack that started at 4.30am and lasted for at least five hours.

The Kremlin has also blamed a US Global Hawk (RQ-4B) which 'flew from Italy' for flying over the Black Sea and monitoring Russian responses to the concerted Ukrainian onslaught.

All passenger ferry services were suspended in the strategic port which is the HQ of Putin's Black Sea Fleet.

According to Ukrainian sources, several of the Russian ships from the fleet were blown up

Local media are reporting that rescuers this morning are still attempting to put out a fire on one of the ships

Plumes of smoke were visible after reports of Ukrainian drone strikes in the middle of the night

Massive explosions have been seen hitting a key naval port in annexed Crimea that Russia claim was targeted in a major Ukrainian drone assault

Mikhail Razvozhayev, Russian governor of Sevastopol, said: 'No damage has been reported in the city.

It marks what could be the most audacious attack so far by Ukraine on Russian naval assets in Sevastopol.

Earlier this week, Razvozhayev said that a drone had attacked a thermal power station near Sevastopol.

Meanwhile, the Russian fleet stationed in the port had also been attacked by a drone in July.

So far, attempts to verify Razvozhayev's claims that no damage has been done have been unsuccessful.

The Russian statesman begged locals not to post footage of the attacks, claiming that it could aid the Kyiv regime.

'A big request is not to write what-where-how much you saw and heard,' he posted.

'And do not upload videos. It should be clear to everyone that such data is very necessary for the UkroNazis in order to understand how the defence of our city is arranged.'

However, this did not fail to prevent residents reporting the explosions that unfolded in the middle of the nights.

One resident reported: 'Woke up at 4 a.m. to a massive explosion. Thank goodness it's [our] air defences.

Earlier this week, Razvozhayev (pictured) said that a drone had attacked a thermal power station near Sevastopol

Russia also blamed a US Global Hawk (RQ-4B) which 'flew from Italy' for flying over the Black Sea and monitoring Russian responses to the concerted Ukrainian onslaught

'Our ships in Sevastopol Bay were repelling a drone attack.

'It was a fun night, even very fun.'

Another stated: 'Woke up to an explosion at 5:30am. Followed some time later by three more…'.

A third added: 'Ten minutes ago three explosions sounded, and shook the house…'

Meanwhile, another comment said: 'Woke up this morning to explosions.

'Never heard anything like that before. It thundered so hard that the windows shook in the flat.'

The attack comes as Russia appears to have largely given up attacking Ukraine and has been forced on to the defensive after Putin's military got mauled by Kyiv's armies.

Russian troops have been forced on to the defensive across almost the entire frontline in Ukraine after Putin's army was mauled, British intelligence said yesterday

Severely undermanned and poorly trained Russian units have stopped advancing across most of the front line in the last six weeks, British intelligence said yesterday.

Ukrainian forces advance in both the north and south of the country - pushing east from Kharkiv into Luhansk and advancing towards Kherson.

In Kherson, companies of soldiers which should consist of 100 men were fighting with just six to eight troops each, Ministry of Defence analysts added.

While Putin is attempting to bolster these units with conscripted troops, Russia is unlikely to be able to resume its offensive in the near future.

Earlier this week, it had appeared that Russia was preparing to withdraw from Kherson city but Ukraine now believes Putin is actually reinforcing it.

Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine's military intelligence service, said earlier this week that Russia has been evacuating civilians but is moving military reinforcements into urban areas, preparing defences, and plans to fight for the city.

He added that the evacuation and talk of a retreat by Russia's top commander may have been an effort to lure Ukraine into a costly urban battle.

Daily Mail · by Alastair Lockhart For Mailonline · October 29, 2022

3. Exclusive: House Democratic Aide Fired after Ties to Chinese Embassy Revealed

Oops.

Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-jenell-hamlett-362a6769/ She has a long history of work in congress. I do not see any red flags in her profile.

Legistorm profile: https://www.legistorm.com/person/bio/18290/Barbara_Jenell_Hamlett.html A trip to Taiwan but no red flags here either though pershpa those will experience in Congress might observe soomthing that I do not.

Exclusive: House Democratic Aide Fired after Ties to Chinese Embassy Revealed

Representative Don Beyer, who has been hawkish on China, moved swiftly to remove the employee after being notified of the activity by security officials.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/exclusive-house-democratic-aide-fired-after-ties-to-chinese-embassy-revealed/

NR Daily is delivered right to you every afternoon. No charge.

AHouse Democratic staffer was fired after her outreach to other congressional aides allegedly on behalf of the Chinese embassy was revealed this week, National Review has learned. After an investigation found that the staffer had acted improperly, her boss, Representative Don Beyer, swiftly removed her.

12,000 Russian Troops Were Supposed To Defend Kaliningrad. Then They Went To Ukraine To Die.

Forbes · by David Axe · October 27, 2022

The 11th Army Corps in 2017.

Russian defense ministry photo

Six years ago, the Russian navy formed a new army corps whose job it would be to defend Kaliningrad, Russia’s geographically separate outpost on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania.

This year, when the war in Ukraine began to go badly for Russia, the Kremlin yanked the 11th Army Corps from Kaliningrad and sent it into Ukraine. Where the Ukrainian army quickly destroyed it.

The formation, deployment and destruction of the 11th Army Corps tell a story that’s bigger than the tragic tale of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The corps, sandwiched between two NATO countries along a strategic sea, was supposed to give Russian forces an advantage in a global war.

Instead, it became cannon fodder for a Ukrainian army that, on paper, was weaker than the Russian army was. Now Kaliningrad is all but defenseless, and the threat the oblast’s troops once posed to NATO … has evaporated.

The 11th Army Corps isn’t really a new formation. It’s a new grouping of existing formations under a single headquarters that itself answers to the Russian navy’s Baltic Fleet. The corps oversees a motorized division, a separate motorized regiment, artillery, rockets, air-defense troops and supporting units.

Before Russia widened its war in Ukraine starting in late February, there were no fewer than 12,000 Russian troops in Kaliningrad with around 100 T-72 tanks, a couple hundred BTR fighting vehicles, Msta-S howitzers and BM-27 and BM-30 rocket-launchers. The 11th Army Corps oversaw most of these forces.

Looming on the western border of Lithuania, one of the weakest NATO member states, the 11th Army Corps was the anvil for a possible Russian invasion of the former Soviet republics Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The hammer was the 18,000-strong ground force in western Russia on the eastern border of the Baltic states.

NATO warily eyed the Kaliningrad buildup. “Kaliningrad certainly, historically, has been a place where we've been very attentive to the dynamics and the delicate regional situation,” a U.S. defense official told reporters in June.

Those dynamics radically changed after February. The Kremlin committed 80% of its ground forces to a wider invasion of Ukraine—and promptly lost many of them in a doomed bid to capture Kyiv.

Encyclopedia Britannica

Strung out along the roads leading to the capital, the poorly led, under-supplied Russian battalions, brigades and divisions were vulnerable to Ukraine’s artillery, drones and infantry teams hauling precision-guided anti-tank missiles.

After just a month of bitter fighting, the Russians retreated from Kyiv. Estimates vary, but it’s possible they suffered 50,000 killed and wounded by the time the front lines stabilized in May. The Russians at the time held the strategic port of Kherson in southern Ukraine and were on the outskirts of the free city of Kharkiv, 25 miles from the border with Russia in northeastern Ukraine.

But Russian forces were fragile. And getting more fragile as the Ukrainian army—rearmed with American and European artillery and rockets—began plucking at Russian supply lines. Desperate for fresh troops, the Kremlin mobilized the 11th Army Corps, moving it by ship and plane to Belgorod in southern Russia, then into Ukraine near Kharkiv.

Three months of grinding combat sapped the corps’ strength. Reuters got its hands on some of the 11th Army Corps’ paperwork. A spreadsheet dated August 30, right before a major Ukrainian counteroffensive, indicated the corps was at 71% of its full strength. Some battalions, however, were down to just a tenth of their original manpower.

It got worse for the corps. In late August and early September, the Ukrainian armed forces launched twin counteroffensives east of Kharkiv and north of Kherson. The Kharkiv operation, involving a dozen eager Ukrainian brigades, exposed profound weaknesses in the Russian forces in the area, including the 11th Army Corps.

Tens of thousands of Russians fled, surrendered or died in place as Ukrainian troops liberated a thousand square miles of Kharkiv Oblast in a heady two weeks. The 11th Army Corps suffered more than most Russian formations in the region. In late September, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., described the corps as “severely battered.”

That may have been an understatement. The Ukrainian general staff concluded the corps lost 200 vehicles and half of its troops in the counteroffensive.

It’s possible the 11th Army Corps survives. If so, it almost certainly will require many months to rest, re-equip and induct draftees in order to regain even a fraction of its former strength.

The deployment and subsequent destruction of the 11th Army Corps is a tragedy for the men who suffered and died under its command—and a terrible blow for the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

But the implications extend across Europe. The 11th Army Corps was supposed to defend Kaliningrad and threaten NATO’s eastern front. Now it can do neither.

Forbes · by David Axe · October 27, 2022

5. Advanced fighters to deploy to Kadena through phased F-15 withdrawal

Hopefully additional missile defense capabilities will be deployed along with them to protect "target Kadena."

Advanced fighters to deploy to Kadena through phased F-15 withdrawal

kadena.af.mil · October 28, 2022

Published
By Staff Report
18th Wing Public Affairs

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan --

The U.S. commitment to regional deterrence and the defense of Japan is ironclad. As part of its modernization plan, the United States Air Force is retiring the F-15 C/D Eagle fleet of aircraft that has been in service for more than 30 years.

Starting in November, the Department of Defense will commence a phased withdrawal of F-15 C/D aircraft forward-deployed to Kadena Air Base over the next two years. The U.S. will continue to maintain a steady-state presence at Kadena by deploying newer and more advanced aircraft to backfill the F-15s as they retire.

While the DOD has not made a decision on the long-term solution, all of the proposals under consideration include advanced capabilities that are superior to the F-15 C/D. Until that decision is made, the DOD will continue to use the Global Force Management process to provide backfill solutions that maintain regional deterrence and bolster our ability to uphold our treaty obligations to Japan.

Modernizing our capabilities in the Indo-Pacific theater remains a top priority for the U.S. This transition to more capable aircraft at Kadena exemplifies our continued commitment to enhancing our posture and building on the strong foundation of our Alliance with Japan.

kadena.af.mil · October 28, 2022

6. The Attack on America’s Future - Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare

Download the entire monograph at this link: https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/fdd-monograph-the-attack-on-americas-future-cyber-enabled-economic-warfare.pdf

October 28, 2022 | Monograph

The Attack on America’s Future

Cyber-Enabled Economic Warfare

Samantha Ravich

CCTI Chairman

Annie Fixler

CCTI Deputy Director and Research Fellow

fdd.org · by Samantha Ravich CCTI Chairman · October 28, 2022

Introduction

By Samantha F. Ravich and RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

In 2018, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) published a series of monographs analyzing cyber-enabled economic warfare (CEEW) as practiced by Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. The four studies brought together for the first time an assessment of each adversary’s CEEW attacks on America’s economic infrastructure. At the time, the term CEEW was only beginning to seep into the consciousness of the U.S. national security community. The White House had used the term in its 2017 National Security Strategy, noting how adversaries are using technology to “weaken our businesses and our economy.” But the connection between such malicious activities and the overall strategies of America’s four principal adversaries remained unclear.

The risks associated with CEEW are now clearer, thanks less to the rigorous analysis of adversarial intentions than to the increased scale, scope, and frequency of attacks across the American economic landscape. Still, the federal government has a blind spot that leaves the United States vulnerable to a catastrophic strategic surprise — one that could simultaneously destabilize the U.S. electrical grid, water supply, banking system, transportation sector, or other critical infrastructure necessary for survival. That blind spot is intelligence that anticipates the adversary’s strategy. For too long, the United States has tried to patch its way to safety with the enemy inside its networks.

Roberta Wohlstetter’s 1962 book Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision warns of the perils of missing “a particular enemy move or intention” amidst a vast amount of intelligence. The book has remained relevant over the decades as the United States successfully avoided a thermonuclear surprise attack by the Soviets, on the one hand, but failed to anticipate jet planes flying into skyscrapers, on the other. Wohlstetter informed generations of Cold War and counterterrorism intelligence analysts that signals not only must be gathered and illuminated to inform policymakers but must also be broken down and dissected to help guide future intelligence collection. Only then can the United States decipher the enemy’s decision-making structures and gain insight into the adversary’s larger strategic plan.

In FDD’s 2018 CEEW reports, we focused on reading the signals. Four years hence, this monograph’s updated chapters on Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran embark upon the hard task of breaking down and dissecting those signals. In each chapter, the authors analyze what these adversaries may do next and how the U.S. government and private sector might disrupt those plans.

Illustrations by Daniel Ackerman/FDD

Russia

In his 2018 monograph for FDD, Boris Zilberman was one of the first scholars to detail how Moscow employs both state actors and proxies to get inside the information and communications technology (ICT) supply chain that is vital to America’s economic wherewithal. He documented how Kaspersky Lab demonstrated “technical knowhow, market foresight, and government cooperation [to] produce not only a global tech giant but also a serious national security threat.”

Today, as Ryan Tully and Logan Weber describe herein, the Kremlin exploits “the gaps that prevent Washington from definitively attributing hostile cyber actions to the Russian government.” The authors emphasize that “Russia’s intelligence services seem to understand, perhaps better than American lawmakers, the constraints on the U.S. intelligence community when a foreign adversary shifts — physically or virtually — from operating outside of American borders to operating from within.” As Tully and Weber note, the U.S. intelligence community is generally restricted from looking inward at the U.S. populace or infrastructure. Thus, policymakers must grapple with difficult tradeoffs between security and privacy embedded within the current legal framework. Tully and Weber also urge greater intelligence collection and analysis of “Moscow’s surveillance dragnet” as an “enabler of CEEW operations abroad.”

As this volume approached publication, Russia invaded Ukraine. Russian artillery continues to pulverize Ukrainian villages, while Russian missiles wreak havoc in major cities. The Kremlin even rattled its nuclear saber. Generally missing in action, however, was Russia’s vast cyber capability. While there were some notable attacks such as that against California-based global satellite communications provider Viasat, there was no “shock and awe” cyberattack that crippled Ukraine’s critical infrastructure in one fell swoop. Rather, there were “hundreds of far more subtle attacks, many timed to coincide with incoming missile or ground attacks.” Theories vary as to why. One theory that will require more investigation: Did the Kremlin worry that a significant cyber strike might quickly leap from the Ukrainian battlefield to other domains, inviting Western retaliation? As National Cyber Director Chris Inglis hypothesized, perhaps the Russians “kind of understand that there are thresholds — they don’t know quite where those thresholds are, and they don’t want to cross those.”

While the fog of war is too dense to discern potential shifts in Russia’s longer-term CEEW strategy, the analysis presented here sets the stage for understanding how Russia may deploy its cyber capabilities over the next few years given its unimpressive display of hard power in Ukraine and an economy weakened due to Western sanctions. The Kremlin will have limited options to undermine its adversaries — which have multiplied in the last few months. The war in Ukraine will force Russia to prioritize asymmetric means to seek revenge and regain parity. CEEW will become an increasingly attractive option.

China

The Chinese CEEW battlespace has also grown more complex and dangerous since 2018, when author Zack Cooper explored the changing contours of China’s cyber operations. Cooper wrote that China’s hostile CEEW activity had “not garnered the public attention warranted by its severity” despite the fact that “China is engaged in wide-ranging cyber intrusions and network exploitations causing massive damage to U.S. and other foreign firms annually.”

After four additional years of attacks and broken promises from the People’s Republic of China, we pick up the narrative where Cooper left off, exploring the fundamentals of Chinese CEEW, writing that it grows out of central tenets in China’s “long-standing approach to political warfare.” Chinese doctrine views cyber and economic tools as “direct and powerful means of influencing public opinion, altering an adversary’s political environment, and diminishing its resolve in a crisis.”

The chapter digs into the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) quest for control of global ICT infrastructure and the “technologies, supply chains, and services that constitute it,” noting this “is a central front” in CEEW. To understand and then undermine China’s CEEW strategy going forward, the United States should focus on ICT, which includes 5G and other telecommunications equipment, satellite navigation, cloud computing, and integrated circuits. China seeks to dismantle the U.S. and allied stake in these markets through cyber-espionage and sabotage as well as non-market coercion so that Beijing can “control key nodes in the global economy.” A powerful tool to combat risks associated with Chinese ICT in U.S. critical infrastructure is Executive Order 13873 of 2019, “Securing the Information and Communications Technology and Services Supply Chain.” Codifying this executive order in law could provide the Commerce Department with the will and resources needed to “establish a quasi-‘import control’ regime around ICT equipment.”

North Korea

The evolution of North Korean and Iranian CEEW over the last four years should compel U.S. policymakers to ask whether the intelligence community has more than a passing understanding of the enemy’s plan.

FDD’s North Korea monograph in 2018 analyzed how the Kim regime deploys its cyber capabilities as an “All-Purpose Sword.” Authors David Maxwell and Mathew Ha wrote, “As diplomatic efforts to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear weapons program move forward — or even if they do not — the flexibility and plausible deniability of cyber capabilities may make them an even more attractive weapon for the Kim regime.”

And yet, as Ha notes in his update, Pyongyang has not employed its cyber capabilities for military ends in recent years. Rather, North Korea has wielded its all-purpose sword “to reap financial, political, and strategic benefits that are essential to prolonging the Kim regime’s survival,” with a primary focus on “financially motivated cybercrime.” Ha posits that the Kim regime “has calibrated its cyber provocations to remain within the gray zone between war and peace so as not to elicit a military response from South Korea and the United States.” At what point this calculus might change is not clear. Continued disintegration of North Korea’s domestic economy may lead Kim to move away from grand larceny and toward CEEW to coerce financial concessions from Washington and its allies. Or the Kim regime may simply miscalculate the line that separates the gray zone from outright warfare. These scenarios require continued vigilance and analysis to predict and prevent.

Ha makes a strong case that a potential shift in North Korea’s CEEW strategy toward a more aggressive stance could occur as the regime fills its cryptocurrency coffers. Pyongyang’s persistent theft from cryptocurrency exchanges could enable it to “build large reserves in numerous cryptocurrencies to spend in a cryptocurrency-based system of exchange independent of the U.S.-led financial system.” Ha explores Pyongyang’s development of a cryptocurrency-based system as a potential pathway to juche (“self-reliance”) — the bedrock of the Kim regime’s ideology. With the total value of the cryptocurrency market around $1 trillion, the allure for the cash-strapped North Korean regime is obvious. Still, Ha acknowledges that Pyongyang’s “ability to leverage cryptocurrencies for these greater objectives will likely be contingent upon technological advances by other rogue states with more robust economies that are more important to global trade.” The United States should carefully monitor whether North Korea is leveraging Russian and Chinese advances in the field of digital currency to undermine the international sanctions regime built to thwart Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile ambitions.

Iran

Like North Korea, the Islamic Republic of Iran has seemingly pulled back on its CEEW activities, though it is not clear why.

Annie Fixler observes that Tehran clearly has the means to conduct such attacks, as illustrated by Iran’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the U.S. financial sector in 2011–2013, the Shamoon attacks against Saudi Aramco in 2012, and the 2019 cyberattacks against Bahrain’s Electricity and Water Authority. Still, despite the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force — Iran has refrained from wielding CEEW in a more devastating fashion over the past four years. Iranian hackers, however, have demonstrated improving capabilities and an ability to learn lessons from the successful operations of other U.S. adversaries.

Fixler counsels that the lack of “spectacular cyberattacks against the United States” should not lead policymakers to assume the United States has deterred Iran. There is not enough evidence to make this judgement. And even if Iran were temporarily deterred in its use of CEEW, “[d]eterrence is not static,” as Fixler thoughtfully writes. “It requires regular maintenance.”

If Fixler is right that Iran, like North Korea, has relegated CEEW tools and techniques to the fringes, there may be lessons for deterring non-near-peer competitors and rising cyber-weapon states. However, as Fixler concludes, “Underestimating a committed adversary is dangerous, and a misdiagnosis risks underinvestment in intelligence gathering, leading to strategic surprise.” While it is possible Washington has deterred Iran, it is equally likely Tehran has “elected not to expend limited resources on destructive attacks but to maintain the capability to employ them later on. After all, cyber-espionage can always be a steppingstone to more aggressive operations, and it can be difficult to parse motive from a few lines of code.” Washington “cannot afford to discount or dismiss Iran as a significant cyber threat.”

Recommendations

In addition to the country-specific recommendations in this monograph, the United States should undertake the following overarching steps to better protect itself against CEEW.

1. Improve focus within the intelligence community on the CEEW challenge. With America’s nation-state adversaries developing and utilizing CEEW tools, the intelligence community must bring increased focus to this issue. It must prioritize resources and personnel to better understand adversary CEEW campaigns, particularly the adversary’s economic interests, and to determine how to rapidly assess and distribute this information to allies and private-sector partners. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center is positioned to lead this effort, alongside efforts underway at the Treasury Department, if properly tasked and resourced.

2. Improve public-private collaboration efforts to prepare for the CEEW threat. The United States needs an improved capacity to withstand CEEW attacks while reducing their frequency, scope, and scale. The nation must be prepared to respond to and recover from an attack, sustain critical functions even under degraded conditions, and, in some cases, restart those functions after a disruption. The United States must also raise the level of security across the cyber ecosystem. Because the private sector owns and operates the vast majority of that ecosystem, scaling up security necessitates public-private cooperation. The public and private sectors need to identify, assess, and mitigate risk across all elements of critical infrastructure in order to defend it. The government must build a better understanding of threats, with the aim of informing the private sector and directing government efforts to counter malicious cyber activities. While recognizing that private-sector entities have primary responsibility for the defense and security of their networks, the U.S. government has unique authorities, resources, and offensive cyber capabilities it can employ to support the private sector.

3. Develop economic contingency plans. A critical element of public-private collaboration is economic planning. While Washington has adequately identified and planned for key military contingencies, it must account for the entire spectrum of conflict where CEEW could occur. Adversaries will likely operate in the gray zone, skirting the line of armed conflict. They are likely to wage war first on an economic front or by employing a combination of economic coercion and critical-infrastructure disruption to raise pressure on the United States and its allies. To develop economic contingency plans, Washington needs a better understanding of U.S. and allied economic strengths and vulnerabilities. This planning should include economic actions that impose costs on attackers. (See the following recommendation.) It should also map out a list of options to mitigate risks, build resilience, and rapidly restart the economy. A key component of this economic contingency planning is the government-led Continuity of the Economy efforts directed by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (FY2021 NDAA). These efforts will help coordinate, exercise, and refine government and private-sector efforts to build economic resilience. They will help ensure the United States is not caught flat-footed by an adversary’s CEEW efforts and will assist in the rapid restart and recovery of the U.S. economy in case of a widespread disruption.

4. Expand the use of economic statecraft. Economic statecraft tools, such as sanctions and export controls, are appropriate responses to adversary CEEW attacks, since they are reciprocal. Sanctions could impose withering costs on the officials, firms, and governments who direct or benefit from acts of CEEW, especially if the sanctions are multilateral. Meanwhile, export controls — again, preferably multilateral — can limit access to key Western technologies that facilitate economic warfare against the United States and its allies. In addition, restrictions on the use of ICT equipment and services received from companies in hostile states can mitigate the risk of those governments, particularly China, utilizing the technological reach of their companies for cyber-enabled intellectual property (IP) theft and critical-infrastructure disruption.

5. Improve U.S. gray zone capabilities. To compete effectively in the gray zone, the United States and its allies must be willing to employ diplomatic, information, military, and economic tools using a strategic approach involving “defend forward” operations. The concept of defend forward posits that to disrupt and defeat ongoing adversary campaigns, the United States must proactively and persistently detect, observe, pursue, and counter adversaries’ operations and, where appropriate, impose costs on the adversary. The concept further posits that proactive responses to adversary gray zone operations signal that the U.S. government will respond to CEEW attacks, even those that do not cause physical destruction or death. Among other things, this will require the development of comprehensive information operations campaigns to counter adversary disinformation and support U.S. policies and interests.

Whereas FDD’s 2018 monographs were meant as a clarion call to recognize the importance of CEEW, the chapters contained herein seek to encourage intelligence gathering and responses to the adversary’s CEEW battle plan. Now more than ever, as American lives are dependent upon a network that moves at the pace of data, the United States must live by the credo, “To be forewarned is to be forearmed.”

Possible Futures for Russia’s CEEW Playbook

By Ryan Tully and Logan Weber

Over the past four years, Russia has used cyber operations to engage in espionage, disinformation campaigns, and supply chain disruptions. While the tools and tactics of each operation vary, their overarching goal is to weaken the United States through a digital assault on its diplomatic, intelligence, military, and economic wherewithal.

Read Possible Futures for Russia’s CEEW Playbook

China’s Accelerating CEEW Campaign

By Samantha F. Ravich and RADM (Ret.) Mark Montgomery

China has implemented a coherent long-term strategy to control key nodes in the global economy and communications infrastructure — all at the expense of the United States and its allies.

Read China’s Accelerating CEEW Campaign

The Evolution of Kim Jong Un’s ‘All-Purpose Sword’

By Mathew Ha

Cybercrime is an integral element of the Kim regime’s hybrid warfare strategy. A robust cryptocurrency marketplace disconnected from the U.S.-led banking system could provide Pyongyang with a long-term solution.

Read The Evolution of Kim Jong Un’s ‘All-Purpose Sword’

The Dangers of Iran’s Cyber Ambitions

By Annie Fixler

Iranian hackers have repeatedly caused damage despite their less sophisticated capabilities compared to America’s other cyber adversaries. And Tehran’s skills are improving.

Read The Dangers of Iran’s Cyber Ambitions

Download Monograph

Download

The Attack on America’s Future

fdd.org · by Samantha Ravich CCTI Chairman · October 28, 2022

7. What causes armies to lose the will to fight? Here's what history tells us -- and what Putin may soon find out

Excerpts:

What causes armies to lose the will to fight? And how might that play out with the Russian army in Ukraine?

This is the question that CNN asked combat veterans and military historians. While history is full of embattled armies like the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, which fought with ferocious intensity even though they knew they would not win, it also records other armies that “quiet quit” — stopped attacking the enemy or did the bare minimum to stay alive.

Russia’s troops may be approaching that precipice, says Jeff McCausland, a combat veteran of the Gulf War and a visiting professor of international security studies at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

He says it’s become clear that the Russian army is poorly trained and supplied, and that its soldiers in many cases have lost their will to fight.

“Fear and panic are more infectious than Covid” for an army, says McCausland, co-author of “Battle Tested! Gettysburg Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders.”

The sources for both fear and panic are varied. But McCausland and other historians say that throughout the history of warfare, there are at least three reasons why armies lose the will to fight.

What causes armies to lose the will to fight? Here's what history tells us -- and what Putin may soon find out | CNN

CNN · by John Blake · October 29, 2022

British and German troops meeting in No Man's Land during the unofficial Christmas truce of 1914 during World War I.

Robert Hunt/Windmill Books/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

CNN —

It was one of the strangest episodes in military history, an event so unusual that it was first treated as a myth.

At 8:30 pm on Christmas Eve of 1914 in the dank and muddy battlefields of northern Europe during World War I, a British soldier dispatched a report to headquarters: German soldiers have illuminated their trenches and are singing carols while wishing British soldiers a merry Christmas.

British officers ordered their men to be silent, but it was too late. A British soldier responded with his own chorus of “The First Noel.” A German soldier called out across No Man’s Land – the barbed wire-strewn, deadly middle ground separating the armies – “Come out, English soldier; come out there to us.”

The soldiers climbed out of their trenches and met in the middle. So did others, gathering to exchange chocolate, wine and souvenirs. They even organized a soccer game, which the Germans won 3-2.

Most of the soldiers who shook hands on that fog-shrouded Christmas Eve would be dead before the war ended four years later. But letters from survivors and grainy black-and-white photographs prove it was no myth. An estimated 100,000 soldiers on both sides simply refused to fight because they were too exhausted and jaded. The Christmas Truce even lasted until New Year’s in some places.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony on June 22, 2022 to mark the Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany in World War II. Putin's army in Ukraine, though, may face a different fate because of larger problems in Russia, experts say.

Maxim Shipenkov/Pool/Reuters

“By December 1914, the men in the trenches were veterans, familiar enough with the realities of combat to have lost much of the idealism that they had carried into war in August, and most longed for an end to bloodshed,” according to an account of the Christmas Truce in Smithsonian Magazine.

More than a century later, there’s little chance that Russian and Ukrainian soldiers will shower each other with gifts this winter. But the Christmas Truce story is an example of a peculiar feature of war that offers a warning to the beleaguered Russian army in Ukraine:

There are moments throughout history where entire armies suddenly stop fighting, though they are evenly matched or even numerically superior to their enemy.

What causes armies to lose the will to fight? And how might that play out with the Russian army in Ukraine?

This is the question that CNN asked combat veterans and military historians. While history is full of embattled armies like the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, which fought with ferocious intensity even though they knew they would not win, it also records other armies that “quiet quit” — stopped attacking the enemy or did the bare minimum to stay alive.

Russia’s troops may be approaching that precipice, says Jeff McCausland, a combat veteran of the Gulf War and a visiting professor of international security studies at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania.

He says it’s become clear that the Russian army is poorly trained and supplied, and that its soldiers in many cases have lost their will to fight.

“Fear and panic are more infectious than Covid” for an army, says McCausland, co-author of “Battle Tested! Gettysburg Leadership Lessons for 21st Century Leaders.”

The sources for both fear and panic are varied. But McCausland and other historians say that throughout the history of warfare, there are at least three reasons why armies lose the will to fight.

They lose faith in their cause

McCausland has seen a broken army lose the will to fight up close.

He says he commanded a battalion during the Gulf War in 1990-1991 and saw so many Iraqi soldiers surrender that his unit had trouble accommodating the prisoners. They ended up giving water to the captured soldiers and pointing them toward the rear.

What happens when an army loses faith in its leaders and its cause? The Iraqi Army in the first Gulf War offers an answer. Iraqi soldiers surrendered in massive numbers, without a fight, to the US and coalition forces.

Patrick Durand/Sygma/Getty Images

The war started when the Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. But many Iraqi soldiers simply didn’t think Kuwait or Iraq’s brutal leader were worth dying for.

“There was one instance where Iraqi soldiers surrendered to a drone that was circling over them,” McCausland says.

A more recent example of an army losing the will to fight came in Afghanistan.

Amid the US military’s withdrawal from the country in 2021, the Afghan National Army collapsed. They allowed the Taliban to quickly take control, even though the US had invested years and billions of dollars in training them. It was a low point for President Biden’s administration.

The reason for the Afghan army’s complex surrender could be distilled in one question, McCausland says.

An army can outfight and outlast a larger and better equipped foe if they have higher morale. This is one reason why the Afghan army quickly collapsed after the 2021 departure of US military forces, which left military installations empty -- like the sprawling Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.

Rahmat Gul/AP

“If you asked a Taliban soldier, ‘What the hell are you fighting for?’ he would say I’m fighting to free my country from the crusaders, just like my grandfather freed the country from the Soviets and my great-great grandfather freed the country from the British. And I’m fighting for my religion, my country and my home,” McCausland says.

And if the same question was asked of an Afghan army soldier?

“He would say I’m fighting for a paycheck—if the company commander doesn’t steal it.”

The Taliban believed in their cause; the Afghan army didn’t, says McCausland.

They lose faith in their leaders

Every war has its defining images. The Ukraine war has already yielded some unforgettable ones showing the contrast in leadership styles of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.

Recent photos of Putin typically show him attired in a suit, alone at the head of an absurdly long conference table, in a large, sterile room, with a general or bureaucrat cowering at the other end. The caption could well read: “paranoid and isolated dictator in action.”

The best leaders often inspire their armies by visiting the front lines. Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn criticism for keeping physical distance from his troops and even from his closest advisors, as this image suggests.

Aleksey Nikolskyi/Sputnik/Kremlin/Reuters

Contrast those images of Putin with those of Zelensky. One shows him standing resolute with his circle of advisors at night in Kiev after vowing not to abandon the city even though he and his family were in danger. Other photographs show him in fatigues, buffed and bearded, swapping hugs with soldiers on the front lines.

McCausland, who is also a national security consultant for CBS radio and television, says the images offer a lesson in leadership.

“Just look at both photos in terms of who would you like to work for,” says McCausland, who offers leadership workshops to companies, non-profits and government institutions through his company, Diamond6. “I don’t care whether you’re in the military or you’re working for a corporation. It’s pretty easy to decide.”

Armies lose the will to fight when they lose faith in their leaders, McCausland and others say.

They say soldiers don’t expect generals or other leaders to hunker down in frontline trenches with them. But they want to know if their leaders care for them and respect their sacrifice.

If you want to know how a leader can inspire an army to superhuman levels of endurance, consider this popular story from one of the greatest commanders in history: Alexander the Great.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, center, visits the town of Bucha, where civilian bodies were found in the street after the town was retaken from Russia by the Ukrainian army. Zelensky has given a master class in effective war leadership, military historians say.

Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Alexander was leading his parched army through an unforgiving desert in pursuit of an enemy when scouts returned to him with a scoop of precious water in a helmet. They handed him the helmet in front of his army.

Alexander thanked the soldiers and then, in full view of his troops, poured the water on the ground. He announced he would not take any water unless all his men had the same. His troops cheered.

Alexander the Great never lost a battle.

“So extraordinary was the effect of this action that the water wasted by Alexander was as good as a drink for every man in the army,” one chronicler would write later.

They lose the backing of their country

We hear commentators warn about the dangers of hyper-polarization in American politics, the corrupting power of unregulated and virtually untraceable “dark money” and the breakdown of civic norms.

What many don’t say is that these trends can become a national security issue in times of war. Put simply, an army can quit when their country becomes too corrupt or divided to support them.

A classic example is the mass collapse of the South Vietnamese Army in the spring of 1975. The US military had been South Vietnam’s big brother and benefactor for a decade as both countries fought the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army.

But the South Vietnamese government was riddled with corruption. Its leaders and their cronies siphoned off military aid to enrich themselves, and never built popular support among the populace they purportedly served.

A corrupt and undivided government can drain an army of the will to fight. This is partly why many South Vietnamese soldiers fled the battlefield during the fall of their country in 1975. Many abandoned their uniforms on the road as they fled.

Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma/Getty Images

After the US military withdrew combat troops in 1973, the North Vietnamese army launched its final offensive on Saigon two years later. The South Vietnamese army refused to fight. News photos from that period show the army’s equipment littering roadways as soldiers abandoned their units and attempted to hide among the civilian population, says Derek Frisby, a historian at Middle Tennessee State University.

“Once it looked like North was going to take over the South, there was nothing the South Vietnamese army could do about it,” Frisby says. “Once the Americans left, it [the loss of South Vietnam) seemed inevitable.”

Wars aren’t just fought by soldiers. They are fought by a country, and its people and its institutions. They are what historian Michael Butler calls “social endeavors.”

The health of a country’s institutions - its government, military and media outlets – matter just as much as a soldier’s will to fight, says Butler, author of “Selling a ‘Just’ War: Framing Legitimacy and U.S. Military Intervention.”

Butler pointed to “On War,” the pioneering work by the 19th century Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote that the “forces of passion” are every bit as critical to a successful war effort as the military and the government.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin reviews naval troops as he attends a parade marking Russian Navy Day on July 31, 2022.

Olga Maltseva/AFP/Getty Images

If a government is corrupt and does not have the trust of the people, its armies can lose the will to fight, Butler says. He says that appears to be taking place in Russia, where society has long been afflicted by a “societal malaise.”

Its citizens have experienced the traumatic breakup of the Soviet Union, rampant corruption, political apathy, and the crushing of independent media and dissenting voices, he says. Political apathy has grown.

The malaise afflicting civic Russia may be spreading to its military, he says, adding that the signs are already there in the thousands of men fleeing Russia to escape conscription.

“That’s pretty compelling evidence that that the forces of passion are not really effectively locked into this war,” says Butler, a political science professor at Clark University in Massachusetts. “It’s not surprising to see that playing out on the battlefield with troops who are deserting or disengaging.”

The forces of passion now, though, seem to favor Ukraine. Its army’s men and women (women soldiers serve in combat units in the Ukrainian military) know what they’re fighting for.

“Ukrainians are motivated by perhaps the strongest force a soldier can have – defense of their country, families and homes,” McCausland says.

The big question for Russian troops this winter

The US military faced a crisis of morale half a century ago in Vietnam.

American troops never surrendered during the Vietnam War. They never lost a major battle during the war. The 1968 Tet Offensive, a failed campaign by North Vietnam’s army and the Viet Cong, was a military victory for the US.

Many US troops lost the will to fight in Vietnam in part because of a massive anti-war movement in their native country. In this photo, demonstrators march down Fifth Avenue in New York City in 1968 to protest against US involvement in the war.

And yet it was also a devastating political loss. The American public turned against the war. Antiwar protests rocked the country. The American public grew enraged when they learned their country’s political and military leaders had lied to them about the purpose and success of the war.

Many American combat soldiers simply lost the will to fight. The US’ abrupt withdrawal from Vietnam was one of the most humiliating chapters in our history.

The political context of the US’s war in Vietnam was different than the current war in Ukraine. In Russia, war protests have been crushed and the media has largely been uncritical of Putin’s conduct.

But on the battlefield, many Russian soldiers are discovering what some American soldiers realized in Vietnam — that they are fighting for a lie.

As John Kerry, a Vietnam combat veteran and future Senator who turned against the war, put it during a 1971 congressional hearing:

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?’

This is the question that may haunt Russian soldiers in Ukraine this winter. If Putin doesn’t give them an answer that makes their hardships worthwhile, the mass migration of men fleeing Russia after conscription may spread to the battlefield.

And one frigid winter night, when the only sounds may not be of Christmas carols but of men dying on the battlefield, Russian soldiers may ask one another:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

CNN · by John Blake · October 29, 2022

8. IDF to deploy all-female tank crews after two-year trial deemed a success

IDF to deploy all-female tank crews after two-year trial deemed a success

timesofisrael.com · by Emanuel Fabian Today, 1:00 pm Edit

Female soldiers operate a tank in the Negev desert in an undated photograph. (Israel Defense Forces)

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday declared the success of a two-year pilot program for a company of all-women tank operators, and said the role would become permanent in the military.

The company, in the Caracal mixed-gender light infantry battalion, operates along the Egyptian border — not in wars or in fighting deep behind enemy lines.

The pilot was launched in 2020 after an initial trial that saw women serving in tank units from 2017 to 2018 was deemed inconclusive.

The IDF said Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi accepted recommendations made by Tamir Yadai, head of the Ground Forces, who termed the trial a success, “and from now on they will be permanently assigned to the position.”

“The decision was made in light of professional and operational considerations and in accordance with the needs of the army, after the female troops met the predefined criteria,” the IDF added.

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“We are successfully concluding a professional and in-depth process, as part of the concept that the IDF is opening up more and more combat roles for women,” said Kohavi in remarks published by the IDF.

“I trust that the female tank soldiers will carry out the task of defending the borders professionally and with great success, and will be a significant part of the IDF’s operational effort,” he added.

Female soldiers operate a tank in the Negev desert in an undated photograph. (Israel Defense Forces)

The armored company operates Merkava IV tanks, outfitted with military’s most updated capabilities and technological systems.

In a significant change from the rest of the military, the tank company commander answers directly to the head of the Caracal Battalion. Elsewhere in the IDF, while Armored Corps units and Infantry Corps units often serve closely together, they are kept separate, with distinct hierarchical structures.

The incoming commander of the Caracal Battalion, one of four mixed-gender infantry units within the IDF’s Border Defense Corps, is a female officer, for the first time in the corps’ history.

Maj. Or Livni, who was wounded during a gun battle with smugglers in 2014, was nominated as the next head of Caracal in July, and will be promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel upon entering the role.

The Border Defense Corps is responsible for defending Israel’s borders with Jordan and Egypt. Though Israel maintains peace treaties with Amman and Cairo, these frontiers see frequent smuggling attempts and, on occasion, other violent incidents.

The Sinai Desert is home to a small but capable branch of the Islamic State terror group, known as the Sinai Province, which has committed terror attacks in the area in recent years.

Illustrative: Male and female combat soldiers of the Caracal Battalion train to fight an Islamic State assault on southern Israel in late March 2017. (Israel Defense Forces)

In an effort to free up heavy infantry units — the Paratroopers, Givati, Golani, Kfir and Nahal Brigades — which once served on these borders, in recent years the IDF has swapped them out with the Border Defense Corps’ light infantry units: Caracal, Bardelas, Lions of the Jordan Valley and Lions of the Valley Battalions.

Unlike the heavy infantry brigades, these mixed-gender battalions are not considered “maneuvering units,” meaning they are not trained to enter deep into enemy territory, but rather to stay largely within Israel’s borders and relatively close to their home bases. This means that the soldiers serving in these units do not need to meet the same physical requirements as troops in heavy infantry brigades, who must be capable of carrying heavy gear across long distances, something that men on average are physically better suited for than women.

Critics of female combat service often point to these lower standards as evidence of the dangers of gender integration in the military, while proponents maintain that these benchmarks are not significant in themselves but are determined by operational needs.

Head of the IDF Armored Corps Brig. Gen. Guy Hasson, center, poses on a tank with the army’s first female tank commanders, who graduated their course on June 28, 2018. (Israel Defense Forces)

The IDF’s 2017-2018 pilot program for all-female armored crews was officially deemed a success, but was seen within the military as having been deeply flawed, failing to account for all aspects involved in operating a tank.

The military halted the integration of armored units following that initial trial, but agreed to restart it in the beginning of 2020 following multiple petitions to the High Court of Justice.

The military is only moving ahead with gender-segregated tank crews, in large part due to issues of modesty, as in some cases crew members must use the bathroom and perform other bodily functions within the confined space of the tank.

Critics of gender integration in the military often decry it as a dangerous social experiment with potential ramifications for national security, while defenders generally call it a long-needed measure in line with the policies of many other Western countries.

Detractors also note the lowered requirements for female combat soldiers — which they say are a sign that effectiveness is being sacrificed — and that servicewomen suffer stress injuries at a higher rate.

The army insists that it is allowing more women to serve in combat positions out of practical considerations, not due to a social agenda, saying it requires all the woman- and manpower available to it.

In recent years, there has also been a growing trend of women serving in combat units and in other roles previously held by men, with the IDF having opened up more combat positions to women in June.

Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.

timesofisrael.com · by Emanuel Fabian Today, 1:00 pm Edit

9. Disinformation’s next frontier: your texts and private messages

Excerpts:

At the Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, we interviewed parents who said political and social justice policies are frequently discussed on parent group chats, as they are concerned with protecting their children’s safety. Among the parents, especially in Asian American communities, this angle was targeted for disinformation — one example is a false claim that gubernatorial candidate Beto O’ Rourke would fire a majority of the police force if elected.

In our research, several community members told us how false information, along with a general trend of members not bothering to fact-check information received via text, had people making voting decisions based on incorrect data.

All of us should expect disinformation to heighten around elections. Fact-checking all information, even information received via text or seen on WhatsApp, is the first step to countering its negative effects. For what it’s worth, there is preliminary evidence that fact-checking is more impactful on WhatsApp than on Facebook. The second step is building more sustainable counter mechanisms through public-private partnerships that follow a bottom-up approach.

Disinformation’s next frontier: your texts and private messages

BY INGA TRAUTHIG, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/28/22 2:00 PM ET

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

The Hill · by Caroline Vakil · October 28, 2022

This election season, disinformation on various platforms and in various languages is spreading yet again. Democratic Congress members are calling for social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to do more to combat election disinformation.

They are right to do so but are already missing the next trend: Disinformation is increasingly spreading via private messaging, such as on iMessage, Telegram and WhatsApp. The private nature of the exchanges poses a threat not present on more open platforms.

Corporations cannot manage this emerging threat without help. Instead of a reliance on tech companies to regulate election disinformation, our democracy needs public-private partnerships that put resources into community-led programs to counter disinformation.

This new approach is necessary to combat a threat with heightened stakes. Disinformation sent via text or on encrypted messaging apps can pose more harm than other social media because people don’t expect it, they believe it more easily and it’s more difficult to flag as suspicious. Unlike Facebook, where users are more broadly aware of disinformation, people are less likely to detect false or politically motivated information via text. In texts and direct messages, information is seen as familiar and informal and is usually not related to news or politics.

Disinformation becomes especially dangerous when it spreads through close ties, as networks of family and friends appear much more trustworthy than one’s Facebook timeline. It can also spread much faster.

For example, WhatsApp, which is highly popular in Latino and Asian American communities and used by over 85 million Americans, allows for large family and friend group chats of up to 512 members where disinformation can spread to entire private networks with one original message. Moreover, it uses end-to-end encryption, meaning messages sent between users are unreadable to the platform itself, or another third party. This makes existing countering mechanisms like removal from the platform — if it violates their community standards — impossible. Given these limited means for intervention and removal, disinformation can spread uninterrupted from chat to chat with people particularly relying on the forwarding feature.

It is especially harmful during elections. For example, false information related to voting procedures — such as what occurred during a recent campaign in Kansas, where text messages misled voters on how to vote for abortion access — can immediately produce damage.

At the Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, we interviewed parents who said political and social justice policies are frequently discussed on parent group chats, as they are concerned with protecting their children’s safety. Among the parents, especially in Asian American communities, this angle was targeted for disinformation — one example is a false claim that gubernatorial candidate Beto O’ Rourke would fire a majority of the police force if elected.

In our research, several community members told us how false information, along with a general trend of members not bothering to fact-check information received via text, had people making voting decisions based on incorrect data.

All of us should expect disinformation to heighten around elections. Fact-checking all information, even information received via text or seen on WhatsApp, is the first step to countering its negative effects. For what it’s worth, there is preliminary evidence that fact-checking is more impactful on WhatsApp than on Facebook. The second step is building more sustainable counter mechanisms through public-private partnerships that follow a bottom-up approach.

Policymakers can get ahead by moving away from top-down models that mostly derive from the points of view of people in power. Legislative discussions about disinformation, regulating the tech sector and content moderation should include representatives from minority groups — which were disproportionately targeted for disinformation during the 2020 election — so that their experiences and opinions inform these discussions better. The Spanish Language Disinformation Coalition, a recently announced campaign in Texas, is right in emphasizing the problem for Spanish speakers, but coalitions like this only create a real impact if they play the long game, outside of election season.

Health care workers deserve better than to live in fear ‘Bakke to the future?’ Supreme Court reconsiders affirmative action with a conservative majority

The spread of disinformation will also be curbed if individuals understand its ubiquity across all platforms. Tech companies should continue to educate the public and suggest new solutions, such as interventions based on metadata, which includes information such as forwarding patterns and frequency. WhatsApp has introduced metadata-based forwarding limits that seem to be inhibiting the spread of disinformation.

Tech companies will never be able to solve the disinformation problem alone, particularly as it finds new pathways to reach end users. More companies should understand their responsibility for taking down harmful content, but given the hidden nature of some disinformation, our democracy is in peril if legislators and citizens bet on nothing beyond corporations finding technological solutions.

Inga Kristina Trauthig is a senior research fellow with the Propaganda Research Lab at The University of Texas at Austin where she leads research projects looking at disinformation on messaging apps specifically. Katlyn Glover, a graduate researcher working at the Propaganda Research Lab who is focused on election-related misinformation, contributed to this piece.

The Hill · by Caroline Vakil · October 28, 2022

10. How the 2022 midterms outcome could change U.S. foreign policy

But the midterms will not be won or lost on foreign policy and nationals security issues.

How the 2022 midterms outcome could change U.S. foreign policy

Midterm elections don’t often upend American foreign policy. 2022 might be the exception.

Joshua Keating

Global Security Reporter

October 28, 2022

grid.news · by Joshua Keating

If Republicans retake control of either or both houses of Congress in November, an outcome that polls currently suggest is likely, the biggest impact will be felt in terms of domestic policy. U.S. presidents have a lot more room to maneuver without Congress’ input in the international sphere, which is one reason why, historically, they’ve tended to focus more on foreign issues later in their terms, after their political capital in Washington has been expended.

But the president is hardly a free agent in the global arena. Whatever happens on Nov. 8, President Joe Biden will still need Congress to pass his budgets, approve his nominees for key positions, and in the most serious cases, approve the use of military force. And there are several current and potential global flashpoints for which a flip to Republican control would have consequences.

All of which means that these elections may be watched almost as closely in Brussels, Moscow and Beijing as they are in Washington.

The war in Ukraine

It’s not an exaggeration to say this midterm election could have major strategic implications in the war between Russia and Ukraine, though these may not become clear for some time.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who would become speaker of the House if Republicans take over, made waves last week when he told Punchbowl News, “I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine. … Ukraine is important, but at the same time it can’t be the only thing they do and it can’t be a blank check.”

Through a series of three supplemental funding packages, Congress has allocated more than $65 billion in military, economic and food aid to Ukraine this year. To put that figure in perspective, the last time the U.S. spent that much on one country in a single year was during the Vietnam War. Support for Ukraine has, for the most part, been a rare point of bipartisan agreement in Washington. Back in March, McCarthy’s line of attack was that Biden wasn’t providing Ukraine enough firepower, namely aircraft. But there is something of a partisan divide opening on the issue. Fifty-seven House members and 11 senators, all Republicans, voted against the last $12 billion Ukraine allocation in September. A recent Reuters poll found that while 81 percent of Americans believe the U.S. should continue providing support to Ukraine despite Russia’s nuclear threats, only 66 percent of Republicans agreed. Sixty-six percent support for any policy is unusually high, but the Ukraine skepticism of influential conservative media figures including Fox News host Tucker Carlson — not to mention former president Donald Trump, who has called for immediate ceasefire negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin — may be having an impact. Some Trump-aligned Republicans this year are campaigning on their opposition to further aid for Ukraine. Senate candidate J.D. Vance of Ohio said in a recent interview, “I think we’re at the point where we’ve given enough money in Ukraine, I really do. … The Europeans need to step up.”

Arguments like these are likely to face pushback from traditional Republican foreign policy hawks. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney slammed McCarthy, saying he was competing to lead the “pro-Putin wing of my party.” Cheney, who lost her primary, won’t be in Congress next year, but hawkish views on Russia are still the majority view in her party. McCarthy’s position could put him at odds with his Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has vowed to push for more Ukraine aid, not less, if he becomes majority leader next year. Other influential House members, including Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, currently the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, appear to be trying to thread the needle between the two positions. McCaul vowed in a recent interview to introduce “more oversight and accountability” into Ukraine funding, while noting of the Ukrainians that “when we give them what they need, they win.”

For his part, Biden has declared himself “worried” that U.S. support for Ukraine could be undermined if the Republicans win. And Matt Duss, former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), told Grid, “even if we don’t see Republicans overtly threaten to pull Ukraine aid, what we almost certainly will see is efforts to extract all kinds of goodies and favors in exchange for not blocking the aid.”

But if McCarthy’s “blank check” remarks drew attention, there were also questions this week as to whether Ukraine fatigue was growing within Biden’s own party.

On Monday, the House Progressive Caucus published a letter urging the Biden administration to pair its military support for Ukraine with “efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire.” The extent to which the letter was actually urging a shift in U.S. policy was somewhat buried by the controversy that followed.

Biden himself has recently acknowledged trying to find a diplomatic “off-ramp” for Putin. But the progressives’ letter was withdrawn just a day after its release amid widespread criticism, including from caucus members themselves, who had reportedly signed it months ago. They said they were unaware it was being released in the wake of McCarthy’s comments, and just two weeks before the election. If this marked the start of a left-wing insurgency against Biden’s Ukraine policy, it wasn’t an auspicious beginning. And if the letter accomplished anything, it was to undermine Democrats’ campaign message that a vote for Republicans is a vote for appeasing Putin.

Where does this leave support for Ukraine?

It’s now looking increasingly likely that lawmakers in both parties will use the December lame duck period to pass a massive new Ukraine aid package that, in the words of one Republican senator, will make “$12 billion look like pocket change.” If they can do this before the new Congress is seated, it will at least postpone a reckoning over this issue for a few months.

China

Want to pass ambitious legislation in today’s gridlocked Congress? Try slapping an anti-China label on it.

Two of the Democrats’ biggest successes this year in terms of new domestic spending — the $52 billion Chips and Science Act and the $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act — were sold to a great extent as efforts to help the U.S. compete with China in vital, emerging manufacturing sectors: semiconductors and green tech, respectively. In June, Congress also passed, with rare and overwhelming bipartisan support, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a sweeping measure targeting imports from the region where the U.S. has accused the Chinese government of carrying out a genocide against the local Muslim population. Republican lawmakers, for the most part, strongly backed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) controversial trip to Taiwan in August, and McCarthy has said he will make a similar trip if he becomes speaker. Leading Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are both currently crafting a massive increase in military aid to Taiwan, as well.

A Republican-controlled Congress would likely push the Biden administration, which has already made “strategic competition” with China the centerpiece of its national security strategy, to be even more aggressive. One hint of what’s to come could be the Countering Communist China Act released last year by the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative lawmakers, in response to what they viewed as insufficiently aggressive proposals from Democrats. The act includes a collection of anti-China measures: bans on U.S. companies receiving federal subsidies affiliating with businesses tied to the Chinese military, blocking funding to U.S. universities that affiliate with Chinese government organizations, and mandating a new investigation into the origins of the covid-19 pandemic. House Republicans are also calling for greater oversight of technology exports to China that could potentially benefit the country’s military.

It’s unlikely all these measures will pass, even if Republicans control both houses next year, but they’re the sorts of provisions that could turn up in large, important spending bills.

U.S.-China relations, which are already in a very tense place, are unlikely to change dramatically should control of Congress revert to the Republicans. But as Bates Gill, executive director of the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, told Grid, “If Republicans were able to gain both houses, then that’s going to put enormous pressure on the president and make it difficult for him to veto actions if the two houses can agree to some tougher policies toward China.”

Saudi Arabia

One foreign leader who will likely be paying close attention on Nov. 8 is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. There’s little love lost between the kingdom’s de facto ruler and the Biden administration. According to a Wall Street Journal account this week, the crown prince frequently mocks the president’s age and verbal gaffes in private and talks about how he “much preferred former President Donald Trump.” While the crown prince defended the recent move by the Saudi-led OPEC+ cartel to cut oil production, thereby raising global energy prices, as a matter of economics, many analysts believe the cut was at least partly an effort to punish Biden’s party at the polls.

The move only deepened antipathy toward the Saudis among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the influential chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the administration to “immediately freeze all aspects” of U.S. cooperation with the kingdom. Menendez has a number of means at his disposal, both formal and informal, to hold up or block U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear to what extent any “freeze” would continue under a Republican Congress. A Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer told Grid in an emailed statement that “despite challenges, our partnership with Saudi Arabia remains important for U.S. national security. The only way we can protect our interests is through engagement — we need to be at the table and incentivize better behavior through engagement and cooperative efforts that serve shared interests, like countering Iran.”

This isn’t a purely partisan issue. During the Trump administration, Republicans at times placed holds on arms sales to the Saudis and their regional allies over various concerns. But it is an area where Trump’s ongoing influence on the party is worth watching. Just this week, the former president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, and his former Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, were both in Riyadh for the global conference nicknamed “Davos in the Desert.” No Biden administration officials were in attendance.

Hearings, hearings and more hearings

Another way that Congress is likely to make itself heard on foreign policy — assuming a Republican victory — is via oversight hearings. McCaul recently sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking for the preservation of documents related to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, during which 13 U.S. servicemembers were killed and which led to the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban’s return to power. A Republican committee staffer told Grid that a list has been prepared of administration officials to be brought in for testimony and that the House majority’s subpoena power could be used if necessary.

House Republicans also say they are preparing the groundwork for hearings on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which they allege will show the president’s sons ties to China and other foreign powers.

The Biden administration will likely dismiss these proceedings as time-wasting, grandstanding. But as the Obama administration learned in the aftermath of the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, such hearings may well dominate Washington’s limited attention span for much of the next two years.

Looking ahead to 2024

For many foreign observers, the elections are likely more interesting as harbingers for what’s to come in two years rather than in the coming months. While the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, the scale of that loss, and the sorts of candidates who enter the new Congress, could give indications of Biden’s prospects for reelection in 2024 and the likelihood that Trump — or another candidate in the Trump mold — could return to power.

Uncertainty about America’s political future always has concrete impacts on foreign policy. One reason why the Biden administration has had a difficult time fulfilling its campaign pledge of negotiating a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is that the Iranians are understandably skeptical that any deal they sign won’t be thrown out the next time a Republican is in office. For what it’s worth, congressional Republicans probably couldn’t do much to stop a new nuclear deal if one were reached, just as they were unable to block Barack Obama’s original deal back in 2015; right now, amid the mass protests in Iran, there’s little movement toward a deal anyway.

A defeat for the Democrats in 2024 could well lead to the U.S. once again withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Former national security adviser John Bolton has even suggested that Trump was prepared to pull the U.S. out of NATO had he won a second term.

So there will be short-term impact and long-term concerns, whatever happens on Nov. 8. And regardless of the results, Biden is likely to spend the next two years with global allies looking over his shoulder, wondering who and what might be coming next.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

grid.news · by Joshua Keating

11. Official Describes DOD’s Efforts to Bolster Ukraine’s Defense

Official Describes DOD’s Efforts to Bolster Ukraine’s Defense

defense.gov · by David Vergun

Today, the Defense Department announced the authorization of a security assistance package for Ukraine valued at up to $275 million.

29:14

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said the package included:

Delivery of eight National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems most likely next month, with training on the system currently underway.
Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems.
500 precision-guided 155 mm artillery rounds.
2,000 155 mm rounds of remote anti-armor mine systems.
Over 1,300 anti-armor systems, including AT4 anti-tank weapons and shoulder-launched multipurpose assault weapons.
125 Humvees.
Small arms with more than 2.75 million rounds.
Four satellite communications antennas to augment Ukraine's communications capabilities, which include Starlink.

Allies and partners are also providing security assistance to Ukraine, she said. Spain will be delivering HAWK surface-to-air missiles, and Germany will be delivering IRIS-T air defense systems.

Ukraine Map

A map of Ukraine.

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Spotlight: Support for Ukraine

"We're extremely pleased that our partners and allies have been donating these systems to Ukraine," she added.

In other news, Singh announced that on Oct. 31, U.S. Army Pacific will activate its first Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center in Hawaii.

Platoon Exercise

A soldier from 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, conducts a platoon exercise in Poland, Oct. 26, 2022.

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It's the first combat training center established by the Army in over 50 years and the first combat training center for the Indo-Pacific region.

Spotlight: Focus on Indo-Pacific

The first rotation will include several thousand troops from all U.S. military services, including the Coast Guard, as well as participants from Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, she said.

Aerial Exercise

An AH-64E Apache Guardian from the Army’s 3rd Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment, Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Armored Division participates in an aerial gunnery exercise at Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland, Oct. 25, 2022.

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"JPMRC increases combined training opportunities for regional allies and partners and produces significant cost savings, versus moving personnel and equipment to continental U.S. training facilities," she said.

defense.gov · by David Vergun

12. Could Iran’s regime fall?

And what if it does? Are we ready for what comes next? I hope there is a lot of interagency wargaming taking place these days.

the theocrats should know that dithering leads to downfall.

Could Iran’s regime fall?

The protests are persisting, as the theocrats dither

The Economist

Sitting on a podium before an assembly of sportsmen on September 11th, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one of the world’s longest-reigning leaders, sounded surprisingly perky. Defying reports of his death, the 83-year-old celebrated the pious female athletes who had been competing abroad, shrouded in veils. One, he enthused, had refused to shake the hand of “a foreign man”. A victorious wrestler had prostrated himself before God, reciting the names of the imams deemed holy by Shia Muslims. The athletes, he said, had scored a “tremendous victory” (irrespective of trophies) against Western efforts to “export their culture and prevail over ours”.

The supreme guide had other reasons to feel jovial. With an eye to his succession, he had purged his regime of the reformists threatening to cast doubt on the Islamic Republic. A year earlier he had replaced President Hassan Rouhani, who earned a doctorate from a Scottish university, with Ebrahim Raisi, a little-travelled, blinkered yes-man. He had fended off Western efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear plans. Despite Western economic sanctions, Iran’s state coffers were being refilled with oil cash. And he had launched a new chastity drive bent on restoring the moral fibre of the Islamic revolution.

Two days after the sporting event, Mr Khamenei’s morality police stopped Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman on a trip to Tehran, Iran’s capital, for not wearing her hijab “properly”. They bundled her into their van and took her away for re-education and a beating. Her death in custody unleashed a decade of pent-up frustration. At the funeral women ripped off their headscarves. Police shot back with tear-gas, sparking protests that quickly spread. In scores of cities across an array of provinces they chanted Amini’s name, crying “Death to the dictator!”—the same cry that had toppled the shah in 1979. Could it happen to the ayatollahs?

Protests against the regime have erupted before. Big ones have occurred every decade or so, but of late have come faster and more furiously. This one has been on a very different scale. The protesters no longer demand bigger handouts or political reform within the system, but the overthrow of the theocracy. The outrage has lasted longer than before and has spread beyond the middle class.

It has engulfed different religious sects and ethnicities. “From Zahedan to Kurdistan, may my life be sacrificed for Iran,” runs a countrywide cry, referring to a city near the eastern border with Pakistan and an Iranian province in the west. Celebrities, sporting heroes and film stars on government payrolls have cheered on the protesters. Despite hundreds of deaths and over 12,000 arrests, Mr Khamenei’s forces have failed to quell the revolt. “We’re not a movement any more,” says a protester at a university in Tehran. “We’re a revolution that’s giving birth to a nation.”

For the first time in the Middle East, women have been leading the protests. They have had enough of men in turbans controlling how they must dress, travel and even work. By law, they still need male guardians to go between provinces or stay in hotels. If they have no male relative, a local mullah may have them married off.

But they have increasingly seen alternative ways of life on the internet and have read of the social changes sweeping across even conservative places such as Saudi Arabia. They hear their grandparents telling them of a time before the ayatollahs when women could be judges. Their mantra—zan, zindiqi, azadi (women, life, freedom)—encapsulates their demands.

Six weeks on, the Islamic Republic is in retreat. Women walk the streets and ride the Tehran underground without headscarves. Some raise a finger at security forces when they pass. Others offer hugs to male strangers. At Tehran’s Sharif University, male students form a line of defence against the basij, the regime’s militia of vigilantes, as women enter the male canteen.

Detractors and supporters alike speak of a sexual revolution. “For dancing in the alley. For being afraid of kissing one another,” run the lyrics of a song, “Baraye”, meaning “for”, which has become the protesters’ anthem. “For changing brains which have got rotten. For being embarrassed. For yearning for a normal life.” “The future of Iran is a woman,” says Ali Karimi, a football star who fled to the United Arab Emirates and is emerging as a spokesman in exile.

The protesters are mostly young; many are radical. Their vanguard is drawn from university and school students, who make up around a third of Iran’s 86m-odd people. They are fired by ideas racing across social media, including khoshunat-e mashroo, or legitimate violence. They have chased Mr Khamenei’s officials out of their schools, thrown Molotov cocktails at the security forces, burned down billboards with images of the supreme leader, torn down signs of the morality police centres, and mugged lone policemen and clerics.

Some of the chants mock the regime’s hate-speech: “Death to the dictator!” rather than the official “Death to Israel!” The symbolic burning of hijabs has replaced the routine setting fire to the Stars and Stripes. When the shah was the butt of protests, the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, famously used to intone: “When the people do not want such a servant to serve them, he should step aside.” Now the protesters echo that saying, with Mr Khamenei as their target.

That message may be swaying pious Iranians, who have been the regime’s traditional base. Some of the biggest protests have been in conservative shrine cities, such as Mashhad and Qom, and in female universities, like al-Zahra in Tehran, where the regime once trained youthful Islamic ideologues. Few have answered Mr Khamenei’s calls to mobilise. “They’re just not showing up,” says an Iranian analyst in Dubai. Many religious Iranians are appalled by the corruption as well as the violence perpetrated in the name of their faith. They fume at the sight of ayatollahs’ sons driving Ferraris or Porsches.

Khamenei at bay

So far the protesters have perhaps intentionally eschewed programmes and leaders. Their diversity makes it hard for them to agree on either. They are wary of relying on a leader who could be killed, jailed or put under house arrest, as happened to the Green Movement’s leading lights after the mass protests of 2009.

Cunningly leaderless

Instead the organisation is horizontal, with hundreds of small and disparate social-media networks. They gather along main roads, not at junctions, where the riot police lie in wait. Experience has taught them that ambitious manifestos in so complex a country can be divisive. So their demands, circulated in slogans and on social-media platforms (particularly Telegram), tend be limited to calls for the release of students from jail, the trial of security men responsible for killing protesters, and the sacking of teachers who have snitched on them.

The regime’s prisons may, however, be a font of revolt. “There’s more space to talk there than in cafés,” says an activist who spent five years in a communal cell with 90 other dissidents. “You spend all your time thrashing through ideas with people from across Iran. We were living together and became very close.” Fellow inmates included atheists, Shia reformists, Sunnis, Sufi mystics, Bahais, Christian converts and even jihadists loyal to Islamic State. Much as leftists and Islamists both did under the shah, they have honed their ideas and plans of action inside. They agree on equal rights and an end to discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities. In their separate jail blocks, women have done the same. On their release they have met and plotted.

But this revolt has mostly been of Mr Khamenei’s own making. At its outset, the regime’s leadership was a hybrid of clergy chosen within their own councils and representatives elected by the people, albeit after being vetted for loyalty to Islamic rule. Parliament and a president were elected every four years. But during his reign of 33 years Mr Khamenei has ruled with an increasingly iron fist. His men on the Guardian Council excluded ever more candidates. Last year they fixed the presidential race so that Mr Raisi, an obedient hardliner, would win. The turnout was the republic’s lowest on record. The safety-valve of even controlled elections was discarded. Mr Khamenei purged his theocracy of reformists. The tightening of the morality code and the raising of fines for violations curbed what personal freedom Iranians still enjoyed.

The regime is becoming bloodier, too. In 2009 it may have killed 70 people to suppress protests over a rigged presidential election. In 2019 it killed more than 1,500 in under a week of protests against cuts in subsidies, according to human-rights groups. The security forces have so far been loth to pour fuel on the fire by shooting schoolgirls. But the scale of repression has already exceeded that of 2009. Exhausted and overstretched, the security forces have sometimes failed to give warning shots. The regime is said to be offering the police double pay to enforce order. A massacre could turn the protests into a full-scale revolution.

The regime is also ramping up its surveillance. Its thugs raid protesters’ homes to confiscate phones. “Don’t make a fuss or we’ll take you as well,” they say, ensuring compliance. Newly installed high-resolution cameras match pedestrians to their identity cards and mobile phones. Businessmen who have been caught flashing V-for-victory signs at protesters have been summoned for questioning in mosques. The authorities are also rolling out a countrywide intranet to seal Iran hermetically from the world wide web. VPNs that have been used to circumvent the intranet are being closed down. The authorities have reduced street lighting, plunging neighbourhoods into darkness.

The regime’s most effective weapon may be economic. Few can afford to heed calls for an indefinite general strike. Inflation, at over 50%, is at its highest in a decade. The currency’s value has plummeted. Millions have fallen into poverty.

So the protesters’ road is long and uncertain. The largest demonstrations have numbered tens of thousands, not the millions that toppled the shah. If the revolt is to succeed, more middle-class and middle-aged Iranians need to join the fray. The security forces, police and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s praetorian body, have so far stood loyal.

There have been no significant defections from the regime. But in its senior echelons a striking silence has prevailed. Despite Mr Khamenei’s call to denounce the protests, none of the former presidents has spoken up. Criticism of Mr Khamenei’s slow and rigid responses is growing in official circles. Seminarians and Islamist reformists have condemned the regime’s recourse to violence. A former long-serving speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, has urged the regime to relax its enforcement of the hijab. The sports minister hosted a female climber who recently competed in Korea without a veil, wearing a hoodie and cap instead. There has been wrangling in the state media.

Mr Khamenei has long feared concessions, seeing them as signs of weakness. “He never budges,” says Mohsen Kadivar, a senior theologian who now lives in America. He notes that regimes in the Middle East, such as Morocco and Jordan, that quickly amended their constitutions in the face of the Arab spring of 2011, emerged the least scathed. From Los Angeles, Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah, has called for a referendum to decide whether Iran should be an Islamic republic, a secular one or a reconstituted monarchy.

Arguments over the succession may weaken the regime from within. Mr Khamenei, who is said to have cancer, may favour his 53-year-old son, Mojtaba, who runs the supreme guide’s office and has lately—on flimsy religious grounds—been named an ayatollah. Some clerics and generals are against a dynastic succession. In June Mr Khamenei sacked Hossein Tayeb, the Revolutionary Guards’ powerful head of intelligence, reportedly for opposing it.

“The IRGC are seeing the ground shift and are holding back,” says Sadegh Zibakalam, a political scientist in Tehran. A former diplomat in Iran agrees. “Maybe some of the commanders are supporting the crackdown, but the rank and file sympathise with the protesters,” he says.

The IRGC is not monolithic, in any case. Many of its senior people are motivated more by money than religion; the irgc has huge business interests. Some analysts think it might sweep away the supreme guide’s establishment and impose a military rule of its own under a veneer of piety.

What is certain is that Mr Khamenei and the Islamic regime are both in deeper trouble than at any time since the shah was toppled in 1979. They are dithering, unsure whether to repress more brutally or give ground. The protests could yet fizzle out, as they have before. But this time there is at least a chance that they will persist. The beginning of the end of the Islamic regime must surely be in sight. ■

The Economist

13. Why Is Joe Biden Sending U.S. Soldiers So Close to Ukraine?

Because he can? Because he should?

Davis' argument against it. I could argue that appeasement or failing to stand up against threats is what could really lead to conflict and war. Acts of weakness will be exploited and Davis counsels weakness.

As I stated at the opening, let me reiterate once more: there is nothing at stake in the war between the bordering states of Russia and Ukraine that threatens our national security (or that of our NATO alliance). Russia has exposed a near total incapacity to conventionally threaten any NATO member, so America’s primary objective should be to contain the spread of the war to its current boundaries, promote a diplomatic end to the fighting on the best terms for Ukraine possible, and maintain our strong conventional and nuclear deterrent to guarantee our own security and continued prosperity.

What we should never do, however, is foolishly court actions that would expand the war, draw us into an unnecessary fight, and put at risk our very existence as a nation. It’s shocking such obvious truths need to be written, yet that is the reality of this situation. Too many of our leaders and so-called experts are aggressively pushing us closer and closer to war with Russia – that could all too easily go nuclear – and doing virtually nothing to end the fighting.

Why Is Joe Biden Sending U.S. Soldiers So Close to Ukraine?

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Davis · October 28, 2022

Is America Mindlessly Drifting to War with Russia?: Let’s start with this black-and-white fundamental truth right up front: America’s national security is not threatened, in any way, by the conflict raging between Ukraine and Russia. This statement is simultaneously true: we will stay safe unless we foolishly, recklessly stumble into a direct confrontation with Russia by joining the war on Ukraine’s side.

Given the Administration’s frequent claims that the president has no intention of engaging in a war with Russia, one could be forgiven not knowing there was any chance of the U.S. getting sucked into the war with Russia. Biden reiterated in April that the United States would not “not send U.S. troops to fight Russian troops in Ukraine.” He has not publicly changed from that stance since. Yet the deployments and dispositions of U.S. military in the past week casts doubt on the president’s assurances.

In just the past few days, the United States Army deployed a brigade of the famed 101st Airborne Division to Romania – the first time the division has been in Europe in almost 80 years. The U.S.-led NATO alliance just held a major nuclear weapons exercise, and in the Adriatic Sea near Ukraine, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. George H.W. Bush is conducting exercises with NATO allies. While exercises are a normal and routine part of America’s national defense, these included ominous offensive allusions.

Brig. Gen. John Lubas, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Romania, said the unit was not there for a training event, but a “combat deployment,” adding that his troops “need to be ready to fight tonight, depending on how the situation escalates across the border” in Ukraine.

In a Newsweek article this week titled, American Troops Prepared to Engage in War with Russia, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who was aboard the aircraft carrier, said the operation in the Adriatic “demonstrates our ability to rapidly reinforce our allies and project power across the alliance.” Since last February, the United States deployed thousands of troops to Europe, bringing the total number to 100,000, many of which have been forward deployed to Eastern European NATO states.

What no one in Washington or Brussels has bothered to explain to the American people, however, is: why?

What is the threat to American national security that would necessitate the deployment of 100,000 U.S. troops, forward-deploy a combat division that hasn’t been in Europe since World War II, and send aircraft carrier battle groups up to the Ukraine border, all of which are expressly and publicly intended to prepare for war with Russia?

Thus far, the non-thinking answer has been to constantly repeat that Russia launched “an unprovoked” war against Ukraine, with the implication being, that if not checked now, Putin may soon launch further attacks into eastern Europe and conquer more territory. So many of America’s current leaders were raised in the heart of the Cold War and learned from their youth to fear and even hate the Russian-dominated USSR. But Putin’s Russia of today is not a fraction of the genuine combat power once wielded by the Kremlin.

It is ironic that many experts claim Russia is a serious threat to attack NATO territory, while others claim the Russian military will not be able to defeat even Ukraine. It can’t simultaneously be that Russia is a regional menace that is a threat to roll through NATO countries, yet also so weak that Ukraine is going to defeat them. The reality is evident for anyone willing to see it: the Russian military did not have the capacity to successfully capture even neighboring NATO states (prior to this war, it was widely assumed NATO would be powerless to prevent a Russian victory over the Baltics) and owing to the tremendous equipment losses over the past eight months, it would take decades of time to rebuild even to their pre-war level.

Yet as I have frequently argued, if Russia mobilizes a large portion of its armed force and its defense industrial capacity, in time it will likely overcome the Ukrainian defenses – though even that minor objective is by no means a guarantee. The idea, however, that Russia has the slightest conventional capacity to invade any other country is laughable. They don’t. Period. Full stop. There is nowhere near the necessary military means to invade even one bordering state, much less take on the 30-member military alliance of NATO.

Yet that has not stopped many in the United States from fanning the flames of fear on the idea that Russia is a danger to the U.S. and must be militarily confronted. Former general and CIA Director David Petraeus has suggested the U.S. troops do more than simply exercise near the Ukrainian border. In a recent interview with the French weekly L’Express, Petraeus suggested the United States might intervene in Ukraine with a multi-national ‘coalition of the willing’ type arrangement and potentially fight the Russians there.

Earlier this month, in response to a hypothetical Russian use of a tactical nuclear weapon on Ukrainian soil, Petraeus argued the United States should “take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine… and every ship in the Black Sea.” The former general seems oblivious to the reality that if the U.S. directly attacked Russian military forces, they would respond in kind immediately, potentially targeting American troops in Europe or Syria – sending the risk of a full-on war between the world’s two largest nuclear superpowers through the roof.

It should be an article of faith that the United States Government and our Armed Forces have the primary obligation to defend our country, meet our treaty obligations, and preserve the ability of our citizens to prosper. Yet in today’s world, there is a ghastly lack of awareness of the consequences to a nuclear exchange with Russia, and a frighteningly cavalier willingness to risk such a war with Moscow over issues not even related to our national security.

A Paladin M109 Alpha-6 Howitzer, fires an illumination round during a night fire exercise in support of Eager Lion 2016, May 23, 2016 at Al Zarqa, Jordan. Eager Lion 16 is a bi-lateral exercise in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between the Jordanian Armed Forces and the U.S. Military designed to strengthen relationships and interoperability beween partner nations while conducting contingency operations. (U.S Army photo by Spc. Kevin Kim/ Released)

As I stated at the opening, let me reiterate once more: there is nothing at stake in the war between the bordering states of Russia and Ukraine that threatens our national security (or that of our NATO alliance). Russia has exposed a near total incapacity to conventionally threaten any NATO member, so America’s primary objective should be to contain the spread of the war to its current boundaries, promote a diplomatic end to the fighting on the best terms for Ukraine possible, and maintain our strong conventional and nuclear deterrent to guarantee our own security and continued prosperity.

What we should never do, however, is foolishly court actions that would expand the war, draw us into an unnecessary fight, and put at risk our very existence as a nation. It’s shocking such obvious truths need to be written, yet that is the reality of this situation. Too many of our leaders and so-called experts are aggressively pushing us closer and closer to war with Russia – that could all too easily go nuclear – and doing virtually nothing to end the fighting.

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Daniel L. Davis is a Senior Fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who deployed into combat zones four times. He is the author of “The Eleventh Hour in 2020 America.” Follow him @DanielLDavis

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel Davis · October 28, 2022

14. Can the US Deter China? Lessons from Putin's Invasion of Ukraine - Interpret: China

I appreantly missed this from August but I think it is still very relevant. Four very important essays from noted experts with varied views that address this article that can be downloaded here: https://interpret.csis.org/can-the-us-deter-china-lessons-from-putins-invasion-of-ukraine/

(Rory Metcalf, Oriana Skyler Mastro, Hal Brands, Michael Mazarr)

The U.S. Deterrence Strategy and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

美国威慑战略与俄乌冲突

How is Beijing assessing the effectiveness of US deterrence strategy, creditability, and capabilities? Writing in one of China’s leading IR journals, Renmin University’s Zuo Xiying concludes that while US “failed to deter Russia from taking military action,” its actions to support Ukraine and punish Moscow “produced a powerful deterrent effect against China with regard to the Taiwan issue.”

Can the US Deter China? Lessons from Putin's Invasion of Ukraine - Interpret: China

interpret.csis.org · by Rory Medcalf · August 23, 2022

To read the translated article discussed below, see “The U.S. Deterrence Strategy and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict,” published in a recent edition of Contemporary International Relations (现代国际关系), a leading IR journal published by the Ministry of State Security-backed China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

In the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, how are Chinese strategists and scholars assessing US deterrence strategy? What are the implications for Taiwan? Here, four leading foreign affairs experts – Rory Medcalf, Oriana Skylar Mastro, Hal Brands, and Michael Mazarr – analyze a newly translated article by a senior Chinese scholar which concludes that while the US failed to deter Putin’s aggression, its actions in Ukraine are nonetheless impacting Beijing’s foreign policy calculations.

Jump to commentary from:

| | |

Rory Medcalf

Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) has long come out with quality strategic analysis. Back in calmer geopolitical times, as an Australian intelligence analyst, I regularly had opportunities for dialogue with this think tank affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of State Security. The caliber of such discussions left the impression that the party-state allowed CICIR staff considerably more license for providing honest assessment than it gave the typical Chinese academic, official, or propagandist. In addition, CICIR analysts grounded their work neither in doctrine nor feigned scholarly detachment but in a clear sense of China’s national interests and the realities of a contested world. They merited attention.

Thus, Zuo Xiying’s May 2022 article, “The U.S. Deterrence Strategy and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict,” makes fascinating and useful reading. As reliable analysis, it has its share of flaws, understandable given the extreme controls on public expression in Xi Jinping’s China. There’s a predictable closing reference to the virtues of Xi’s “community of common destiny,” and American decadence gets an obligatory mention. One key conclusion is the obvious point that U.S. strategy failed to deter Vladimir Putin from commencing his aggressive war.

But the bulk of the paper is illuminating for its sophisticated effort to come to grips with the relative success of U.S. efforts to strengthen Ukraine and the substantial impact of “second-stage deterrence”—international sanctions on Russia and the sustained arming of Ukraine during war. Here is a credible Chinese expert account of the conflict that will not be welcome in Russia. In generally unideological terms, the author acknowledges the excellence of U.S. intelligence gathering and the growing costs that Washington and its allies are imposing on Russia. The narrative at times acknowledges the accuracy of Western perspectives (for instance, noting the likely role of U.S. capabilities in helping Ukraine eliminate Russian generals and sink the Moskva, the Black Sea Fleet’s flagship). This is a welcome hint that China’s best strategic thinkers know full well the limits of Russia’s—and their own government’s—delusional public narrative that depicts Putin’s war as anything other than a brutal blunder.

For Asia watchers, of course, the crucial part of Zuo’s article is its brief direct reference to Taiwan. The context of China’s threats against Taiwan casts a shadow across the whole analysis but is made explicit in just one tantalizing paragraph toward the end, where the author argues U.S. determination to impose post-invasion costs on Russia is intended to change China’s calculations about forceful “reunification.” Whether or not this was truly front of mind for U.S. decisionmakers, it is hard to contest the conclusions that “all the parties involved with the Taiwan issue are studying the Russia-Ukraine conflict” and that the United States and its allies want Taiwan to become better prepared for war, both in capability and in will.

It would be useful to see the bits that did not get published in order to know the author’s deeper conclusions about the lessons of Putin’s war for China and Taiwan. His published analysis ends abruptly, with the text taking a jagged turn toward the conflict’s ramifications for food security and the wonders of a community of common destiny. One hopes there is a longer version of the Taiwan section for official eyes only—and that they read it, for the lessons of Ukraine are profound and many. Resistance and solidarity matter. And armed aggression by Beijing would have catastrophic consequences, not only for international peace and the people of Taiwan, but for the global economy, China’s interests, and the Xi regime.

Oriana Skylar Mastro

Center Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University; Non-Resident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Tensions at the Taiwan Strait are at an all-time high. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit marked the highest level of exchange between U.S. and Taiwanese officials since 1997. China used the visit as a pretext to conduct large-scale military exercises encircling the island, coupled with rhetoric about how it could successfully use force to unify if it decided to do so.

The dynamics between China and the United States over Taiwan are eerily like those laid out in Zuo Xiying’s balanced, informative article. Zuo accurately captures the U.S. deterrence strategy toward Russia before its invasion of Ukraine—highlighting key components such as threatening economic sanctions and international isolation, as well as providing training and equipment to Ukraine to enhance its ability to defend itself. But deterrence failed, the reasons (according to Zuo) being that the United States did not do more to reassure Russia of its peaceful intentions and that ultimately costs are difficult to calculate ahead of time. Once war broke out, as Zuo also points out, the United States escalated its involvement by providing military aid to Ukraine, which increased the costs of the war to Russia.

What does all this mean for U.S. deterrence strategy with respect to Taiwan? Zuo recognizes that “for China, the Russia-Ukraine conflict acts as a mirror. . . . China needs to not only study in depth how the United States deters and how it punishes Russia, but also to carefully analyze how Russia perceives the United States’ threats and to derive experience and lessons from therein.” But he leaves the reader wondering what those lessons are. He hints in his discussion on Ukraine that a U.S. strategy to build up Taiwan’s defenses is unlikely to deter China; however, he also indirectly suggests that China may be underestimating the costs of war. Successful deterrence, Zuo notes, “requires not only that the United States itself has powerful forces and strong resolve but that it can make the other side accurately feel the threat and have an accurate calculation of the costs and benefits. But the real world is complicated, and it is difficult to have both conditions present at once.” In other words, he thinks there is an intermediate step needed in a deterrence strategy. The United States has to not only issue a credible threat, but also make the other side accurately assess the costs and benefits of certain actions.

Zuo does not seem optimistic. He implies the United States needs to increase efforts to paint a more specific picture of what it would do if war broke out—but that, even if it did, the message still might not get through. The reader is left with an acute understanding that if there is war over Taiwan, failures in both Beijing and Washington will be to blame.

Hal Brands

Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

How will Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—and the democratic world’s reaction to that invasion—shape China’s calculus regarding a prospective attack on Taiwan? This is one of the most important questions in international politics today.

The answer is, unfortunately, presently unknowable given the difficulty of figuring out just what is happening in Xi Jinping’s mind. But the larger Chinese policy community has begun to assess the implications of the Ukraine war, and this article by Professor Zuo Xiying of Renmin University of China offers an early contribution to the debate. “All the parties involved with the Taiwan issue are studying the Russia-Ukraine conflict and trying to gain experience and lessons from it,” he writes.

Professor Zuo’s article traces the U.S. effort to deter Russia both before and after the invasion of February 2022. Zuo argues that Washington failed to deter that invasion because President Biden: (a) refused to offer meaningful reassurance that Ukraine would not join NATO (or simply move closer to the alliance) and further integrate into the Western community; and (b) weakened his own position by preemptively taking the use of U.S. military forces off the table. Yet Zuo also argues that Washington and its allies subsequently constructed a powerful “deterrence by punishment” strategy, using a mix of measures—including sanctions against Russia and support for the Ukrainian war effort—to raise the cost of the invasion, in hopes of affecting not just Putin’s calculus but that of other U.S. rivals, namely China.

As Zuo writes, U.S. policy has “formed a new deterrence logic and new deterrence effects” and “produced a powerful deterrent effect against China with regard to the Taiwan issue.” Notably, Zuo is also impressed with the role of U.S. intelligence disclosures in exposing Russian war plans and throwing Moscow off balance. For the West, he writes, “the lessons and experience are clear, namely that Taiwan must prepare for war—that it must both improve its defensive capabilities and strengthen its will to fight. This would be the only way to convince China that it cannot win on the battlefield or that it can bear the cost of reunification.”

Some readers may disagree with parts of this article: I doubt that the reassurance efforts Zuo stresses would have averted a Russian invasion, because Putin could only be reassured by measures that went far beyond a pledge of “no NATO membership for Ukraine.” U.S. officials, for their part, have disputed the notion that threats of force—whether implicit or explicit—would have changed Putin’s mind. But this article is analytically valuable because it gives a window into how some Chinese analysts are interpreting events in Ukraine. And that is a starting point for understanding how a war on one side of Eurasia may affect the likelihood of conflict on the other.

Michael Mazarr

Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation

Zuo Xiying’s review of U.S. deterrence policies toward Russia and Europe after 2014 is detailed, balanced, and accurate. The essay emphasizes one especially critical and often overlooked fact about preventing war: the need to pair deterrence threats with elements of reassurance. The most urgent question for U.S. policy on the Taiwan issue is whether Washington can continue to achieve that difficult balance.

Analysts and policymakers too often think of deterrence as a linear relationship between capabilities and outcomes: the more risk we can present a potential aggressor, the higher the reading we get on the deterrence meter. In fact, while the power and credibility of military threats can be essential to forestall war, they are only part of the equation. Their effect can be ruined if a paranoid aggressor believes that the strategic situation is turning against them and feels a desperate urgency to act. Even the prospect of likely failure did not keep Japan from attacking the United States in 1941 or the Soviet Union from plunging into Afghanistan in 1979.

Zuo makes this point at some length, stressing that it is essential to open a path for a potential aggressor to satisfy its needs short of war—some form of reassurance—for capabilities and threats to work. Dissuading aggression involves not only making an aggressor fear going to war, but also convincing them they do not have to do so.

Achieving such reassurance in Taiwan has historically taken the form of a mutual agreement to kick the can down the road, allowing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to defer its goals instead of acting rashly. But many intersecting trends are now undercutting that approach. Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong has eviscerated the happy talk behind its offer of “one country, two systems.” The devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (and the sorrow that, as Zuo documents, the United States could have done more to deter it) is hardening attitudes in Washington, which seems increasingly willing to take risks to shore up Taiwan’s position. U.S. and global efforts to engage Taiwan economically and politically are spoiling Beijing’s effort to isolate the island. And public opinion in Taiwan has turned decisively against any version of unification.

It is not clear how close we are to a dangerous threshold, the point at which the PRC decides it must either act or lose Taiwan forever. Senior officials in Beijing may remain confident in their long-term ability to compel Taiwanese submission without war, as dubious as that may seem to unbiased observers. But reassurance, as Zuo rightly reminds us, is a critical component of any strategy to forestall war. Given China’s rising power and continuing goals, an increasingly tough-minded U.S. policy, and several accelerating political trends, the space to preserve some version of reassurance over the Taiwan issue may be rapidly closing.

Rory Medcalf

Head, National Security College, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

Oriana Skylar Mastro

Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University; Non-Resident Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Hal Brands

Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)

Michael Mazarr

Senior Political Scientist, RAND Corporation

interpret.csis.org · by Rory Medcalf · August 23, 2022

15. Republicans sharpen knives for China with eye on House majority

I hope it is not a bloodbath for aid to Ukraine.

Republicans sharpen knives for China with eye on House majority

BY EMILY BROOKS - 10/28/22 6:00 AM ET

The Hill · by Lauren Vella · October 28, 2022

House Republicans plan to put sharp scrutiny on China next year if they win the majority, including establishing a select committee to take on Beijing on a range of economic and military issues.

And while much of the their agenda consists of aggressively investigating the Biden administration and pushing partisan priorities, Republicans are hopeful that work on China and the select committee will be a largely bipartisan, non-adversarial venture that has lasting impacts in tackling a generational challenge.

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), a member of the House Intelligence and Armed Services committees, said that there is “huge opportunity in divided government” to get “bipartisan work” done on China.

Creating a China select committee has been a longtime goal of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who tried to work with Democrats to create one in 2020.

But Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Republicans say, pulled Democrats out of a planned China panel the day before the original launch date that February, around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Washington Post reported at the time that Democrats had concerns about the China issue being too politicized.

After plans for a bipartisan group crumbled, McCarthy organized a House GOP China “task force,” led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Despite the task force lacking Democratic participation, McCarthy flaunted to Roll Call later that year that “more than 60 percent of the ideas are bipartisan.” A select committee would be a continuation of that effort.

Some proposals from members on the GOP’s China task force were included in a $280 billion bill to boost domestic chip manufacturing industry and fund scientific research that was passed and signed into law earlier this year. House Republican leaders whipped against the final version of the bill, however, over larger political and tax objections.

“This really isn’t just a military effort, or even a whole-of-government effort,” said Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), but an “all-of-society effort.”

Waltz said he has experienced good bipartisan working relationships with Democrats when working on China policy that has a national security focus. But he is not certain that would be the case on some domestic issues related to the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — or for members who do not have access to classified information about Chinese threats.

“I just don’t know the appreciation, for example, of some Democrats that are on Ed and Labor [House Education and Labor Committee], and are they concerned about the amount of CCP-backed money flowing into university endowments? Or the number of university students who will get a visa to come to here on a liberal arts degree, and then switch their major to nanotechnology while here? And there’s no provision within our visa law to really kind of capture that,” Waltz said.

“There were kind of so many disparate, uncoordinated efforts going on that the task force really pulled a lot of that together,” said Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who was also on the task force.

Specific plans and focus for the select committee are in deliberation and may change depending on who is selected to be on it, but a person familiar with the plans expects it to put a large focus on domestic, economic and tech issues. Some standing committees with access to classified information take the lead on matters of hard military power.

Boosting U.S. competition with China in the tech space, the CCP’s influence in American universities and Beijing’s purchase of agricultural land in the U.S. are all possible areas of focus for a select committee, which is expected to collaborate with standing panels. McCarthy said in a September radio interview that he envisions the select committee focusing on China’s control of critical minerals, its theft of U.S. technology and its fraught relationship with Taiwan.

“A select committee on China could go a long way towards coordinating policy across the many committee jurisdictions and thereby create a more coherent approach to our China policy,” said Gallagher, the Wisconsin congressman, adding that it might also focus on human rights issues and “ideological warfare.”

Both Gallagher and Waltz said that they are interested in looking at policy moves to incentivize rather than mandate the decoupling of supply chains that are too dependent on China.

“This will be won or lost economically way before it is militarily,” Waltz said.

GOP focus on Taiwan will extend far beyond the planned select committee.

On the House Foreign Affairs Committee, likely to be chaired by McCaul in a GOP majority, weapons sales to Taiwan will be a large focus for Republicans, particularly with the Russian invasion of Ukraine stoking fears about a Beijing attack on the island.

“There’s a whole series of things you can do when it comes to hard power and deterrence over Taiwan,” Gallagher said.

McCaul has also called for a 90-day review of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security and whether it is adequately enforcing compliance rules relating to trade and national security.

Tapper: Elected officials, TV anchors creating a ‘permission structure’ for political violence Kari Lake thanks Liz Cheney for ‘anti-endorsement’

Rep. James Comer (Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, plans to use his committee to dig into the origins of the COVID-19 virus in Wuhan, China, with an eye on the theory that the virus originated in a lab.

China is also a top concern for the House Intelligence Committee.

“We know the Chinese Communist Party continues to invest and develop cyber, space, biological and nuclear weapons. Our members will continue to work with our Intelligence Community as well as our Congressional colleagues to best address these threats,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), ranking member on the Intelligence panel, said in a statement.

The Hill · by Lauren Vella · October 28, 2022

16. Ukrainians use phone app to spot deadly Russian drone attacks

Necessity is the mother....

The Ukrainians are demonstrating a lot of ingenuity and creativity.

Ukrainians use phone app to spot deadly Russian drone attacks

Citizen-spotters can report missiles at the push of a button with ePPO on their mobiles

The Guardian · by Dan Sabbagh · October 29, 2022

A simple mobile phone app has been developed by Ukrainian volunteers to allow civilians to report sightings of incoming Russian drones and missiles – and, it is hoped, increase the proportion shot down before they hit the ground.

The app, ePPO, relies on a phone’s GPS and compass, and a user only has to point their device in the direction of the incoming object and press a single button for it to send a location report to the country’s military.

Gennady Suldin, one of those behind the project, said the aim was to enlist “the entire population” in helping to spot incoming attacks in what he described as an example of “web-centric war”.

Ukraine has been subject to months of deadly long-range missile strikes, but the attacks have stepped up in the past month as Russia has fired hundreds of cheap, Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones into cities and at Ukraine’s infrastructure.

Limitations in Ukraine’s air defences have meant that a minority of the distinctive delta-winged drones get through. Five civilians were killed when the centre of Kyiv was bombed a fortnight ago; on that day 28 drones were launched at the capital, five exploding near the main train station.

Shahed-136 drones are a challenge for traditional radar to detect because their initial flight path is often low, perhaps 30m above ground, and their small size means they have a modest detection signature. As they close in on their targets, their altitude increases before they dive into the ground with terrifying effect.

The drones have been particularly effective in bombing Ukraine’s power stations and energy grid, causing blackouts in Kyiv and elsewhere, and prompting a scramble by politicians and the military to find ways to halt them.

Typically, the drones are set on course to fly over remote areas, rivers or other bodies of water, and are often launched at night. The attacks on Kyiv were launched from neighbouring Belarus, with drones flying low over the Dnipro river reservoir that runs from the border to the north of the capital.

A drone approaches for an attack in Kyiv on 17 October. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

However, the team behind the app believes the drones’ relatively slow cruising speed, around 110mph, and their distinctive motorbike or lawnmower engine noise means they are easy to detect from the ground. “It is their Achilles heel,” Suldin said. “Once detected, these low-flying objects are easy to intercept.”

Samuel Bendett, a drones expert and adviser to the US CNA military thinktank, agreed that the Shahed drones were “relatively loud and have a distinct sound in flight”, and that the app could be useful as part of Ukraine’s layers of defence. “Every bit of data can help to pinpoint the origin and trajectory of the attack,” he said.

For all the technological novelty, however, the app echoes previous systems of public air defence. During the Battle of Britain, the Royal Observer Corps, a network of volunteer spotters, worked closely with the Royal Air Force to identify German aircraft flying over the UK.

The British coastal radar system faced outwards, meaning that the 30,000-strong network of spotters was crucial in pinpointing the enemy inland.

Towards the end of the war, the focus shifted to the identification of incoming V1 and V2 German rockets.

So far the app has had limited publicity in Ukraine but has nonetheless been downloaded 180,000 times via word of mouth. Its developers acknowledge that it took five months of testing and work with the military and government officials to develop it.

Suldin said the app had already helped to spot previously undetected Shahed drones and Kalibr cruise missiles on a few occasions, but he said he could not provide an exact figure for security reasons. Senior air defence officers “did not expect it to be so efficient”, the app’s promotor said.

For security reasons, the ePPO app only works in conjunction with the established Diia government app, which allows adult Ukrainians to store their identity card, driving licence and other official documents on their phone. That means it cannot, in theory, be used by non-citizens.

The app has been available for around three weeks, although only on Google Android phones, while approval from Apple is expected within days. Setting it up takes only a couple of minutes, requiring a download and confirmation from Diia, with a finger or thumbprint.

Andrii Kosiak, an electronics supplier also involved in the development programme, said he hoped people who work in remote locations – “fishermen, railway workers” – would download the app, although it is not clear that rural populations use Diia, which has been taken up by around a third of the adult population.

Ukraine does not have the equipment to monitor its low-level airspace continuously, said Justin Bronk, an aviation analyst with the Rusi thinktank. “Updates from spotters,” he said, would “help the air defence network plot the course of missile and loitering munition raids, to alert air defence units along their course and tailor air raid warnings.”

The Guardian · by Dan Sabbagh · October 29, 2022

17. China censors searches for 'Hu Jintao,' the former president removed from congress

Anyone surprised?

China censors searches for 'Hu Jintao,' the former president removed from congress

americanmilitarynews.com · by Radio Free Asia · October 29, 2022

This article was originally published by Radio Free Asia and is reprinted with permission.

Chinese government censors on Monday limited keyword searches for former president Hu Jintao, who was unceremoniously removed from the ruling Chinese Communist Party congress over the weekend.

Seated at the leaders’ rostrum on Saturday, a confused-looking Hu was physically lifted from his seat by a security guard and firmly escorted past leader Xi Jinping, whom he tried to talk to, and out of the hall.

The incident prompted rampant speculation that Hu’s removal was a political statement from Xi and to show the total destruction of Hu’s political faction, which is closely linked to the Communist Party Youth League. Xi was later voted in for an unprecedented third five-year term in office, making him the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

No discussion of the incident was allowed on Chinese social media platforms after the event, while keyword searches for “Hu Jintao,” “Granddad Hu” and “Xi Jinping” were blocked, or only showing very limited results.

A keyword search for “Hu Jintao” on the Weibo social media platform on Monday resulted in just a couple of generic posts from the party congress, which ran from Oct. 16-22 in Beijing, with comments turned off on both.

State news agency Xinhua later tweeted that Hu had turned up to the session despite feeling “unwell,” and was escorted out due to his health.

Some messages managed to get around censors for a brief time by referring to Hu as a “former principal” who had been sent out by the current principal.

Clues from photos

Ming Chu-cheng, professor of political science at National Taiwan University, said important clues could be found in news photos of the incident, broadcast by the Spanish-language channel ABC Internacional.

“In the first photo, Hu Jintao is about to open the file [on the desk in front of him], but [outgoing Politburo standing committee member] Li Zhanshu stops him,” Ming told a recent discussion forum in Taiwan.

“In the second photo, Li Zhanshu takes the file away from Hu Jintao, who tries to take it back, but Li won’t let him.”

In the third and fourth photos, party leader Xi Jinping indicates to the security guard that Hu should leave. Hu is escorted out, but tries to talk to Xi on his way out.

“Xi doesn’t give him the time of day,” Ming said, saying that Xi’s behavior was rude according to Chinese culture’s veneration of elders. “The leaders … on either side stay expressionless throughout … they didn’t dare show any expression due to Xi’s power.”

But he added: “I think it was likely an emergency of some kind [rather than a premeditated gesture target the Youth League faction].”

Wu Guoguang, a senior research scholar at the Center for China Economics and Institutions at Stanford University, agreed that Xi’s treatment of Hu was disrespectful.

“Regardless of why he was leaving, the least the leaders on the rostrum could do would be to at least get up, shake hands, and say goodbye,” Wu said. “There was a total absence of that etiquette.”

“Why do former leaders come at all? Generally, as a platform for them to show unity with the current leader, but … the [treatment] of Hu Jintao shattered those illusions,” he said.

U.S.-based popular science writer Fang Zhouzi said via Twitter that the man who escorted Hu outside the hall was Xi’s personal bodyguard.

The man following along behind was named by the Associated Press’s Beijing correspondent Dake Kang as Kong Shaoxun, deputy director of the Communist Party’s general office, which is in charge of practical arrangements, housing and other services for leaders past and present.

Japanese journalist Akio Yaita, Taipei bureau chief for the Sankei Shimbun, said rumors of a coup attempt were far-fetched. “It’s more likely that Hu Jintao had an opinion on the … amendments to the party charter,” he said. “Hu’s departure showed that Xi Jinping rules over everything, but also made public contradictions within the party.”

After Hu left, the party charter was amended to enshrine Xi Jinping as a “core” party leader.

Protests

Signs of anti-Xi protest were largely confined to overseas cities during the party congress, with 1,000 people turning out in London on Sunday to protest Xi’s rule and the beating of a Hong Kong protester by Chinese consular officials in the northern city of Manchester.

A video clip circulating on social media on the evening of Oct. 23, after Xi announced a new leadership line-up packed with his most loyal allies, showed two young women walking through a Shanghai street carrying a banner that read, “We don’t want,” repeated several times.

The banner appeared to be a reference to the “Bridge Man” banner protest on the eve of the party congress, which called for elections, not leaders, and an end to COVID-19 lockdowns, as well as for Xi Jinping to step down.

As the young women walked past the camera on Xiangyang North Road in Shanghai’s Jing’an and Xuhui districts, someone could be heard playing the Internationale — a tune that played a prominent part in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest movement — on a kazoo.

One of their companions commented: “We’ve always wanted to do this.”

Flip

americanmilitarynews.com · by Radio Free Asia · October 29, 2022

18. 'Massive' drone attack on Black Sea Fleet - Russia

Maybe Ukraine can turn captured Iranian drose against Russia. (fantasy I know)

'Massive' drone attack on Black Sea Fleet - Russia

BBC · by Menu

Published
15 minutes ago

About sharing

How does China’s COVID response affect your investment thesis?

Is China experiencing a real-estate crisis?

What geopolitical concerns should investors consider regarding China (including Taiwan)?

You mentioned supply chains earlier. How is the move toward deglobalization affecting China? And how do you see it playing out?

Should investors be concerned that Chinese companies’ U.S.-listed shares will be delisted from exchanges?

Five Takeaways

Despite China’s uncertain future growth, I think there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. To recap, here are the five key takeaways.

China’s zero-COVID policy has been bad for Chinese equities but could marginally improve.
China is taking measures to support its property market, so declines are likely to ease—and even if they don’t, we’re not looking at a subprime crisis.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a low-probability, high-impact event.
China’s role in global supply chains is changing, and this may hurt in the near term, but China’s goal of further opening up to the world and moving up the value chain likely doesn’t change.
China wants its companies listed globally, so will allow auditing to move forward, and with that should come less risk of delisting.

China: 5 Questions

Oct. 29, 2022 8:12 AM

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4550727-china-5-questions

Summary

China is taking measures to support its property market, so declines are likely to ease—and even if they don’t, we’re not looking at a subprime crisis.
A proactive Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a low-probability event in our view, at least over the near to medium term. But should it happen, the impact would be high.
From China’s perspective, the costs of invading Taiwan could be economically catastrophic, with potential global sanctions and isolation setting China back a couple of decades.

da-kuk

China’s future growth is uncertain amid risks stemming from domestic issues (structural, economic, and societal), increased tensions with the United States, and deglobalization. And that has investors wondering about the outlook for Chinese equities. Here are the top five questions investors ask us—and how we respond.

How does China’s COVID response affect your investment thesis?

In the near term, China’s COVID response is negative for our investment thesis because it has adversely affected consumer and business sentiment as well as economic activity across segments (including retail, property, manufacturing, and supply chain). I estimate that nearly 70% of China’s recent slowdown is attributable to its COVID management.

The unemployment rate—particularly among younger people—has increased. This is partly due to the impact of COVID lockdowns on the overall economy (in particular the service industry) and partly due to reduced employment opportunities in the internet industry amid recently increased regulations.

The lockdowns obviously limit consumers’ physical ability to get to stores and restaurants and to travel, but the psychological impact from uncertainty around lockdowns is even more severe and likely to be long-lasting. No one knows which city will be locked down next and for how long, and when people have no confidence around the near future, they tend to hunker down and wait. It’s therefore not surprising that the household savings rate in China surged to as high as 40% this year from an average of 25% to 30% in prior years (which is high to start with).

China’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth will probably be down around 3% this year, and in China, that’s the equivalent of a recession. To address the material slowdown of the economy, the Chinese government may have to seek a more effective balance between its COVID policies and economic growth.

We expect China to continue pursuing its “dynamic zero-COVID” policy in the near term, with increased focus on targeted and shorter lockdowns, if needed to reduce the adverse impact on the economy. We may get a clearer understanding of the COVID policy outlook now that the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has ended. Before an event like this, the CCP tends to take a very conservative approach to managing society; after, there could be more likelihood of change.

China has also gradually relaxed the quarantine requirements for international entries to the mainland to 7+3, which refers to seven days of mandatory quarantine in designated hotels plus three days of self-quarantine at home (previously, it was 14+7).

Hong Kong, meanwhile, has recently removed mandatory hotel quarantine requirements completely (previously seven days), and now only requires three days of at-home self-quarantine. The success of Hong Kong’s new quarantine policy could pave the way for China’s further relaxation of entry requirement for the mainland.

My conclusion: China’s COVID situation and related policies have negatively impacted the Chinese economy and equities, but we expect a marginally and gradually improved policy going forward. This could help Chinese equities, in my opinion.

Is China experiencing a real-estate crisis?

The Chinese property market has been going through a structural deceleration-to-decline phase since the mid-2010s, and in 2022, it experienced an even larger-than-expected decline, exacerbated by COVID lockdowns.

China’s property market bubble became acutely evident nearly 10 years ago, reflecting inflated property prices, excessive investments, and low affordability. The Chinese government has since taken measures to address the problem by constraining both supply and demand. For example, land sales by local governments and new home developments have been limited. First-time homebuyers must generally make a 40% down payment, and other homebuyers are not allowed mortgage financing. These measures have effectively cooled China’s property market in recent years, resulting in an overall flat to slightly down market.

COVID lockdowns exacerbated the property market decline this year, halting purchase and construction activities and materially reducing confidence among homebuyers. As a result, new home sales in many major cities were down 40% to 50% year-over-year in recent years. This is concerning, as it led to a material slowdown of the overall economy (because the property market directly and indirectly impacts 20% to 25% of the Chinese economy.)

As dire as that sounds, this may not lead to a credit crisis like the one that occurred in the United States in 2007 and 2008, because the Chinese housing market is mostly cash-based. Among first-time homeowners, the only eligible mortgage applicants, mortgage penetration is also quite low, at less than 30% (and an average 40% down payment).

In response to the situation, the Chinese government is engaged in a balancing act. The property market is at the epicenter of many industries in China, from construction to infrastructure to consumer spending (because there’s a wealth effect). As a result, the Chinese government recently announced measures to support property markets, though it does not want to boost the market too much and risk exacerbating the structural issues.

For example, local governments of more than 20 cities recently enacted a stimulus policy that allows mortgages for all homebuyers (and 20% down payments for first-time homebuyers). The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has also lowered the five-year prime loan rate (which drives mortgage rates) three times in the last 12 months—by 5 basis points (bps), then 15 bps, then 15 bps again.

My conclusion: China is taking measures to support its property market, so declines are likely to ease—and even if they don’t, we’re not looking at a subprime crisis.

What geopolitical concerns should investors consider regarding China (including Taiwan)?

In my opinion, the No. 1 geopolitical concern regarding China is U.S-China relations, which are entering a new phase—one in which the nations are strategic competitors. Everything else stems from that.

As background, there is the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which we all know as China, and the Republic of China (ROC), which we all know as Taiwan. The two separate China regimes, and the current China-Taiwan issue, were a legacy issue resulting from the Chinese civil war, which ended in 1949. At that time, the ROC lost control of mainland China to the PRC, but Taiwan remained under the ROC’s governance. However, in China’s view, there is only one China, and the PRC is the legitimate representative of China.

However, there has been significant ambiguity when it comes to U.S. relations with both China and Taiwan over the decades. For example, in 1979, the United States established diplomatic relations with the PRC, recognizing it as the sole legitimate government of China. At the same time, U.S. Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which does not guarantee that the United States will intervene militarily if the PRC attacks or invades Taiwan. However, the United States has continued selling weapons to Taiwan.

For China, Taiwan remains the biggest unresolved sovereignty issue. Its official stance toward Taiwan has been that Taiwan is a part of China; China will pursue peaceful reunification and “one country, two systems” with Taiwan; but China does not commit to abandoning the military option if Taiwan declares independence or foreign forces meddle with the situation.

China, Taiwan, and the United States have maintained the status quo over the past few decades, but it gets challenged from time to time, particularly when U.S.-China relations get tense (as they did when Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan recently). China usually responds with military drills in public waters around Taiwan (because going into Taiwanese waters would be an invasion).

Further supporting the status quo is the enormous cost of a potential military conflict to all parties involved.

From China’s perspective, the costs of invading Taiwan could be economically catastrophic, with potential global sanctions and isolation setting China back a couple of decades. Such an invasion could also be devastating to China’s image and stance in the global community (China places considerable cultural importance on “face” and aspires to leadership in the global community). Lastly, an invasion could also threaten China’s own societal stability, because a potentially unsuccessful military campaign combined with global sanctions and isolation could easily lead to social unrest.

In summary, I believe the probability of China proactively invading Taiwan is low, especially in the near to medium term, given the high costs mentioned above. However, China could react to provocations that threaten and disrupt the status quo.

From the United States’ and Taiwan’s perspective, the costs of upsetting the status quo could have a material impact on Taiwanese and related global semiconductor supply chain. It could also lead to potential instability across the Asia-Pacific region.

My conclusion: A proactive Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a low-probability event in our view, at least in the near to medium term. But should it happen, the impact would be high, so we need to closely monitor the development.

You mentioned supply chains earlier. How is the move toward deglobalization affecting China? And how do you see it playing out?

Some supply chains left China before the current deglobalization trend began. China used to be the global textile manufacturing center, with major retailers such as Walmart and Target sourcing from the country. But that supply chain started moving to Vietnam and Bangladesh nearly 10 years ago—partly because China was no longer the cheapest producer, partly because China’s currency strengthened, and partly because China began focusing on higher-tech industries with less environmental impact.

However, in response to increased deglobalization trends, rising geopolitical risks, and recent COVID disruptions, global companies have started to diversify their supply chains and reduce their dependence on one country (such as China). Even Chinese companies have started to expand their capacity and supply outside of the mainland—in Indonesia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Eastern Europe—in order to better serve overseas demand.

For example, Apple (including its suppliers in China) started to develop new supply chain and manufacturing capacity outside of its key supply country, China, by building capacity in Vietnam and India. However, China remains Apple’s largest supplier, with 60% to 90% of Apple components and final products manufactured in China.

China’s large and skilled labor force; competitive cost structure; large-scale, advanced infrastructure and technology capabilities; and supportive business environment remain attractive to global companies from a fundamental perspective. Therefore, I believe deglobalization’s impact on the supply chain shift could be moderate in the near term, and the long-term evolution could be gradual.

My conclusion: China’s role in supply chains is changing, in part because of a natural evolution and in part because of geopolitical considerations. This will affect China, because 20% of its GDP comes from gross exports. This will also affect global supply chains and related global industries that still heavily rely on China. However, I think the trend and effect will both evolve gradually over time. And I don’t believe China’s goal of further opening up to the world and moving up the value chain changes.

Should investors be concerned that Chinese companies’ U.S.-listed shares will be delisted from exchanges?

At the end of 2020, with U.S.-China relations worsening, the United States passed a law stating that any company listed in the United States must be auditable by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).

China was one of a few countries with large American depository receipts (ADR) listings that could not do so (because of different jurisdictions and laws). Many market participants thought China wouldn’t yield, but I had a different view, and was right—China decided to let the PCAOB come and audit those companies.

Following a series of negotiations between regulators and delays driven by COVID travel restrictions, there is a prospective solution currently being tested by U.S. auditors in Hong Kong. Thus far, China has complied with requests for sample data including some of its largest U.S.-listed companies. A determination from the PCAOB is expected by the end of the year, and China has three years from the passing of the 2020 law to be fully compliant.

My conclusion: China has demonstrated its pragmatic stance to the ADR issue, with the goal of keeping those companies listed globally. I therefore expect it will allow PCAOB auditing to move forward—and with that will come less risk of delisting.

Five Takeaways

Despite China’s uncertain future growth, I think there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. To recap, here are the five key takeaways.

China’s zero-COVID policy has been bad for Chinese equities but could marginally improve.
China is taking measures to support its property market, so declines are likely to ease—and even if they don’t, we’re not looking at a subprime crisis.
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan is a low-probability, high-impact event.
China’s role in global supply chains is changing, and this may hurt in the near term, but China’s goal of further opening up to the world and moving up the value chain likely doesn’t change.
China wants its companies listed globally, so will allow auditing to move forward, and with that should come less risk of delisting.

Original Post

Editor's Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.

This article was written by

William Blair

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William Blair is committed to building enduring relationships with our clients and providing expertise and solutions to meet their evolving needs. We work closely with the most sophisticated investors globally across institutional and intermediary channels. We are 100% active-employee-owned with broad-based ownership. Our investment teams are solely focused on active management and employ disciplined, analytical research processes across a wide range of strategies. We are based in Chicago with resources in New York, London, Zurich, Sydney, Stockholm, and The Hague, and dedicated coverage for Canada.

20. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 28 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-28

Key Takeaways

Russian forces are not making significant progress around Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast or anywhere else along the front lines.
President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the end of partial mobilization.
Putin may be attempting to rehabilitate Shoigu’s image in the information space to counter the growing influence of the pro-war siloviki faction.
The growing influence of the siloviki faction is continuing to fracture the Russian pro-war community.
Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the direction of Kreminna and Svatove.
Russian forces continued to deploy mobilized personnel to and establish defensive positions on the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in northwestern Kherson Oblast.
Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast.
Russian occupation authorities completed their "evacuation” of parts of occupied Kherson Oblast.
Russian occupation authorities reportedly plan to force Russian citizenship on Ukrainian civilians in occupied parts of Ukraine by October 30, likely in part to legalize the forced mobilization of Ukrainian civilians as part of the November 1 autumn conscription cycle.
Russian occupation authorities are continuing their attempts to erase Ukrainian history, culture, and national identity in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 28

Oct 28, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Kateryna Stepanenko, George Barros, Riley Bailey, Katherine Lawlor, and Frederick W. Kagan

October 28, 8:30 pm ET

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

Russian forces are not making significant progress around Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast or anywhere else along the front lines. A Russian information operation is advancing the narrative that Russian forces are making significant progress in Bakhmut, likely to improve morale among Russian forces and possibly to improve the personal standing of Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose forces are largely responsible for the minimal gains in the area. Russian forces have made limited advances towards the Ukrainian strongpoint in Bakhmut but at a very slow speed and at great cost. Prigozhin acknowledged the slow pace of Wagner Group ground operations around Bakhmut on October 23 and stated that Wagner forces advance only 100-200m per day, which he absurdly claimed was a normal rate for modern advances.[1] Ukrainian forces recaptured a concrete factory on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut around October 24.[2] Ukrainian military officials stated on October 16 that Russian forces had falsely claimed to have captured several towns near Bakhmut within the past several days, but Ukrainian forces held their lines against those Russian attacks.[3] Russian forces are likely falsifying claims of advances in the Bakhmut area to portray themselves as making gains in at least one sector amid continuing losses in northeast and southern Ukraine. Even the claimed rate of advance would be failure for a main effort in mechanized war--and the claims are, in fact, exaggerated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu declared the end of Russian military mobilization on October 28. Shoigu stated that military commissariats will recruit only volunteers and contract soldiers moving forward.[4] Shoigu stated that Russia mobilized 300,000 men, 82,000 of whom are deployed in Ukraine and 218,000 of whom are training at Russian training grounds.[5] Putin stated that 41,000 of the 82,000 servicemen in Ukraine are serving in combat units.[6] Putin acknowledged that Russian forces experienced logistical and supply issues with mobilized forces but falsely asserted that these problems affected only the ”initial stage” of mobilization and that these problems are now solved.[7] Putin stated Russia must ”draw necessary conclusions,” modernize ”the entire system of military registration and enlistment offices” and ”think over and make adjustments to the structure of all components of the Armed Forces, including the Ground Forces.”[8]

Putin likely ended mobilization in Russia to free up administrative and training capacity in time for the delayed start of the Russian autumn conscription cycle, which will begin on November 1.[9] Russia’s military likely does not have the capacity to simultaneously support training 218,000 mobilized men and approximately 120,000 new autumn conscripts.[10] It is unclear how autumn 2022 conscripts will complete their training, moreover, since the usual capstones for Russian conscripts‘ training involves joining a Russian military unit—which are already fighting in Ukraine and badly damaged.

Russia‘s now-completed mobilization is unlikely to decisively impact Russian combat power. Putin described a 50-50 split between mobilized personnel in combat and support roles in Ukraine. If that ratio applies generally, it suggests that a total of 150,000 mobilized personnel will deploy to combat roles in Ukraine after training is complete, likely sometime in November. Russia’s deployment of 41,000 poorly trained combat personnel to Ukraine may have temporarily stiffened Russian defensive lines, although these reservists have not yet faced the full weight of a major and prepared Ukrainian counteroffensive thrust. The deployment has not significantly increased Russian combat power. The deployment of an additional 110,000 or so mobilized men to combat units therefore remains unlikely to change the trajectory of the war.

Putin may be attempting to reestablish Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu’s authority in the Russian information space to balance the growing influence of the Russian pro-war siloviki faction. The Russian siloviki faction refers to people with meaningful power bases within Putin’s inner circle who are fielding combat forces in Ukraine. Putin could have announced the end of mobilization himself instead of in a meeting with Shoigu or could have tasked Shoigu with concluding the flawed mobilization effort on his own. Their staged public meeting is consistent with the recent surge in Shoigu’s media appearances. For example, Shoigu held several publicized calls with his Turkish, Chinese, and Western counterparts between October 23 and 26.[11] These high-profile meetings differentiate Shoigu and the Russian higher military command from the siloviki, who do not hold the same rank or authority despite their popularity in the Russian information space. Shoigu had made very limited public appearances over the spring and summer.[12] Shoigu’s presence in the information space depends on the approval of the Kremlin, since Putin can control when and whether Shoigu speaks publicly. Shoigu’s siloviki rivals control their own Telegram channels and speak freely to the media.

The growing influence of the siloviki faction – led by Wagner Group financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin – is further fracturing the Russian pro-war community. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for the second time criticized the commander of the Central Military District (CMD), Colonel General Alexander Lapin, for his management of the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 27.[13] Kadyrov contrasted his harsh criticisms of Lapin with high praise for Prigozhin and Wagner units, even calling Prigozhin a ”born warrior.” Kadyrov has resumed his criticisms of the progress of the Russian invasion and Russian higher military command since October 25, likely in response to a Ukrainian strike on Chechen units in northeastern Kherson Oblast.[14] Kadyrov has since announced that the Ukrainian strike killed 23 Chechen fighters and wounded 58 troops.[15]

Kadyrov accused Lapin of failing to communicate with Chechen leaders, claiming that he had unsuccessfully attempted to reach Lapin to discuss Ukrainian breakthroughs around Lyman. Kadyrov added that no one could locate Lapin or his subordinates when one of Lapin’s units redeployed from Rubizhne to reinforce the frontlines.[16] Kadyrov claimed that Chechen units had to hold Russian defensive positions without Lapin’s support, stated that soldiers are increasingly deserting from Lapin’s units, and insinuated that Lapin will soon lose Svatove.[17] Kadyrov previously attacked Lapin on October 1 for moving his headquarters far from the frontlines and for his military failures, and Prigozhin publicly agreed with Kadyrov’s statement at that time.[18] Kadyrov’s praise of Prigozhin further demonstrates that siloviki are increasingly promoting their parallel military structures at the expense of the reputation of the Russian Armed Forces.

Kadyrov’s accusations have once again created a rift among pro-war Russian milbloggers and exposed concerns over the growing influence of the siloviki faction within the pro-war community. Some milbloggers expressed their support for Lapin, noting that his failures – such as large losses of military equipment in Chernihiv Oblast or the devastating failure at the Siverskyi Donets river crossing in Bilohorivka – were not as severe as other failures of some Russian military commanders even though these same milbloggers had indirectly criticized Lapin for these incidents.[19] Most pro-Lapin milbloggers blamed the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) for abstaining from publicly defending Lapin against the likes of Kadyrov and Prigozhin. A milblogger even noted that it is unacceptable for any Russian governor or regional head to criticize the Russian Armed Forces as such critiques can lead ”to the direct road to the erosion of the very essence of the Russian state.”[20] Kadyrov’s only formal position is head of the Chechen Republic. The milblogger noted that Russian commanders cannot defend their actions on Telegram – unlike Prigozhin and Kadyrov – and stated that such critiques only ignite internal conflicts. Wagner-affiliated Telegram channels, by contrast, amplified reports of dire conditions on the Svatove-Kreminna frontline, discussing the high number of deserters, low morale, poor living conditions, and command cowardice.[21]

Kadyrov’s second critique of Lapin indicates a further fragmentation within the pro-war community that may allow Priogozhin to accrue more power in the long-term. Putin will need to continue to appease the siloviki faction while attempting to support his disgraced higher military command and retain favor with the milbloggers that respect some conventional Russian military commanders such as Lapin and the Commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Sergei Surovikin.

Key Takeaways

Russian forces are not making significant progress around Bakhmut, Donetsk Oblast or anywhere else along the front lines.
President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the end of partial mobilization.
Putin may be attempting to rehabilitate Shoigu’s image in the information space to counter the growing influence of the pro-war siloviki faction.
The growing influence of the siloviki faction is continuing to fracture the Russian pro-war community.
Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in the direction of Kreminna and Svatove.
Russian forces continued to deploy mobilized personnel to and establish defensive positions on the west bank of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.
Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations in northwestern Kherson Oblast.
Russian forces continued ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast.
Russian occupation authorities completed their "evacuation” of parts of occupied Kherson Oblast.
Russian occupation authorities reportedly plan to force Russian citizenship on Ukrainian civilians in occupied parts of Ukraine by October 30, likely in part to legalize the forced mobilization of Ukrainian civilians as part of the November 1 autumn conscription cycle.
Russian occupation authorities are continuing their attempts to erase Ukrainian history, culture, and national identity in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

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

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

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

Eastern Ukraine: (Eastern Kharkiv Oblast-Western Luhansk Oblast)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued to conduct counteroffensive operations in the direction of Svatove and Kreminna on October 28. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian assault in the direction of Berestove, Kharkiv Oblast (20km northwest of Svatove).[22] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also conducted an assault near Kuzemivka, Luhansk Oblast (13km northwest of Svatove).[23] Another Russian miblogger claimed that Russian artillery fire repelled attempted Ukrainian advances in the direction of Nyzhnia Duvanka near Kyslivka (28km northwest of Svatove) and Orlianka (31km northwest of Svatove) in Kharkiv Oblast.[24] Russian sources reported that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian assaults northwest of Kreminna near Chervonopopivka (6km northwest of Kreminna).[25] ISW cannot independently verify the claims made by Russian sources about Ukrainian assaults in eastern Ukraine on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian counterattacks west of Lysychansk near Bilohorivka (11km west of Lysychansk) and west of Svatove near Andriivka, Luhansk Oblast (15km west of Svatove).[26]

Russian forces may be facing continuing personnel issues in the Svatove-Kreminna area. A Russian milblogger in the Svatove-Kreminna area claimed on October 27 that Russian forces there are just starting to entrench their defensive positions and that there are instances of personnel refusing orders.[27] The milblogger claimed that low morale among newly mobilized personnel in the area has led commanders to believe they will not willingly fight and therefore commanders have placed mobilized personnel only in the second and third lines of defense.[28] The milblogger also claimed that he witnessed a Russian general pleading with a Russian company to return to their positions on the battlefield along the Svatove-Kreminna line.[29] Personnel issues will likely persist in the Svatove-Kreminna area as Russian forces continue to rely on severely demoralized units and poorly trained mobilized personnel to stabilize the front line in eastern Kharkiv Oblast and western Luhansk Oblast.

Southern Ukraine: (Kherson Oblast)

Ukrainian military officials reported that Russian forces continued to deploy mobilized men and establish defensive positions on the western bank of the Dnipro River on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that 1,000 mobilized men arrived at the Dnipro River’s western bank, with some deploying to Chervony Mayak, Novoraysk, and Zmyivka about 20km northwest of Beryslav.[30] The spokesperson for Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command, Nataliya Humenyuk, stated that Russian forces are continuing to prepare for street fights in Kherson City and are establishing defenses on both western and eastern riverbanks.[31] The advisor to the head of Kherson Oblast, Serhiy Khlan, added that Russian forces are also heavily mining the outskirts of Kherson City and are clearing hospitals of civilians in the city to prepare to treat military personnel.[32] The deputy head of the Kherson Occupation Administration, Yekaterina Gubareva, announced in October 28 that Russian forces prepared Kherson City for street fighting by strengthening the first floors of buildings, emplacing sandbags, and checking for Ukrainian “saboteurs.”[33] Ukrainian partisans reportedly conducted an arson attack against a Russian patrol police station in Kherson City on October 28.[34] Ukrainian officials also reported that Russian forces are stealing medical equipment from northwestern Kherson Oblast and transporting it to Skadovsk and Henichesk, likely in an effort to prepare defensive positions closer to Crimea.[35] A Russian milblogger operating in Kherson City noted that Rosgvardia units are providing security on the eastern riverbank.[36] Another milblogger noted that Russian forces are turning Kherson Oblast into a ”giant fortress” aimed at defending Crimea and cutting off Ukrainian access to the Black Sea.[37]

Ukrainian forces continued their interdiction campaign on October 28, and a Russian source on the ground corroborated the campaign’s successes. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces hospitalized about 100 wounded servicemen in Kherson Oblast following a Ukrainian strike on an unspecified location.[38] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command also noted that Russian forces are transferring additional hospital beds to accommodate an influx of wounded servicemen.[39] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command added that Ukrainian strikes on an area of manpower and equipment concentration killed 44 Russian servicemen and destroyed two ammunition depots in Beryslav Raion.[40] Ukrainian forces also reportedly struck a Russian pontoon crossing in Kherson Oblast.[41] A Russian milblogger in Kherson City told a Russian state media outlet that the Ukrainian interdiction campaign has seriously disrupted the supply of food and medicines from the eastern bank to the western bank of the Dnipro River.[42] The milblogger stated that due to the damage to the Antonivsky Road Bridge, he had to wait in traffic to board a 10-minute-ferry ride across the river to Kherson City. Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted a missile strike at a cancer care clinic in Kherson Oblast.[43]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted limited ground assaults in northwestern Kherson Oblast on October 28. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed Russian artillery and aviation struck Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage groups in an unspecified area near the frontline.[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that the Russian 11th Guards Air Assault Brigade targeted a Ukrainian reconnaissance group with a grenade launcher.[45] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighters from the ”Petrovich” private military company (PMC) operating in the Posad-Pokrovske direction shot down a Ukrainian drone, but ISW does not have additional information about the ”Petrovich” PMC at this time.[46] Another Russian source claimed that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian assault in the Sukhyi Stavok area on the eastern bank of the Inhulets River.[47] Geolocated footage published on October 27 and October 28 showed Ukrainian force striking Russian tanks near Snihurivka (about 60km east of Mykolaiv City).[48]

Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks in Donetsk Oblast on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Bakhmut; northeast of Bakhmut near Bakhmtuske (11km northeast of Bakhmut), Zelenopillia (5km northeast of Bakhmut), and Soledar (13km northeast of Bakhmut); and south of Bakhmut near Mayorsk.[49] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also conducted an assault northeast of Bakhmut near Bilohorivka (27km northeast of Bakhmut).[50] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks northwest of Avdiivka near Novobakhmutivka (15km northwest of Avdiivka); southeast of Avdiivka near Yakolivka (7km southeast of Avdiivka); and southwest of Avdiivka near Mariinka (28km southwest of Avdiivka), Nevelske (16km southwest of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (13km southwest of Avdiivka).[51] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces also repelled a Russian assault in western Donetsk Oblast near Vremivka.[52] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued routine indirect fire along the line of contact in Donetsk Oblast.[53]

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

Russian forces continued to conduct routine air, missile, and artillery strikes west of Hulyaipole, and in Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv oblasts on October 28.[54] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Mykolaiv City, Ochakiv, and Bereznehuvate in Mykolaiv Oblast.[55]

Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian manpower and equipment positions in Zaporizhia Oblast on October 28. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed a Russian ammunition depot near Novovodiane and struck manpower concentrations near Tokmak, Molochansk, and Kinski Rozdory in Zaporizhia Oblast.[56] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that the strikes wounded up to 110 Russian military personnel.[57]

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

Russian legislators are discussing Russian military mobilization shortcomings with increasing candor. Russian State Duma MP Maksim Ivanov (who represents Sverdlovsk Oblast) appealed to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to resolve the issue of mobilized men deploying to frontlines without appropriate training on October 28.[58] Ivanov stated that he is receiving endless complaints from constituents – particularly women – that their husbands and sons did not receive training. Ivanov stated, “What benefit will an untrained guy bring, for example, at a checkpoint near Donetsk? Probably the minimum.”[59] Ivanov said 86 men from his constituency deployed to Ukraine without proper training in just the first few days of mobilization. Ivanov suggested that mobilized men that are on the frontlines without training should return to Russia. Moscow Duma MP Andrey Medvedev similarly discussed the lack of uniform training for mobilized men on October 28, stating that the battlefield success of a tactical unit at or below the battalion level relies on how much the unit’s commanding officer cared to teach subordinates.[60] Medvedev called for ”radical reorganization” of training for mobilized personnel and stated that the current situation, wherein a unit’s success decisively depends on the initiative of an officer and the initiative of the mobilized, is ”categorically wrong and dangerous.”[61]

Russian military mobilization is likely significantly increasing labor scarcity in Russia’s labor market. Some Russian federal subjects are sending college students as replacement workers to offset the economic impacts of military mobilization. Kemerovo Oblast Governor Sergei Tsivilev announced a “labor mobilization” of final year university and technical college students on October 21 to work at industrial enterprises to replace workers who were mobilized for the war in Ukraine.[62] Russian business newspaper RBK reported on October 27 that regional authorities in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and in the Kaluga, Kurgan, Kursk, Leningrad, and Chelyabinsk oblasts are considering undertaking similar ”labor mobilization” of fourth-year students.[63] Mobilization has directly removed at least 300,000 men from the labor pool, and at least 700,000 Russian citizens have fled Russia since mobilization began.[64]

Russian authorities continue conducting roundup raids to gather mobilized men. Russian Police conducted a raid at a gas turbine plant in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl Oblast, on October 26.[65] Russian police physically blocked the exit to the plant and forced men to receive their mobilization notices.[66] The director of the plant reportedly previously refused to give summonses to his employees.[67]

Some Russians continue to resist the Kremlin’s mobilization practices. An unidentified individual threw a Molotov cocktail at a military recruitment center in the Zavodsky Raion of Kemerovo, Kemerovo Oblast on October 28.[68]

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities completed their forced "evacuation” of parts of occupied Kherson Oblast. The Russian-appointed head of the Crimea Occupation Administration, Sergei Aksyonov, announced on October 27 that Russian officials completed their forced relocation of Kherson residents to “safe regions of Russia.”[69] The advisor to the head of Kherson Oblast, Serhiy Khlan, reported on October 28 that the children whom Russian authorities have “evacuated” from Kherson are not allowed to return and are unable to contact their parents or relatives.[70] One Russian milblogger argued on October 28 that the forced deportation of Kherson residents into other parts of Russia is “a main success” for Russian forces in Kherson because it enables “a mixing of new Russians with … their large Motherland.” He asserted that the forced relocations will “return people to their historical mentality.”[71]

Russian occupation authorities are continuing their attempts to erase Ukrainian history, culture, and national identity in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. The Ukrainian National Resistance Center reported on October 28 that Russian occupation authorities have launched a re-education campaign in Russian-occupied territories to promote Russia’s version of history in schools, including the false narratives that Russia created Ukraine and that Ukraine should have always been a part of the Russian Federation.[72] Teachers are reportedly required to receive special training and are required to incorporate lessons on “the greatness of Russia” into all of their lessons, regardless of subject. Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly chose independence from the Soviet Union and Russia in a 1991 referendum, and the Russian Federation recognized Ukraine’s independence along with the rest of the international community and the United Nations. Russian occupation authorities are establishing a Russified version of Ukrainian history outside of schools as well; DNR head Denis Pushilin claimed on October 28 that the Russian Military Historical Society established a regional branch in occupied Donetsk Oblast and presented a bust of Pavel Sudoplatov, a Ukrainian-born Soviet intelligence officer who fought against Ukrainian nationalism on behalf of the Soviet Union.[73]

Russian occupation authorities reportedly plan to force Russian citizenship on Ukrainian civilians in occupied parts of Ukraine by October 30, likely in part to legalize the forced mobilization of Ukrainian civilians as part of the November 1 autumn conscription cycle. The Ukrainian mayors of Enerhodar and Melitopol reported on October 28 that all Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied parts of Zaporizhia Oblast will automatically become Russian citizens beginning on October 30 without their consent, two days before the autumn conscription cycle begins.[74] Russian forces are likely attempting to legitimize the forcible conscription of Ukrainian men as part of that cycle after their previous efforts to force Ukrainian civilians to accept Russian passports were largely unsuccessful. The Ukrainian head of the Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration announced on October 28 that Russian forces are not allowing Ukrainian men to leave Russian-occupied areas, and are only allowing small numbers of women, children, and the elderly to return to Ukrainian-held territory.[75]

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.

[3] https://www.unian dot ua/war/bahmut-novini-v-armiji-ukrajini-vkazali-na-brehnyu-zagarbnikiv-shchodo-bojiv-bilya-mista-12013569.html; https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/10/16/informacziya-rashystiv-pro-zahoplennya-selyshh-poblyzu-bahmuta-ne-vidpovidaye-dijsnosti-sergij-cherevatyj/

[4] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69703

[5] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69703

[6] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69703

[7] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69703

[8] http://kremlin dot ru/events/president/news/69703

[10] http://publication.pravo.gov dot ru/Document/View/0001202209300077

[12] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/sergei-shoigu-russia-dis...; https://www dot kyivpost.com/russias-war/putin-removes-shoigu-from-russian-army-command-british-intelligence.html

[36] https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27463/4668757/;

[42] https://www.kp dot ru/daily/27463/4668757/

[58] https://t.me/maksim_ivanon/749; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/10/28/idet-val-obrascheniy-ot-zhen-i-materey-deputat-gosdumy-poprosil-shoygu-vernut-s-fronta-mobilizovannyh-kotorye-ne-proshli-voennoy-podgotovki

[63] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/27/10/2022/635a00899a79476cbbf25738 ; https://t.me/tatarcorona/6367; https://iz.ru/1416413/anastasiia-platonova/prishli-na-smenu-regiony-goto...

[64] https://news.err dot ee/1608738886/forbes-up-to-700-000-citizens-have-left-russia-since-mobilization-declared

[65] https://76 dot ru/text/gorod/2022/10/26/71768852/

[66] https://76 dot ru/text/gorod/2022/10/26/71768852/

[67] https://76(dot)ru/text/gorod/2022/10/26/71768852/; https://t.me/mobilizationnews/2625; https://t.me/mobilizationnews/2637; https://notes.citeam.org/mobilization-oct-26-27

[68] https://ngs42 dot ru/text/incidents/2022/10/28/71774408/; https://www.sibreal.org/a/v-kuzbasse-v-voenkomat-brosili-kokteyl-molotov...

understandingwar.org

21. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (28.10.22) CDS comments on key events

CDS Daily brief (28.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Humanitarian aspect:

Scheduled blackouts to save energy continued in Ukraine. NEC "Ukrenergo" issued an order this morning to Oblenergo to limit electricity supply to different categories of consumers in all regions of Ukraine.

On October 27, Russian troops killed 10 civilians in Ukraine and wounded 12 more, Deputy Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko said, citing the data of the Oblast military administrations as of 9:00 a.m. on October 28.

As a result of Russian shelling in Mykolaiv Oblast, Russian terrorists destroyed 8,297 objects, including 4,826 private houses and 1,155 high-rise buildings, Deputy Head of the President's Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said.

Deputy Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko told a press briefing, that evacuation of people from the territories where active hostilities are taking place is ongoing. Over the past month, 3,719 people have been evacuated, including 614 children and 216 persons with disabilities.

The Russian forces continued shelling populated areas and civilian infrastructure. A total of 7 Oblasts came under Russian fire on October 27, among them:

• 5 communities of Sumy Oblast were shelled throughout the day. In the morning, the Russians fired 25 shells at one of the villages of the Novoslobidska community. A power line and two civilian houses were damaged. Bilopillya, Khotin, Znob-Novhorod communities were also shelled.

• 4 civilians in Donetsk Oblast were killed by Russians: 3 in Bakhmut and 1 in Sviatohirsk. Another 9 people were injured. In addition, law enforcement officers discovered the bodies of 5 civilians who died during the occupation — in Shandrygolovo, the head of the Donetsk oblast military administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said

• The Nikopol district of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast was shelled all night with the Russian "Grad" MLRS and heavy artillery, in particular three communities - Nikopolska, Marganetska, and Chervonogrigorivska. People were not affected. A dozen high-rise and private buildings were damaged in Nikopol. Power lines were broken. In the Chervonogrihorivska community, summer houses and electricity grids were damaged. Almost 1,000 families are without electricity.

• On the night, Russian troops fired at Mykolaiv with the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system; one person was injured.

• The Russian forces shelled 3 border districts from the Russian territory in Kharkiv Oblast. No victims of injuries were reported.

Because of the war, the economy is going to drop by 30%, and the level of unemployment will increase, as a result, said Yuliya Svyridenko, First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy.

According to the employment service, 404,000 citizens have registered as unemployed since the beginning of hostilities. Currently, 230,000 registered unemployed people receive unemployment benefits. At the same time, the number of vacancies in the labor market has shrunk more than two times. There are only 31,000 of them; that is, eight unemployed people applying for one vacancy.

Occupied territories:

Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the Russian invaders turned Mariupol into a city of nameless graves. According to him, the number of mass graves at the Old Crimean Cemetery continues to increase. At first, the occupying authorities buried people killed by mass shelling there, and now the number of graves is growing due to the deaths of elderly people who could not leave the city. "The worst thing is that the graves do not have names, only numbers. And it is not known at all how many bodies were buried in one grave. It is also unknown how relatives can find the deceased's body," Lubinets said.

Of the 6,700 [Ukrainian] workers who remained to work at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP, only about a hundred signed contracts with Rosatom. Moreover, most of those who did so "agreed" under pressure from the Russian authorities. Another 4,300 pro-Ukrainian ZNPP workers left for the territory controlled by Ukraine, Ukrainian nuclear power generation company Enerhoatom reported.

According to the mayor of Enerhodar (Zaporizhzhia Oblast), Dmytro Orlov, the lack of mass demand for Russian passports in the temporarily occupied territories, particularly in Enerhodar, led to the fact that they decided to impose Russian citizenship on the residents of these territories automatically. Starting October 30, the invaders will consider the residents of Enerhodar, who remain in the city, citizens of the Russian Federation.

Operational situation

(please note that this part of the report is mainly on the previous day's (October 27) developments)

It is the 247th day of the strategic air-ground offensive operation of the Russian Armed Forces against Ukraine (in the official terminology of the Russian Federation – "operation to protect Donbas"). The enemy tries to maintain control over the temporarily captured territories and improve its tactical position. It concentrates its efforts on disrupting the counteroffensive actions of the Ukrainian troops, and at the same time, does not give up attempts to conduct the offensive in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions.

Over the past day, units of the Ukrainian Defense Forces repelled Russian attacks in the areas around Andriivka and Bilohorivka in Luhansk Oblast; Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Vremivka, Zelenopillya, Soledar, Mayorsk, Maryinka, Nevelske, Novobakhmutivka, Pervomaiske, Yakovlivka in Donetsk Oblast.

The Russian military shells the positions of the Ukrainian troops along the contact line, fortifies its positions in some directions, particularly on the left bank of the Dnipro River, and actively conducts aerial reconnaissance. In violation of the norms of international humanitarian law, the laws and customs of war, it continues to strike critical infrastructure. Over the past day, the Russian forces have launched fifteen air strikes and one missile strike and fired over 40 MLRS rounds. Bilohirka, Nova Kamianka, Novohredneve in Kherson Oblast, Stepove in Zaporizhia Oblast, and Maryinka and Pavlivka in Donetsk Oblast were affected. The Russian military shelled Boyaro-Lezhachi, Vodolahi, Hirky, Pysarivka, and Ryzhivka in Sumy Oblast and Vilkhuvatka, Vovchansk, Okhrimivka, and Starytsa in Kharkiv Oblast using different types of artillery from the territory of the Russian Federation.

The Republic of Belarus continues to support the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, providing its territory, airspace, and infrastructure. The threat of missile and air strikes against critical infrastructure of Ukraine from the territory of the Republic of Belarus persists, including the use of attack UAVs.

The Ukrainian Defense Forces aircraft made 29 strikes over the past day. Impact on 21 enemy weapons and military equipment concentration areas, 3 strongholds, and 5 anti-aircraft missile systems positions are confirmed. In addition, Ukrainian air defense units shot down 2 Russian Ка- 52 helicopters and one Su-25 bomber.

Ukraine's missile and artillery forces hit 4 areas of enemy manpower, weapons and equipment concentration, and 1 ammunition depot.

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

The Russian occupying forces command tries to conceal the real manpower losses by all means to avoid panic among the personnel.

Kharkiv direction

• Zolochiv-Balakleya section: approximate length of combat line - 147 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 10-12, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 13.3 km;

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

The Ukrainian armed forces in the Svatove direction are very close to cutting the R-66 road. A significant part of the road between Svatove and Kreminna is already under their effective fire control. The section north of Svatove was also cut in at least two locations. The command of the

Russian troops is forced to bring supplies to the troops in the Svatove area exclusively through Troitske or Starobilsk.

A tactical grouping of the Russian troops (up to three BTGs, probably from the 3rd motorized rifle division of the 20th Army, reinforced by two rifle battalions of the mobilization reserve of the 2nd Army Corps) is kept on high alert for the offensive on Zarichne and Torske. Employing the forces of two platoons supported by three APCs, the grouping conducted a reconnaissance attack in the southwest direction but failed.

The combined battalion of the 27th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st tank army, defending along the Volodymyrivka-Kuzemivka frontier and covering the direction to Nizhnya Duvanka, suffered massive fire damage from the advanced units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the night of October 24-25.

The enemy units of the 20th Army defending in west and southwest of Svatove along the Raihorodok-Novovodyane frontier suffered significant fire damage and are now "approaching the limit of combat capability". Consequently, they were forced to withdraw gradually in the north-eastern direction.

On the right bank of the Siverskyi Donets River, employing the forces of up to one and a half BTG of the 74th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 41st Army, a combined assault detachment formed from the detachments of BARS-13 and BARS-19 and BTG from the 4th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd Army Corps, the Russian military continues to launch attacks in the direction the eastern outskirts of Bilohorivka and from the oil refinery in the direction of Verkhnokamyanske. Their goal is to prevent the advance of the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the area of Shypylivka - Pryvillya - Novodruzhesk and to the border of Zolotarivka - Verkhnekamyanka.

Kramatorsk direction

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

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

The Russian military shelled the positions of the Defense Forces in the areas of Druzhelyubivka, Petro-Ivanivka, Kharkiv, Zarichne, Yampolivka in Donetsk Oblast, and Makiivka and Nevske, in Luhansk Oblast with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery.

Donetsk direction

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

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

The Russian military shelled the areas around Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Verkhnyokamianske, Opytne, Rozdolivka, Soledar, Mayorsk, Yakovlivka, Avdiivka, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, Nevelske, Novomykhailivka and Pervomaiske with tanks, mortars, barrel and jet artillery.

For two days, the Russian forces continued stubborn attacks north of Bakhmut, trying to break through to Krasna Gora through Bakhmutske and Soledar on the one hand, and at the same time, attacking in the area of Podgorodny. They failed to achieve their goal and retreated. After a sudden counterattack by units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the vicinity of the SINIAT TDV plant two days ago, units of the Wagner PMC retreated at least 1.5 km and went on the defensive at an unprepared frontier.

South of Bakhmut, two reinforced companies from the 31st separate airborne assault brigade and units of the 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps, reinforced by individual tanks "Diesel" of the 1st Army Corps and the 3rd assault detachment of the "Wagner" PMC, for two days, have been unsuccessfully trying to break through to Bakhmut attacking from the intersection of M-03 and T-0504 roads and through Opytne, Ivanhrad.

The attacks of the 1st separate motorized rifle brigade of the 1st army corps, separate assault battalion "Somalia", and separate reconnaissance battalion "Sparta" along the Vodyane - Opytne and Pisky - Pervomaiske line south of Avdiyivka and in the Krasnohorivka area north of it continue to have a stubborn, rough, but ineffective. They aim to break through the flanks of the Avdiyivka defense district of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and encircle them. The Russian military is suffering losses. The Russian command is trying to compensate for them by involving units of the 9th motorized rifle regiment, a separate assault battalion "Storm", and a separate motorized rifle brigade "Pyatnashka" from other directions.

Zaporizhzhia direction

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

● Deployed BTGs: 36th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 29th Combined Arms Army, 38th and 64th separate motorized rifle brigades, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th Combined Arms Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37 separate motorized rifle brigade of the 36th Combined Arms Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments of the 19th motorized rifle

division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 70th, 71st and 291st motorized rifle regiments of the 42nd motorized rifle division of the 58th Combined Arms Army, 136th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 58 Combined Arms Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps, 39th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 68th Army Corps, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, and 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.

Artillery was fired at 15 towns and villages, in particular Bilohirya, Hulyaipole, Dorozhnyanka of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Vuhledar, Novosilka, Pavlivka and Prechistivka districts of Donetsk Oblast.

8 units of enemy armaments and military equipment of various types were destroyed, and up to 120 military servicemen were injured.

Tavriysk direction

- Vasylivka – Stanislav section: approximate length of the battle line – 296 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 39, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 7,5 km;

- Deployed BTGs of: the 8th and 49th Combined Arms Armies; 11th, 103rd, 109th, and 127th rifle regiments of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps of the Southern Military District; 35th and 36th Combined Arms Armies of the Eastern Military District; 3rd Army Corps of the Western Military District; 90th tank division of the Central Military District; the 22nd Army Corps of the Coastal Forces; the 810th separate marines brigade of the Black Sea Fleet; the 7th and 76th Air assault divisions, the 98th airborne division, and the 11th separate airborne assault brigade of the Airborne Forces.

Areas around 20 towns and villages located near the contact line were affected by the Russian fire. About 100 wounded occupiers were delivered to medical facilities.

The so-called "evacuation" from the temporarily occupied territory of Kherson Oblast continues. Medical equipment and property of, as the occupiers say, "nationalized" enterprises are removed with extra diligence. Thus, the local hospital equipment from the village of Bilozerka is transported to the towns of Skadovsk and Henichesk.

The strengthening of the Russian grouping on the right-bank part of Kherson Oblast by mobilized military personnel numbering up to 1,000 people is noted. They are resettled in the homes of local residents who have left these areas.

Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:

The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine and control the northwestern part of the Black Sea. The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and to maintain control over the captured territories.

The Russian fleet has 11 ships, boats, and submarines at sea. They are located along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them are 3 Kalibr cruise missile carriers: a Project 11356R frigate, a Project 21631 small missile ship, and two Project 636.3 submarines carrying a total of 16 missiles. This grouping at sea also has two amphibious ships of project 775. However, there are no signs that an amphibious detachment is being formed to conduct an amphibious operation.

In the Sea of Azov waters, 6 patrol ships and boats are located on the approaches to the Mariupol and Berdyansk seaports to block the Azov coast.

Russian aviation continues to fly from the Crimean airfields of Belbek and Hvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 14 combat aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were involved. A Tu-154M passenger plane (registration number RA-85136) took off from the Belbek military airfield in the direction of Moscow to move the command staff of the "Rosgvardiya" forces.

The intensity of the movement of military equipment by road and rail transport from Crimea to the Kherson region remains stable.

According to reports from the NTS TV channel (the local TV channel of occupied Sevastopol), on the night of October 27, an unknown drone attacked the TPP in Balaklava (Sevastopol). The power plant sustained minor damage. According to the report, the energy infrastructure was not affected. Following the statement, calls to "close Sevastopol" from Ukrainian citizens displaced from the war zone began to "suddenly" spread in social networks controlled by the occupiers.

According to foreign media, a floating crane operation in Balaklava Bay was observed during the last few days. The operation area overlaps with the exit of the ventilation corridors from the Soviet submarines' bunker base, which was built in 1961 in case of a nuclear war. The occupiers have completely restored the tunnel passage to enable the submarines to enter the shelter. The occupiers are also restoring the ventilation system, which ensured the operation of the base in the Soviet times. This facility (Object 825 GTS) was intended to provide the shelter, repair and maintenance for submarines of the 613th and 633rd projects, as well as for storing ammunition intended for these submarines. The base could withstand the impact of a 100-kiloton nuclear charge. 7 submarines of the specified projects could be accommodated in the channel of the facility (602 meters long). The depth of the channel reaches 8 m, and the width varies from 12 to 22 m. The total area of all premises and passages of the plant is 9,600 m², and the area of the underground water surface is 5,200 m². The complex also included a repair and technical base (object 820) intended for the storage and maintenance of nuclear weapons.

The surmises of the mass media that this base can be restored by the Russian Federation to be used as a base for 636.3 project submarines looks unrealistic due to the much larger water tonnage and overall dimensions of this new project compared to those for which the facility was originally built.

This facility could be restored and used for the sheltered location of several hundred personnel and small boats. But this calls for restoring the facility's engineering networks, which were dismantled in the early 1990s. Another purpose of such a demonstrative floating crane operation could be to continue the information and psychological operations campaign associated with the Russian nuclear threats.

"The Grain Initiative": 6 ships with 180,000 tons of agricultural products left the ports of Greater Odesa for the countries of Africa, Asia and Europe. Among them is the LINA bulker, with 25,000 tons of corn for Egypt. Since the departure of the first vessel with Ukrainian food, 9.1 million tons of agricultural products have been exported. A total of 403 ships with food for the countries of Asia, Europe and Africa left Ukrainian ports.

Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 28.10

Personnel - almost 69,700 people (+480);

Tanks - 2,640 (+9)

Armored combat vehicles – 5,378 (+14);

Artillery systems – 1,698 (+8);

Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 379 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 192 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,088 (+10); Aircraft - 272 (+1);

Helicopters – 251 (+2);

UAV operational and tactical level – 1,401 (+3); Intercepted cruise missiles - 351 (0);

Boats / ships - 16 (0).

Ukraine, general news

On the 78th anniversary of the day when the Nazis occupiers were driven out of Ukraine in WWII, a wreath from President Volodymyr Zelensky was laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Eternal Glory Park in Kyiv. "The liberation of Ukraine from the Nazis on the 247th day of our fight becomes a symbol: the result of our struggle is definitely the liberation of our Ukraine! One way or another, our land always becomes free. Resistance becomes pride. The struggle becomes a victory. And Ukraine becomes united!", Zelenskiy said in his address to mark the day of Ukraine's liberation from the Nazi invaders.

According to a public opinion poll conducted by Razumkov Center between September 22 and October 1, more than half of the population (51%) believe that the events in Ukraine are now developing in the right direction. "The paradox of this result lies not only in the optimism that the respondents show during the war, but also in the fact that in peacetime society very rarely shows such optimism", the director of the sociological service of the Razumkov Center Andrii Bychenko stressed.

The interdepartmental working group on implementing the state sanctions policy approved a new sanction list of persons involved in Russian aggression. It will be submitted to the National

Security and Defense Council of Ukraine for consideration, the Ukrainian economy ministry reported. More than 1,000 people appear in the new sanctions package, including the aggressor state authorities, the military leadership of the Russian Federation, and heads of Russian banks.

As of October 27, 2022, Ukrainian farmers have already harvested 30.9 million tons of grain and leguminous crops, or 70% of the total area, the press service of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine reports.

International diplomatic aspect

The US will send some $275 million in new weapons and equipment to Ukraine, which brings the total amount of assistance to nearly $18 billion. The package includes 500 Excalibur precision- guided 155mm artillery rounds, 2,000 155mm remote anti-armor mine systems, more than 1,300 anti-armor weapons, more than 2.75 million rounds of small arms ammunition, and an unspecified number of HIMARS rockets. On top of that, 125 Humvees and four satellite communications antennas.

The IAEA is sending inspectors to two locations where Russia believes Ukrainians are cooking "dirty bombs." The director of the Agency expects experts to reach a conclusion in a matter of days. In the meantime, Russian troops have carried out secret construction work over the last week at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Russians intimidate Ukrainian management and workers of the ZNPP into signing a contract with the illegal Russian entity. The IAEA chief said he made clear that he considers the ZNPP a Ukrainian plant and expressed concern at possible confusion about the chain of command following Russia's announcement that it has "taken control" of the facility.

It's difficult to guess what the UN agency should send its experts to investigate bizarre Russian claims that Ukraine has collected pathogens of dangerous infectious disease, allegedly spreading through birds, bats, and mosquitoes. Russia's UN Permanent Representative claimed that Russian forces recovered containers from Kherson Oblast that could be used to "spray bioagents" and also mentioned a US patent for using a UAV to distribute infected mosquitoes, which could be used to harm army personnel.

"How much more of this nonsense do we have to endure?" the UK Ambassador replied diplomatically. The US Ambassador called the UN Security Council's meeting "a colossal waste of time," rejecting Russian allegations as "pure fabrications brought forth without a shred of evidence." "Ukraine does not have a biological weapons program. The US does not have a biological weapons program. There are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the US," she said. Adedeji Ebo, Director and Deputy to the High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, noting that the Russian Federation has filed an official complaint in line with the provisions of article VI of the Biological Weapons Convention regarding allegations of biological weapons programs in Ukraine, reiterated that the United Nations is unaware of any such biological weapons programs.

"The path to energy supply stability is different. It is necessary to recognize the legitimacy of Russia's demands within the framework of the special military operation and its results, reflected in our Constitution. And then the light will come on…" Dmitry Medvedev said on his Telegram account. The former Russian President, once loved in the West for his liberal intentions, publicly admitted that Russia terrorizes the civilian population by targeting critical infrastructure, most of all energy facilities, as we are getting into the winter. A trained "lawyer," apparently, has little knowledge of history, which proved wrong assumptions that the terror of civilians behind the frontlines isn't capable of breaking the will to resist, not to mention defeating the enemy. Meanwhile, Ukraine has shot down more than 300 Iranian-made Shahed-136 drones.

"We're very much interested in the deployment of NATO forces in Poland, and we're interested in participating in the nuclear sharing program," the Polish President's top foreign policy aide said. The US has recently stated that they were not planning to station nuclear weapons in countries that joined the alliance after 1997. However, Jakub Kumoch believes that it could be revised since by invading Ukraine, Moscow "rendered invalid" a 1997 NATO-Russia agreement prohibiting the deployment of permanent NATO forces in Eastern Europe.

Canada imposed sanctions on Russian governmental officials, including two vice prime ministers and the minister of energy. The blacklist now includes top management of Gazprom. Among the sanctioned companies are Transoil, Lukoil, and Gas Industry Insurance Company. From January 1 2023, the UK is ending all imports of Russian liquefied natural gas. Contrary to Russian expectations and propaganda about "freezing Europeans," the price of benchmark European natural gas futures has dropped 20% since last Thursday and by more than 70% since hitting a record high in late August. At the moment, 93.8% of the EU gas storage is filled.

Russia, relevant news

Poland canceled the simplified procedure for Russian citizens to be employed in the Polish labor market. Those entrepreneurs who want to hire a Russian citizen now have to follow the standard procedure, i.e., check whether there is a Polish citizen who could fill the vacancy before hiring a foreigner. At the same time, Russians who worked in Poland legally, under the simplified procedure, can continue to do so, but only until the expiration of the work permit.

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RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 28

Oct 28, 2022 - Press ISW

CDS Daily brief (28.10.22) CDS comments on key events

Occupied territories:

Operational situation

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

Kharkiv direction

Kramatorsk direction

Donetsk direction

Zaporizhzhia direction