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Quotes of the Day:
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
- Henry David Thoreau
"The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true."
- Edgar Allan Poe
“The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world.”
- Plato
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 19 (Putin's War)
2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (19.11.22) CDS comments on key events
3. Nothing resolved in Biden-Xi talks
4. Stealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces
5. China Tosses Out the Developed Nation Playbook
6. China, Russia Seek 'Might Makes Right' World, Says US Official
7. It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia
8. Opinion | The U.S. seeks to support Ukraine, but contain the war
9. The End of the Beginning in Ukraine
10. Britain to provide Ukraine with new air defense package - Sunak
11. Russia trying to exhaust Ukraine's air defenses, Pentagon official says
12. Iran's Rogue Regime Is Collapsing: Time for a Provisional Government
13. El Salvador takes risks for Chinese investments
14. I Was the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. This Is What Could Become of It.
15. China’s rise risks being thwarted by outdated plans and a shifting world
16. Why the US seeks closer security cooperation with the Philippines
17. US approves arms sales to Switzerland, Lithuania and Belgium
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 19 (Putin's War)
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-19
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces are reportedly beginning to reinforce their positions in occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts with personnel from Kherson Oblast and mobilized servicemen.
- US intelligence officials stated that Russian and Iranian officials finalized a deal in early November to manufacture Iranian drones on Russian territory.
- Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on the Svatove-Kreminna line.
- Russian forces maintained their offensive operations around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and west of Donetsk City despite reports of high losses around Bakhmut.
- Russian forces continued efforts to fortify areas around ground lines of communication in southern Ukraine while struggling with the partial loss of the use of the Kerch Strait Bridge.
- Russian media sources continued active discussions of an impending second wave of mobilization.
- The number of Russian prisoners appears to have dropped by about 6.5% since January of 2022 likely due to intensive Wagner Group recruitment.
- Russian authorities are working to establish control over the information space in occupied territories and identify Ukrainian partisans.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 19
understandingwar.org
Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, and Frederick W. Kagan
November 19, 6:30pm 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 reportedly beginning to reinforce their positions in occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts with personnel from Kherson Oblast and mobilized servicemen. The Ukrainian General Staff reported an increase in Russian military personnel in Luhansk City and noted that Russian forces are housing servicemen in abandoned homes in Krasne and Simeikyne about 30km southeast of Luhansk City.[1] Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian forces are transferring the remnants of the Russian airborne units from right (west) bank Kherson Oblast to Luhansk Oblast.[2] Luhansk Oblast Military Administration added that a part of redeploying Russian troops is arriving in Novoaidar, approximately 55km east of Severodonetsk.[3] Advisor to Mariupol Mayor Petro Andryushenko also noted the arrival of redeployed personnel and military equipment to Mariupol, stating that Russian forces are placing 10,000 to 15,000 servicemen in the Mariupol Raion.[4] Andryushenko stated that newly mobilized men are deploying to the presumably western Donetsk Oblast frontline via Mariupol. Russian forces are reportedly attempting to disperse forces by deploying some elements in the Hulyaipole direction in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast.[5] Russia will also likely commit additional mobilized forces in the coming weeks, given that mobilized units of the Russian 2nd Motorized Rifle Division of the 1st Tank Army have finished their training in Brest Oblast, Belarus.[6] Russian forces will likely continue to use mobilized and redeployed servicemen to reignite offensive operations in Donetsk Oblast and maintain defensive positions in Luhansk Oblast.
US intelligence officials stated on November 19 that Russian and Iranian officials finalized a deal in early November to manufacture Iranian drones on Russian territory.[7] The US officials stated that the deal could allow Russia to “dramatically increase its stockpile” of Iranian drones. The Washington Post reported that Russian forces have launched 400 Iranian kamikaze drones since first using them in the Ukrainian theater in August, and Ukrainian officials have previously stated that Ukrainian forces down 70% of drones before they can strike their targets.[8] The US officials stated that it is unclear what assistance Russia will provide to Iran in return for the drones.[9] The deepening relationship between Russia and Iran, specifically in the provision of long-range munitions such as kamikaze drones and precision missiles, may allow Russian forces to sustain their campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure for a longer period than their diminishing stockpile of munitions would otherwise allow. This report also suggests that Russia can somehow circumvent Western sanctions to acquire the microchips needed to program the drones it plans on manufacturing. A Russian milblogger claimed that the deal allows Russian officials to claim they build Russian drones—thus providing an informational win—having previously stated that the domestic manufacturing of Iranian drones on Russian territory humiliates Russia.[10]
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces are reportedly beginning to reinforce their positions in occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts with personnel from Kherson Oblast and mobilized servicemen.
- US intelligence officials stated that Russian and Iranian officials finalized a deal in early November to manufacture Iranian drones on Russian territory.
- Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on the Svatove-Kreminna line.
- Russian forces maintained their offensive operations around Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and west of Donetsk City despite reports of high losses around Bakhmut.
- Russian forces continued efforts to fortify areas around ground lines of communication in southern Ukraine while struggling with the partial loss of the use of the Kerch Strait Bridge.
- Russian media sources continued active discussions of an impending second wave of mobilization.
- The number of Russian prisoners appears to have dropped by about 6.5% since January of 2022 likely due to intensive Wagner Group recruitment.
- Russian authorities are working to establish control over the information space in occupied territories and identify Ukrainian partisans.
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—Eastern Ukraine
- Russian Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and one supporting effort);
- 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)
Ukrainian forces continued their counteroffensive operations throughout the Svatove-Kreminna line on November 19. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks in the directions of Chervonopopivka (about 6km northwest of Kreminna) and Ploshchanka (about 20km southwest of Svatove).[11] A Russian milblogger noted that Ukrainian forces returned to positional battles following their unsuccessful attempts to assault Russian positions in Chervonopopivka.[12] Luhansk People’s Republic’s (LNR) Deputy Interior Minister Vitaly Kiselev claimed that Russian forces continued to repel Ukrainian attacks in the Kuzemivka area (approximately 13km northwest of Svatove), and a Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian and Russian forces are engaged in the most difficult battles west of Kuzemivka in Novoselivka.[13]The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces shelled settlements along the Svatove-Kreminna frontline.[14]
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 their offensive operations around Bakhmut on November 19 despite reports of high losses on the frontline. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults on Bilohorivka and Zelenopillya northeast of Bakhmut and Klishchiivka southwest of Bakhmut.[15] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces continued to attack Ukrainian positions near Spirne, Verkhnokamianske, and Bilohorivka, all near the T1302 highway.[16] Geolocated footage showed that Russian forces made incremental advances toward Klishchiivka, and other footage indicated that Ukrainian forces maintained their positions near Mayorsk (about 20km southeast of Bakhmut).[17] Russian officials previously claimed control over Mayorsk on November 13.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that about 500 wounded Russian servicemen arrived in Horlivka hospitals from the Mayorsk direction, which suggests that Russian forces are experiencing high casualties on this segment of the frontline.[19] Russian milbloggers, however, claimed that Russian forces seized the southern part of the T0513 highway that starts at Mayorsk.[20]
Russian forces continued to launch assaults west of Donetsk City and around Avdiivka on November 19. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces stopped Russian advances on Vodyane (approximately 8km west of Avdiivka) and Novomykhailivka (about 30km southwest of Donetsk City).[21] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian aviation, artillery, and missile forces struck a Ukrainian command point in Vodyane, and geolocated footage showed Russian forces striking Ukrainian positions in the settlement.[22] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces continued assault operations near Vodyane, Pervomaiske (about 4km northwest of Vodyane), and forced Ukrainian forces from their positions on the outskirts of Nevelske (about 7km southwest of Vodyane).[23] Russian and Ukrainian forces continued to engage in artillery battles southwest of Donetsk City and in eastern Zaporizhia Oblast.[24]
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Note: ISW will report on activities in Kherson Oblast as part of the Southern Axis in this and subsequent updates. Ukraine’s counteroffensive in right-bank Kherson Oblast has accomplished its stated objectives, so ISW will not present a Southern Ukraine counteroffensive section until Ukrainian forces resume counteroffensives in southern Ukraine.
Russian forces continued to undertake defensive measures and conduct routine shelling east of the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast on November 19. Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command stated that Russian forces continue to establish defensive positions east of the Dnipro River and are pulling Russian forces out of the range of Ukrainian artillery.[25] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces began withdrawing from Oleshky, just south of Kherson City on the left side of the river.[26] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported explosions at Karantynnyy Island, just southwest of Kherson City in the Dnipro River, attributing the explosions to Russian or Ukrainian artillery strikes against a fuel depot.[27] Russian forces may have struck the fuel depot to prevent Ukrainian forces from using it. Russian forces continued shelling areas on the right (west) bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson City, Antonivka, Kozatske, and Chronobaivka.[28] Russian and Ukrainian forces reported that Ukrainian forces shelled Oleshky and Nova Kakhovka on the left riverbank.[29]
Ukrainian forces continued targeting Russian force concentrations and military assets south of the Dnipro River. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian force concentration area in Mykhailivka, 38km south of Kherson City on the R57 highway, killing 60 personnel and wounding 70 personnel.[30] Ukraine’s Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian force concentration in the Kinburn Spit, killing seven personnel and destroying two armored vehicles.[31]
Russian forces continued efforts to fortify areas around ground lines of communication in southern Ukraine while struggling with the partial loss of the use of the Kerch Strait Bridge. Ukrainian Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov stated that Russian authorities are forcing civilians to dig trenches and build defenses near Melitopol.[32] Russian sources expressed continued concern that Ukrainian forces are concentrating along the Zaporizhia Oblast front line for a counteroffensive drive toward Melitopol.[33] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Havrylov stated that Ukrainian forces could enter Crimea by the end of December.[34] Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko stated that Russian forces are struggling to compensate for the loss of the Kerch Strait Bridge and posted footage of a traffic jam of cargo trucks in Mariupol.[35] Russian sources reported that Russian occupation authorities placed replacement spans for the Kerch Strait Bridge and completed the installation of two of those spans; those sources reported that the bridge will be fully operational for vehicle traffic by December 20.[36] However, as ISW has previously reported, the UK Ministry of Defense assessed that the road bridge will not be fully operational until March 2023 and the rail bridge not until September 2023.[37]
Russian forces continued routine shelling west of Hulyaipole and in Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts on November 19.[38] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck the Motor Sich Plant in Zaporizhzhia City with anti-air missiles and kamikaze drones.[39] Mykolaiv Oblast Head Vitaly Kim stated that Russian forces struck Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast with anti-air missiles.[40] Russian forces conducted artillery and MLRS strikes against Nikopol and Marhanets, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[41]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
The number of Russian prisoners dropped by about 6.5% since January of 2022 (not including those held in pre-trial detention centers and remanded prisoners), apparently due to intensive Wagner Group recruitment.[42] ISW has extensively reported on Wagner Group's recruitment of prisoners and use of prisoners on the front lines in Ukraine.[43] Russian investigative outlet Mediazona reported on November 18 that the number of male prisoners in Russia has decreased by 23,000 since the start of the Wagner Group’s prison-based recruitment campaigns.[44] This is the sharpest decrease in the Russian prison population since 2014, including during periods of amnesty.[45] Mediazona reported that the number of Russians in pre-trial detention centers and prison colonies stayed relatively constant, which suggests that the decrease in the number of prisoners is not due to decreased rates of arrest.[46]
Russian media sources continued active discussions of an impending second wave of mobilization on November 19. Russian sources amplified reports of a woman being issued permission to travel abroad until December 31 in order to return for her husband’s mobilization summons on January 16.[47] Russian sources also reported the launch of basic military training courses in Barnaul, Siberia, to ensure that those impacted by mobilization receive “all the necessary skills.” A prominent Russian Telegram channel refuted statements from Ukrainian sources that Russia will likely conduct general mobilization after the New Year’s holiday, arguing that Russia does not have the equipment, trainers, or bureaucratic structure required to provide for hypothetical newly mobilized soldiers.[48] The channel contended that Russian authorities might conduct a future partial mobilization, but the Ministry of Defense (MoD) would only mobilize 100-200,000 men at a time. The channel claimed Russia needs to mobilize 1-1.5 million total soldiers to defeat Ukrainian forces.[49] Previous ISW analyses support the assessment that the Russian MoD does not have the capacity or resources to handle a future general mobilization.[50] Widespread reports of mobilized soldiers being required to purchase their own equipment, sleeping outside or in tents without heat while still on training grounds, receiving no or woefully inadequate training, and experiencing other poor conditions suggest the Russian MoD is unprepared to handle future rounds of partial mobilization or even provide for those currently mobilized.[51]
The Kremlin continues to selectively respond to public mobilization complaints while continuing to commit poorly trained mobilized men to the frontlines. The Russian Armed Forces relocated 130 mobilized men from Vladimir Oblast from the frontlines to the rear areas following Vladimir Oblast Governor Alexander Avdeev’s appeal to the Russian MoD regarding the deployment of poorly trained personnel to the frontlines.[52] Avdeev noted that over 1,000 mobilized servicemen from his constituency still serve on the frontlines, and relatives of the Vladimir Oblast mobilized men recorded a third video appeal addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding their lack of adequate training.[53] Mobilized men from Voronezh Oblast who were removed from the frontlines following a public appeal by their relatives were redeployed to frontlines in Luhansk Oblast.[54]
Russian military officials continued covert mobilization. A Russian news channel reported that a Russian military commissariat issued a mobilization summons for November 21 to a man called in to clarify data. The resources spent on covert mobilization coupled with Russia’s ongoing fall conscription wave further degrades the ability of the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) to prepare for future waves of mobilization, as ISW reported on November 18.[55]
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 media is amplifying narratives that criminals in Russian military uniforms are terrorizing and looting local populations in occupied Ukraine. A prominent Russian news source claimed that Russian military officials in Oleshky, Kherson Oblast detained several criminals dressed in Russian uniforms while robbing civilians and making plans to kill and steal from Russian soldiers.[56] The source published an interview between a Russian commander and the detainees in which the detainees claimed that Ukrainian authorities released them from prison and left them without any resources.[57] It is unclear whether Russian efforts to amplify this narrative are a part of efforts to minimize reports of Russian looting and abuse of civilians.
Russian authorities are working to establish control over the information space in occupied territories. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 19 that Russian authorities are dispatching propagandists to occupied territories to organize TV broadcasts and launch branches of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VDTRK).[58] Occupation authorities plan to use seized broadcasting property to facilitate broadcasting, including the 196-meter TV towers in Mariupol and Melitopol. Occupation authorities reportedly planned to coopt local media specialists as well but chose to import Russian personnel when Ukrainian media specialists refused to cooperate with occupation regimes.[59]
Russian occupation authorities continue efforts to identify Ukrainian partisans. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on November 19 that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) created groups with counterintelligence specialists and representatives from other Russian security services and charged them with seeking out Ukrainian partisan groups, including using internet-traffic analysis.[60] The Ukrainian Resistance Center noted that this strategy mirrors Russian approaches used in Syria.[61]
Occupation authorities continue to struggle to link basic infrastructure in occupied territories to Russian systems. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin announced on November 19 that occupation authorities will supply occupied eastern Ukraine with water via a to-be-constructed conduit from the Don River.[62] A prominent Russian milblogger also criticized occupation authorities in Kherson Oblast for the failure to link Russian railway infrastructure to Kherson City during eight months of occupation whereas Ukrainian officials reestablished the Ukrainian railway connection within ten days of recapturing the city.[63][64]
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.
[8] https://www dot pravda.com.ua/articles/2022/10/24/7373160/; https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/11/19/russia-iran-...
[42] https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/russian-federation; https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1593682496771727361 https://zona [dot] media/article/2022/11/18/navoynu; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/11/18/mediazona-chislo-zaklyuchennyh-v-rossiyskih-koloniyah-za-dva-mesyatsa-sokratilos-na-rekordnye-23-tysyachi-chelovek
[44] https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1593682496771727361 https://zona [dot] media/article/2022/11/18/navoynu; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/11/18/mediazona-chislo-zaklyuchennyh-v-rossiyskih-koloniyah-za-dva-mesyatsa-sokratilos-na-rekordnye-23-tysyachi-chelovek
[45] https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1593682496771727361 https://zona [dot] media/article/2022/11/18/navoynu; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/11/18/mediazona-chislo-zaklyuchennyh-v-rossiyskih-koloniyah-za-dva-mesyatsa-sokratilos-na-rekordnye-23-tysyachi-chelovek
[46] https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1593682496771727361 https://zona [dot] media/article/2022/11/18/navoynu; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/11/18/mediazona-chislo-zaklyuchennyh-v-rossiyskih-koloniyah-za-dva-mesyatsa-sokratilos-na-rekordnye-23-tysyachi-chelovek
[47] https://t.me/pogranichnyi_control/1246; https://notes dot citeam.org/mobilization-nov-17-18
[51] https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/12738; https://notes dot citeam.org/mobilization-nov-17-18; https://t.me/bazabazon/14526; https://t.me/readovkanews/47261; https:/... citeam.org/mobilization-nov-17-18; https://t.me/dovod3/7177
[52] https://tass dot ru/armiya-i-opk/16362643
[53] https://notes dot citeam.org/mobilization-nov-17-18; https://t.me/dovod3/7177
[54] https://notes dot citeam.org/mobilization-nov-17-18; https://t.me/tvrain/60001
[58] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/19/okupanty-zvozyat-na-tot-svoyih-propagandystiv-dlya-organizacziyi-movlennya-oseredkiv-svogo-telebachennya/
[59] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/19/okupanty-zvozyat-na-tot-svoyih-propagandystiv-dlya-organizacziyi-movlennya-oseredkiv-svogo-telebachennya/
[60] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/19/fsb-stvorylo-speczialni-grupy-z-poshuku-chleniv-ukrayinskogo-pidpillya/
[61] https://sprotyv dot mod.gov.ua/2022/11/19/fsb-stvorylo-speczialni-grupy-z-poshuku-chleniv-ukrayinskogo-pidpillya/
understandingwar.org
2. Ukraine: CDS Daily brief (19.11.22) CDS comments on key events
CDS Daily brief (19.11.22) CDS comments on key events
Humanitarian aspect:
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, 437 children have died, and more than 837 have been injured, according to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine.
Over the past day, as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, three civilians were killed, and six were injured, reported the deputy head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko based on the data of the regional military administrations.
As of 9 a.m. this morning, Oblast Military Administrations reported that the Russian army shelled seven Oblasts of Ukraine over the past 24 hours.
Consequences of enemy shelling on the morning of November 19
• At night, the enemy fired five S-300 missiles at one of Zaporizhzhia's districts, the Zaporizhzhia Regional Prosecutor's Office reports. Enemy rockets hit one of infrastructure facilities, killing one person. The central heating pipeline was damaged. 123 high-rise buildings remained without heat.
• After 21:30, the occupiers opened artillery fire on the border regions of Sumy Oblast.
• On November 18, the enemy shelled the Kupyansk, Chuhuyiv and Kharkiv districts of Kharkiv Oblast. Roofs of buildings were damaged in Kupyansk. Residential and commercial buildings were partially destroyed in Vovchansk.
• Yesterday, the enemy carried out anti-aircraft missile strikes at the water area of the Ochakiv community of the Mykolaiv Oblast. No casualties were reported.
• At night, the Russians shelled three communities of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from Grads and heavy artillery, damaging housing, farm buildings and cars. No victims were reported.
Three servicemen of a separate marine infantry battalion have returned from Russian captivity, the Naval Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced on Facebook. They were provided with primary medical and psychological assistance.
Voluntary evacuation from the de-occupied territories of the South of Ukraine has already begun, and the state will bear all the related costs, including transportation, accommodation, and medical care, stated Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk at a briefing in Mykolaiv. According to her, the residents of de-occupied Kherson, with whom she spoke, expressed their desire to evacuate, in particular, vulnerable categories of citizens who cannot help themselves. The head of Mykolayiv Military Administration, Vitaly Kim, noted that lists of those willing to evacuate are being comprised in the de-occupied communities of the region. Furthermore, a transit point has been created in Mykolayiv where people can stay for a week before departure. From there, they would move to the different regions of Ukraine, where places to live have been arranged.
Residents of Kherson are asked not to hurry back to return to the city. Demining work is still ongoing; the enemy is shelling the city, and many problems need to be solved to restore normal life, said Yuriy Sobolevskyi, the first deputy chairman of the Kherson Regional Council. He noted that work on demining roads and city infrastructure facilities is still ongoing. There are risks of shelling - the enemy is on the other side of the Dnipro river.
Russian troops fired at a humanitarian point in a village of Kherson Oblast during the distribution of bread, resulting in five people being injured, Deputy Head of the Office of the President Kyrylo Tymoshenko announced on his Telegram.
In Mykolaiv Oblast, in the village of Kyselivka, the Russian invaders completely destroyed the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which survived two world wars, reported Suspilne with reference to the rector of the parish, Father Oleksandr. "The building has no roof, and the oldest icons have been destroyed by rain and falling plaster. The temple has been completely destroyed, and restoring it is impossible, " says Suspilne.
In Odesa, electricity was restored to more than 400,000 homes of residents, Maksym Marchenko, the head of Odesa Military administration, reported in Telegram. He noted that problems in the power system do not disappear and require efforts to stabilize.
Operational situation
(Please note that this section of the Brief is mainly on the previous day's (November 18) developments)
It is the 269th 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 is concentrating its efforts on restraining the actions of the Defense Forces and, at the same time conducting offensive in the Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlivka directions.
Over the past day, the Defense Forces repelled enemy attacks in the areas of Bilohorivka, Zelenopillia, Klishchiivka, Pervomaiske, Vodyane and Novomykhailivka in Donetsk Oblast. The enemy carried out 10 air strikes and 10 missile strikes, and 42 attacks from MLRS. They continue to strike critical infrastructure, violating the norms of International Humanitarian Law, laws and customs of war. Thus, objects of the civil infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia were hit by a missile. Near the state border, the enemy fired mortars and rocket artillery at the Defence Forces' positions near Atynske and Novovolodymyrivka in Sumy Oblast, Strilecha, Starytsia, Ohirtseve, Okhrymivka and Zarubinka in Kharkiv Oblast.
The Republic of Belarus continues to support the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. On the section of the border Derazhychy – Loyev, Gomel Region, the enemy reinforced its BTG from the 103rd separate airborne brigade. In the same direction, the operation of the enemy's radar and at least one EW station is recorded.
An increase in the flight activity of the Russian Air Force, armed with the Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic aviation missile system, is recorded at the Machulyshchi air base. The unit prepares for striking targets on the territory of Ukraine from the launch lines in the airspace of the Republic of Belarus by performing regular flights of MiG-31K aircraft from the complex.
From November 15 to 18, the Russian command delivered to the territory of Belarus another batch of anti-aircraft guided missiles for S-300/400 anti-aircraft missiles (from 20 to 30 transport and launch containers). In the Republic of Belarus, the so-called "mass verification of military registration data" is being conducted, which will allegedly last "until the end of this year." According to the country's Ministry of Defense, "from the middle of November until the end of the current year, these data will be verified for everyone registered. In this regard, a significant number of the country's citizens will participate in these events in November."
In several areas of the front, personnel of the Russian occupation forces began to receive individual military equipment of Iranian production, in particular ballistic protection means. According to Ukrainian specialists, these samples have reduced combat properties and quality compared to similar samples of Western or Ukrainian production.
The command of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, after the attack on ships by unmanned surface drones, has strengthened the surveillance on the external raid and increased the forces and means allocated for the protection/defense of the water area. From now on, at least 2 guard/patrol ships of project 22460 "Okhotnik", anti-sabotage boats of project 21980 "Grachonok", and other vessels are involved. Furthermore, permanent sonar reconnaissance of the waters of Sevastopol Bay and the adjacent waters of the Black Sea is organized. In addition, permanent control of the surface and air situation in the areas adjacent to Sevastopol is organized by the designated forces and means of the Black Sea Fleet.
During the day, the Defense Forces aviation made 7 strikes on enemy concentration areas. Ukrainian missile forces and artillery hit the enemy command and control post, more than 12 concentration areas and the enemy's mobile air defense system.
Kharkiv direction
• Topoli - Siversk section: approximate length of combat line - 154 km, number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 23-28, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 5.5 km;
• Deployed enemy BTGs: 26th, 153rd, and 197th tank regiments (TR), 245th motorized rifle regiment (MRR) of the 47th tank division (TD), 6th and 239th TRs, 228th MRR of the 90th TD, 25th and 138th separate motorized rifle brigades (SMRBr) of the 6th Combined Arms (CA) Army, 27th SMRBr of the 1st Tank Army, 252nd and 752nd MRRs of the 3rd MRD, 1st, 13th, and 12th TRs, 423rd MRR of the 4th TD, 201st military base, 15th, 21st, 30th SMRBrs of the 2nd CA Army, 35th, 55th and 74th SMRBrs of the 41st CA Army, 275th and 280th MRRs, 11th TR of the 18th MRD of the 11 Army Corps (AC), 7th MRR of the 11th AC, 80th SMRBr of the 14th AC, 2nd and 45th separate SOF brigades of the Airborne Forces, 3rd and 14th separate SOF brigades, military units of the 1st AC of so-called DPR, 2nd and 4th SMRBrs of the 2nd AC, PMC
The enemy shelled the positions of the Defense Forces in the Novomlynsk, Orlyanka, Kotlyarivka, Krokhmalne and Tabaivka areas in Kharkiv Oblast; Novoselivske, Myasozharivka, Novoyehorivka, Ploshanka and Nevske in Luhansk Oblast and Torske, Andriivka and Berestove in Donetsk Oblast.
The movement and concentration of forces and assets of the enemy's 106th airborne division in Luhansk Oblast continues for the third day. The advanced units of the division have already arrived there and are concentrating in designated areas. The division's logistic command center has been deployed, and the deployment of the command and communication system of the unit is underway. Separate units of the 106th airborne division were spotted in the Mariupol region during their march in the north-eastern direction.
In addition, the enemy continues to gradually increase the number of tactical reserves in the Svatove and Kramatorsk directions. Thus, northwest of Starobilsk, the deployment of the enemy's BTG (probably from the 1st tank army) - up to 50 armored vehicles, in particular tanks, and automotive equipment is recorded.
Donetsk direction
● Siversk - Maryinka section: approximate length of the combat line - 144 km, the number of BTGs of the RF Armed Forces - 13-15, the average width of the combat area of one BTG - 9.6 km;
● Deployed BTGs: 68th and 163rd tank regiments (TR), 102nd and 103rd motorized rifle regiments of the 150 motorized rifle division, 80th TR of the 90th tank division, 35th, 55th, and 74th separate motorized rifle brigades of the 41st Combined Arms Army, 51st and 137th parachute airborne regiment of the 106 airborne division, 31st separate airborne assault brigade, 61st separate marines brigade of the Joint Strategic Command "Northern Fleet," 336th separate marines brigade of Baltic Fleet, 24th separate SOF brigade, 1st, 3rd, 5th, 15th, and 100th separate motorized rifle brigades, 9th and 11th separate motorized rifle regiment of the 1st Army Corps of the so-called DPR, 6th motorized rifle regiment of the 2nd Army Corps of the so-called LPR, PMCs.
The enemy shelled with tanks and artillery the areas of Bakhmut, Bakhmutske, Bilohorivka, Verkhnokamianske, Vesele, Zelenopillia, Kurdyumivka, Mayorsk, New York, Soledar, Spirne, Yakovlivka, Vodyane, Pervomaiske, Nevelske, Krasnohorivka, Maryinka, and Novomykhailivka.
About 500 wounded servicemen of the Russian occupation forces, most of them recently mobilized, were brought to Horlivka hospitals from Mayorsk.
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 (SMRBr) of the 29th Combined Arms (CA) Army, 38th and 64th SMRBrs, 69th separate cover brigade of the 35th CA Army, 5th separate tank brigade, 37th of the 36th CA Army, 135th, 429th, 503rd and 693rd motorized rifle regiments (MRR) of the 19th motorized rifle division (MRD) of the 58th CA Army, 70th, 71st and 291st MRRs of the 42nd MRD of the 58th CA Army, 136th SMRB of the 58 CA Army, 46th and 49th machine gun artillery regiments of the 18th machine gun artillery division of the 68th Army Corps (AC),
39th SMRB of the 68th AC, 83th separate airborne assault brigade, 40th and 155th separate marines brigades, 22nd separate SOF brigade, 1st AC of the so-called DPR, and 2nd AC of the so- called LPR, PMCs.
The enemy shelled the Defence Forces' positions near Bohoyavlenka, Blahodatne, Vremivka and Vuhledar in Donetsk Oblast, Kamianske, Mylove and Chervonyi Mayak.
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 (CA) Armies; 11th, 103rd, 109th, and 127th rifle regiments of the mobilization reserve of the 1st Army Corps (AC) of the Southern Military District; 35th and 36th CA Armies of the Eastern Military District; 3rd AC of the Western Military District; 90th tank division of the Central Military District; the 22nd AC 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.
The enemy shelled with artillery Antonivka, Beryslav, Odradokamyanka, Chornobayivka and Kherson.
The enemy's concentration area in Mykhailivka of the Skadovsk district was hit. Losses of personnel - up to 40 dead and 70 wounded. They were taken to hospitals in the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
Azov-Black Sea Maritime Operational Area:
The forces of the Russian Black Sea Fleet continue to stay ready to carry out two operational tasks against Ukraine:
• to project force on the coast and the continental part of Ukraine by launching missile strikes from surface ships, submarines, coastal missile systems, and aircraft at targets in the coastal zone and deep into the territory of Ukraine and readiness for the naval amphibious landing to assist ground forces in the coastal direction;
• to control the northwestern part of the Black Sea by blocking Ukrainian ports and preventing the restoration of sea communications (except for the areas of the BSGI "grain initiative") by carrying out attacks on ports and ships and concealed mine laying.
The ultimate goal is to deprive Ukraine of access to the Black Sea and extend and maintain control over the captured territory and Ukraine's coastal regions.
The enemy has 8 surface ships and a submarine at sea. Due to stormy conditions, part of the ships returned to their bases. At sea, enemy ships patrol along the southwestern coast of Crimea. Among them is one submarine carrying 4 Kalibr missiles. Two ships were spotted on the western coast of Crimea, near the Black Sea port (judging by the length and exterior, they may be missile corvettes). So far, no movement of ships towards Kherson Oblast or the Kinburn Spit has been observed.
In the Sea of Azov, the enemy continues to control sea communications, keeping 1 boat on combat duty.
Enemy aviation continues to fly from Crimean airfields Belbek and Gvardiyske over the northwestern part of the Black Sea. Over the past day, 15 combat aircraft from Belbek and Saki airfields were deployed.
On the Kinburn spit, the Armed Forces of Ukraine hit the area of the enemy's manpower, weapons and equipment concentration. From there, the Russian military fired at port tugs and grain barges in the Dnipro-Buzka estuary. As a result, seven enemy personnel and two armored vehicles, and the enemy base were destroyed.
At a meeting on November 18, the head of the occupying authorities of Crimea, Aksenov, told his staff that in Crimea, by order of Putin, they began to create fortifications "for the safety of the inhabitants of the peninsula."
The Russian Federation continues to repair the Crimean Bridge. It seems that the initial statements about the speedy traffic restoration were propaganda, and the repair will be delayed at least until the middle of next year. 3 hundred-meter road sections on both branches of the highway, about 300 meters of the railway track, plus engineering communications are being completely replaced.
Grain initiative: The grain agreement has been extended for 120 days. Discussion of possible additions is ongoing. They relate to two issues: the inclusion of the Mykolaiv seaport in the agreement and the acceleration (simplification) of the ship maintenance procedure.
For Ukraine, the "grain initiative" is now the main corridor for exporting Ukrainian grain, which is vital for Ukrainian farmers and the world because it restrains the growth of food prices. For some countries, primarily African, this news is particularly important. About 11 million tons of grain were exported thanks to the "grain initiative". However, this year less grain was exported compared to the previous. The most difficult period was from March to July. The blockade of seaports caused a very sharp rise in grain prices worldwide, worsened by drought in Europe and some countries' intention to increase their grain reserves. The unprecedented growth of prices was halted only by the work of the "grain corridor". The Russians understand this very well and try to use it [to their advantage]. Before the war, Ukraine exported 90 percent of its agricultural products by sea, up to 7 million tons per month. Before the "grain corridor", Ukraine developed railway, road and river transportation routes towards the EU and exported up to 3 million tons through them in March-May. But still, these routes are costly and lengthy compared to sea corridors.
Russian operational losses from 24.02 to 19.11
Personnel - almost 83,880 people (+420);
Tanks - 2,885 (+6)
Armored combat vehicles – 5,815 (+7);
Artillery systems – 1,867 (+2);
Multiple rocket launchers (MLRS) - 393 (0); Anti-aircraft warfare systems - 209 (0); Vehicles and fuel tanks – 4,368 (+2); Aircraft - 278 (0);
Helicopters – 261 (0);
UAV operational and tactical level – 1,536 (0); Intercepted cruise missiles - 480 (0);
Boats/ships - 16 (0).
Ukraine, general news:
Russia's missile attack against Ukraine on November 15 caused 0.5 billion to 1 billion US dollars of direct damage to the Ukrainian economy, announced the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada committee on finance, tax and customs policy, Danylo Hetmantsev. Hetmantsev reminded that the Ministry of Economy adjusted its macro forecast in the direction of the fall in GDP to 39% in October, stressing that these attacks did not decrease in November, so the fall, according to the parliamentarian, will continue. At the same time, he emphasized that, in addition to direct losses, there are also indirect losses, when, in particular, enterprises cannot work due to power outages.
Work to restore the energy system continues in Ukraine; the most problematic regions are currently Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv Oblasts, said President Volodymyr Zelensky, in his video address to Ukrainians on November 19. On Saturday, President Zelensky held a meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, during which the situation at the front was discussed, in particular, the provision of the military and the situation in the energy sector.
In Ukraine, all medical institutions that provide inpatient and emergency medical care are equipped with generators, stated the Minister of Health Viktor Lyashko. According to him, the Ministry of Health started preparing for the winter season in the summer, providing hospitals with generators and Starlink devices. Currently, the Ministry of Health and the World Bank have started a project to purchase another 1,100 generators that should be provided to Ukrainian hospitals shortly. In addition, another 170 generators for medical facilities will be provided by the WHO, Lyashko noted. According to him, every medical institution should rearrange the system and be ready to work in complete blackout conditions, providing heat, water supply and additional alternative power sources.
International diplomatic aspect
"The UK and our allies will continue to stand with Ukraine as it fights to end this barbarous war and deliver a just peace," said the UK Primer Minister meeting the Ukrainian President in Kyiv. Rishi Sunak announced a major new package of air defense to help protect Ukrainian civilians and critical national infrastructure from an intense barrage of Russian strikes. The £50 million
package of defense aid comprises 125 anti-aircraft guns and technology to counter deadly Iranian-supplied drones, including dozens of radars and anti-drone electronic warfare capability.
"It is heartbreaking to see these disabled Ukrainian soldiers here in the halls of Congress being used as pawns to pressure our Congress to give America's hard-earned tax dollars to Zelensky," twitted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announcing her "audit of funds to Ukraine." After taking over the House, the first GOP news conference revealed that one of the major priorities would be going after President Joe Biden. Whenever Hunter Biden's name appears, there would be a reference to Ukraine and, related to it, unfound conspiracies of Ukraine "meddling" in the 2016 elections on the rival's side. So far, Ukraine has been enjoying strong bipartisan support from both chambers.
Russian occupants in Mariupol are planning to re-erecting two of Vladimir Lenin's monuments in the city. The ressentiment of eclectic nature drives Russia. On the one hand, tzar Nikolay II is called a "saint" by the Russian Orthodox Church, symbolizing the political elites' neo-imperial ambitions. On the other hand, Russians glorified the Soviet Union and the most brutal figures like Lenin, who murdered the whole tzar family, and Stalin, who murdered more Soviet subjects than Adolf Hitler.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians have launched an e-petition on President's website aimed at swapping a monument to Russian empress Catherine II for the raccoon retreating Russian troops had hijacked from the Kherson Zoo. CCTV has frequently filmed Russian troops looting Ukrainian private apartments, shops, and offices. Washing machines and toilets are among the most popular items besides jewelry, smartphones, laptops, and TV sets. But the raccoon video went viral and triggered a lot of mocking.
The statue of the Russian (actually German) royal in Odesa has been controversial for years. But now it's unacceptable to leave her at the place because Putin's regime instrumentalized her in claiming Crimea and Southern Ukraine to be "traditionally" Russian lands. Contrary to Moscow narratives, Catherine II didn't establish the city of Odesa. Before Russian invaders came, there was a Greek settlement for more than a millennium, the Huns lived there, and the Republic of Genoa built a fortress. After taking control over the southern territories in 1324, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania established a settlement called Kachibei, renamed Khadzhibey by Ottomans, who conquered the region later. In 1789 the fortress was seized by Russian troops led by Catalan Jose de Ribas and Ukrainian Cossacks led by Anton Holovaty and Zakhary Chepiga. And then, out of the blue, Catherine II "established" Odesa in 1794…
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3. Nothing resolved in Biden-Xi talks
Excerpts:
Biden also said he told Xi that “the ‘one China’ policy — our ‘one China’ policy has not changed.”
The interjection of “our” was an allusion to Beijing’s invocation of its “one China” principle, which states that there is only one China in the world — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — and that Taiwan is part of it. For Beijing, the pre-existing Republic of China no longer exists.
Biden did not bother to educate his audience that Washington agrees with the first half of China’s articulation — that there is only one Chinese state, the PRC — but whether Taiwanese choose to be part of it is their decision alone, a self-determination commitment that is anathema to the Chinese Communist Party.
We will eventually learn whether Biden demanded that the all-powerful Xi stop his officials from repeating the false assertion that Washington ever accepted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan belongs to China, and only recognized that this is China’s claim.
Biden should remind Xi that even former US president Richard Nixon, the father of US-China engagement, in 1994 wrote that China and Taiwan are now “permanently separated politically.”
Similarly, Biden must proclaim in an official statement that cannot be walked back by his staff that the antiquated US policy of strategic ambiguity on defending Taiwan is over.
Strategic clarity is the only way to avoid the strategic miscalculation that Biden fears from China and it cannot come from offhand responses to reporters.
Fri, Nov 18, 2022 page8
Nothing resolved in Biden-Xi talks
https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2022/11/18/2003789140
US President Joe Biden’s news conference after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, revealed no progress on the increasingly tense US-China relationship. The conventional diplo-speak Biden used to describe their exchange of views — “We had an open and candid conversation about our intentions and our priorities” — raised more questions than it answered.
In their candor, did they say to each other’s face what they have repeatedly stated in public? Did Xi say that Taiwan’s integration into what can only be called the Chinese empire — including Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Macau and Hong Kong — cannot be deferred for another generation and will be accomplished by force if Taiwanese do not submit “peacefully”? Did he also repeat that the US must stay out of it and not cross one of China’s many red lines?
Did Biden tell Xi directly what he told reporters and interviewers four times — that the US would use military force to defend Taiwan if China attacked it?
If the two were that frank with each other, how did the conversation proceed after they had established that their countries would go to war over Taiwan? Or did Biden issue the kind of warning a parent gives a misbehaving child, or the US gave Moscow when it failed to deter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying “there will be consequences”?
Did they discuss escalation scenarios and what each would do in response to the other’s actions? For example, if China sank a US aircraft carrier or two with anti-ship missiles built and deployed for that purpose, killing 5,000 to 10,000 sailors, as one Chinese admiral recommended last year, would Washington retaliate by destroying bases in China, and/or the ships, planes or submarines from which the attack was launched? Did Biden inform Xi how the US Congress and the US public would react?
Did they examine the dangers of one side or the other resorting to nuclear weapons, as Chinese generals have also repeatedly threatened against hundreds of US cities? Or, that any exchange of military blows between the US and China would automatically mean World War III, as Biden said in response to Kyiv’s request for a US no-fly zone over Ukraine?
Did the two acknowledge to each other — and to themselves — that their respective red lines on Taiwan — Xi’s threat of force to achieve unification and Biden’s pledge to forcefully resist it — would inevitably be crossed and make war inevitable? Or did they simply express mutual satisfaction at having had a frank exchange?
Were these merely recitations of talking points for their domestic audiences?
Biden seemed to indicate there was a genuine meeting of the minds on the US’ commitment to Taiwan when he said: “I’ve met many times with Xi Jinping, and we were candid and clear with one another across the board. And I do not think there’s any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan.”
Biden’s equanimity regarding China’s peaceful intentions toward Taiwan clashes with the views expressed by former and present US Navy officials.
Admiral Philip Davidson, a former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, last year said that China could attack Taiwan by 2027.
US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral John Aquilino said: “This problem is much closer than most people think.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Beijing no longer accepts the “status quo” across the Taiwan Strait and has accelerated its time line to seize Taiwan.
Biden’s confidence in Xi’s peaceful intentions evokes his predecessor’s assertion that he had not been “duped” by Xi’s assurances about COVID-19.
Biden also said he told Xi that “the ‘one China’ policy — our ‘one China’ policy has not changed.”
The interjection of “our” was an allusion to Beijing’s invocation of its “one China” principle, which states that there is only one China in the world — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — and that Taiwan is part of it. For Beijing, the pre-existing Republic of China no longer exists.
Biden did not bother to educate his audience that Washington agrees with the first half of China’s articulation — that there is only one Chinese state, the PRC — but whether Taiwanese choose to be part of it is their decision alone, a self-determination commitment that is anathema to the Chinese Communist Party.
We will eventually learn whether Biden demanded that the all-powerful Xi stop his officials from repeating the false assertion that Washington ever accepted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan belongs to China, and only recognized that this is China’s claim.
Biden should remind Xi that even former US president Richard Nixon, the father of US-China engagement, in 1994 wrote that China and Taiwan are now “permanently separated politically.”
Similarly, Biden must proclaim in an official statement that cannot be walked back by his staff that the antiquated US policy of strategic ambiguity on defending Taiwan is over.
Strategic clarity is the only way to avoid the strategic miscalculation that Biden fears from China and it cannot come from offhand responses to reporters.
Joseph Bosco, who served as China country director in the office of the US secretary of defense, is a fellow of the Institute for Taiwan-American Studies and a member of the Global Taiwan Institute’s advisory committee.
4. Stealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces
Resistance. The essence of the human domain and it is people who are the most important force in any war, especially when they choose to resist an occupying power.
I am told by some friends who know that resistance is in the DNA of all Ukrainians.
So many of the tactics, techniques, and procedures described here are tried and true methods to resist (or adapted from tried and true methods). Subversion. Sabotage. Psychological Warfare. This is why training and education in unconventional warfare is so important. This is why Special Forces must develop and use an unconventional warfare mindset to inform all operations.
We can learn a lot from the Ukrainans. We must learn from them.
Stealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces
The Washington Post · by Isabelle Khurshudyan · November 18, 2022
Europe
By
and
Kamila Hrabchuk
November 18, 2022 at 3:42 p.m. EST
KHERSON, Ukraine — Ihor didn’t even know the first name of the person who contacted him. The man said he was a member of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and wanted to know if Ihor was interested in helping fight the Russians occupying his city of Kherson.
“Sign me up,” Ihor responded.
For months, the two kept up a coded communication over the Telegram messaging app. Sometimes Ihor would be asked to help pinpoint locations from which the Russians were firing artillery. Other times, he sent the man, who asked to be called Smoke, the positions of Russian troops, armored vehicles and ammunition stocks.
Then in August, Ihor had a more dangerous task from Smoke. There was a cache of weapons hidden somewhere in Kherson, and Ihor needed to bury them in a different location and wait for the signal. Eventually, Smoke told him, Ihor might be called on to take up one of the arms and help Ukrainian soldiers if the battle for Kherson turned to street fighting and small sabotage groups would be necessary.
“Around the city, there were a lot of people with weapons who were waiting for the right time to use them,” Ihor said. He declined to provide his surname out of concern for his safety, and Smoke asked to be identified only by his call sign because of his work in special forces.
During more than eight months of Russian occupation, an underground resistance movement formed in Kherson, the lone regional capital Vladimir Putin’s military was able to capture since the start of its invasion last February.
Stories of brave Ukrainian citizens standing up to the invading soldiers have been widespread throughout the war. But Kherson, occupied since early March, was a unique hub for resistance activity where many civilians worked in close coordination with handlers from Ukrainian security services.
Help from inside occupied territories — at times beyond the reach of Ukraine’s missiles and artillery — has proven key for Kyiv in pulling off some of its most brazen attacks, including at an airfield in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.
In Kherson and in the occupied city of Melitopol, about 140 miles to the east, there have been mysterious explosions during the war that have killed or injured Russian-installed authorities. Those blasts are believed to be the work of resistance fighters, also known as partisans, or Ukrainian special forces working behind enemy lines. Sometimes, bombs exploded in occupying officials’ cars or at their homes.
People often did not know who among their neighbors or co-workers were also resistance fighters. In interviews, two members of the resistance claimed that they managed to kill a few drunk Russians walking alone in the streets by stabbing them. Those claims could not be verified. But mostly the partisans were given nonviolent assignments, resistance fighters and military officers said, such as hiding weapons or explosives at a certain location, identifying collaborators, or reporting where Russian soldiers and their materials were based. That information was then used to direct Ukrainian artillery fire.
In Kherson, it all added up to a subtle insurgency that Ukraine’s military leaned on as the southern front line drew closer and closer to the city, ultimately forcing the Russians to retreat last week. With Kherson city now free of Russian soldiers, the resistance movement is rising to the surface.
In the central square this week, Smoke, wearing a balaclava, ran up to Ihor and hugged him tightly.
“The main thing for me is that people remained alive,” Smoke said. “This worried me the most. But they survived and, thank God, that’s the most important thing.”
There was a time when Ihor wasn’t sure he would.
There was one other person he and Smoke were working with who was also tasked with burying weapons, Ihor said. That man was caught by the Russians and, after being beaten, eventually gave up the location where he was supposed to meet Ihor. Ihor was then captured, too, he said, and spent 11 days in August at a detention facility where the Russian guards tortured their prisoners.
As Ihor returned to the prison for the first time, accompanied by Washington Post journalists, he struggled to hold back tears. Tatyana, a 74-year-old woman who lived next door to the detention center, said she could hear men screaming every day. “I never wanted to see this place again, but coming back like this is sort of funny,” Ihor said. Some people standing outside asked Ihor if he had been held there.
“I was in there, too,” one man said.
“Who wasn’t?” Ihor responded.
Because Ihor was still in communication with Smoke, who was based outside in nearby Ukrainian-controlled Mykolaiv, the Russians released him and said they would be monitoring any text exchanges between the two. They asked for Ihor to send screenshots of their conversation any time there was an update — and threatened his life if he did not cooperate.
But Smoke and Ihor had agreed on a subtle code that could act as a warning — for example, responding to a message with “ok” instead of “all right.”
Ihor still took risks after that. In September, he noticed the Russians had based several transport trucks at a car park near downtown Kherson. Ihor walked past the building with a phone to his ear, pretending to be on a call while his camera recorded what was inside. Two days later, the place was hit with artillery.
Several resistance fighters told The Post that they had reported the location, which helped the Ukrainian armed forces confirm it was a worthy target.
One member of Ukraine’s special services, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said he acted as a handler for several informants during the occupation, which required assessing what each could do. A person with a car could drive around and mark locations of troops and weapons. Another with a view of a main road could report on the Russians’ movements.
“If, for example, a bridge or an important communication hub, such as power lines, is blown up, then that might have been with our help,” the handler said.
“We are talking about valuable equipment, not just armored personnel carriers, but about command and staff vehicles, communication vehicles, air defense or electronic warfare,” the handler added. “The destruction of what is expensive and available in small quantities can incapacitate the Russians and give a certain tactical advantage to our armed forces in some parts of the front.”
Some members of this internal resistance were trained and prepared before Russia ever invaded — just in case, the handler said.
Others were unlikely partisans, like Iryna, a 58-year-old woman who worked for the local government. Iryna, who declined to provide her surname out of concern for her safety, had contacts in the SBU, Ukraine’s main internal security service, and regularly passed them information about how occupation authorities were organized and who was working with the Russians. They also had their own code. Once, she even sent a message to her daughter in Bulgaria to forward on to her handlers.
One day, some men Iryna described as “fellow partisans” came to her home and asked to bury some things in her yard. She agreed, covering the spot with tomatoes. When Russian soldiers searched her home, she claimed to be just a woman who was helping cook meals for the neighborhood.
Her SBU acquaintances visited her earlier this week and dug up what had been buried in the yard. “They told me it was everything to make explosives,” she said.
Some of the resistance was more public, but for psychological effect. An organization called Yellow Ribbon regularly spray-painted locations around town — marking Russian establishments with a yellow ribbon symbol or the Ukrainian letter “i.” They targeted Russian banks, places where the Russians were handing out passports, and where referendum ballots on Russian annexation were being prepared. The Russians would cover up the paint, but Yellow Ribbon would just mark it again.
The organizers tagged the home of Kirill Stremousov, one infamous Moscow-installed official in Kherson who recently died in a car accident. They defaced Russian billboards proclaiming that “Russia is here forever” or that “Ukrainians and Russians are one.” And they posted photos of “collaborators” eating at a restaurant around town or walking down the street.
“Then they all started to walk around with bodyguards after that,” said Yellow Ribbon’s organizer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.
One goal, he said, was to make the Russians paranoid about the resistance that existed around them. Sometimes people would take a photo of two Russian soldiers walking from behind, and then Yellow Ribbon would post it on their Telegram channel, with a warning: “We’re watching you.”
One of the posters Yellow Ribbon hung in the city made a reference to HIMARS, a weapon system that the United States provided to Ukraine. “If HIMARS can’t reach you,” the poster said, “a partisan will.”
The Washington Post · by Isabelle Khurshudyan · November 18, 2022
5. China Tosses Out the Developed Nation Playbook
Excerpts:
More broadly, Overholt warns that Xi’s current approach has unsettled so many interest groups so fundamentally that it raises major risks. It reminded him of something he observed in 1980 as a newly-minted analyst at Bankers Trust, then looking at Communist Poland.
The bank pulled its loans to the country after Overholt pointed out how its leadership had “alienated every important” group. A few months later, Poland defaulted. By the end of the decade, its government was overthrown.
China Tosses Out the Developed Nation Playbook
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-11-19/china-tosses-the-developed-nation-playbook-new-economy-saturday?sref=hhjZtX76
ByChris Anstey
November 19, 2022 at 6:45 AM EST
For decades, China rode a wave of economic success by following what its neighbors had done. But now it has truly veered from that path—foreshadowing a potential failure to achieve upper income, or developed-economy, status.
Authoritarian governments in South Korea and Taiwan showed how to pull millions of people out of poverty by overseeing rapid and sustained economic growth propelled by an export-led model. Bill Overholt, drawing on his research at (now-defunct) Bankers Trust, recognized how that could be applied in the People’s Republic of China in his 1993 book, The Rise of China.
Overholt, who now conducts his research at Harvard, highlights that South Korea and Taiwan offered further lessons. In the 1980s and 1990s, their political systems evolved to embrace competition, and they became even more market-driven. This allowed them to progress to the next level of the economic scale.
But that’s where China has thrown out the playbook.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping, left, and members of the Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee in October.Source: Bloomberg
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Brazil’s incoming president eases worries about a spending surge.
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Kenya’s plans to turn barren land to forest to counter global warming.
-
Russia’s economy contracts for a second quarter, with worse to come.
At a certain stage of development, Overholt said in an interview this week, “things get very complicated because of economic success.”
Among the patterns that appear are:
-
Big companies get into financial trouble. Recent examples include Chinese real estate giants and conglomerates, not unlike big South Korean enterprises in the late 1990s.
-
Some large firms “get so big that they start trying to capture parts of the state,” he said. In China, that arguably evokes memories of how Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. came under scrutiny over its links to regional authorities.
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Demonstrations increase. Overholt said that as interest groups multiply, they gain financial resources, organization and leadership. Before Xi took over the Communist Party and during the first years of his rule, China saw waves of protests over issues from environmental degradation to property seizures.
It as at this point that leaders have a choice, Overholt said. One option is to “bow to the complexity” of their now-more-sophisticated economies, allowing political competition and freer markets (as was done by South Korea and Taiwan). Or they can slam on the brakes.
In the early 2000s, when he worked at RAND Corp., Overholt was brought in as a consultant for the massive Tianjin-Binhai development southeast of Beijing. It was then, Overholt said, that he started to realize China wasn’t embracing the new complexity of its economy.
While Shenzhen (set up as a special economic zone in 1980) and Shanghai’s Pudong (a 1990s project) became world-famous, Tianjin-Binhai is better known for its debt problems. The trouble? Rather than let market demands prevail, officials were picking what technologies to invest in, he said.
A taxi driver washes his car across from the Tianjin-Binhai development in 2011.Photographer: Sim Chi Yin
Over the past decade, China has clearly chosen the other path. This has been illustrated by crackdowns on privately run enterprises and the undermining of civil-society groups including non-governmental organizations, Christian churches and once-independent think-tanks.
China’s bureaucracy—which Overholt noted was once innovative and embraced working with private-sector companies—has in part been paralyzed by Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. And within the Party, the October leadership reshuffle sidelined anyone who could rival Xi and his associates.
This alternative path doesn’t bode well for the kind of innovation and productivity-led economic growth Beijing says it wants, observed Overholt, who’s now compiling a fresh book on US-China ties.
And that’s a problem when the potential of China’s other domestic-demand engines—property, infrastructure and urbanization—is fading, though Overholt added that urbanization still has a ways to go.
More broadly, Overholt warns that Xi’s current approach has unsettled so many interest groups so fundamentally that it raises major risks. It reminded him of something he observed in 1980 as a newly-minted analyst at Bankers Trust, then looking at Communist Poland.
The bank pulled its loans to the country after Overholt pointed out how its leadership had “alienated every important” group. A few months later, Poland defaulted. By the end of the decade, its government was overthrown.
6.China, Russia Seek 'Might Makes Right' World, Says US Official
China, Russia Seek 'Might Makes Right' World, Says US Official
voanews.com
November 19, 2022 5:06 PM
UPDATE November 19, 2022 6:25 PM
halifax, canada —
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Saturday that Russia's invasion of Ukraine offers a preview of a world where nuclear-armed countries could threaten other nations and said Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where "might makes right."
Austin made the remarks at the annual Halifax International Security Forum, which attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies.
"Russia's invasion offers a preview of a possible world of tyranny and turmoil that none of us would want to live in. And it's an invitation to an increasingly insecure world haunted by the shadow of nuclear proliferation," Austin said in a speech.
"Because Putin's fellow autocrats are watching. And they could well conclude that getting nuclear weapons would give them a hunting license of their own. And that could drive a dangerous spiral of nuclear proliferation."
Austin dismissed Putin's claims that "modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia," calling it a vision of "a world in which autocrats decide which countries are real and which countries can be snuffed out."
He added that the war "shows the whole world the dangers of disorder. That's the security challenge that we face. It's urgent, and it's historic,” he said.
Basic principles of democracy are under siege around the world, he added.
U.S. President Joe Biden last month declared that the risk of nuclear "Armageddon" is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis; Russian officials have raised using tactical nuclear weapons after suffering massive setbacks in their nearly nine-month invasion of Ukraine.
While U.S. officials for months have warned of the prospect that Russia could use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine in the face of battlefield setbacks, Biden administration officials have repeatedly said nothing has changed in U.S. intelligence assessments to suggest Putin has imminent plans to deploy nuclear weapons.
CIA Director Bill Burns recently met with his Russian intelligence counterpart to warn of consequences if Russia were to deploy a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
Austin said nuclear weapons need to be responsibly controlled and not used to threaten the world.
"Ukraine faces a harsh winter. And as Russia's position on the battlefield erodes, Putin may resort again to profoundly irresponsible nuclear saber-rattling," he said.
Compares Moscow to China
Austin also compared Russia to China, saying Beijing is trying to refashion both the region and the international system to suit its authoritarian preferences. He noted China's increasing military activities in the Taiwan Strait.
"Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where might makes right, where disputes are resolved by force, and where autocrats can stamp out the flame of freedom," he said.
Austin called Putin's invasion the worst crisis in security since the end of World War II and said the outcome "will help determine the course of global security in this young century."
Austin said the deadly missile explosion in Poland this week is a consequence of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "war of choice" against Ukraine.
"The tragic and troubling explosion in Poland this week reminded the whole world of the recklessness of Putin's war of choice," Austin said.
Russia blamed for deaths in Poland
On Tuesday, two workers were killed when a projectile hit a grain-drying facility close to Poland's border with Ukraine. While the source of the missile is under investigation, NATO officials have said they suspect it was fired from a Ukrainian missile battery in self-defense.
Officials from Poland, NATO and the United States have blamed Russia for the deaths in any case, saying a Ukrainian missile would not have misfired had the country not been forced to defend itself against heavy Russian attacks that day.
Russian officials have cast the conflict as a struggle against NATO — though Ukraine is not a NATO member even if it has been receiving aid from NATO member states.
Austin said NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to Russia.
"Make no mistake: We will not be dragged into Putin's war of choice. But we will stand by Ukraine as it fights to defend itself. And we will defend every inch of NATO territory," Austin said.
A Polish investigation to determine the source of the missile and the circumstances of the explosion was launched with support from the U.S. and Ukrainian investigators joined the probe on Friday.
Andriy Yermak, head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said in an interview broadcast live at the forum that "It's not right to say it's a Ukrainian rocket, or a Russian rocket, before the investigation is over."
In its 14th year, about 300 people gather each year at Halifax International Security Forum held at Halifax's Westin hotel, where about 13 Ukrainian refugees now work.
voanews.com
7. It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia
Will the audit of aid to Ukraine capture this analysis?
Conclusion:
In conclusion, on so many levels, continued US support for Ukraine is a no-brainer from a bang for buck perspective. Ukraine is no Vietnam or Afghanistan for the US, but it is exactly that for Russia. A Russia continually mired in a war it cannot win is a huge strategic win for the US.
It’s Costing Peanuts for the US to Defeat Russia
The cost-benefit analysis of US support for Ukraine is incontrovertible. It’s producing wins at almost every level.
cepa.org · by Sarah Krajewski · November 18, 2022
Former President Trump, and others in the US including some Democrats as well as Republicans, have criticized continued US support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. They have called for military and financial support to Ukraine to be cut, even ended. They downplay the risk from Russia and argue that the money should be spent at home.
Yet from numerous perspectives, when viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, US and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment.
Altogether, the Biden administration received Congressional approval for $40bn in aid for Ukraine for 2022 and has requested an additional $37.7bn for 2022. More than half of this aid has been earmarked for defense.
These sums pale into insignificance when set against a total US defense budget of $715bn for 2022. The assistance represents 5.6% of total US defense spending. But Russia is a primary adversary of the US, a top tier rival not too far behind China, its number one strategic challenger. In cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives.
The Ukrainian armed forces have already killed or wounded upwards of 100,000 Russian troops, half its original fighting force; there have been almost 8,000 confirmed losses of armored vehicles including thousands of tanks, thousands of APCs, artillery pieces, hundreds of fixed and rotary wing aircraft, and numerous naval vessels. US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment. If we divide out the US defense budget to the threats it faces, Russia would perhaps be of the order of $100bn-150bn in spend-to-threat. So spending just $40bn a year, erodes a threat value of $100-150bn, a two-to-three time return.
The US military might reasonably wish Russia to continue deploying military forces for Ukraine to destroy.
Meanwhile, replacing destroyed kit, and keeping up with the new arms race that it has now triggered with the West will surely end up bankrupting the Russian economy; especially an economy subject to aggressive Western sanctions. How can Russia possibly hope to win an arms race when the combined GDP of the West is $40 trillion, and its defense spending amounting to 2% of GDP totals well in excess of $1 trillion when the disproportionate US defense contribution is considered? Russia’s total GDP is only $1.8 trillion. Vladimir Putin will have to divert spending from consumption to defense, risking social and political unrest over the medium term, and a real and soon-to-be present danger to his regime. Just imagine how much more of a bargain Western military aid will be if it ultimately brings positive regime change in Russia.
Second, the war has served to destroy the myth that Russian military technology is somehow comparable to that of the US and West. Remember that Ukraine is using only upgraded second generation US technology but is consistently beating whatever Russia’s military can deploy. Wars are shop windows for defense manufacturers; any buyer in their right mind will want the technology made by the winner. Putin’s misjudgment has merely provided a fantastic marketing opportunity for its Western competitors.
Note also that the war is also pushing NATO partners to quickly increase spending to the 2% of GDP and above target. Given the US’ technological advantage in defense equipment, a sizeable share of this additional military outlay will be spent on US equipment.
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The Ukrainians are also showing remarkable innovation in their own defense, improving the performance of equipment in battlefield conditions, which again brings technological advantages to the US defense sector.
Third, the revelation that Russia’s defense industry is something of a Potemkin village also generates other strategic and diplomatic wins for the US. Countries eager to secure defense capability to meet their own threats – think of Turkey, India, Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia — might have opted for cheaper, “value” Russian defense offerings. However, with the quality/capability of this equipment now being questioned because of poor battlefield performance, they will likely be vying to acquire a better US kit. But this will require improved diplomatic relations. This is currently evident in the improved US–Pakistan relationship, with Pakistan securing upgrade kits for its F-16s.
Fourth, helping Ukraine beat Russia surely also sends a powerful signal to China that the US and its allies are strong and determined when challenged on issues of core importance. This may raise questions in the minds of Xi Jinping and the People’s Liberation Army generals about their ability to win a conflict against countries armed with US/Western military technology, for example in Taiwan. Surely Russia’s difficulty in winning the war in Ukraine will cause second thoughts in China about the wisdom and perhaps the viability of efforts to conquer Taiwan.
Fifth, the war in Ukraine is encouraging and accelerating the energy transition in Europe, but also Europe’s diversification away from Russian energy. Europe is desperately trying to source alternative energy supplies, and US liquefied natural gas (LNG) is proving to be the obvious beneficiary.
In conclusion, on so many levels, continued US support for Ukraine is a no-brainer from a bang for buck perspective. Ukraine is no Vietnam or Afghanistan for the US, but it is exactly that for Russia. A Russia continually mired in a war it cannot win is a huge strategic win for the US.
Why would anyone object to that?
Timothy Ash is a Senior Emerging Markets Sovereign Strategist at RBC BlueBay Asset Management. He is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House on their Russia and Eurasian program.
The opinions in this article are those of the author.
Read More From Europe's Edge
CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America.
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cepa.org · by Sarah Krajewski · November 18, 2022
8. Opinion | The U.S. seeks to support Ukraine, but contain the war
Excerpts:
The United States has pushed back when it thinks Ukrainian actions are too risky, or too rigid. According to an Oct. 5 story in the New York Times, U.S. intelligence decided that Ukrainian operatives were responsible for an August car bombing that killed the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist — and warned Kyiv that it strongly opposed such attacks. A Nov. 5 Post article reported that national security adviser Jake Sullivan went to Kyiv partly to press Zelensky to drop his refusal to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soon after, Zelensky adjusted his public policy.
The administration has been careful not to jam Zelensky and his generals, even as it tried to contain the conflict. The latest example was the statement last week from Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Russia’s withdrawal this month from Kherson might provide an opening for diplomacy. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said. Milley, who has argued that more diplomacy is needed to find a settlement, didn’t retreat. But other administration officials repeated their no-pressure litany: “Nothing about Kyiv without Kyiv.”
Biden’s ultimate responsibility is to protect the United States, and that means avoiding any drift toward a nuclear conflict with Russia. The past few weeks have been a case study in how to support a war and prevent one at the same time.
Opinion | The U.S. seeks to support Ukraine, but contain the war
The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · November 18, 2022
If you’ve worried that the conflict in Ukraine might escalate into a spasm of nuclear war — and what sane person hasn’t? — the past few weeks have been chilling. But they have also demonstrated some important U.S. efforts to communicate about risks and avert catastrophe.
The baseline for President Biden is that an overall peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine doesn’t appear possible now. The two sides are simply too far apart, and the United States couldn’t dictate terms to Kyiv even it thought it was time to end the conflict. Instead, the administration has focused its diplomacy on Russia — and averting any escalation into nuclear war.
Take a look at recent U.S. crisis management efforts, to get a sense of how the Biden administration is playing this game of measured confrontation. They have the common theme of helping Ukraine while also containing the conflict.
Let’s review first this week’s travels by CIA Director William J. Burns. He met Monday in Ankara, Turkey, with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. Burns was “conveying a message on the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia, and the risks of escalation to strategic stability,” said a spokesman for the National Security Council. U.S. officials believe that Russia took Burns’s message quite seriously.
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Burns then traveled to Kyiv for a Wednesday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “While there, he discussed the U.S. warning he delivered to the head of Russia’s SVR not to use nuclear weapons and reinforced the U.S. commitment to provide support to Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression,” a U.S. official said. This meeting seemed partly an effort to reassure Zelensky that the United States wasn’t operating behind his back with Moscow.
In describing Burns’s travels, officials have stressed he wasn’t on a secret mission to jump-start peace talks. “He is not conducting negotiations of any kind. He is not discussing settlement of the war in Ukraine,” the NSC spokesman stressed. Instead, said the spokesman, “we have channels to communicate with Russia on managing risk, especially nuclear risk and risks to strategic stability.”
Burns has played a crucial role since the crisis began, traveling to Moscow before the war began, and repeatedly to Kyiv since then. He is the character a Hollywood director would cast for the role: Reserved, modest, fluent in Russian, deeply experienced as a back-channel emissary. His demeanor makes the phrase “gray man” a compliment.
Second, let’s look at the U.S. response to the missile that struck Poland on Tuesday, near its border with Ukraine. This was the kind of scenario that U.S. commanders have feared could lead to nuclear war: A NATO ally is attacked; analysts assume that the attack came from Russia; NATO launches a counterattack under its self-defense treaty; and so on, up the ladder to disaster.
The Biden administration instead did what generations of crisis managers have recommended. In a hot moment, it cooled down. Despite pressure for action, the administration realized it lacked reliable information. It waited to gather facts. Poland, too, resisted the urge to immediately blame its historic adversary, Russia.
And it turned out that initial assumptions that Russia fired the missile were probably wrong. “Ukraine’s defense was launching their missiles in various directions, and it is highly probable that one of these missiles unfortunately fell on Polish territory,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Wednesday. “There is nothing, absolutely nothing, to suggest that it was an intentional attack on Poland.”
Third, let’s think about the delicate relationship between Washington and Kyiv. Zelensky has the power of a brave, charismatic leader to pressure his superpower patron into actions that might not be in the United States’ interests. The Biden administration has tried to strike a balance between strong military support for Ukraine and avoiding anything that might trigger a direct Russian-American conflict.
The United States has pushed back when it thinks Ukrainian actions are too risky, or too rigid. According to an Oct. 5 story in the New York Times, U.S. intelligence decided that Ukrainian operatives were responsible for an August car bombing that killed the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist — and warned Kyiv that it strongly opposed such attacks. A Nov. 5 Post article reported that national security adviser Jake Sullivan went to Kyiv partly to press Zelensky to drop his refusal to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soon after, Zelensky adjusted his public policy.
The administration has been careful not to jam Zelensky and his generals, even as it tried to contain the conflict. The latest example was the statement last week from Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that Russia’s withdrawal this month from Kherson might provide an opening for diplomacy. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he said. Milley, who has argued that more diplomacy is needed to find a settlement, didn’t retreat. But other administration officials repeated their no-pressure litany: “Nothing about Kyiv without Kyiv.”
Biden’s ultimate responsibility is to protect the United States, and that means avoiding any drift toward a nuclear conflict with Russia. The past few weeks have been a case study in how to support a war and prevent one at the same time.
The Washington Post · by David Ignatius · November 18, 2022
9. The End of the Beginning in Ukraine
Excerpts:
In light of these developments, the United States and its Western partners need to be prepared to aid Ukraine over what could be a protracted conflict. Washington cannot be cowed by Putin’s bluster. The war is now one of grinding attrition, and the Ukrainian military needs weapon systems that will make a difference on the battlefield so it can continue to counterattack and reclaim its sovereign territory. Besides military assistance, the United States needs to provide sufficient economic and energy assistance to neutralize Putin’s attempt to weaponize gas and oil shipments to Europe in an attempt to break the alliance supporting Ukraine. Once Russia sees that it cannot use energy extortion to bludgeon Western countries into ending their support to Ukraine, there will be few cards left for the Kremlin to play. A Ukrainian military that retakes its sovereign territory, a Russian army facing defeat, and a West united behind Ukraine is the best way to end the war as soon as possible. Churchill ended his speech by reciting several lines of a poem by Lord Byron, which paid tribute to those that fell in battle. It has direct relevance to the war in Ukraine today:
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children’s lips shall echo them and say,
Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day.
And this is much and all which will not pass away.
The End of the Beginning in Ukraine
csis.org · November 12, 2022
Seth G. Jones
Senior Vice President; Harold Brown Chair; and Director, International Security Program
Philip G. Wasielewski
Templeton Fellow for National Security, Foreign Policy Research Institute
A Roadmap for Sustained Support
November 17, 2022
Following the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, in which British forces led by Bernard Montgomery defeated Erwin Rommel’s German forces in Egypt, Winston Churchill remarked, “Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Churchill’s comments are relevant to Ukraine’s recent retaking of Kherson and the U.S. need to prepare for a protracted conflict. On November 14, violence spilled into Poland when Ukraine accidentally fired at least one SA-10 surface-to-air missile from an S-300 missile system, killing two individuals, after Russia shot approximately 100 missiles at Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.
Thus far, Ukrainian units have reconquered several thousand square miles of territory in Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kherson Oblasts. Over the course of their offensive, Ukrainian forces conducted impressive combined arms operations, military innovation, and denial and deception tactics. Russian forces have been far less impressive. Despite President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to put a positive spin on the war and to conduct a partial military mobilization and annexation of Ukrainian territory, Russia has sustained mounting losses on the battlefield. Russian ground units have suffered from low morale, poor execution of combined arms, subpar training, deficient logistics, corruption, and even drunkenness. To make matters worse for Moscow, there is mounting domestic opposition to President Putin’s partial mobilization and a sputtering economy following U.S. and other Western sanctions.
Yet there are growing calls by some foreign leaders for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to end the war through peace negotiations. As President Zelensky told one visiting Westerner, he was under rising pressure from some Western officials to make concessions and to jumpstart peace talks. Some U.S. officials have also encouraged Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders to publicly signal an openness to negotiate with Russia, though there have been disagreements among U.S. officials about whether now is the right time to push for serious negotiations. Some Western officials and pundits worry that continuing to provide weapons to Ukraine—including more sophisticated weapons, as Ukrainian officials have requested—might escalate the war to NATO territory, increasing the likelihood that President Putin uses nuclear weapons and risking a direct conflict between the United States and Russian forces. As one assessment concluded, the United States needs to conduct a policy of “calculated restraint ” toward Ukraine that limits arms sales and avoids escalation.
But these worries are misplaced, as are efforts to force Zelensky to negotiate a deal now. While dialogue between Kyiv and Moscow is important, pushing for a settlement now would reward President Putin for his military aggression, ensure either Russian de facto or de jure annexation of Ukrainian territory through naked power, and weaken deterrence against future aggressors—including China. If this is the end of the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Kyiv still faces a long and difficult road ahead. Now is the time for the United States to clearly outline a policy that supports Ukraine, provides sufficient arms to help Ukraine retake its own territory, offers economic support to counter Russian energy extortion and start to rebuild Ukraine, and guarantees better transparency and accountability of foreign aid.
War Aims
Kyiv’s primary war aim is to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine violated by Russian forces and their proxies beginning in 2014. The United States should make it clear that it supports this goal and will do all that is possible to help Ukraine succeed. Helping Ukraine achieve this objective is not only just because the country was invaded by Russian forces—it also has several other benefits for the United States.
To begin with, a clear U.S. goal of supporting Ukrainian sovereignty can help deter Moscow from again trying to change the borders of its neighbors by force or coercion. The weakening of Russia’s army by Ukrainian forces and Russia’s military industrial complex will decrease threats to NATO countries on Russia’s periphery—at least in the near future. This will allow the United States to concentrate scarce defense dollars on countering China in the Indo-Pacific. A weakening of Russia’s military may also be the shock that Russia’s body politic needs to move on from the Putin era. In addition, it could serve as a warning to other dictators who try to conquer countries through brute force. Ensuring that Russia does not achieve its objective also helps strengthen deterrence in Asia by demonstrating Western military, economic, and diplomatic resolve in the face of aggression.
While U.S., allied, and partner support to Ukraine’s defense has been critical in providing tools to repel Russia’s initial offensive, the United States has still not declared a clear political and military objective of the war. The closest to any official policy announcements by the administration have been the unscripted remarks by President Biden in Poland in March 2022 that President Putin “cannot remain in power,” as well as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s comments in April that “we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
It is important to remove the ambiguity of the United States’ desired end state in Ukraine. The foreign affairs machinery of the United States is at its best when it is focused on a clear threat and guided by a clear policy. It also provides a guidepost for other allies and partners to follow in their policy toward the war in Ukraine. Consequently, the United States should conduct a combination of military, diplomatic, economic, and governance steps to end the war in Ukraine on the best terms for the security of Ukraine and that deter future aggression.
The Right Weapons for the Right Fight
The United States has provided roughly $19 billion in security assistance to Ukraine between February and November 2022. Yet the total amount of aid is largely irrelevant if it’s not the right type of equipment. Ukraine’s needs have evolved from an early requirement for short-range defensive weapons such as Javelin anti-tank and Stinger antiair missiles, which were helpful to conduct defensive operations against advancing Russian forces. Along with training and intelligence, Ukraine now needs advanced systems for long-range reconnaissance, long-range fires, armored operations, and close air support to support offensive operations, such as MQ-1C drones, MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), air defense systems, and fighter aircraft.
These types of munitions and weapons systems are essential to assisting Ukrainian forces conduct effective offensive operations against dug-in Russian forces. Above all, Ukraine needs rockets, missiles, and other munitions because the war has evolved into a grinding war of attrition in which both sides are waging a modern, protracted, and industrial war not seen since World War II. Such wars are insatiable consumers of munitions, and their heavy use takes a toll on weapons systems and platforms. On some days the Russian military has launched 50,000 artillery shells at Ukrainian military and civilian positions, and the Ukrainian military has frequently lobbed as little as a tenth as many against Russian positions.
ATACMS would be helpful. They are surface-to-air missiles that can be fired from a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which Ukraine already possesses. But ATACMS can be fired three times the distance of standard rockets, allowing Ukrainian ground forces to move further away from Russia’s deadly long-range artillery. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are essential to providing fire support and carrying infantry into battle, since the war will likely remain a protracted ground war of attrition. MQ-1C drones provide helpful intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike capabilities to Ukrainian forces. The Ukrainian military has effectively integrated drones into combined arms warfare, where they have been particularly valuable in a contested environment to improve battlefield awareness without risking loss of life.
Finally, Ukraine’s Soviet-era air force needs better aircraft. Combat losses in the past five months have cost it nearly four dozen fixed-wing combat aircraft out of an original fleet of fewer than 150. With fewer aircraft available, each plane has to endure more sorties and wears down faster. Without replenishment from the West, Ukraine could lose the ability to defend its airspace and target Russian ground forces. The U.S. Air Force is divesting more than 200 A-10s, F-15s, and F-16s to make room for sixth-generation fighters, hypersonic weapons, and other systems. Ukraine could use some of these aircraft, particularly for close air support missions to aid Ukrainian ground forces.
Ukraine needs these munitions and systems at the appropriate scale. After all, Russia still has an advantage over Ukraine in the number of munitions and the quality of some weapons systems, including long-range artillery, advanced fixed-wing aircraft, and naval capabilities. U.S., allied, and partner military aid to date has been exceptional and unstinting, but as the war changes so must the aid provided. The value of U.S. military assistance should not be judged in terms of overall dollars but of effects on the battlefield.
False Fears
Some policymakers have worried that advanced weapons could bring an even greater escalation of the war or even force Russia’s hand to use nuclear weapons. These fears have been a major factor in the United States’ unwillingness to provide advanced conventional weapons. However, there are several problems with these arguments.
First, they exaggerate Russian capabilities and ignore the fact that Russia has used virtually every possible conventional weapon in Ukraine and has extensively targeted Ukraine’s civilian population. The Russian war effort has long been at its maximum level of brutality . In addition, the Russian army has deployed almost all of its tactical units in the war and has no strategic reserve of competent maneuver units to extend the war into the Baltics or any other NATO country. Russian president Vladimir Putin’s announcement on September 21, 2022, to call up roughly 300,000 military reservists is unlikely to generate competent, combat-ready forces in Ukraine. Russian ammunition stocks, especially of precision-guided munitions, have been depleted to the point that it is now buying artillery shells from North Korea and drones from Iran. Finally, its logistical system has proven incapable of supporting one war; in no way can it support another war against NATO.
Second, these fears exaggerate Putin’s likelihood of using nuclear weapons by portraying him as an irrational actor. Putin has certainly made extraordinary miscalculations about how Ukrainians would respond to a Russian invasion, the effectiveness of his army, and Western resolve in implementing broad economic sanctions and providing military aid to Ukraine. But he has not been irrational. He has not expanded the war to NATO countries, as some feared. Nor has he conducted debilitating cyber operations against the United States and other Western countries, as others worried.
Russian nuclear threats against the West for its support of Ukraine may make Putin feel better, but they are not credible unless Russia’s military is willing to let Putin commit societal suicide. Any contemplated nuclear strike against a NATO country would not only contend with the nuclear might and second-strike capability of the United States, but also capabilities of the United Kingdom and France. In addition, it is unlikely that the use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield would change the course of the war. The Russian army has performed poorly on the battlefield, and its forces have struggled with low morale, poor execution of combined arms, and corruption. The Russian air force has failed to achieve air superiority and is running out of precision munitions. Nuclear weapons will not fix these problems.
Ukraine is not protected by NATO’s nuclear umbrella and there is a risk, however small, that Russia uses nuclear weapons. The goal of U.S. policy should be to make it clear to Putin and Russian elites that any use of nuclear weapons will lead to economic ruin for their nation. Many of the world’s liberal democracies have imposed economic sanctions on Russia. But China, India, and many nations of the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa have not. Most of these nations, especially those living in the shadow of other nuclear powers, will hopefully conclude that a nuclear state striking a nonnuclear state with atomic weapons is a precedent that undermines the national security of almost all of the world’s states.
Preempting Russian Extortion
The alliance that the United States has helped form to aid Ukraine is nearly as impressive as the one crafted by President George H.W. Bush in the face of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. By providing military and economic aid to Ukraine, alliance support has been critical in turning the tide of the war behind Ukraine’s own blood, sweat, and tears.
However, Putin may believe that by weaponizing Russia’s energy supplies, he can break up the alliance this winter and end most sanctions against Russia. The next pillar in the United States’ policy towards Ukraine should be to continue providing necessary economic and energy aid to prevent a splitting of the alliance due to a lack of gas in Europe. The U.S. government and business community has already taken steps to move in this direction. The United States is now exporting over 60 percent of its liquid national gas (LNG) to Europe, up from 20 percent a year ago. U.S. LNG imports currently provide more gas to Europe than pipeline gas from Russia in an effort some have labeled the Berlin “Gas Lift.” The United States should also provide Europe the technological and economic support to expand opportunities for fracking and generating electricity via nuclear power.
Putin’s last hope is that a lack of energy this winter will cause the alliance to fall apart and stop aiding Ukraine. Actions taken to get Europe through the winter and sustain allied and partner resolve should destroy any Russian hope of a deliverance from its problems via economic coercion. Destroying Putin’s last hope of success will hopefully speed Russian elites’ realization that it cannot win this war and must settle on terms just and favorable for Ukraine.
Transparency and Good Governance
Another ploy of Moscow is spreading propaganda that foreign aid has gone astray and that corrupt Ukrainian officials are siphoning off economic and military assistance. Ukraine has struggled with corruption, and President Zelensky ran for office criticizing Ukrainian politicians for “creating a country of opportunities—opportunities to steal, bribe and loot.” Since then, Zelensky has adopted some concrete anti-corruption measures, though large amounts of foreign aid pouring into Ukraine since the invasion has raised the prospect of further corruption.
The United States can help dispel Russian propaganda and concerns about corruption by working with the Zelensky government to strengthen anti-corruption efforts with a particular emphasis on accounting for aid provided since February 24, 2022. For example, NATO could create an “audit chamber” to work with the Ukrainian ministry of defense to track the use and disposition of all war material, including Stinger and other portable antiaircraft missiles. In cooperation with the European Union, a similar audit chamber should be created to track the status and use of all economic aid. The duties of the EU audit chamber could also be extended to monitor the likely foreign aid and contracting processes set up to rebuild Ukraine. These auditing and anti-corruption efforts can undercut Russian propaganda and reassure Western populations that their tax dollars have been spent properly and legitimately in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression.
The Changing Tide
When Winston Churchill gave his El Alamein speech in November 1942, there were still nearly three years left of the war, Churchill correctly sensed that the tide of the war was turning. The war in Ukraine is, of course, not over. Far from it. But the Ukrainian defense of Kyiv in the early days and recent successful efforts to retake Izyum, Lyman, and other cities from Russian forces have been a blow to the Russian army.
In light of these developments, the United States and its Western partners need to be prepared to aid Ukraine over what could be a protracted conflict. Washington cannot be cowed by Putin’s bluster. The war is now one of grinding attrition, and the Ukrainian military needs weapon systems that will make a difference on the battlefield so it can continue to counterattack and reclaim its sovereign territory. Besides military assistance, the United States needs to provide sufficient economic and energy assistance to neutralize Putin’s attempt to weaponize gas and oil shipments to Europe in an attempt to break the alliance supporting Ukraine. Once Russia sees that it cannot use energy extortion to bludgeon Western countries into ending their support to Ukraine, there will be few cards left for the Kremlin to play. A Ukrainian military that retakes its sovereign territory, a Russian army facing defeat, and a West united behind Ukraine is the best way to end the war as soon as possible. Churchill ended his speech by reciting several lines of a poem by Lord Byron, which paid tribute to those that fell in battle. It has direct relevance to the war in Ukraine today:
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children’s lips shall echo them and say,
Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day.
And this is much and all which will not pass away.
Seth G. Jones is senior vice president, Harold Brown Chair, and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., as well as author, most recently, of Three Dangerous Men: Russia, China, Iran and the Rise of Irregular Warfare (W.W. Norton). Philip G. Wasielewski is a retired paramilitary operations officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and a Templeton Fellow for National Security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Commentary is produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a private, tax-exempt institution focusing on international public policy issues. Its research is nonpartisan and nonproprietary. CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author(s).
© 2022 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
csis.org · November 12, 2022
10. Britain to provide Ukraine with new air defense package - Sunak
Britain to provide Ukraine with new air defense package - Sunak
ukrinform.net
This was stated by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak following the talks with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
According to Sunak, he is proud of how the UK has been standing with Ukraine from the very beginning of the war.
“I am here today to say the UK and our allies will continue to stand with Ukraine, as it fights to end this barbarous war and deliver a just peace,” he said.
The UK prime minister reminded that only this year Britain provided Ukraine with military aid worth more than 2.3 billion pounds, noting the United Kingdom will provide military aid next year as well.
“While Ukraine’s armed forces succeed in pushing back Russian forces on the ground, civilians are being brutally bombarded from the air. We are today providing new air defence, including anti-aircraft guns, radar and anti-drone equipment,” he said.
According to Sunak, the UK is also bolstering its training programs for the Ukrainian military, in particular, medics and military engineers. In addition, the United Kingdom will provide special winter equipment.
As reported, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Kyiv on Saturday, November 19 and met with President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
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ukrinform.net
11. Russia trying to exhaust Ukraine's air defenses, Pentagon official says
Russia trying to exhaust Ukraine's air defenses, Pentagon official says
Reuters · by Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Russia's surge in missile strikes in Ukraine is partly designed to exhaust Kyiv's supplies of air defenses and finally achieve dominance of the skies above the country, a senior Pentagon official said on Saturday.
Russia has been hammering cities across Ukraine with missile strikes over the past week, in one of the heaviest waves of missile attacks since Moscow began its invasion nearly nine months ago.
Ukraine says the strikes have crippled almost half of Ukraine's energy system, creating a potential humanitarian disaster as winter sets in.
Colin Kahl, the Pentagon's top policy advisor, cautioned that Moscow also hoped to deplete Ukrainian air defenses that have so far prevented the Russian military from establishing dominance of the skies above Ukraine.
"They're really trying to overwhelm and exhaust Ukrainian air defense systems," Kahl told reporters during a trip to the Middle East.
"We know what the Russian theory of victory is, and we're committed to making sure that's not going to work by making sure that the Ukrainians get what they need to keep their air defenses viable."
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Western military experts widely expected the Russian military to try to immediately destroy Ukraine's air force and air defenses. That is a core element of modern military strategy, allowing better support for advancing ground forces.
Instead, Ukrainian troops with surface-to-air rockets and other air defenses were able to threaten Russian aircraft and the skies above Ukraine remain contested to this day.
That critical, early failure has been a core element of Russia's troubles in Ukraine as it presses its failing invasion, at tremendous cost in lives and military equipment.
"I think one of the things that probably surprised the Russians the most is how resilient Ukraine's air defenses have been since the beginning of this conflict," Kahl said.
"In large part, that's because of the ingenuity and cleverness of the Ukrainians themselves in keeping their air defense systems viable. But it's also because the United States and other allies and partners have provided a tremendous amount of support," he said.
Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin focused on air defense supplies for Ukraine at a virtual meeting he hosted from the Pentagon. Ukraine's allies have been providing everything from legacy Soviet-era systems to more modern, Western ones.
For the United States, this includes newly U.S.-provided NASAMS air defense systems that the Pentagon says so far have had a 100% success rate in Ukraine intercepting Russian missiles.
"We've been transitioning the Ukrainians towards the NATO standard equipment across the board, but not the least of which includes air defense systems like the NASAM," Kahl said.
The United States has provided more than 1,400 Stinger anti-aircraft systems along with counter-artillery and air surveillance radars to Ukraine.
Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali Editing by Catherine Evans and Frances Kerry
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Idrees Ali
Thomson Reuters
National security correspondent focusing on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Reports on U.S. military activity and operations throughout the world and the impact that they have. Has reported from over two dozen countries to include Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. From Karachi, Pakistan.
Reuters · by Phil Stewart
12. Iran's Rogue Regime Is Collapsing: Time for a Provisional Government
Excerpt:
The Islamic Republic began not with Khomeini’s return to Tehran, but rather with a referendum to vote on the Islamic Republic as a system of government. What began with a referendum can end with a referendum. Khamenei will soon die. The only question is whether his death will be inside Iran or whether he will spend his final weeks in cancer-stricken exile as did Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It is essential when he departs, Iranians have a platform to advance their state in order to prevent a new supreme leader or Revolutionary Guard commanders from seeking to consolidate a new dictatorship.
Iran's Rogue Regime Is Collapsing: Time for a Provisional Government
19fortyfive.com · by Michael Rubin · November 19, 2022
It’s Time for a Provisional Government in Iran: On November 18, 2022, Iranian protestors burned down the house of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic, in the central Iranian town of Khomein. The episode was symbolic. Whereas the Iranian regime’s self-described reformists and their fellow travelers in the West tried to spin previous protest waves as limited in scope to opposition just to hardline factions rather than the regime itself, today’s protestors drive a stake into any claim of regime legitimacy.
More than two months into protests sparked by the regime’s murder of Mahsa Amini, a young woman security forces deemed inappropriately dressed, the Iranian regime appears no closer to ending the uprising. Iranians are angry, and they see no future under the system imposed first by Khomeini and continued today by ailing supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
While the protests have delegitimized the regime, its Western supporters, and the Mujahedin al-Khalq, it is unclear whether they will be enough to topple the regime. The problem is that while the movement represents the outrage of Iranian society, it has yet to morph into something more. There is no clear leadership, nor has it evolved a platform beyond expressing anger at the regime.
If the Iranian protest movement is to morph into an Iranian freedom movement, it is time to take the next step. Iranians must form a provisional government in Iran in order to sketch out the future shape of the Iranian government. Whereas exclusion characterized Khomeini’s rule, they should embrace the inclusion of every group that eschews violence as a means of enforcing its political will.
Diaspora should stand aside. They failed decades ago and left Iranians to their fate. Most diaspora groups are 40 men, each running a newspaper and claiming to be a general. They might contribute money or donate technical expertise, but they should not aspire to power. Nor should exiles ostracize Iran’s current civil service. They represent a constituency to coopt, not defeat. They will be the backbone of transition. Their jobs should be safe.
That said, there is an obvious role for Reza Pahlavi, the son of the ousted shah. While Iranians likely do not want a restoration of the monarchy, they do recognize the former crown prince as a unifier. When I lived in the Islamic Republic, a quarter century ago, merchants in Isfahan and Tehran reminisced about how the economy and merchandise available were better under the shah. There was an element of the grass always being greener in their complaints, but perception is often more important than reality. A decade later, I watched Iranians living inside the Islamic Republic from leftist circles long opposed to the monarchy meet the shah’s son at a wedding in Florida where he was serving as the best man, recognize him, and kneel down as if the past decades had never happened. For these ordinary Iranians, the shah’s son symbolized a more tolerant, prosperous era. The former crown prince is self-aware enough to realize the flaws of his father. He seeks not to impose or claim power, but to build coalitions. He is a consensus figure who can organize a constitutional convention and allow the Iranians leading protests today to consolidate, unify and, ultimately, lead. He can mediate while Iranians from across the ethnic and political spectrum debate and vote upon the parameters of a provisional government.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, former Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan could have played a similar for Iraq, but ultimately dallied, delayed, and deferred and missed his moment. Reza Pahlavi should not repeat his error. He should return to the region. He might defy Iranian-backed militias and visit the Shrine of Imam Hussein in Najaf, and then he could sit for consultations at Neauphle-le-Château. He should be a presence in Dubai and Baku.
Whereas cynics might repeat arguments from the run-up to the Iraq War and say democracy is not a foreign concept to Iranians, they would simply show themselves to be ignorant of Iranian history. In 1905, Iranians inspired by the creation of the Duma in Russia successfully unleased their own constitutional revolution. They succeeded to constrain the monarchy and create a real parliamentary democracy that survived for a decade or so before reactionary forces subsumed it. Regardless, Iran is not Iraq. There is no role for any outside state’s intervention or imposition, beyond strike funds, communications and other resources and moral support. It is time to transform the Mahsa Amini uprising into Iran’s second Mashrutiyyat.
The Islamic Republic began not with Khomeini’s return to Tehran, but rather with a referendum to vote on the Islamic Republic as a system of government. What began with a referendum can end with a referendum. Khamenei will soon die. The only question is whether his death will be inside Iran or whether he will spend his final weeks in cancer-stricken exile as did Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It is essential when he departs, Iranians have a platform to advance their state in order to prevent a new supreme leader or Revolutionary Guard commanders from seeking to consolidate a new dictatorship.
Iranians want more and deserve better.
Expert Author Biography: Dr. Michael Rubin, a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he specializes in Iran, Turkey, and the broader Middle East. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre-and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics, including “Seven Pillars: What Really Causes Instability in the Middle East?” (AEI Press, 2019); “Kurdistan Rising” (AEI Press, 2016); “Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes” (Encounter Books, 2014); and “Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos” (Palgrave, 2005). Dr. Rubin has a Ph.D. and an MA in history from Yale University, where he also obtained a BS in biology.
19fortyfive.com · by Michael Rubin · November 19, 2022
13. El Salvador takes risks for Chinese investments
Beware debt trap diplomacy.
Excerpts:
"When the international markets see how high the fiscal deficit is, how spending can't be paid for and how debt is accumulating, they are going to be more cautious and consider you high risk," Roberto Rubio Fabian, executive director of the National Foundation for Development and Transparency International's representative in El Salvador, told DW.
In January, El Salvador will have to pay €667 million ($691 million) in international debt for the amortization of a eurobond. "China offered to buy all our debt, but we need to tread with caution," Vice President Felix Ulloa said at an event in Madrid.
This was never confirmed by Xi Jinping's regime in Beijing. However, three days later, the governments' mutual interest in opening negotiations on a free trade deal was confirmed at an event in San Salvador that brought together Bukele and Chinese Ambassador Ou Jianhong.
El Salvador takes risks for Chinese investments – DW – 11/19/2022
DW · by Latest videosLatest audio
"Uncertain" is perhaps the word that best describes El Salvador's situation.
This week, FTX, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the world, announced it had filed for bankruptcy. The news caused a sharp drop in the price of bitcoin over the past days — and caused all eyes to turn to El Salvador. The president of the Central American nation, Nayib Bukele, made bitcoin legal tender in 2021 and also invested a large part of the country's fiscal reserves in it.
Bukele's decision to invest El Salvador's reserves in bitcoin was not uniformly cheeredImage: Camilo Freedman/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press/picture alliance
"Unfortunately, if one asks for information about the extent of investments into bitcoin, the answer is either that this information doesn't exist or it's confidential," Ricardo Castaneda, country coordinator for El Salvador at the Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies (ICEFI). Castaneda said it was only possible to calculate El Salvador's investments into bitcoin by using the president's tweets. According to what the president has publicized, the investments could total about $120 million (€116 million).
Following the global devaluation of cryptocurrencies and with little trust on the international markets, El Salvador is facing new economic difficulties.
"When the international markets see how high the fiscal deficit is, how spending can't be paid for and how debt is accumulating, they are going to be more cautious and consider you high risk," Roberto Rubio Fabian, executive director of the National Foundation for Development and Transparency International's representative in El Salvador, told DW.
In January, El Salvador will have to pay €667 million ($691 million) in international debt for the amortization of a eurobond. "China offered to buy all our debt, but we need to tread with caution," Vice President Felix Ulloa said at an event in Madrid.
New economic alliance
This was never confirmed by Xi Jinping's regime in Beijing. However, three days later, the governments' mutual interest in opening negotiations on a free trade deal was confirmed at an event in San Salvador that brought together Bukele and Chinese Ambassador Ou Jianhong.
Even back in 2018, El Salvador was already showing signs of pursuing closer ties to the world's second-largest economy after having ended relations with Taiwan. This brought with it some advantages.
Nayib Bukele has been president of El Salvador since June 2019Image: Jose Cabezas/REUTERS
"China made three donations to El Salvador: the construction of a sort of beach amusement park, a stadium that has yet to be built and a library. These investments improve China's image and, obviously, our country's image, too," Rubio Fabian explained.
Desiree Reder, a researcher at the Hamburg-based German Institute for Global and Area Studies, added that the current condition of El Salvador's democracy also prevents it from establishing closer ties with countries that are critical of Bukele's government, such as the United States. "In this regard, China doesn't apply sanctions based on human rights, and that makes it a possible solution. The big question is whether the benefits of the relationship are greater than the costs," she told DW.
"Nothing is free"
Even though an eventual alliance with China could serve as a "lifeline" for the Salvadoran economy, experts agree that such an agreement could also carry multiple risks. "Nothing is free," Reder said.
"El Salvador could see some benefits to its infrastructure, something we are already observing, but China will want something in return. This could be exclusive rights to commercial profits, or it could demand certain projects in areas that might be protected or that could affect some communities," she added.
The ICEFI's Castaneda also doubts whether the idea of a free trade agreement with China is a good deal for El Salvador. On the contrary: He believes the Central American country would incur losses.
Moreover, Castaneda believes it all comes down to politics. "Remember that President Bukele wants to be reelected, and he has practically no allies at the international level, added to the fact that there's a lot of tension with the US. Bukele is looking for backing for his decisions, and China doesn't exactly stand out when it comes to defending democracy," he added.
Experts are also questioning how much real interest there is in El Salvador, particularly since its strategic standing can't compare to countries like Brazil or Panama. Still, they also point out that China has gradually strengthened its relations with Latin America, breaking the region's decades-long dependency on the US. This could in fact be one of the principal motivations of Xi Jinping's regime.
"China is maintaining and increasing its presence, improving its image, little by little," FUND's Rubio Fabian said.
This article was originally written in Spanish.
DW · by Latest videosLatest audio
14. I Was the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. This Is What Could Become of It.
I Was the Head of Trust and Safety at Twitter. This Is What Could Become of It.
nytimes.com · by Yoel Roth · November 18, 2022
By Yoel Roth
Mr. Roth is a former head of trust and safety at Twitter.
Credit...Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock
This month, I chose to leave my position leading trust and safety at Elon Musk’s Twitter.
My teams were responsible for drafting Twitter’s rules and figuring out how to apply them consistently to hundreds of millions of tweets per day. In my more than seven years at the company, we exposed government-backed troll farms meddling in elections, introduced tools for contextualizing dangerous misinformation and, yes, banned President Donald Trump from the service. The Cornell professor Tarleton Gillespie called teams like mine the “custodians of the internet.” The work of online sanitation is unrelenting and contentious.
Enter Mr. Musk.
In a news release announcing his agreement to acquire the company, Mr. Musk laid out a simple thesis: “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” He said he planned to revitalize Twitter by eliminating spam and drastically altering its policies to remove only illegal speech.
Since the deal closed on Oct. 27, many of the changes made by Mr. Musk and his team have been sudden and alarming for employees and users alike, including rapid-fire layoffs and an ill-fated foray into reinventing Twitter’s verification system. A wave of employee resignations caused the hashtag #RIPTwitter to trend on the site on Thursday — not for the first time — alongside questions about whether a skeleton crew of remaining staff members can keep the service, now 16 years old, afloat.
And yet when it comes to content moderation, much has stayed the same since Mr. Musk’s acquisition. Twitter’s rules continue to ban a wide range of lawful but awful speech. Mr. Musk has insisted publicly that the company’s practices and policies are unchanged. Are we just in the early days — or has the self-declared free speech absolutist had a change of heart?
The truth is that even Elon Musk’s brand of radical transformation has unavoidable limits.
Advertisers have played the most direct role thus far in moderating Mr. Musk’s free speech ambitions. As long as 90 percent of the company’s revenue comes from ads (as was the case when Mr. Musk bought the company), Twitter has little choice but to operate in a way that won’t imperil the revenue streams that keep the lights on. This has already proved to be challenging.
Almost immediately upon the acquisition’s close, a wave of racist and antisemitic trolling emerged on Twitter. Wary marketers, including those at General Mills, Audi and Pfizer, slowed down or paused ad spending on the platform, kicking off a crisis within the company to protect precious ad revenue.
In response, Mr. Musk empowered my team to move more aggressively to remove hate speech across the platform — censoring more content, not less. Our actions worked: Before my departure, I shared data about Twitter’s enforcement of hateful conduct, showing that by some measures, Twitter was actually safer under Mr. Musk than it was before.
Marketers have not shied away from using the power of the purse: In the days following Mr. Musk’s acquisition, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, a key ad industry trade group, published an open call to Twitter to adhere to existing commitments to “brand safety.” It’s perhaps for this reason that Mr. Musk has said he wants to move away from ads as Twitter’s primary revenue source: His ability to make decisions unilaterally about the site’s future is constrained by a marketing industry he neither controls nor has managed to win over.
But even if Mr. Musk is able to free Twitter from the influence of powerful advertisers, his path to unfettered speech is still not clear. Twitter remains bound by the laws and regulations of the countries in which it operates. Amid the spike in racial slurs on Twitter in the days after the acquisition, the European Union’s chief platform regulator posted on the site to remind Mr. Musk that in Europe, an unmoderated free-for-all won’t fly. In the United States, members of Congress and the Federal Trade Commission have raised concerns about the company’s recent actions. And outside the United States and the European Union, the situation becomes even more complex: Mr. Musk’s principle of keying Twitter’s policies on local laws could push the company to censor speech it was loath to restrict in the past, including political dissent.
Regulators have significant tools at their disposal to enforce their will on Twitter and on Mr. Musk. Penalties for noncompliance with Europe’s Digital Services Act could total as much as 6 percent of the company’s annual revenue. In the United States, the F.T.C. has shown an increasing willingness to exact significant fines for noncompliance with its orders (like a blockbuster $5 billion fine imposed on Facebook in 2019). In other key markets for Twitter, such as India, in-country staff members work with the looming threat of personal intimidation and arrest if their employers fail to comply with local directives. Even a Musk-led Twitter will struggle to shrug off these constraints.
There is one more source of power on the web — one that most people don’t think much about but may be the most significant check on unrestrained speech on the mainstream internet: the app stores operated by Google and Apple.
While Twitter has been publicly tight-lipped about how many people use the company’s mobile apps (rather than visit Twitter on a web browser), its 2021 annual report didn’t mince words: The company’s release of new products “is dependent upon and can be impacted by digital storefront operators” that decide the guidelines and enforce them, it reads. “Such review processes can be difficult to predict, and certain decisions may harm our business.”
“May harm our business” is an understatement. Failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to get Twitter’s services. This gives Apple and Google enormous power to shape the decisions Twitter makes.
Apple’s guidelines for developers are reasonable and plainly stated: They emphasize creating “a safe experience for users” and stress the importance of protecting children. The guidelines quote Justice Potter Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” quip, saying the company will ban apps that are “over the line.”
In practice, the enforcement of these rules is fraught.
In my time at Twitter, representatives of the app stores regularly raised concerns about content available on our platform. On one occasion, a member of an app review team contacted Twitter, saying with consternation that he had searched for “#boobs” in the Twitter app and was presented with … exactly what you’d expect. Another time, on the eve of a major feature release, a reviewer sent screenshots of several days-old tweets containing an English-language racial slur, asking Twitter representatives whether they should be permitted to appear on the service.
Reviewers hint that app approval could be delayed or perhaps even withheld entirely if issues are not resolved to their satisfaction — although the standards for resolution are often implied. Even as they appear to be driven largely by manual checks and anecdotes, these review procedures have the power to derail company plans and trigger all-hands-on-deck crises for weeks or months at a time.
Whose values are these companies defending when they enforce their policies? While the wide array of often conflicting global laws no doubt plays a part, the most direct explanation is that platform policies are shaped by the preferences of a small group of predominantly American tech executives. Steve Jobs didn’t believe porn should be allowed in the App Store, and so it isn’t allowed. Stripped bare, the decisions have a dismaying lack of legitimacy.
It’s this very lack of legitimacy that Mr. Musk, correctly, points to when he calls for greater free speech and for the establishment of a “content moderation council” to guide the company’s policies — an idea Google and Apple would be right to borrow for the governance of their app stores. But even as he criticizes the capriciousness of platform policies, he perpetuates the same lack of legitimacy through his impulsive changes and tweet-length pronouncements about Twitter’s rules. In appointing himself “chief twit,” Mr. Musk has made clear that at the end of the day, he’ll be the one calling the shots.
It was for this reason that I chose to leave the company: A Twitter whose policies are defined by edict has little need for a trust and safety function dedicated to its principled development.
So where will Twitter go from here? Some of the company’s decisions in the weeks and months to come, like the near certainty of allowing Mr. Trump’s account back on the service, will have an immediate, perceptible impact. But to truly understand the shape of Twitter going forward, I’d encourage looking not just at the choices the company makes but also at how Mr. Musk makes them. Should the moderation council materialize, will it represent more than just the loudest, predominantly American voices complaining about censorship — including, critically, the approximately 80 percent of Twitter users who reside outside the United States? Will the company continue to invest in features like Community Notes, which brings Twitter users into the work of platform governance? Will Mr. Musk’s tweets announcing policy changes become less frequent and abrupt?
In the longer term, the moderating influences of advertisers, regulators and, most critically of all, app stores may be welcome for those of us hoping to avoid an escalation in the volume of dangerous speech online. Twitter will have to balance its new owner’s goals against the practical realities of life on Apple’s and Google’s internet — no easy task for the employees who have chosen to remain. And as I departed the company, the calls from the app review teams had already begun.
Yoel Roth (@yoyoel) was the head of trust and safety at Twitter, where he spent seven years directing the company’s policy and enforcement work on abuse, election security and anti-spam issues.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
nytimes.com · by Yoel Roth · November 18, 2022
15. China’s rise risks being thwarted by outdated plans and a shifting world
Abishur Prakash
China’s rise risks being thwarted by outdated plans and a shifting world
- China’s future appears up in the air for the first time in decades, in part because of global challenges arising from its own success
- Sustaining China’s rise means addressing other countries’ scrutiny of ties with China, maintaining global access and adapting to a new form of globalisation
Abishur Prakash
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Published: 8:30pm, 19 Nov, 2022
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3199796/chinas-rise-risks-being-thwarted-outdated-plans-and-shifting-world?utm_source=rss_feed
For the first time in decades, China’s future is up in the air. Many global challenges are besieging the country, not least the US efforts to cordon off the globe from China – for example, by restricting chip exports.
The prediction that China would lead the world is now in doubt. Ironically, much of what China is experiencing is a consequence of its own success. China’s rise has created shock waves that Beijing must deal with to continue rising.
If China wants to achieve what it set out to in the 20th century, it must solve three great challenges.
First, China must keep countries in its corner. Consider Zambia, which is in debt to China but has stopped taking Chinese loans and instead turned to the International Monetary Fund. Look at Bangladesh, whose finance minister has warned other developing countries about taking Chinese loans.
Entire regions are breaking away, too. The European Union is moving to reduce its reliance on China. In eastern Europe, China’s 16+1 cooperation group is crumbling as Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania have all walked away. Last year, Lithuania’s defence ministry urged citizens to avoid buying Chinese phones, and Poland ended a genomics project because of data security concerns amid involvement by the Beijing Genomics Institute.
Both major powers and emerging economies are questioning their relationship with China. They do not want to rely on China or have it involved in their society. What does this say about Beijing’s allure?
01:56
China’s Xi rebukes Trudeau at G20, chides Canadian leader for ‘leaking’ meeting details
China’s Xi rebukes Trudeau at G20, chides Canadian leader for ‘leaking’ meeting details
Second, China is losing the global access it needs to continue its rise. In the past, the US helped China gain this access, but now it is locking China out on three key fronts – consumers, investment and technology.
Much of the world’s semiconductor chips can no longer be sold to China. Countries such as the UK, Romania and Japan are rejecting Chinese 5G technology. Other countries where Chinese invested heavily in technology, such as Israel, appear to be changing their attitude.
The same world the US helped open up to China is now being closed off. A bigger red flag is that, after decades of Chinese politicking around the world, the US is still able to do this. Are China’s relationships only surface deep?
Third, China is invested in old globalisation. Today, a new form of “vertical globalisation” is beginning. The world is splitting and fragmenting, and nations are ditching the old systems and institutions. It is this old design of globalisation around which China built its power.
Whether it’s supply chains or governance, China has spent decades putting itself at the centre of a world that is fading away. From Japanese air conditioner manufacturer Daikin shifting its supply chain away from Chinese-made parts to India encouraging foreign firms to use its navigation system rather than China’s BeiDou, areas in which China is invested are being reconfigured.
New groupings such as Chip 4 and D10 do not include China. The world is no longer as open and accessible as it was when China’s rise began. As the world becomes riddled with walls and barriers, what is China’s place in the vertical world?
While US President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping spoke on the sidelines of the recent Group of 20 summit, a landmark climate financing deal was unveiled in another room. The US, EU, Japan and other developed nations reached a US$20 billion partnership to help Indonesia stop using coal. Climate change has become another way for the US to draw nations away from China.
The global environment is changing on every front. China is aware of this, as seen in its recent actions to ease pandemic-related travel restrictions and reform its real estate sector. If the world’s second-largest economy wants to achieve superpower status, though, it must discard its old playbook.
Covid lockdowns spark rare protest in southern Chinese city of Guangzhou
The time for China to act is shrinking. While China once sense opportunities the rest of the world missed, such as building a footprint in Africa, today nobody is waiting for China. Chinese companies such as TikTok are drawing unwanted attention across the globe, threatening to limit China’s role in the world rather than expanding it.
In addition, the Belt and Road Initiative – China’s most ambitious project – is under siege. Some projects have been upended by sanctions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and economic and political turmoil in countries such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka is threatening Chinese investments. Rival connectivity plans such as Build Back Better World and Europe’s Global Gateway have emerged to challenge China in certain regions.
China has been on a rapid ascent for the past 40 years. Like a finely tuned machine, every decision China made seemed to be perfectly calculated. Now, China faces its greatest test in a century.
Its top political and corporate leaders must be able to answer whether they want to maintain what they have built or level up. Either way, China needs a new plan for the future.
Abishur Prakash is a co-founder and geopolitical futurist at the Centre for Innovating the Future (CIF), an advisory firm based in Toronto, Canada
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Abishur Prakash
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Abishur Prakash is a co-founder and geopolitical futurist at the Center for Innovating the Future (CIF), an advisory firm based in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of five books, including, “Next Geopolitics: Volume One & Two,” “Go.AI (Geopolitics of Artificial Intelligence),” and his latest, “The World Is Vertical: How Technology Is Remaking Globalization”.
16. Why the US seeks closer security cooperation with the Philippines
Location, location, location.
Why the US seeks closer security cooperation with the Philippines
rappler.com · November 20, 2022
US Vice President Kamala Harris visits the Philippines this week in the Biden administration’s latest high-level engagement with America’s oldest Asian ally and an increasingly vital strategic partner as tensions rise with China over Taiwan.
The following are some of the main issues surrounding her visit:
Why is the Philippines so important to the United States?
The Philippines is a former US colony and became a US treaty ally in 1951, five years after independence. During the Cold War, it hosted some of America’s largest overseas bases, facilities vital to the US wars in Korea and Vietnam. Philippine nationalism forced Washington to vacate those in the 1990s, but in recent years the allies have cooperated on counter-terrorism and in response to rising Chinese military pressure in the South China Sea, where the Philippines has rival claims.
Today, because of its geography, the Philippines is central to US plans to deter and respond to any Chinese attack on Taiwan, a self-administered island China claims as it own.
Tensions over Taiwan are expected to feature when Harris meets with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday, November 21, Manila’s ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez told Reuters.
Harris also plans a highly symbolic stop on the Philippine islands of Palawan in the South China Sea to show U.S. support for its ally.
How does the country fit into US planning for a possible conflict over Taiwan?
Of the five US treaty allies in the Indo-Pacific – Australia, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand – the Philippines is closest to Taiwan, its northernmost land mass of Luzon just 200 km (120 miles) away.
Experts such as Randall Schriver, who served in the Trump administration as the top Pentagon official for East Asia, said Luzon is of great interest to the US Army, in particular, as a potential location for rockets, missiles and artillery systems that could be used to counter an amphibious invasion of Taiwan.
He said the political environment for greater military access appeared to be improving under Marcos after a rocky period of relations during the six-year term of President Rodrigo Duterte, who sought closer ties with China.
Washington has carefully courted Marcos and Harris’s visit follows two meetings between President Joe Biden and Marcos and a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Manila in August.
How are Washington and Manila boosting security cooperation?
The two sides have moved ahead with an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement that dates back to Obama’s presidency and that languished under Duterte. EDCA allows US access to Philippine military bases for joint training, the pre-positioning of equipment, and the building of facilities such as runways, fuel storage and military housing, but not a permanent presence.
To what extent the Philippines would allow its territory to be used to defend Taiwan remains unclear. Romualdez, the ambassador to Washington and a relative of Marcos, said in September it would let US forces use its bases in the event of a Taiwan conflict only “if it is important for us, for our own security.”
The United States has proposed adding five more EDCA sites to the current five. Southeast Asia expert Gregory Poling at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies said Harris’s trip could bring an announcement of an agreement.
How would a Taiwan conflict affect the Philippines?
Poling believes it would be extremely difficult for the Philippines to remain neutral in a Taiwan conflict given its proximity to the island and its treaty obligations to the United States. It would be the most likely destination for Taiwanese refugees and the some 150,000 Filipinos living on the island would be endangered by any Chinese attack.
“They have commitments to the Americans under the alliance,” Poling said. “So if they want American support in the South China Sea, the Americans will expect Philippine support on Taiwan.”
What would the Philippines expect in return?
Schriver said that with the Pentagon’s rising concern about a possible attack on Taiwan, Washington would want assurances over access within the next year or two, though any overt planning for a Taiwan contingency is highly sensitive for Manila.
Poling said providing Manila sufficient funding to help modernize its long-neglected armed forces was key. Washington recently announced $100 million in foreign military financing and $66.5 million for EDCA sites, but amounts are small compared to what Washington sends to the Middle East and Ukraine.
“The second Philippine demand is a continued clear commitment to defend Filipinos in the South China Sea,” Poling said. “They have that rhetorically, but the question for both sides is, do they have it functionally? If there was a Chinese attack on a Philippine base in the South China Sea tomorrow, could the Americans actually do anything about it? And that is far less clear, which is another reason EDCA is so important.” – Rappler.com
rappler.com · November 20, 2022
17. US approves arms sales to Switzerland, Lithuania and Belgium
US approves arms sales to Switzerland, Lithuania and Belgium
Defense News · by Zamone Perez · November 18, 2022
WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department cleared $700 million in a possible foreign military sale to Switzerland, along with other sales to Lithuania and Belgium, as the neutral European country works to modernize its Air Force by 2030.
Switzerland now has approval to purchase up to 72 Raytheon Technologies-made Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles. The agreement also includes related launching technology as well as logistics and technical support, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
The missiles will improve Switzerland’s Patriot air defense system, which is used to defend the country’s territorial integrity, DSCA said in a statement Tuesday.
Switzerland has worked to revamp its air defense capabilities over the past few years. Since 2018, the government has set a goal of acquiring aircraft and ground-based missiles for more than $8 billion. The Patriot missiles were among the weapons on its short list.
Meanwhile, the State Department approved Lithuania and Belgium last week for $495 million and $380 million in possible foreign military sales, respectively.
Lithuania received the OK to acquire eight Lockheed Martin-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers, 36 Guided Multiple Rocket Launch System alternative warhead missile pods and other related logistical support. According to a DSCA statement on Nov. 9, the weapons will support the modernization of the Lithuania’s military and deter regional threats.
HIMARS and other systems like GMLRS have grown in notoriety since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. In October, the Pentagon announced it would soon deliver four more HIMARS to Ukraine, bringing the total number sent since the war began to 20. Other HIMAR units have also been dispatched along NATO’s eastern front. The U.S. Army in September announced two HIMARS were sent to Latvia.
Belgium was given the green light to purchase 120 AIM-120C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, 10 AMRAAM C-8 guidance sections and other logistical support. The country will use the missiles to maintain its F-16 and F-35 fleets at combat-ready status, the DSCA said in a Nov. 8 statement.
About Zamone Perez
Zamone “Z” Perez is an editorial fellow at Defense News and Military Times. He previously worked at Foreign Policy and Ufahamu Africa, where he helped produce podcasts. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he researched humanitarian intervention and atrocity prevention in his thesis. He can be found on Twitter @zamoneperez.
18.
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com
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