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Quotes of the Day:
"Communism never sleeps, never changes its objectives, nor must we. Our first duty to freedom is to defend our own. Then one day we might export a little to those peoples who have to live without it."
- Margaret Thatcher
"Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort."
~Erich Fromm
(Book: Escape from Freedom https://amzn.to/3jn3DCr).
"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
- George Eliot
1. Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN December 28, 6.00 pm EST - The three hundred and eighth day of the russian large-scale invasion.
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 29
3. Xi and Putin Meet Again, Two Strongmen in a Weak Moment
4. To Deter China, Taiwan Must Prepare for War
5. The Biden administration tries to stop Iran from supplying Russia with drones.
6. Is Iran On the Verge of Another Revolution?
7. The Arsenal of Democracy Is Back in Business
8. U.S. says it killed nearly 700 Islamic State suspects this year
9. ‘Dangerously’ close: Video shows Chinese jet buzzing US spy plane
10. Tweaking the Inflation Reduction Act Can Strengthen Democracies’ Hand
11. Islamic State Sympathizer Arrested for Carrying Out Jerusalem Bombings
12. Assessing War Commentary by Sir Lawrence Freedman
13. West’s Double Standards: Pursuit For Human Rights Or A Tool For Dominance – OpEd
14. How China Is Using Vladimir Putin
15. US Military Develops AI Systems to Counter Iranian Drone Threats
16. First Javelins. Then HIMARS. Now Patriot. What’s next?
17. 6 ways the Army can appeal to Gen Zers and recruit more than a few good men and women
18. Strategic Communication and Security Force Assistance: Critical Components for Ukrainian Success?
19. Ukraine received over $120bln in Western assistance in 2022
20. China’s uncertain politics will force foreign firms to seek alternate production hubs
21. Fraught shift from ‘Asia-Pacific’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’
22. Zelenskyy Was Used By Joe Biden as a Pawn
23. A Look at the New Veterans Headed to Congress in January
1. Ukraine: WAR BULLETIN December 28, 6.00 pm EST - The three hundred and eighth day of the russian large-scale invasion.
Also posted on Small Wars Journal here: https://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/ukraine-war-bulletin-december-28-600-pm-est-three-hundred-and-eighth-day-russian-large-scale
Embassy of Ukraine in the USA
WAR BULLETIN
December 28, 6.00 pm EST
During the day, Russian forces launched 2 air strikes, 2 missile strikes and more than 10 attacks from MLRS systems.
Russia continues offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas and tries to improve the tactical position in the Lyman areas. In other directions, Russian forces are defending.
President of Ukraine delivered the annual Message to the Verkhovna Rada and presented state awards to Ukrainian defenders
Since the start of war, 94,000 tenders for UAH 120 billion held on Prozorro
More than 700 critical infrastructure facilities damaged in Ukraine since the beginning of full-scale russian invasion
MFA of Ukraine expresses a strong protest in connection with the illegal entry of the official of the administration of the President of the Russian Federation Serhii Kiriyenko to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in the Zaporizhzhia region, including his stay at the Ukrainian nuclear facility – the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Comment of the MFA of Ukraine on the decree of the president of the russian federation “On certain issues of acquiring citizenship of the russian federation”
WAR ROOM
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
The total combat losses of the Russian forces from 24.02 to 28.12:
personnel ‒ about 103770 (+550) killed,
tanks ‒ 3017 (+1),
APV ‒ 6037 (+13),
artillery systems – 1999 (+1),
MLRS – 418,
Anti-aircraft warfare systems ‒ 212,
aircraft – 283,
helicopters – 267,
UAV operational-tactical level – 1707,
cruise missiles ‒ 653,
warships / boats ‒ 16,
vehicles and fuel tankers – 4660 (+8),
special equipment ‒ 179.
https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0Aj9LaRF1SivoCGsuwnCgfTaKuivqK8nYByYbtY5ngpFkotHp5yW6h8KLqfNbZFozl
The three hundred and eighth day of the russian large-scale invasion.
During the day, the occupiers launched 2 air strikes and 2 missile strikes, as well as launched more than 10 attacks from MLRS systems.
The enemy continues offensive operations in the Bakhmut and Avdiivka areas and tries to improve the tactical position in the Lyman areas. In other directions, the enemy is defending.
The situation remains stable in the Volyn, Polisiya, Siverskiy and Slobozhanskiy directions, no signs of the formation of offensive groups of the occupiers have been detected. On the last one, areas of Veterinarne, Ohirtseve, Gatishche, Vovchansk, Staritsa, Dvorichna, Novomlynsk settlements of the Kharkiv region were subjected to artillery and mortar shelling.
On the Kupyansk and Lyman directions, the enemy shelled the areas of more than
20 settlements. Among them are Sinkivka, Vilshana, Kupyansk, Kislivka and Krokhmalne of the Kharkiv region; Stelmakhivka, Ploshanka, Chervopopivka and Dibrova in the Luhansk region, as well as Yampolivka in the Donetsk region.
Areas of more than 20 settlements were also affected by fire in the Bakhmut direction. In particular, these are Spirne, Bilogorivka, Soledar, Hryhorivka, Bakhmutske, Chasiv Yar, Bakhmut, Kostyantynivka, Mayorsk and New York in Donetsk region.
In the Avdiyivka direction, the enemy fired from tanks, mortars and barrel artillery at the districts of Berdychiv, Avdiyivka, Pervomaiskyi, Maryinka and Novomykhailivka of the Donetsk region.
Vremivka, Velyka Novosilka, Vugledar, and Prechistivka in Donetsk region came under the influence of fire in the Novopavlovsk direction.
In the Zaporizhzhya and Kherson directions, the Russian occupiers terrorized residents of more than 25 settlements with artillery fire. Among them are Gulyaipole, Malynivka, Charivne and Dorozhnianka in the Zaporizhzhia region and Respublikanets, Kozatske and Lviv in the Kherson region. Once again, the civilian infrastructure of Antonivka, Kherson region, and the city of Kherson itself were damaged by enemy shelling. There are victims among the civilian population.
russian occupiers continue to die ingloriously in Ukraine. In the Zaporizhzhya region, the destruction of one S300 anti-aircraft missile system, 8 units of military equipment of various types and types of ammunition was confirmed in the previous days. More than 150 servicemen were injured. The number of those killed is being verified.
At the same time, in the temporarily occupied territories of the Zaporizhzhya region, russian servicemen and mercenaries of the occupation forces are massively leaving their places of service. Separate divisions of the russian guard were sent to the city of Primorsk for search operations. According to preliminary information, more than 200 people are wanted.
During the current 24 hours, the Ukrainian aviation carried out 4 strikes on the areas where the invaders were concentrated, and units of the missile forces and artillery of the Defense Forces of Ukraine hit 2 control points, 2 areas of concentration of manpower and the enemy's ammunition warehouse.
https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0jXoWN4bTf1krtoZ8xrcbWWTknJrMEjAnh3K2BZYLSTov1q5U7pADXqCT5zoNAcRAl
POLICY
President of Ukraine
President of Ukraine delivered the annual Message to the Verkhovna Rada and presented state awards to Ukrainian defenders
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered the annual Message to the Verkhovna Rada on the internal and external situation of Ukraine.
From the rostrum of the Parliament, the Head of State emphasized that this year, thanks to Ukraine, the world believed that values give strength, and was convinced that tyranny will lose, and freedom will definitely be victorious.
“It was Ukraine that united the European Union. It turned out that it is possible! And now Europe defends itself. Europe overcomes crises. And this is despite the colossal resources thrown by Russia to break our continent,” he said.
According to the President, now the world is interested in what else Ukraine can give to it and to Europe.
“Ukraine cements. It cements the European Union and the entire free world with the struggle for freedom and peace. This is our main achievement in foreign policy for the past year,” the Head of State noted.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized that the majority of citizens in the countries of the European Union supported the idea of Ukraine joining the EU, so the time has come to start negotiations on our country's membership in the European Union.
He urged to thank the Ukrainian warriors who are gaining peace for Ukraine and who are the hope of millions of people for life, Europe's hope for peace, and the world’s hope for the fact that the time of empires has passed.
The President noted that the Ukrainian army managed to liberate more than 1,800 cities and villages from Russian occupation. The Head of State noted that the world helps Ukraine, in particular by providing advanced weapons.
“A year ago it seemed impossible that our country would have Patriot air defense systems. Now we have such an agreement. I am grateful to our strategic partners! This is a special sign of trust in Ukraine. This is a true alliance with the United States of America. We have achieved this,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy emphasized.
At the same time, the President expressed his conviction: the time will come when Ukrainian weapons brands will be of interest to the world as well.
“We are capable of producing our missiles, our naval drones, we are already doing it, armored vehicles, aircraft and other types of weapons. We are already doing it,” he said.
In order to achieve all the set goals and to realize all the possibilities of Ukraine, the President called to preserve the unity of society despite any personal emotions and interests.
In order to strengthen security, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine must constantly look for new friends and alliances, new growth for the economy and society.
In particular, according to him, the Ukrainian state should become a leader in the development of modern "green" energy, which will make it possible to create a decentralized energy system that cannot be destroyed by missile strikes.
Also, according to the Head of State, Ukraine should become a leader in the digital transformation of the state and society: complete the total digitization of all permits and public services and start spreading positive experience in the world, which will help our country secure new alliances, new political and economic ties, in particular with African states and other countries of the Global South.
In addition, Ukraine will be a leader in global efforts to guarantee the world's food security. This will be facilitated by the implementation of the grain export initiative and the "Grain from Ukraine" program, which have already returned vital food stability to the world and made it possible to save millions of jobs for Ukrainians, the President stated.
Another important security element, according to the Head of State, is business and taxes. Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked everyone who maintains the functioning of their business, provides jobs and pays taxes. He emphasized that the financing of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is primarily an internal resource from Ukrainian taxes, duties, bonds and other similar sources.
“Of course, the existing tax system is convenient neither for those who pay taxes nor for those who collect taxes. It is also not convenient for those of our people who receive salaries and pensions from these taxes. But it is extremely important for us to reach a national agreement on this issue,” the Head of State noted.
The President emphasized that the reconstruction of Ukraine after hostilities is a component of justice.
“We have to raise from the ruins the territory entered by the Russian invaders after February 24. In the same way, we will restore the normality of life in the territory of Donbas and Crimea, which were illegally occupied in 2014 and have been brought to the point of disaster by the occupiers over the time that has passed,” he stressed.
In this context, Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on people's deputies, together with the government and the President's Office, to develop a legislative framework for giving priority participation in reconstruction projects to those companies and businesses that were in Ukraine or came to our country during the war, or left the Russian market after the start of a full-scale invasion.
In the context of ensuring justice, the Head of State mentioned the creation of a tribunal for the crime of aggression, as well as the development and implementation of an international compensation mechanism.
“No crime committed by the occupiers in Ukraine can go unpunished,” he stressed.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy also emphasized: The goal of restoring the territorial integrity of Ukraine always goes hand in hand for us with another goal of freeing all Ukrainians who are held in Russian captivity or in prisons, as well as all those who were forcibly deported from our land. The President reminded that after February 24, Ukraine managed to free 1,456 people from Russian captivity, but there is much more work ahead.
In addition, according to the Head of State, Ukraine should ensure that millions of our citizens, who found refuge from the war abroad, do not become refugees, but want to return home.
“We have to make sure that when the world sees the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag of ours, they will know that it is about freedom and about people who have a strong home and who will always be helped - no matter what happens to them. Because we are all Ukrainians,” the President said.
The Head of State also presented commander of the HIMARS battery, Captain Pavlo Cherniavskyi, who was present in the session hall of the Verkhovna Rada, who presented his award "Cross of Combat Merit" to President of the United States Joseph Biden, with a special symbol - Command Coin, which the leader of the United States gave to the Ukrainian military in return.
“Mr. Captain! Pavlo! I have to give this Command Coin to you now. Once again, I want to thank President Biden, both parties of Congress and every American family for the historical support of Ukraine and our citizens,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
After delivering the Message, the President of Ukraine presented state awards to Ukrainian defenders who were invited to the Parliament.
https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/prezident-ukrayini-vistupiv-zi-shorichnim-poslannyam-do-verh-80121
Full speech: https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/vistup-prezidenta-zi-shorichnim-poslannyam-do-verhovnoyi-rad-80113
Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine
Since the start of war, 94,000 tenders for UAH 120 billion held on Prozorro
Despite the difficult economic conditions during the full-scale war, the electronic procurement platform Prozorro remains an effective tool. This was announced by Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Nadiia Bigun, commenting on the annual results of the Prozorro electronic public procurement system.
"The results of work in 2022 show that, despite all the difficulties and challenges, the Prozorro electronic procurement system works without failures and demonstrates flexibility and ability to change, even in wartime. Moreover, international partners also highly appreciated the efficiency of Ukrainian public procurement. The Prozorro e-procurement system, including the Prozorro Market electronic catalogues, was recognized as meeting the requirements for e-procurement for World Bank-financed operations," said Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Nadiia Bigun.
As for financial results, since the beginning of the war, Prozorro platform can boast with the following achievements:
94,000 tenders for UAH 120 billion have been held;
more than 23,000 enterprises became participants of competitive procurement;
the difference between the total amount that public procurers planned to spend on their procurements and the amount for which contracts were concluded through tender procedures amounted to UAH 6 billion;
in total, more than 2 million contracts for UAH 311 billion were reported in the electronic system.
After the Government returned mandatory procurement to Prozorro in July 2022, about half of the pre-war level of procurement takes place in the system. This reduction can be explained both by the reduction of expenditures for non-critical needs and by the fact that procurement for defense and critical infrastructure is carried out without the use of Prozorro.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Cabinet of Ministers has changed the rules of public procurement to adapt them to the new reality, which requires faster provision of needs. Thus, thanks to the new procedure - open bidding with specific features, which was introduced by Resolution No. 1178, it was possible to reduce the average duration of the tender by almost half - to 22 days.
Instead, the procedure of requesting the price of the offer in Prozorro Market can be carried out even faster, its average duration is 11 days. Thanks to the new rules, procuring entities can use Prozorro Market without any limitations on the amount, which significantly reduces the administrative burden on procuring entities. As a result, the volume of procurement in the electronic catalog has tripled compared to 2021 - up to UAH 1.2 billion.
https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/vid-pochatku-viiny-na-prozorro-provely-94-tysiachi-tenderiv-na-120-mlrd-hrn
More than 700 critical infrastructure facilities damaged in Ukraine since the beginning of full-scale russian invasion: Yevhenii Yenin
In total, more than 35,000 facilities have been destroyed as a result of russian attacks. This was stated by First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Yevhenii Yenin on the air of the UAtogether telethon.
“More than 35,000 facilities in Ukraine have been destroyed as a result of russian attacks. Out of almost 30,000 recorded attacks since the invasion, 702 critical infrastructure facilities have been damaged. We are talking about gas pipelines, power substations, bridges,” Yevhenii Yenin said.
He noted that in just one day the police received information about shelling of 27 settlements.
“Most attacks were recorded in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. More than 5,000 attacks have been recorded there since the beginning of the war. Kharkiv region suffers the most, with more than 11,700 attacks,” said Yevhenii Yenin.
The First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs also noted that de-occupation measures continue in Kharkiv region, in particular to identify collaborators.
“In Kharkiv region, investigators of the National Police have already documented more than 4,500 war crimes, and since the beginning of the invasion this figure has reached more than 52,000 criminal proceedings on the facts of crimes committed on the territory of Ukraine by servicemen of the russian federation and their accomplices. In total, over 2,200 criminal proceedings have been initiated in Ukraine on the facts of cooperation with the aggressor state,” Yevhenii Yenin said.
Besides, Yevhenii Yenin spoke about the work of Cyberpolice. According to him, Cyberpolice have processed almost 40,000 dossiers on servicemen of the russian army.
“There are more than 10 projects to collect information about the military of russia and belarus. Cyberpolice is also actively involved in the fight on the information front, one of specific areas is the blocking of enemy disinformation. More than 8,000 russian resources from different spheres have already been blocked. One of the key tasks of the enemy is to create chaos, spread anti-government and anti-military sentiments, attempt to discredit the leadership of the Armed Forces and the State and thus to persuade Ukraine to humiliating negotiations,” said the First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs.
https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/v-ukraini-z-pochatku-povnomasshtabnoho-vtorhnennia-rf-urazheno-ponad-700-obiektiv-krytychnoi-infrastruktury-ievhenii-ienin
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Statement of the MFA of Ukraine on Russia's New Illegal Actions against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine expresses a strong protest in connection with the illegal entry of the official of the administration of the President of the Russian Federation Serhii Kiriyenko to the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine in the Zaporizhzhia region, including his stay at the Ukrainian nuclear facility – the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Such illegal actions by officials of the aggressor state are yet another gross violation of international law and the legislation of Ukraine. This step by the Kremlin also demonstrates its complete disregard for the demands of the three resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors, that call upon the Russian Federation to immediately withdraw its military and other personnel from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, in order for the competent Ukrainian authorities to regain full control of the plant to ensure its safe and secure operation.
We count on the effective and efficient efforts of the IAEA Member States, as well as IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, in countering Russia's crimes against Ukraine's nuclear facilities and cynical disregard for current nuclear safety and security standards.
We call on the partner states and EU institutions to speed up the introduction of effective measures to respond to the ongoing criminal actions of the Russian Federation in relation to nuclear facilities in Ukraine, including the expansion of sanctions against the Russian state corporation Rosatom, its affiliated companies and institutions, as well as other key factors of nuclear energy Russia. We put particular emphasize on the urgency of working out the mechanisms for the complete termination of cooperation with the Russian Federation in the field of nuclear technologies, as well as the suspension of the rights and privileges of the Russian Federation within the IAEA.
We expect a consistent and uncompromising position of all members of the international community in ensuring binding political, economic and legal consequences for the terrorist state for all its crimes and illegal actions. We emphasize the importance of bringing all criminals to justice and the irreversibility of punishment.
https://mfa.gov.ua/en/news/statement-mfa-ukraine-russias-new-illegal-actions-against-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant
Comment of the MFA of Ukraine on the decree of the president of the russian federation “On certain issues of acquiring citizenship of the russian federation”
On December 26, the president of the russian federation signed another worthless decree on the procedure for acquiring russian citizenship by citizens of Ukraine.
This time it concerns Ukrainian citizens who lived or live in the temporarily occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions of Ukraine during the full-scale aggression of russia against our country.
The decree that approves simplified procedures for renunciation of Ukrainian citizenship and acquisition of russian citizenship is null and void, and testifies to russia’s unwillingness to negotiate, its leadership’s desire to continue the war, the absorption of the territory of Ukraine, forced assimilation and genocide of the Ukrainian people.
Forced imposition of russian citizenship on Ukrainian citizens, who as a result of russian aggression found themselves in inhuman conditions and were deprived of the fundamental right to free choice of citizenship, confirms the criminal nature of the totalitarian russian regime.
Particularly outrageous is the procedure of issuing russian passports, without consent of the recipients, to Ukrainian children and adolescents aged 14 to 18 years old forcibly displaced to the territory of the russian federation, which is a flagrant violation of fundamental human rights and proof of genocide of Ukrainians committed by russia.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine strongly condemns the enactment of this document, regards it as another crime of russia against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which grossly violates the Constitution and laws of our country, current norms of international law and international obligations of russia.
The consequences of this and other worthless normative acts of the russian federation in relation to citizens of Ukraine will have no legal effect, will never be recognized by Ukraine or the vast majority of UN member states.
The decree adds to the list of crimes committed during the armed aggression of russia, which will be tried within the framework of the international tribunal against the leadership of the russian federation.
https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/news/komentar-mzs-ukrainy-z-pryvodu-ukazu-prezydenta-rf-shchodo-okremykh-pytan-nabuttia-hromadianstva-rosiiskoi-federatsii
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 29
Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-december-29
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces conducted another massive series of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated Russia’s unwillingness to commit to genuine negotiations with Ukraine.
- Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Chief Kyrylo Budanov stated that fighting in Ukraine is in a deadlock.
- The Kremlin continues to manipulate Russian law to grant the state increasingly broad powers under ambiguous conditions in order to eliminate dissent.
- Repeated Ukrainian strikes on legitimate military targets in rear areas in the Russian Federation demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defenses against drones and exacerbate critiques that Russia cannot defend its own territory.
- Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Kreminna while Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Avdiivka area as well as around Bakhmut, where the potential culmination of the Russian offensive is likely being expedited.
- Russian forces continued to conduct defensive operations in Kherson Oblast.
- The Kremlin’s mobilization working group met for the first time on December 29. The forum for criticism of mobilization implementation will likely create friction with the Russian Ministry of Defense.
- Russian occupation authorities continue to intensify law enforcement crackdowns in unsuccessful attempts to stamp out partisan pressure in occupied territories.
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 29
understandingwar.org
Angela Howard, Riley Bailey, Karolina Hird, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan
December 29, 5:30pm 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 conducted another massive series of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure on December 29. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched 69 cruise missiles and 23 drones at Ukraine and that Ukrainian air defenses shot down 54 of the missiles and at least 11 of the drones.[1] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck targets, primarily infrastructure facilities, in Lviv, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Donetsk oblasts causing widespread disruptions to energy, heating, and water supplies.[2] Russian sources claimed that Russian forces also struck targets in Sumy, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Khmelnytsky, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia oblasts.[3] The Belarusian Ministry of Defense claimed that Belarusian air defenses shot down a Ukrainian S-300 air defense missile during the wave of Russian strikes and that wreckage fell onto Belarusian territory.[4] It is currently unclear whether Ukrainian air defenses may have been responding to Russian missile launches from Belarusian territory, which Russian forces have used repeatedly in support of their campaign against Ukrainian critical infrastructure.[5]
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) responded to ongoing Western assessments that it has severely depleted its stock of high-precision weapons systems amidst the massive strike against Ukraine by stating that it would never run out of Kalibr missiles.[6] ISW has previously assessed that Russian forces have significantly depleted their arsenal of high-precision weapons systems but will likely continue to threaten Ukrainian critical infrastructure at scale in the near term and cause substantial suffering to Ukrainian civilians.[7] Ukraine’s Main Military Intelligence Directorate Chief Kyrylo Budanov stated on December 26 that Russian forces had enough missiles to conduct two or three more large-scale strikes.[8] ISW assesses that the Russian campaign to break the Ukrainian will to fight through large-scale missile strikes against critical infrastructure will fail even if the Russians are able to conduct more barrages than Budanov estimated.[9]
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated on December 29 Russia’s unwillingness to commit to genuine negotiations and to recognize Ukraine as an independent actor in negotiations. Lavrov stated in an interview with a prominent Russian news source that Russia will not accept Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposed peace plan and that the Kremlin will not talk to any Ukrainian negotiators under conditions that include the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied Ukraine, Russian payment of reparations, and Russian participation in international tribunals.[10] Lavrov declared that he cannot determine whether an “adequate,” independent politician remains in Kyiv with whom Russia can negotiate.[11] Lavrov claimed that Zelensky’s refusal to pursue negotiations with Russia in April demonstrated the complete “lack of independence of [Zelensky] in making important decisions” and the manipulation of the West to continue hostilities.[12] Lavrov questioned whether an ”acceptable” politician would emerge under the "Kyiv regime,” apparently restating the Kremlin’s position that Zelensky is not a legitimate political leader or acceptable negotiating partner and recommitting Russia to its maximalist goal to drive regime change in Ukraine.[13]
Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Chief Kyrylo Budanov stated that fighting in Ukraine is in a deadlock on December 29.[14] In an interview with BBC, Budanov stated that “the situation is just stuck” and that both Russian and Ukrainian troops lack the resources or ability to move forward.[15] Budanov stressed that Ukraine cannot defeat Russian troops "in all directions comprehensively” and reiterated that Ukraine is awaiting the supply of new and more advanced weapons systems.[16] Budanov’s statement is consistent with certain elements of ISW’s December 28 assessment, which suggested that the Russian offensive around Bakhmut may be culminating and that Russian forces in this area will likely be unable to make operationally significant gains.[17] However, ISW also noted indicators that Russian forces may be preparing for a decisive effort (likely of a defensive nature) in Luhansk Oblast, which suggests that fighting writ large in Ukraine has not necessarily reached a stalemate.[18]
The Kremlin continues to manipulate Russian law to grant the state increasingly broad powers using vague language in order to eliminate dissent and threaten Ukrainian sympathizers. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a supplement to the Russian Criminal Code on December 29 that allows Russian authorities to sentence Russians to up to life imprisonment for “assistance to subversive activities” or for “undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out sabotage activities” and for “organizing a sabotage community” and between 5- and 10-years imprisonment for “participation in such a community.”[19] Putin also signed a law enabling Russian authorities to sentence any private citizen who "desecrates” the ribbon of Saint George (a prominent Russian military symbol especially associated with the war in Ukraine) with up to 3 years imprisonment or a fine of up to three million rubles (40,541 USD).[20] These laws follow a sequence of Russian policies targeting what remains of the Russian opposition and enhancing Kremlin control of Russia’s already-limited information space under the guise of preventing Russians from "discrediting” the military.[21]
Repeated Ukrainian strikes on legitimate military targets far in the Russian rear demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defenses against drones. Ukrainian forces attacked Engels Airbase with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) on December 29, within three days of reports that air defense shot down a Ukrainian UAV over Engels and killed three Russian servicemen.[22] The United Kingdom Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated on December 29 that it is “increasingly clear” that Russia “is struggling to counter air threats deep inside [its territory].”[23] The United Kingdom MoD assessed that Russian air defenses probably are struggling to meet the high demand for air defense for field headquarters near the front line in Ukraine while also protecting strategic sites, such as Engels Airbase.[24] The repeated strikes on Engels Airbase will likely exacerbate milblogger critiques that Russia cannot defend its own territory from Ukrainian strikes. A prominent Russian milblogger questioned how Ukrainian UAVs and missiles cross such distances and enter Russian territory with “such impunity” and questioned the honesty of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s response.[25] The milblogger joked that an undetected pilot landing in Red Square (referencing Matias Rust’s 1987 flight from Helsinki to Moscow) would certainly generate a response longer than a single sentence from the Russian government.[26] ISW reported on similar dissatisfaction among Russian milbloggers on December 26.[27]
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces conducted another massive series of missile strikes against Ukrainian critical infrastructure.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated Russia’s unwillingness to commit to genuine negotiations with Ukraine.
- Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Chief Kyrylo Budanov stated that fighting in Ukraine is in a deadlock.
- The Kremlin continues to manipulate Russian law to grant the state increasingly broad powers under ambiguous conditions in order to eliminate dissent.
- Repeated Ukrainian strikes on legitimate military targets in rear areas in the Russian Federation demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Russian air defenses against drones and exacerbate critiques that Russia cannot defend its own territory.
- Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Kreminna while Russian forces conducted limited counterattacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
- Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Avdiivka area as well as around Bakhmut, where the potential culmination of the Russian offensive is likely being expedited.
- Russian forces continued to conduct defensive operations in Kherson Oblast.
- The Kremlin’s mobilization working group met for the first time on December 29. The forum for criticism of mobilization implementation will likely create friction with the Russian Ministry of Defense.
- Russian occupation authorities continue to intensify law enforcement crackdowns in unsuccessful attempts to stamp out partisan pressure in occupied territories.
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 counteroffensive operations near Kreminna on December 29. Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov, reported that Ukrainian forces have advanced 2.5km in the direction of Kreminna over the past week and are continuing offensive actions towards the settlement.[28] Hromov stated that information is circulating among officers of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 2nd Army Corps that a significant part of the 2nd Army Corps will surrender if Ukrainian forces break through the Svatove-Kreminna line.[29] Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Ukrainian forces may capture Kreminna by the beginning of 2023.[30] A Russian milblogger claimed that 1,500 Ukrainian servicemen are currently trying to break through Russian positions near Kreminna from the direction of Torske (14km west of Kreminna), Dibrova (5km southwest of Kreminna), and Kuzmyne (3km southwest of Kreminna).[31]
Russian forces continued to conduct limited counterattacks to regain lost positions along the Svatove-Kreminna line on December 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults northwest of Svatove near Stelmakhivka (16km northwest of Svatove) and Andriivka (16km west of Svatove) and northwest of Kreminna near Ploshchanka (17km northwest of Kreminna) and Chervonopopivka (6km north of Kreminna).[32] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups are probing Ukrainian positions in the vicinity of Hryhorivka (11km south of Kreminna).[33] Haidai reported that Russian forces are continuing to transfer more equipment and personnel to the Kreminna area, including a substantial number of Wagner Group personnel.[34] ISW assesses that Russian forces are likely preparing for a decisive effort in Luhansk Oblast, although it is still unclear whether this decisive effort is offensive or defensive.[35]
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 offensive operations around Bakhmut on December 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Bakhmut; within 21km northeast of Bakhmut near Bilohorivka, Soledar, Bakhmutske, and Pidhorodne; and within 13km south of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka.[36] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces withdrew from unspecified strongholds in Soledar and in Pidhorodne, where elements of the Wagner Group are attempting to cut off a section of the M-03 highway.[37] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces made notable advances in the southern parts of Bakhmut, although ISW cannot independently verify whether Russian forces have actually done so.[38] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces also conducted assaults south of Bakhmut near Opytne.[39]
The rate of potential culmination of the Russian offensive on Bakhmut is likely being expedited by increased demands on already degraded personnel and equipment. Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov, reported that Ukrainian forces repel up to 20 Russian assaults in the Bakhmut area daily.[40] Hromov also reported that Russian forces concentrated 40 percent of their artillery fire along the 200km long frontline that runs from Kupyansk, Kharkiv Oblast to Marinka, Donetsk Oblast on Bakhmut.[41] Hromov reported that Russian forces deliberately reduced indirect fire in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts in recent weeks and delivered artillery rounds to the Bakhmut area to maintain the pace of artillery fire there.[42] ISW assesses that Russian personnel and equipment capacities in the Bakhmut area are severely degraded and that the Russian offensive to capture Bakhmut is likely culminating as a result.[43] Russian forces’ high demand on personnel and on artillery munitions to support a continued high pace of assaults will likely further degrade Russian forces’ operational capabilities in the Bakhmut area and quicken the rate of the Russian offensive’s culmination.
Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Avdiivka-Donetsk City area on December 29. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults near Avdiivka and within 32km southwest of Avdiivka near Krasnohorivka, Marinka, and Pobieda.[44] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are using defensive positions in high-rise buildings to establish strong points and adjust artillery fire in Marinka and suggested that this is allowing Ukrainian forces to slow the rate of Russian advances in the settlement.[45] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces continued routine indirect fire along the line of contact in Donetsk and eastern Zaporizhia oblasts.[46]
Supporting Effort—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)
Russian forces continued defensive operations in Kherson Oblast on December 29. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces in the Kherson direction are regrouping, reinforcing, and conducting positional defenses.[47] The Head of the Ukrainian Joint Press Center of the Tavrisk Direction Defense Forces, Yevhen Yerin, stated that small Russian sabotage and reconnaissance groups try to cross the Dnipro River on a daily basis and that Ukrainian forces are detecting and neutralizing the groups.[48] Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov, noted that mobilized Russian forces are deploying to Kherson Oblast so that conventional combat units can withdraw to the rear and presumably refit for further redeployment.[49] Hromov also stated that Russian forces are deploying "territorial troops” to the Kherson Oblast frontline to assist with the redeployment effort.[50] Russian forces continued routine shelling of the west (right) bank of Kherson Oblast and struck the Kherson Oblast Cardiology Dispensary in Kherson City.[51] Residents of Oleshky (just south of Kherson City on the east bank of the Dnipro River) reported shelling in the settlement on both December 28 and 29, and the Ukrainian General Staff and other Ukrainian sources claimed that Russian forces shelled Oleshky.[52] Russian sources accused Ukrainian troops of striking Oleshky.[53] ISW has not observed any visual confirmation of Ukrainian forces in Oleshky, and it is unclear why Russian troops would shell territory they control. Geolocated footage from December 28 shows a Ukrainian drone striking a Russian ammunition truck near Oleshky, indicating that Ukrainian forces have recently targeted Russian positions in Oleshky.[54]
Ukrainian officials provided conflicting reports regarding the situation in Zaporizhia Oblast on December 29. Hromov reported that there is currently no significant threat of the creation of a Russian offensive group in the Zaporizhia direction, which is consistent with previous observations made by Ukrainian officials that Russian units that are currently forming in the Zaporizhia direction do not have offensive capabilities.[55] However, following Hromov’s statement, the Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are concentrating their efforts on conducting offensive actions in the Zaporizhia direction, which is an inflection in the language the General Staff typically uses that describes Russian actions in this area as defensive.[56] ISW has not observed any indicators that Russian forces are preparing for or conducting offensive operations in Zaporizhia Oblast.[57] The reason for the discrepancies between the General Staff and Hromov’s statements is unclear.
Ukrainian forces continue to strike Russian concentration areas in Zaporizhia Oblast. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian strikes hit various Russian military assets and personnel concentrations in Tokmak, Tytove, Chernihivka, Polohy, and Berdyansk on December 27.[58] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian personnel concentration in Berdyansk on December 28.[59]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu held the first meeting of the Kremlin’s mobilization working group on December 29.[60] First Vice-Speaker of the Russian Federation Council Andrey Turchak reportedly serves as head of the working group, which enables representatives from both Russian houses of parliament, all major Russian political parties, leading war correspondents and milbloggers, and leaders of unspecified public organizations to discuss mobilization policies with MoD representatives.[61] The Kremlin likely hopes to use the working group to minimize criticism of authorities’ mishandlings of mobilization. Turchak claimed that the Russian MoD is “ready” to work in conjunction with other actors.[62] However, public acknowledgment of and a forum for discussion of MoD mistakes will likely become a further source of friction for the MoD. Shoigu alleged on December 29 that Russian officials had already managed to solve almost all mobilization problems quite quickly but conceded that mobilized soldiers’ needs require “constant long-term attention” and coordination between authorities of all levels.[63] A Russian milblogger incorrectly stated on December 27, and ISW therefore incorrectly reported, that the working group would meet on December 28.[64]
Russian authorities continue efforts to punish mobilized soldiers who refuse to fight and to publicize threats to mobilization dodgers. Russian news sources reported on December 27 and 28 that three Russian parliamentary deputies have proposed or are drafting bills to limit the rights of men who fled Russia since February 24, particularly while eligible for mobilization. The proposals include confiscation of property, restriction of the right to work in public service, and formal designation as “foreign agents.”[65] Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev posted on December 28 that Russia should ban the “traitors“ who left the country since February 24 from returning to Russia.[66] A group of wives of mobilized soldiers from Volgograd filed a complaint with the military prosecutor’s office on December 26 that Russian commanders are holding 9 mobilized soldiers who refuse to fight in a “prison for refuseniks” in Amvrosiivka, Donetsk Oblast.[67]
Russian authorities continue to invest in long-term Russian force generation capacity and long-term financial promises to soldiers contingent on the retention of territory currently occupied by Russia. Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed an order on December 23 to establish military training centers in 16 Russian universities across Russia.[68] The head of Russian-occupied Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, claimed on December 29 that his administration approved the provision of land plots from occupied Crimea to certain soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of and annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to face partisan pressure in occupied territories. Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan reported on December 29 that likely Ukrainian partisans blew up the Nova Kakhovka occupation police department head Yehor Kuzakov.[69] Khlan noted that he is awaiting additional information and official confirmation of the incident.
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to intensify law enforcement crackdowns in occupied areas in response to Ukrainian partisan activities. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on December 29 that Russian occupation authorities carried out another search raid for Ukrainian partisans in Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast.[70] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported on December 29 that Russian occupation officials are seeking to arrest as many saboteurs as possible and are exaggerating their successes in order to give favorable reports to Russian officials in Moscow.[71] A Russian source claimed on December 29 that the Federal Security Service (FSB) detained a Ukrainian resident in occupied-Kherson Oblast under accusations that he was transmitting information to Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) on the movements of Russian forces.[72]
Russian occupation authorities are facing pressure from farmers in occupied territories.[73] A Russian source claimed on December 29 that Ukrainian farmers in occupied Kherson Oblast face a lack of geocadastre (territorial land management) bodies and unprepared irrigation systems that are preventing them from resuming agricultural activities throughout Kherson Oblast.[74] The Russian source claimed on December 29 that Ukrainian farmers are requesting that Kherson Occupation Administration Head Vladimir Saldo urgently address threats to the upcoming agricultural season as Russian occupation authorities have failed to provide the promised support to Ukrainian farmers.[75]
Russian occupation authorities are continuing to seize and repurpose civilian infrastructure in occupied territories for military use. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on December 29 that Russian forces are concentrating troops and military equipment in abandoned schools in occupied territories.[76] The Ukrainian Resistance Center also reported on December 29 that Russian forces are using the basements of schools along the frontlines in the Vasylivskyi Raion, Zaporizhia Oblast, to deliberately stage provocations and create propaganda.[77] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 29 that Russian forces are continuing to use civilian healthcare networks in occupied territories to treat wounded servicemen and private military mercenaries.[78] The Ukrainian General Staff reported on December 29 that Russian forces seized a hospital in Bilovodsk, Luhansk Oblast, to treat more than 100 wounded Russian and Wagner servicemen and that Russian forces have placed approximately 120 wounded servicemen at a civilian hospital in Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast.[79] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported on December 29 that Russian forces have redirected medical workers and equipment from Kalinin Donetsk Regional Hospital to Mariupol.[80]
Russian officials continued efforts to consolidate administrative and economic control of occupied territories on December 29. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order on December 29 establishing Russian-appointed prosecutors in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia Oblasts.[81] The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on December 29 that Russian occupation authorities are incentivizing Ukrainian citizens to accept Russian passports in exchange for social payments.[82] Kherson Occupation Administration Head Vladimir Saldo stated on December 29 that external management of enterprises in occupied territories is irrelevant as all enterprises are now state-owned.[83] Saldo also stated on December 29 that managers of now state-owned enterprises will only continue their employment if they fulfill obligations set by occupation officials.[84] Saldo stated that approximately 26,000 enterprises are registered in Kherson Oblast and that Russian officials are working to re-register them within the Russian legal framework.[85]
ISW will continue to report daily observed indicators consistent with the current assessed most dangerous course of action (MDCOA): a renewed invasion of northern Ukraine possibly aimed at Kyiv.
ISW’s December 15 MDCOA warning forecast about a potential Russian offensive against northern Ukraine in winter 2023 remains a worst-case scenario within the forecast cone. ISW currently assesses the risk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine from Belarus as low, but possible, and the risk of Belarusian direct involvement as very low. This new section in the daily update is not in itself a forecast or assessment. It lays out the daily observed indicators we are using to refine our assessments and forecasts, which we expect to update regularly. Our assessment that the MDCOA remains unlikely has not changed. We will update this header if the assessment changes.
Observed indicators for the MDCOA in the past 24 hours:
- Ukrainian General Staff Deputy Chief Oleksiy Hromov stated on December 29 that the Russian military plans to transform the Machulishchy airfield in Belarus into a key Russian “logistics hub” and that unspecified work is ongoing at the Belarusian Machulishchy, Baranovichi, Luninets airfields, and their adjacent infrastructure to support Russian forces.[86] This indicator can support the MDCOA as well as the Kremlin’s longstanding campaign to establish a permanent Russian military presence in Belarus.[87]
Observed ambiguous indicators for MDCOA in the past 24 hours:
- The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) posted a video on December 29 showing unspecified Russian Western Military District elements (possibly of the 2nd Motorized Rifle Division, 1st Guards Tank Army) conducting tactical training with Belarusian personnel at an unspecified training ground in Belarus.[88] The Russian MoD reiterated that Russian and Belarusian units form a combined Regional Grouping of Forces within the Union State.[89]
- Geolocated video footage posted on December 28 shows a train with Russian military equipment, including tanks and trucks, moving west from the Krasny Bereg railway station in Gomel Oblast.[90]
- Ukrainian General Staff Deputy Chief Oleksiy Hromov stated on December 29 that the Russian military has 11,000 personnel and 400 pieces of equipment currently deployed in Belarus.[91] Hromov stated that 22,000 Russian personnel are currently deployed in Belarus, Bryansk, and Kursk oblasts and that this is half as many personnel (45,500) as Russia deployed to this area before the February 24 invasion. Hromov stated that even if all Belarusian combat forces join Russia, Russia would have only about 30,000 personnel. This is an ambiguous indicator because Russian forces do not need to replicate the February 2022 force array to conduct a diversionary attack against northern Ukraine. Russian commanders might also believe, likely mistakenly, that a smaller force could succeed this winter where a larger one failed in 2022.
Observed counter-indicators for the MDCOA in the past 24 hours:
- Ukrainian General Staff Deputy Chief Oleksiy Hromov stated on December 29 that Russia removed all the artillery shells and MLRS ammunition that Russia established in Belarus before the February 24 invasion and that Belarus has limited capabilities to resupply a Russian offensive group with ammunition.[92]
- The Ukrainian General Staff reiterated that it has not observed Russian forces in Belarus forming a strike group as of December 29.[93]
- Deputy Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated on December 29 that persistent reports about a possible Russian invasion from Belarus are part of a Russian information operation to demoralize Ukrainians.[94]
- Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate Chief Kyrylo Budanov said on December 29 that Russian activity in Belarus is part of an information operation to divert Ukrainian forces away from Ukraine’s south and east.[95] Budanov also stated that he has not observed Russian forces preparing to invade Kyiv City or northern Ukraine.[96]
- Head of Ukraine’s State Border Guards Service Serhiy Deyneko stated on December 28 that Russian and Belarusian forces do not have real capacities to attack Ukraine and that Ukrainian authorities have not observed Russian forces in Belarus forming a strike group. He also stated that Belarus’ 10,000 combat personnel are not capable of attacking Ukraine.[97]
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.
[1] https://suspilne dot media/348422-ponad-120-raket-vipustila-rosia-po-ukraini-29-grudna-so-vidomo/ ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...
[8] https://www.liga dot net/ua/politics/interview/kirill-budanov-letom-2023-go-ya-sovetuyu-poehat-v-otpusk-v-krym
[10] https://mid dot ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1845943/
[11] https://mid dot ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1845943/
[12] https://mid dot ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1845943/
[13] https://mid dot ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1845943/
[19] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/12/29/putin-podpisal-zakon-o-pozhiznennom-lishenii-svobody-za-diversionnuyu-deyatelnost; http://publication.pravo dot gov.ru/Document/View/0001202212290038?index=0&rangeSize=1
[20] https://www.interfax dot ru/russia/879159; https://t.me/boris_rozhin/73939; https://meduza dot io/news/2022/12/29/putin-podpisal-zakon-priravnivayuschiy-georgievskuyu-lentu-k-simvolam-voinskoy-slavy-teper-za-ee-oskvernenie-grozit-shtraf-i-lishenie-svobody; https://www dot kommersant.ru/doc/5756803
[28] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B... ua/2022/12/29/protyagom-tyzhnya-syly-oborony-prosunulys-na-vidstan-do-25-km-v-napryamku-kreminnoyi/
[29] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B... https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/12/29/protyagom-tyzhnya-syly-oborony-prosunulys-na-vidstan-do-25-km-v-napryamku-kreminnoyi/
[40] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/12/29/protyvnyk-namagayetsya-za-bud-yaku-czinu-zahopyty-bahmut-oleksij-gromov/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...
[41] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/12/29/protyvnyk-namagayetsya-za-bud-yaku-czinu-zahopyty-bahmut-oleksij-gromov/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...
[42] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2022/12/29/protyvnyk-namagayetsya-za-bud-yaku-czinu-zahopyty-bahmut-oleksij-gromov/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...
[48] https://suspilne dot media/347812-na-hersonskomu-napramku-rosijski-drg-sodna-forsuut-dnipro-erin/
[55] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B... ua/2022/12/28/oznak-formuvannya-vorogom-udarnogo-ugrupovannya-na-zaporizkomu-napryamku-narazi-nemaye-yevgen-yerin/
[65] https://www.rbc dot ru/politics/27/12/2022/63ab3c039a7947641c9ae831; https://t.me/mobilizationnews/6467; https://t.me/lentachold/56631
[68] http://publication.pravo.gov dot ru/Document/View/0001202212270042?index=0&rangeSize=1; https://t.me/news_sirena/9247; https://t.me/Aksenov82/1966
[70] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/12/29/okupanty-posylyly-represyvni-zahody-v-tokmaku/
[71] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/12/29/okupanty-posylyly-represyvni-zahody-v-tokmaku/
[76] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/12/29/rosiyany-rozmistyly-sklady-bk-v-shkolah-zaporizkoyi-oblasti/
[77] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/12/29/rosiyany-rozmistyly-sklady-bk-v-shkolah-zaporizkoyi-oblasti/
[82] https://sprotyv.mod dot gov.ua/2022/12/29/vorog-sponukaye-lyudej-otrymuvaty-pasport-rf-v-obmin-na-soczialni-vyplaty/
[91] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWRZ7gEgbry5FI2-46EX3jA 1%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8F%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%97%D0%BD%D0%B8
[94] https://www.presscenter dot company/rf-robyt-vkydy-pro-nastup-z-bilorusi-shhob-sprovokuvaty-paniku-u-suspilstvi-minoborony/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vogMwWMLBOU&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...
[95] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/ukraina-chekaie-na-postavky-peredovoi-zbroi.html
[96] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/ukraina-chekaie-na-postavky-peredovoi-zbroi.html
understandingwar.org
3. Xi and Putin Meet Again, Two Strongmen in a Weak Moment
Excerpts:
“Xi remains deeply wedded to Putin’s war, because China has much to gain geopolitically from a Russian victory and potentially even more to lose from a Russian defeat,” said Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “In other words, Xi and Putin’s marriage of convenience will endure, not despite Russia’s battlefield setbacks, but because of them.”
Mr. Xi may also be emboldened because he has yet to pay a prohibitive cost for his measured support of Russia. Far from being diplomatically isolated, Mr. Xi has spent the last three months re-engaging with world leaders, many of whom have longed to meet face-to-face with the leader of the world’s second-largest economy.
China has seen relations stabilize with the United States to a degree after Mr. Xi met with President Biden at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. The Chinese leader has also had productive meetings with European leaders, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France.
“A renewed demonstration of Sino-Russian solidarity may force Western countries to begrudgingly reassess their willingness to collectively pressure China to rein in its support for Russia,” Mr. Singleton said.
Xi and Putin Meet Again, Two Strongmen in a Weak Moment
By David Pierson and Anton Troianovski
Dec. 30, 2022
Updated 7:04 a.m. ET
Russia is isolated by its invasion of Ukraine and needs China more than ever. But China, facing a Covid crisis, is in no position to risk sanctions.
nytimes.com · by Anton Troianovski · December 30, 2022
President Vladimir Putin of Russia speaking from Moscow via video with China’s leader Xi Jinping on Friday.Credit...Mikhail Kuravlev/Sputnik, via Reuters
When China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia declared a “no limits” partnership 10 months ago, the pair projected an aura of strength in a direct challenge to the United States and the West.
As the two leaders met again on Friday via video, they found themselves in positions of weakness, encumbered by geopolitical and economic threats to their informal authoritarian alliance. Both now have little room to maneuver, making the relationship all the more important, albeit also a lot more complicated.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin has been isolated and highly dependent on China to maintain a semblance of diplomatic and financial stability. His needs have intensified in recent months as the Kremlin has suffered setbacks on the battlefield in a grinding war that has killed thousands of civilians and left Russia’s economy vulnerable.
This month, Mr. Xi has seen his much-touted pandemic strategy unravel and Covid cases explode, marring the image he wants to present to the world as the leader of a superior political system. With the current crisis, he can neither fully throw his weight behind Mr. Putin and risk sanctions, nor abandon him and risk losing a key geopolitical ally to counter the West.
They betrayed little shakiness in their situations on Friday, pointing in public statements to beefier bilateral trade and growing military cooperation. In a seeming nod to the strains, Mr. Xi acknowledged the “complicated and quite controversial international situation,” but said China was ready to improve “strategic cooperation” with Russia, according to a broadcast about the meeting on Russian state television.
“As long as the two have the U.S. as their shared common threat, the convergence of their interests will outweigh the divergence,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based research institute.
Mr. Putin used the call Friday to reaffirm Russia’s ties with China, calling them “a model of cooperation between major powers in the 21st century,” according to a readout by the Kremlin. He invited Mr. Xi to visit Moscow in the spring and suggested the two countries could overcome the “unfavorable external situation” together.
“We share the same views on the causes, course and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape, in the face of unprecedented pressure and provocations from the West,” Mr. Putin said.
Russia sees China as its most important partner in its existential showdown with the West. Every word of support from Mr. Xi is amplified as evidence that Mr. Putin is far from alone in taking on Europe and the United States.
A column published by Russia’s RIA Novosti state news agency on Thursday showed how the Kremlin is lauding the partnership while trying to reduce expectations for how much support China will provide. Without providing proof, the article claimed that China was working to help Russia get around sanctions. This was happening “not as quickly or simply as Russia would like,” the article said, “but what matters is the process itself.”
In a sign of Moscow’s growing reliance, China accounted for more than a quarter of Russia’s total imports in the first nine months of this year, compared to less than 15 percent in the first nine months of last year, according to Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance in Washington. Of the new car brands still sold on the Russian market, the only foreign ones — 11 of them — are Chinese, Russian state media reported this month.
With Europe scrambling to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels, China has become a critical customer. Three times this month, the Russian energy giant Gazprom announced breaking its record for single-day gas deliveries to China.
On Friday, the two leaders vowed to deepen their ties. Mr. Xi called for China and Russia to “provide each other with opportunities for development,” while Mr. Putin aimed to “strengthen cooperation between Russian and Chinese forces.”
“Military and military-technical cooperation occupies a special place in our relations, in our ties,” said Mr. Putin. “It facilitates the security of our countries and supports stability in key regions.”
Since China is loath to violate sanctions, Western officials say that Russia has turned to two other friendly countries — Iran and North Korea — for emergency deals to try to address its shortfall of arms and ammunition.
But China’s partnership is important for the broader symbolism of Moscow helping to lead an anti-Western front — a key propaganda trope for Mr. Putin, who often rails against a Western “golden billion” purportedly trying to dominate and exploit the rest of the world’s population.
“The West is trying to pressure with all its strength Beijing and the head of the People’s Republic of China personally, demanding they turn away from Moscow and Putin,” the marquee weekly news show on Russian state television, Vesti Nedeli, declared last Sunday. “But Beijing’s position is unchanged.”
Their propaganda on Ukraine often aligns, deriding the United States for pushing Russia into war and taking aim at the more muscular posture of NATO.
“The U.S. is making all efforts to cheer Ukraine on so it can continue its conflict with Russia,” China’s state-owned Global Times wrote in a recent commentary. “Washington hopes to use the war to completely crush Moscow, including making the latter lose its moral position within the international community.”
Chinese scholars also emphasize that the majority of countries in the world have not agreed to join sanctions against Russia, and challenge the notion that Moscow is isolated beyond the West and its allies.
“The United States and the European Union do not represent the world,” said Xu Poling, a Russia expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
China’s backing comes in spite of the complications the invasion has created for Mr. Xi. Beijing had been building on its economic ties with Western allies, but the war has moved Europe more in line with U.S. efforts to undercut China. The invasion has also drawn more attention to China’s threats to invade the self-governing island of Taiwan. And the disruption to Europe’s economy from soaring energy prices has roiled one of China’s biggest export markets.
There are hints that Mr. Xi’s unease over the war is growing. During a meeting in Beijing last week, he expressed hope to Dmitri A. Medvedev, the close Putin ally and former Russian president, that “all parties concerned will exercise rational restraint.” Mr. Putin also alluded to Mr. Xi’s discomfort when he acknowledged the Chinese leader’s “questions” and “concerns” at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Uzbekistan in September, when the two leaders last met.
Western leaders have urged Mr. Xi to do more to persuade Mr. Putin to stop the war. But the Chinese leader has told European officials that they overestimate the role he can play as a mediator, according to two officials with knowledge of the discussions. The officials added that the Chinese and Russian leaders shared a strong personal relationship, with Mr. Xi saying he trusted Mr. Putin.
True as that may be, Mr. Xi can ill afford to abandon Mr. Putin or watch the Russian leader’s ambitions collapse in Ukraine, analysts say. Doing so would critically weaken a key geopolitical ally and leave China to compete with the United States on its own at a time when the Chinese leader faces mounting foreign and domestic challenges.
Chief among them is a spiraling Covid outbreak that is threatening chaos in a nation where many people have already been pushed to their limits by years of lockdowns, quarantines and economic stagnation. The crisis — unfolding every day in hospitals and funeral homes across the country — has undermined the way the ruling Chinese Communist Party has portrayed Mr. Xi’s expert handling of the pandemic, particularly in the way it boasted low death tolls compared to the West.
Mr. Xi is also being stung by rising pressure from the United States. Few things have been of greater consequence than the sweeping restrictions introduced in early October on semiconductor technology exports to China, which could set back the country’s high-tech industries by years.
“Xi remains deeply wedded to Putin’s war, because China has much to gain geopolitically from a Russian victory and potentially even more to lose from a Russian defeat,” said Craig Singleton, a senior China fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “In other words, Xi and Putin’s marriage of convenience will endure, not despite Russia’s battlefield setbacks, but because of them.”
Mr. Xi may also be emboldened because he has yet to pay a prohibitive cost for his measured support of Russia. Far from being diplomatically isolated, Mr. Xi has spent the last three months re-engaging with world leaders, many of whom have longed to meet face-to-face with the leader of the world’s second-largest economy.
China has seen relations stabilize with the United States to a degree after Mr. Xi met with President Biden at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. The Chinese leader has also had productive meetings with European leaders, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France.
“A renewed demonstration of Sino-Russian solidarity may force Western countries to begrudgingly reassess their willingness to collectively pressure China to rein in its support for Russia,” Mr. Singleton said.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff Keith Bradsher and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting. Olivia Wang contributed research.
nytimes.com · by Anton Troianovski · December 30, 2022
4. To Deter China, Taiwan Must Prepare for War
Key point: Taiwan's buy-in. We cannot want it more than them.
The comparison to Ukraine shows that Ukraine had a history and culture of resistance and although the US and NATO assisted them, the Ukrainians developed resistance capabilities organically. Now we are pushing resistance and other defense capability and strategy upon Taiwan.
Excerpts:
To the dismay of U.S. officials, the asymmetric strategy also hasn’t been implemented over the past five years, as it has clashed with the political prerogatives of Taiwan’s leaders. Raising the specter of war—a precondition for increasing defense spending and shifting military strategies—is unpopular. Conscription has been an especially tough sell to the younger voters it directly affects. And many in the political opposition and military believe that the strategy will do little good without a firm U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense.
...
America has given Taiwan both a friendly push and a hard shove in the National Defense Authorization Act. The military training and weapons are meant to show Taiwan that Washington isn’t sitting on the sidelines as it asks Taipei to reform its military. By preparing Taiwan to fight now, the U.S. is hoping that the fight never comes.
Taiwan’s buy-in is necessary for this approach to work. If Taiwan’s political and military leadership doesn’t fully embrace the new defense strategy, no realistic amount of U.S. aid would be able to counter China’s immense advantages. And if Taipei isn’t seen as investing in its own defense, it’s doubtful that the American public will be willing to send its own troops to Taiwan to fight and die in a war. The recent move to lengthen conscription partly remedies that. By pushing Taiwan’s people closer toward a wartime mentality, Taipei hopes that it can open the political space for more defense spending and reforms, which will show Washington that it is taking its defense seriously.
But if Taiwan is to follow up with further progress—including more investments in asymmetric weapons and a well-trained reserve force—it must continue chipping away at its longstanding aversion to thinking about war. For peace to prevail, Taiwan’s interest in meeting its defensive needs must exceed America’s.
To Deter China, Taiwan Must Prepare for War
Military conscription is a good start, but leaders in Taipei need to act with greater urgency still.
By Ethan Kessler
Dec. 28, 2022 6:23 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-preserve-peace-taiwan-must-prepare-for-war-war-military-weapons-missiles-taipei-11672263297
China’s threat to take Taiwan by force looks more credible by the day as Beijing’s military power grows. The U.S. is taking the lead in response. But that needs to change if Taiwan wants to secure itself from invasion.
China’s Communist Party promised in 1949 to absorb Taiwan, where the Chinese Nationalists had fled in defeat. For most of the seven decades since, China’s lackluster military capabilities meant it couldn’t enforce the claim. That has changed. Following years of increased military spending and modernization, China is gaining the capacity to blockade and even invade Taiwan. From 2012 to 2021, Beijing nearly doubled its military spending to about $210 billion a year, according to a recent Pentagon estimate. This increased spending has bought enhanced air, naval, missile and amphibious-assault capabilities.
In response, Washington wants to make Taiwan more defensible. The National Defense Authorization Act, which President Biden signed last Friday, provides $10 billion in new security assistance to Taiwan over the next five years. And like the Trump administration, the Biden administration has pressed Taipei to steer its arms purchases and force structure toward an asymmetric defense strategy aimed at offsetting Taiwan’s weaknesses with relatively cheap, easily distributed weapons.
This strategy was first proposed in 2017 by Taiwan’s then-military chief, Lee Hsi-min, and it calls for Taiwan to emphasize weapons such as mines, mobile antiship missiles and mobile air defenses over legacy systems such as fighter jets, large frigates and tanks. Washington’s hope is that this strategy can build a Taiwanese force capable of holding off a Chinese invasion until U.S. forces arrive.
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Taiwan is taking action as well. On Tuesday, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen announced that the tour of service for military conscripts will be lengthened to one year from four months.
In other respects, however, Taiwan has yet to respond to China’s rising power with the necessary urgency. Through the 2010s, Taiwan’s annual defense spending hovered around $11 billion and recently exceeded $19 billion in the 2023 proposed budget. As a percentage of gross domestic product, that’s less than what Israel and Estonia, two similarly precarious countries, spend on their militaries.
To the dismay of U.S. officials, the asymmetric strategy also hasn’t been implemented over the past five years, as it has clashed with the political prerogatives of Taiwan’s leaders. Raising the specter of war—a precondition for increasing defense spending and shifting military strategies—is unpopular. Conscription has been an especially tough sell to the younger voters it directly affects. And many in the political opposition and military believe that the strategy will do little good without a firm U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense.
America has given Taiwan both a friendly push and a hard shove in the National Defense Authorization Act. The military training and weapons are meant to show Taiwan that Washington isn’t sitting on the sidelines as it asks Taipei to reform its military. By preparing Taiwan to fight now, the U.S. is hoping that the fight never comes.
Taiwan’s buy-in is necessary for this approach to work. If Taiwan’s political and military leadership doesn’t fully embrace the new defense strategy, no realistic amount of U.S. aid would be able to counter China’s immense advantages. And if Taipei isn’t seen as investing in its own defense, it’s doubtful that the American public will be willing to send its own troops to Taiwan to fight and die in a war. The recent move to lengthen conscription partly remedies that. By pushing Taiwan’s people closer toward a wartime mentality, Taipei hopes that it can open the political space for more defense spending and reforms, which will show Washington that it is taking its defense seriously.
But if Taiwan is to follow up with further progress—including more investments in asymmetric weapons and a well-trained reserve force—it must continue chipping away at its longstanding aversion to thinking about war. For peace to prevail, Taiwan’s interest in meeting its defensive needs must exceed America’s.
Mr. Kessler is a research associate in the Lester Crown Center on U.S. Foreign Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
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Appeared in the December 29, 2022, print edition as 'To Deter China, Taiwan Must Prepare for War'.
5. The Biden administration tries to stop Iran from supplying Russia with drones.
Everything in war is simple but even the simplest thing is hard.
Excerpts:
But all three approaches have run into deep challenges, and the drive to cut off critical parts for the drones is already proving as difficult as the decades-old drive to deprive Iran of the components needed to build the delicate centrifuges it uses to enrich near-bomb-grade uranium.
The administration’s scramble to deal with the Iranian-supplied drones comes as Ukraine is using its own drones to strike deep into Russia, including an attack this week on a base housing some of the country’s strategic bombers. And it comes as officials in Washington and London warn that Iran may be about to provide Russia with missiles, helping alleviate Moscow’s acute shortage.
The Biden administration tries to stop Iran from supplying Russia with drones.
By David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt
Dec. 29, 2022
nytimes.com · by Eric Schmitt · December 29, 2022
Rescue workers combing through the rubble of a residential building in Kyiv that a Russian drone hit in October.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has launched a broad effort to halt Iran’s ability to produce and deliver drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, an endeavor that has echoes of its yearslong program to cut off Tehran’s access to nuclear technology.
In interviews in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, a range of intelligence, military and national security officials have described an expanding U.S. program that aims to choke off Iran’s ability to manufacture the drones, make it harder for the Russians to launch the unmanned “kamikaze” aircraft and — if all else fails — to provide the Ukrainians with the defenses necessary to shoot them out of the sky.
U.S. forces are helping Ukraine’s military target the sites where the drones are being prepared for launch — a difficult task because the Russians are moving the launch sites around, from soccer fields to parking lots. And they are rushing in new technologies designed to give early warning of approaching drone swarms, to improve Ukraine’s chances of bringing them down, with everything from gunfire to missiles.
But all three approaches have run into deep challenges, and the drive to cut off critical parts for the drones is already proving as difficult as the decades-old drive to deprive Iran of the components needed to build the delicate centrifuges it uses to enrich near-bomb-grade uranium.
The administration’s scramble to deal with the Iranian-supplied drones comes as Ukraine is using its own drones to strike deep into Russia, including an attack this week on a base housing some of the country’s strategic bombers. And it comes as officials in Washington and London warn that Iran may be about to provide Russia with missiles, helping alleviate Moscow’s acute shortage.
nytimes.com · by Eric Schmitt · December 29, 2022
6. Is Iran On the Verge of Another Revolution?
Conclusion:
But if we’ve learned any thing from the history of revolutions — including Iran’s own — it is that change can come slowly, and then all at once.
Is Iran On the Verge of Another Revolution?
The protests have not ended and the ayatollahs are afraid. Plus a selection of the writer’s favorite columns.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-12-30/iran-s-protests-may-be-a-harbinger-of-a-revolution-to-come?sref=hhjZtX76
ByBobby Ghosh
December 30, 2022 at 12:00 AM EST
What to expect in 2023:
Going into the new year, I’ll be keeping my eye on two stories that could dramatically change the geopolitics of the Middle East: the protests in Iran and the general election in Turkey. I’ll focus on the former here, and come back to the latter in a column soon.
The most important question about the Iranian protests is whether they can evolve into a full-blown revolution capable of toppling the Islamic Republic. Some argue that bridge has already been crossed: What began as sporadic demonstrations against the restrictive dress code for women — sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police — has long since evolved into full-throated calls for the downfall of the regime.
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Three months after Amini’s death, the protests have lasted longer than any previous expressions of public dissent since the 1979 Islamic revolution that led to the creation of the theocratic state. In the past four decades, the political system installed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has left Iran isolated in world affairs, debilitated its economy and denied its people both economic opportunities and a political voice.
Unsurprisingly, the mostly young protesters want the entire edifice of that state dismantled. The regime’s heavy-handed crackdown — including mass imprisonment, rape, torture and executions — has not cowed them. If anything, their voices have grown more strident, their demands more insistent. It is the regime that is showing signs of strain: Diverting an aircraft to prevent the family of a famous soccer player from leaving the country, apparently because he is a prominent supporter of the protests, smacks of desperation. Calls for the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are now routine, as are the destruction of statues and posters of the regime’s heroes, such as the military commander Qassem Soleimani.
Khamenei, having himself played an important part in the events of four decades ago, can hardly have missed the recent parallels. This may explain his vague offer of compromise: The possible suspension of the morality police. Just as in 1979, the protesters have rejected the ruler’s eleventh-hour olive branch.
But to bring him down, the protesters will need to coopt some elements of the state; Khomenei was able to overthrow the Shah of Iran only after large sections of the armed forces mutinied. There have as yet been few signs of disgruntlement within the security apparatus, which is comprised of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military, the paramilitary Basij and the police.
But if we’ve learned any thing from the history of revolutions — including Iran’s own — it is that change can come slowly, and then all at once.
From the year behind us:
Pakistan’s Floods May Reveal China as a Fair-Weather Friend: Islamabad has tried to switch allegiance from Washington to Beijing, but when it came to the crunch Chinese assistance was conspicuously lacking. For one thing, the government of President Xi Jingping was beset with problems of its own. For another, China simply hasn’t developed the state infrastructure and bureaucratic system to respond quickly to disasters abroad
An Unarmed Putin Wants a Culture War With the West: With his troops suffering humiliating reversals in Ukraine, the Russian president has been trying to rally international opinion behind him by retreading old anti-Western tropes from the Soviet era. But if anything, Moscow had more pomp as a cultural beacon under the USSR than it has soft power with Putin now.
Tunisia’s Democracy Is Collapsing. Biden Shouldn’t Just Stand By: Kais Saied’s consolidation of power has gone unchallenged by Western powers and by an American president who promised to make the promotion of democracy the leitmotif of his foreign policy. It is not too late to undo the damage.
US Should Brace for More Pushback From Erdogan: With Turkey’s economy in tatters and an election looming, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will need every distraction he can engineer. Anti-Western foreign policies are red meat to his base, so the US and Europe should expect more provocations in the months ahead.
An Indian Restaurant’s Rise Mirrors Asheville’s: Chai Pani, which serves Indian street food, is the most outstanding restaurant in the US this year. This is a testimony to both the evolution of American tastes and the rise of small cities like Asheville, NC.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
To contact the author of this story:
Bobby Ghosh at aghosh73@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net
7. The Arsenal of Democracy Is Back in Business
Excerpts:
Successive U.S. presidents have long called on NATO’s European allies to boost their defense spending, a campaign that at times caused rifts within the alliance and diplomatic headaches, particularly under former U.S. President Donald Trump. But Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 slowed the decline in Europe’s overall defense spending. Its full-fledged invasion in February has completely reversed the trend, as more NATO allies announce massive increases in defense budgets.
In 2014, just four NATO allies—the United States, United Kingdom, Estonia, and Greece—met the alliance’s benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. By 2022, 10 of NATO’s 30 members are slated to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. Some countries are going even further: Estonia pledged to boost its annual defense budget by 42 percent in 2023 and committed to spending 3 percent of its GDP on defense.
Finland and Sweden, which declared their intent to join NATO this year after Russia’s invasion, have also announced plans to increase their defense spending. Finland already spends around 2 percent of GDP on defense, while the Swedish government has unveiled plans to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2023. The two Nordic countries’ accession to NATO has been delayed by Turkey, but U.S. and NATO defense officials say they expect Turkey to approve their membership by next year.
The Arsenal of Democracy Is Back in Business
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/12/29/arms-sales-united-states-nato-russia-ukraine-war-the-arsenal-of-democracy-is-back-in-business/
Proposed U.S. arms sales to NATO almost doubled this past year as Russia’s aggression spooked the continent.
By Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. You have opted out of receiving all news alerts. To begin receiving alerts and manage your settings, click here.
Ukrainian soldiers load a truck with a U.S.-made FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile on its delivery.
Ukrainian soldiers load a truck with a U.S.-made FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile on its delivery at Kyiv's Boryspil Airport on Feb. 11. SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
DECEMBER 29, 2022, 2:04 PM
The United States nearly doubled the number and price tag of approved arms sales to NATO allies in 2022 compared with 2021, as alliance members scramble to stock up on high-end weapons in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In 2021, the U.S. government approved 14 possible major arms sales to NATO allies worth around $15.5 billion. In 2022, that jumped up to 24 possible major arms sales worth around $28 billion, including $1.24 billion worth of arms sales to expected future NATO member Finland, according to a Foreign Policy analysis of two years of data from the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency.
While not all arms sales will be finalized with the same numbers outlined in the proposals, the sharp uptick in these plans reflects a massive shift in Europe’s security landscape after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February. After some European countries allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy for decades, Russia’s invasion jolted Europe into a scramble to rapidly boost military spending.
“Everyone is trying to lock down arms sales deals as quickly as possible,” said one Eastern European defense official, who spoke to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity. “Russia’s invasion has brought a cold new reality to Europe.”
Some of the approved U.S. arms sales in 2022 were years in the making, such as Germany’s plan to purchase F-35 fighter jets in a deal worth around $8.4 billion. But many other major arms sales were rushed after the war broke out in Ukraine, as European countries on NATO’s eastern flank dashed to bulk up their own military capabilities in an effort to backfill the equipment they shipped to Ukraine and deter Moscow from any military incursions on alliance territory.
In early December, for example, the State Department cleared a possible sale of 116 M1 Abrams battle tanks to Poland, after an initial proposed plan to sell Poland 250 of such battle tanks was announced in April. The three Baltic countries on NATO’s vulnerable eastern flank—Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—all pursued plans to procure the types of U.S. long-range rocket and missile systems that helped Ukraine turn the tide of the war against Russia in recent months. The State Department approved a plan to sell up to six HIMARS rocket launchers to Estonia in July under its foreign military sales program, in a deal worth around $500 million. It approved a similar sale to Lithuania in November. A U.S. deal to sell HIMARS to Latvia is expected to be announced in early 2023, according to several U.S. and European officials familiar with the matter.
The data showcases how the United States remains a major arms supplier for allies in Europe in the short term, even as Europe’s own defense industries scramble to meet wartime demands for conventional arms and ammunition. The flurry of new defense sales comes amid growing concerns in the West that NATO countries are running out of excess military equipment and munitions to send to Ukraine to aid its fight against the Russian invasion. Defense officials and experts say Europe’s defense industrial base is struggling to rapidly expand its capacities to keep pace with the new demand.
“Europeans are getting extremely worried about not having enough of their own military equipment after sending so much to Ukraine,” said Rachel Rizzo, a scholar at the Atlantic Council. “The United States certainly plays a role in helping here, which is evidenced by the increase in arms sales in 2022 compared to 2021. However, it also highlights that Europe needs to get its act together in the security and defense realm.”
At this phase in the war, Ukraine is firing some 4,000 to 7,000 rounds of artillery a day, rapidly using up munitions delivered by the West shortly after they arrive. The United States has sent some 806,000 155 mm artillery rounds to Ukraine since Russia began its invasion. By comparison, the United Kingdom, which has one of Europe’s strongest militaries, has sent around 16,000 rounds to Ukraine as it grapples with its own supply shortages. In November, the British government notified one of the country’s top defense industry firms to expand its production of artillery shells.
On the other side of the conflict, however, Russia’s battered forces are also running low on ammunition after a series of stinging battlefield defeats that pushed them farther back into eastern Ukraine before winter set in. Moscow has sought to backfill its own dwindling munitions supplies through deals with Iran and North Korea. It has also taken some 20,000 tons of ammunition from neighboring Belarus, Lithuania’s defense minister, Arvydas Anusauskas, told Defense News in an interview this week. Under President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus has served as an accomplice and logistical staging ground for Russia’s invasion.
Successive U.S. presidents have long called on NATO’s European allies to boost their defense spending, a campaign that at times caused rifts within the alliance and diplomatic headaches, particularly under former U.S. President Donald Trump. But Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 slowed the decline in Europe’s overall defense spending. Its full-fledged invasion in February has completely reversed the trend, as more NATO allies announce massive increases in defense budgets.
In 2014, just four NATO allies—the United States, United Kingdom, Estonia, and Greece—met the alliance’s benchmark of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. By 2022, 10 of NATO’s 30 members are slated to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on defense. Some countries are going even further: Estonia pledged to boost its annual defense budget by 42 percent in 2023 and committed to spending 3 percent of its GDP on defense.
Finland and Sweden, which declared their intent to join NATO this year after Russia’s invasion, have also announced plans to increase their defense spending. Finland already spends around 2 percent of GDP on defense, while the Swedish government has unveiled plans to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2023. The two Nordic countries’ accession to NATO has been delayed by Turkey, but U.S. and NATO defense officials say they expect Turkey to approve their membership by next year.
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer
8. U.S. says it killed nearly 700 Islamic State suspects this year
Removing terrorists from the battlefield.
U.S. says it killed nearly 700 Islamic State suspects this year
More than 460 alleged ISIS operatives were killed in Syria, U.S. officials say. The rest were killed in Iraq.
The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · December 29, 2022
American military personnel, together with local forces in Iraq and Syria, killed nearly 700 suspected members of the Islamic State in 2022, officials said Thursday, highlighting an aggressive counterterrorism campaign that quietly endures five years after a U.S.-led coalition destroyed the militant group’s caliphate.
U.S. forces conducted 108 joint operations in the past year against alleged ISIS operatives in Syria and an additional 191 in Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement, which notes that American troops undertook another 14 missions by themselves and only inside Syria. Nearly 400 suspects were detained, it says.
“The emerging, reliable and steady ability of our Iraqi and Syrian partner forces to conduct unilateral operations to capture and kill ISIS leaders allows us to maintain steady pressure on the ISIS network,” Maj. Gen. Matt McFarlane, the top commander of the task force overseeing these operations, said in the statement.
Last year, following the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Biden declared at the United Nations that the United States would no longer “fight the wars of the past.” But in Iraq and Syria, the Pentagon maintains contingents of about 2,500 and 900 troops, respectively, who still occasionally come under enemy fire.
Biden, writing in an opinion piece published in July by The Washington Post, said that the Middle East is “more stable and secure” than when his administration took over in January 2021, highlighting the U.S. operation in February that killed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, then the leader of the Islamic State. The group has affiliates elsewhere, including in Afghanistan and parts of Africa.
Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, said in Thursday’s statement that the American military is approaching the campaign in three ways: Pursuing the group’s leaders through partnered operations with local forces, continuing to detain Islamic State members in the region, and attempting to prevent children from being radicalized.
The U.S. military in September disclosed that, combined with Syrian partner forces, it has carried out dozens of raids on the al-Hol detention camp in northeast Syria, a sprawling facility in the desert that houses tens of thousands of people, many considered to be Islamic State sympathizers, and either the wives or children of men who joined the militant group.
The United States has found a model to counter the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that is sustainable, said Col. Joe Buccino, a U.S. military spokesman. With Iraqi and Syrian forces taking a leading role, he said, no U.S. troops were killed or seriously injured during any of the counter-ISIS operations undertaken this past year.
But deployed U.S. forces continue to face other threats.
In Syria, operations were upended last month by Turkey, a NATO ally, which launched cross-border strikes on the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main U.S. partner against the Islamic State there. Turkey considers the SDF to be a segment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Washington and Ankara alike have designated a terrorist organization. The United States has drawn a distinction, however, saying that the SDF has been a reliable and courageous partner in countering the Islamic State.
U.S. forces paused partner operations with the SDF for days as Turkey threatened to launch a ground invasion into Syria, before resuming them early in December.
In both Iraq and Syria, U.S. forces also have had to remain vigilant against both the Islamic State and Iranian-backed militias that have sought to drive the United States out of the country. In one recent example, three U.S. troops were wounded in Syria in August when Iranian-backed militias launched rockets at two U.S. military positions. U.S. forces responded, military officials said, with attack helicopters that destroyed three vehicles and weapons used to launch the rockets.
ISIS fighters are thought to be behind a spate of deadly attacks this month targeting Iraqi troops.
The Washington Post · by Dan Lamothe · December 29, 2022
9. ‘Dangerously’ close: Video shows Chinese jet buzzing US spy plane
30 second video at the link. A good view (close-up) of the J-11 (which looks a lot like an F-15 to me - a layperson). We might say it does not look that close because afterall Tom Crusie gets a lot closer to enemy aircraft in Top Gun. That is what happens when films are our framwe of reference.
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/12/29/dangerously-close-video-shows-chinese-jet-buzzing-us-spy-plane/?utm
‘Dangerously’ close: Video shows Chinese jet buzzing US spy plane
Defense News · by Stephen Losey · December 29, 2022
A Chinese J-11 fighter pilot performed an unsafe maneuver during and intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft, the U.S. says.
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Thursday released video it said showed a Chinese fighter jet coming dangerously close to a U.S. Air Force RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea last week.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy pilot flew the J-11 fighter in front of, and within 20 feet of, the Rivet Joint’s nose during the Dec. 21 intercept, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.
A U.S. military spokesperson said the Chinese fighter first came about 10 feet from the Rivet Joint’s wing, before moving in front of the U.S. plane. In that position, the spokesperson said, it was unlikely the Chinese pilot could safely see the RC-135.
The spokesperson said the Air Force plane maintained its course and speed, and the Chinese fighter “dangerously drifted within 20 feet of the RC-135′s nose.”
This was “an unsafe maneuver ... forcing the RC-135 to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” INDOPACOM said.
The command also said the Rivet Joint was in international airspace at the time, conducting “routine operations.”
“The U.S. Indo-Pacific Joint Force is dedicated to a free and open Indo-Pacific region and will continue to fly, sail and operate at sea and in international airspace with due regard for the safety of all vessels and aircraft under international law,” the command said. “We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law.”
The U.S. military said this incident “reflects a concerning trend of unsafe and dangerous intercept practices by the PLA that are of grave concern to the United States.”
In June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that the U.S. has “seen an alarming increase in the number of unsafe aerial intercepts and confrontations at sea by PLA aircraft and vessels.”
About Stephen Losey
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
10. Tweaking the Inflation Reduction Act Can Strengthen Democracies’ Hand
But there is a large and growing faction in the US who do not want the US to lead on the world stage and think the only way is America first and only (yet the irony is these same people want to believe the US is the greatest and most powerful country in the world - I think the adage is true - you cannot have it both ways and "with great power comes great responsibility." I wish I could find a better citation for that statement than Spiderman - but I suppose I could go back to Cicero).
Conclusion:
The temptation for any leader to speak only to a domestic audience is strong. The crisis provoked by Russia, with the potential for more given the background challenge of China, demands a united front. President Biden’s openness to President Macron and Europe’s interests will help preserve such a front.
Tweaking the Inflation Reduction Act Can Strengthen Democracies’ Hand
“Made in Democracy” is a better label than “Made in America” if the goal is to strengthen our collective Western economies as well as our political alliances.
by John Austin Elaine Dezenski
The National Interest · by John Austin · December 25, 2022
By all appearances, French president Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Washington has reknit the relationship between the United States and its oldest ally—strained when the United States and other allies pulled the rug out from under France’s submarine sales to Australia last year.
The one notable remaining fly in the Franco-U.S. ointment—Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, which boxed France and other European allies out of expanded U.S. electric vehicle and other clean energy products’ development—got a Biden pledge to make a “tweak”. The president made no apologies for actions to create more American manufacturing jobs, but promised not to do so “at the expense of Europe.”
Should the president find a way to follow through on this promise, either through executive action or amended legislation, it would boost ongoing efforts among Western democracies to pull closer together and work in concert to counter the economic and political threats from Russia and China.
As we have written before, a more geopolitically potent path than trying to onshore everything, if democracies are to outcompete authoritarians for economic and political leadership, is an ally-shoring strategy. Ally-shoring means selectively leaning into and rewiring supply chains and increasing co-production arrangements with friends who share our democratic values and global interests. A lot of this is happening organically, as countries and global companies burned by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and skittish about relying on China for products and components (for both political and supply-chain reliability issues), seek both reliable and politically friendly environments that support economic stability, the rule of law, and intellectual property protections.
Meanwhile, trade between the United States and Europe, which includes a healthy share of intermediate goods (or component parts of finished products) is now booming. The United States is importing more goods from Europe than China this year (a sizeable change from past trends), while becoming a critical supplier of European energy and military hardware. European investment in the United States is also trending upward.
“Made in Democracy” is a better label than “Made in America” if the goal is to strengthen our collective Western economies as well as our political alliances. Working and producing together enhances our economic, political, and military hand in checking the behavior of authoritarians like Russia and China, who clearly are seeking to subvert the West-led economic and political order, and who are more than willing to use critical supply dependencies as political blackmail.
The temptation for any leader to speak only to a domestic audience is strong. The crisis provoked by Russia, with the potential for more given the background challenge of China, demands a united front. President Biden’s openness to President Macron and Europe’s interests will help preserve such a front.
John Austin directs the Michigan Economic Center and is a nonresident senior fellow with the Brookings Institution and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Elaine Dezenski is senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Image: Reuters.
The National Interest · by John Austin · December 25, 2022
11. Islamic State Sympathizer Arrested for Carrying Out Jerusalem Bombings
Islamic State Sympathizer Arrested for Carrying Out Jerusalem Bombings | FDD's Long War Journal
longwarjournal.org · by Joe Truzman · December 29, 2022
Israeli security forces gather in Jerusalem following an explosion at a bus stop which wounded at least seven people, two of them seriously, on November 23, 2022. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
On Tuesday, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and Israeli Police announced the arrest of 26-year-old Aslam Faroukh, an Islamic State sympathizer and a resident of Israel suspected of carrying out two bombing attacks in Jerusalem on November 23.
Israeli authorities alleged that Faroukh, a mechanical engineer by trade, learned to make explosive devices by researching the subject online. In the days following the bombings, investigators located a scooter used to transport materiel in the attack, five pipe bombs, clothing, a helmet and other items. Investigators also recovered an explosive device that was intended to be used in another attack by Faroukh.
On the day of the bombings, Faroukh drove his scooter to a hitchhiking station where he placed the first charge behind bushes, and the second charge was placed at Ramot station. Approximately one hour after placing the explosives, Faroukh detonated the charges via a cell phone. The bombings resulted in the deaths of two civilians and the injury of more than 20 people.
Following the bombings, Israeli authorities also arrested a suspect that was in the initial stages of carrying out an attack not related to the Jerusalem bombings. According to Israeli media, 23-year-old Hamed Othman from the village of Ein Naqquba, planned to use an explosive belt against IDF soldiers at a transport station in Jerusalem. Othman’s indictment is expected in the coming days, according to Israeli authorities.
In recent months, supporters of the Islamic State have been arrested by Israeli security forces for planning to carry out attacks against Israeli targets. On Oct. 2, the ISA announced it arrested six Arab Israelis with ties to the Islamic State who sought to carry out attacks against targets inside the country, including a Nazareth Muslim school.
On March 27, before carrying out a shooting attack that resulted in the deaths of two Israeli border police officers, Ayman and Khaled Ighbariyah uploaded a video to Facebook swearing bayat (oath of allegiance) to the Islamic State and its leader at the time, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi. [See FDD’s Long War Journal report, Islamic State Sympathizer Arrested for Carrying Out Jerusalem Bombings.]
Joe Truzman is a contributor to FDD's Long War Journal.
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Tags: Islamic State, Israel, Jerusalem
longwarjournal.org · by Joe Truzman · December 29, 2022
12. Assessing War Commentary by Sir Lawrence Freedman
This is a powerful self-critique of one's own analysis.
We should all be as self reflective as Sir Lawrence Freedman.
This is very much worth the read.
Assessing War Commentary
https://samf.substack.com/p/assessing-war-commentary?utm
Lawrence Freedman
3 hr ago
21
6
Following Sam’s example I thought I should try to assess my own performance over the past year. From the moment we set up the substack it was clear that the big issue for me was going to be the Russian threat to Ukraine. I wrote five pieces in the period before the war and another 35 once it started. In the pre-war pieces the question was whether there was going to be a war and if so what form it might take. Once the war began the issue became one of its likely course. The big questions were - and sadly still are - about who was ‘winning’, how long the fighting would last and what it would take to bring it to an end, along with the risk of nuclear use and the economic dimensions of the war.
Many of my posts have been as much backward as forward looking, trying to explain the background to events. When looking forward I have been wary of predicting. One person above all is responsible for this terrible wars, and while trying to make sense of Vladimir Putin’s priorities and presumptions is essential to any analysis, I cannot claim any special insight into his decision-making. Moreover, while one can normally expect a stronger force to prevail over a weaker one, the tactics and strategies employed make a difference, as they have done to a remarkable extent in this case. This war has been extremely focused, in that it has largely take place on Ukrainian territory. At the same time it has involved many countries, most committed to supporting Ukraine, a few sympathetic to Russia, others looking to mediate, and all taking to varying degrees an economic hit from the knock-on effects of the war.
My preference therefore has been to talk about trends, possibilities, and developments coming into view. Wars pass through stages, depending on the fortunes of the two sides in battle, their ability to keep forces supplied and reinforced, and the shifting impacts of such factors as terrain and weather. One also has to be aware that both sides are trying to shape perceptions. On the Russian side the habitual lying means that the inclination is just to dismiss whatever the Kremlin says, although it has been important to try to explore the ongoing debates in Moscow. On the Ukrainian side, at times military prospects have been played up to boost morale and to encourage support, and then played down, to underscore the dire consequences if more Western support is not forthcoming.
For all these reasons, it can be hard to look ahead much beyond the current stage of the war, never mind the one beyond. Nonetheless it is important to try. I have always accepted that my assessments may turn out to be wrong and misleading, but this is my area of professional expertise and it would have been a cop out to abandon the effort and say that it is all too uncertain.
I have also tried to guard against wishful thinking. I believe that this war is unusual in its moral clarity. Russia’s case for invasion was flimsy and fabricated. Even if the case had been stronger, neither the original act of aggression nor the cruelty and brutality of Russia’s methods could be justified. I felt sure from day one that this was not a war Russia could actually win, in the sense of being able to conquer, subjugate, and pacify Ukraine, and that its defeat is vital not only for the future of Ukraine but also for the future of European security and international order. Its military performance has been consistently poor. But none of that translates easily into a Ukrainian victory and even when Ukrainian forces have come out on top, the battles have been gruelling. The damage done by this unnecessary war will take years to put right. So when people ask me if I am optimistic, I say that I am in believing that Ukraine will prevail in the end but not when I think about the additional suffering this will entail.
Upgrade to paid
Before the War
My recollection was that I had been more sceptical of the likelihood of war than a review of the five pre-war posts suggest. Perhaps that was more of a reflection of my engagements on twitter where I regularly asked those who were confident of an imminent Russian invasion what it could achieve and how it could overcome Ukrainian resistance. I always understood that an invasion might come, and I was never ready to dismiss the warnings from US and UK intelligence on the grounds that they were fear-mongering and had been wrong over Iraq. The military build-up could not be easily dismissed. The issue for me was always one of whether Putin could extract a sufficient coercive benefit from the build-up, and then whether, if war did come, it might be confined to the Donbas.
My three starting assumptions were: first, that Russia’s superiority in land and air power should allow it to win its battles; second, that, despite this, wars rarely go to plan: and, third, Russia lacked the capabilities for the long-term occupation of a hostile country. This was set out in my first post, on 10 January. Before dashing into war, Russia might consider ‘the pitfalls that come with any military operation that promises early triumphs and territorial gains, but lacks a clear view of what happens next and what constitutes victory.’ I noted that the ‘longer a military campaign drags on the more the inherent uncertainties of war come into play’ and how even if ‘substantial amounts of territory are acquired then holding on to it would require a large occupation force which could soon become a target for guerrilla warfare.’ Military action would not solve any of his security problems and would make them worse. I concluded
‘For now he may have boxed himself in with a show of military strength, which isn’t quite enough, in support of a set of political demands, which go too far. The big uncertainty is about whether Putin has concluded that this is a now or never moment, that if he does not act now Ukraine will be drawn forever into NATO’s orbit and that Russia’s comparative weakness will be confirmed for the foreseeable future.’
Put that way I should have realised that the answer was probably that he had so concluded, but I never quite answered the question.
Instead by early February I was coming to the conclusion that Putin was playing the crisis quite cleverly and that he might consider that he had got enough out of the conflict without going to war. This was, I noted, a curious crisis which lacked direct threats and ultimatums, to the point where the Ukrainians were asking the Americans to tone down the talk of war because of the economic impact. Meanwhile Putin had been able to remind everyone that Russia was still a great power, gaining lots of diplomatic attention, and turned Belarus into a client state. He still appeared content to explore diplomatic options with foreign leaders. ‘It is therefore at least possible’, I suggested, ‘that he will carry on developing a mixture of options, seeing if anything changes, taking what he can from the situation, until it is time to start bringing his troops back home. Some crises do just fade away.’
By 20 February it was clear that this crisis was not fading away. There had been a staged ‘provocation’ in the Donbas, which was ‘how the playbook tells us that President Putin creates his pretext for war’ even though this had little to do with the ‘big Russian theme of the past few months, which is that urgent action is needed to redress the bias against Russia in the European security order.’ Most of the post was devoted to examining this theme, noting that at that moment Ukrainians would need ‘some convincing that they would not have been better off if NATO enlargement had come their way.’
Clearly I did not make the big call, which would have been to join those who had been convinced for some time that a big war was about to start. I was becoming increasingly persuaded of its possibility but it still seemed to be such a self-evidently stupid move that I assumed that Putin had better options. As this was a debate going on until the moment of invasion across Europe and North America, including in Russia, I was not alone in underestimating Putin’s stupidity. I am more self-critical over my focus in all these pieces on the Donbas as the most likely arena of military activity (which wasn’t really supported by the disposition of Russian forces but did seem more manageable) and where there might be a potential diplomatic breakthrough. I did not appreciate the extent to which the logic of the situation, and Putin’s own writings, meant that he was after a far more radical outcome than securing the future of the enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk, whatever the propaganda claims.
War Begins
My starting assumptions from before the war shaped my reactions to its onset. It was evident on 25 February that despite their advantages of ‘tactical surprise and potentially overwhelming numbers’ the Russians had performed poorly and that the Ukrainians had demonstrated a spirited resistance. I asked whether ‘Vladimir Putin has launched an unwinnable war.’
Though the Russians may eventually prevail in battle the first day of the war confirmed what has always seemed likely – that whatever the military victories to come this will be an extraordinary difficult war for Putin to win politically.
The Russians had underestimated the enemy, assuming ‘a decadent and witless opponent, ready to capitulate at the first whiff of danger.’ I expected them to improve their performance, which they turned out to be unable to do, but then made a number of points which I think remain valid:
- Morale and determination of those defending their country tends to be higher than that of those mounting an invasion, especially if they are unsure why they are doing so.
- Ukrainians were serious about defending their country and were resilient. They had not been rolled over.
- Putin’s failure to achieve a quick fait accompli supported those in the West who wanted to impose tough sanctions (and later military supplies).
- He was after regime change but he should have known through Western as well as Soviet experience how difficult that could be.
- Zelensky had emerged as a war leader. While he might need to be evacuated, ‘[s]o long as he can continue to operate in Ukraine his leadership serves as a rebuke to Putin.’
Two days later I felt I had understated the ‘faltering character of the first waves of the Russian offensive.’ This was not the ‘hybrid war’ advertised in advance. These first days would continue to affect Russian performance - though I still expected a degree of Russian military recovery and then a sequence ‘from the first stage of conventional warfare to the next stage of urban warfare and potentially the stage after that of resistance to an unwelcome occupation.’ The Ukrainians were dominating the information space. ‘While Russia offers a President who increasingly presents as a cartoon villain, Ukraine’s bravely and eloquently leads his people at a time of grave danger.’ Already, I noted, ‘the Russians appear to have opted for a more ruthless strategy, relying more on artillery, which in turn will add to the terrible cost to civilian life and property.’
Over the following days I saw no reason to change these original judgements. The importance of logistics and command structures was being thrown into sharp relief, helping explain why Russia could not make the most of its apparent superiority in combat power. Having observed the trouble the Russian military had got itself into I remained wary. On 2 March I wrote: ‘If only for reasons of prudence, and to avoid getting ahead of ourselves in the analysis, we must still assume that the Russians will be more successful in bringing the weight of their military strength to bear.’ And of course in the South they had been more successful. Moreover, they were now concentrating on attacking cities, although so far this had yet to affect civilian morale and was not being linked appropriately with military moves.
By now I was confident that ‘any possibility that this war would end with the complete subjugation of Ukraine by force of arms this has now gone’ but nor could I imagine an ‘end with Russian forces being chased out of the country.’ So most likely there would be a negotiated conclusion - but this would require that Ukraine emerged from this ordeal ‘as a free and independent country with no Russian troops on their soil.’ I concluded that it was now ‘as likely that there will be regime change in Moscow as in Kyiv … When we know more about how this war ends we will understand better how [Putin’s] regime ends.’
My understanding of the structure of the war was thus established early on and this has not really changed. Nor has my belief in the link between negotiations, Putin’s future and developments in the land war. I could not see how it suited either side for this war to continue indefinitely, but thereafter the more I looked into the issues surrounding a negotiated settlement the more pessimistic I became, without seeing any evidence that Putin was on his way out. By the late spring I had reached the view that the key to ending the conflict lay in the land battle. One way or another Russian forces would need to be chased out.
Indeed, so obvious did it seem that a cease-fire would serve Russian purposes by freezing the lines of contact that I was surprised that Moscow did not propose one. Another regular theme has been the need to counter the idea that somehow it is up to Ukraine to come up with proposals for a negotiated peace, including accepting the partition of their country. Behind this idea is often concern that if Ukraine keeps on pushing Russian forces back somehow Putin will be driven to use nuclear weapons. I have never found this a credible scenario because it missed the effective role of nuclear deterrence in Putin’s strategy, which he would not wish to jeopardise, in persuading the US and NATO not to get directly involved in the fighting. It was also irritating because it normally led to an argument for Ukrainian concessions, while ignoring the extent to which Russia had already escalated in its attacks on civil society.
I think I have done a reasonable job in following the course of the war, trying all the time to keep developments in the fighting in their wider political context. I overestimated the effect of sanctions at first before reaching a more balanced view, but I never expected these to be decisive. I picked up on the importance of the grain export issue, although oddly did not follow up on my initial post. I was conscious of the need to avoid getting caught up in the mood of the moment, for example when the war became much tougher for Ukraine over the summer. Here I could see how the Russians were exhausting themselves in the summer battles for little gain, while the Ukrainians were gaining in strength as Western support began to kick in. At the start of July I observed:
Both sides therefore must adapt, but, admittedly oversimplifying, the Russians are adapting into becoming more of a 20th Century army while the Ukrainians are becoming more of a 21st Century army. The Ukrainian adaption process will therefore taking longer but the prospect at the end is of a much more capable force.
Thus by late summer we were moving into a transitional stage with serious Ukrainian counter-offensives imminent. I was not surprised by the big Ukrainian breakthroughs of September. The Ukrainians now had the upper hand in the land battle, and I believe they still have it. They have come a long way from early preparations for street fighting with Molotov cocktails.
Over the past few months what has become extraordinary is the widening gap between Putin’s claimed objectives and the military capabilities at his disposal. There have been a number of points at which Putin might have moved to cut his losses - the retreat from Kyiv in late March or after the Ukrainian offensives in September. In both these cases he doubled down. In the summer I surmised that at some point the military might conclude that their position had become untenable and that could drive a move to a negotiated Russian withdrawal. Certainly the general staff have shown themselves ready to withdraw from hopeless positions, and it remains unlikely that they would fight for every inch of Ukrainian territory. But did I tend then to wishful thinking? Since early September my analysis of Putin and his strategy has become much bleaker. He has come to frame this war as a sort of civilisational struggle, far more than an effort to protect Russian-language speakers in the Donbas. As soon as the annexation of the four Ukrainian provinces were announced in September it was evident that he was making a serious peace deal almost impossible.
He also decided to throw everything available at the problem, hoping that a miserable winter without military progress would turn Ukrainians against the war. To this end the two key aspects of Putin’s new strategy in September were mass mobilisation, which enabled defensive positions to be reinforced and preparations for possible renewed offensives in the spring, and the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. On this second aspect, which I described graphically but too dismissively as a ‘sociopath’s tantrum’, I underestimated the efficiency and remorselessness with which Russia would conduct this campaign, although I still don’t think it provides any strategic benefit to Russia. On the first, the picture is more complex. The mobilisation was shambolic and the draftees were pushed into battle with inadequate kit and training. Russian tactics still appear to be unimaginative and shockingly wasteful of the lives of their own troops. The battle for Bakhmut in Donetsk, which appeared to offer the Russians the best hope of a new gain seems to be turning against them. I find it hard to see how they can generate sufficient combat power for new offensives and it is still likely that they will suffer reverses in the coming weeks.
Yet I wonder if I also underestimated the resilience of the Russian army and its ability to exploit mobilisation. It is easier to defend than to attack, and value can be found even in the most indifferent and unwilling soldiers, especially when they are considered expendable. Much military activity seems designed to tie Ukrainian forces down rather than achieve sustainable breakthroughs. There have been numerous reports of wiped-out units, low morale, and even some micro-mutinies, but so far nothing to suggest the sort of contagious collapse which would be truly dangerous for the Russian military. It may yet happen. Just as when there have been dramatic movements there is a risk of wishful thinking, assuming that the enemy is on the run, when everything slows down there is soon talk of stalemate. It needs a leap of the imagination to imagine what the war will look like in the spring. The key limiting factor for both sides will be production and supply and that will be one of the most important issues to watch over the coming months.
This was my last full assessment from late November. Lets see how long it lasts.
As has been the case from the start of the war … judgements on who is winning and losing continue to depend on the course of the land battle. But for now Russia lacks a credible concept of victory whereas it is possible to see how Ukraine might prevail, at least to the point of leaving Russia with holdings that are minimal and incoherent, with even Crimea left vulnerable.
13. West’s Double Standards: Pursuit For Human Rights Or A Tool For Dominance – OpEd
A pretty strong anti-US screed. No author is cited - not sure if this is a EURASIA editorial board position but I assume the primary author is probably from Pakistan.
West’s Double Standards: Pursuit For Human Rights Or A Tool For Dominance – OpEd
December 29, 2022 Eurasia Review 0 Comments
By Eurasia Review
With the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, it was hoped that the world especially the eastern part of the globe would have at least peace at borders and within. The regional power competitors were looking for regional prosperity through development and multilateralism.
However, the emerging situation in Ukraine since 2014 was a preparation for another regional chaos, which exacerbated as the Ukraine – Russia war. The US planned and secretly pushed the war to Russian borders. US since 2014, has provided around $22.1 billion to Ukraine in security assistance for training and equipment, and to help maintain its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO. In response to Russia’s unjustified war against Ukraine, US and its allies sided with Ukraine and supported it to safeguard it sovereignty and territorial integrity. Furthermore, other than military assistance, disinformation is also employed as one of the chief weapons to manipulate the international arena with fabrication.
Moreover, in controlling states’ behaviour, weapon modernization – a tactic to engage the world into arm race to ensure negative peace and stability through deterrence is massively employed. On one hand, through weapon modernization, countries come under heavy debt, the donors’ economy flourish and these recipient states suffer at home due to multiple encumbrances. Security assistance in that regard is a trap by U.S.
Secondly, under the banner of peace, U.S. itself is playing a role of war promoter by supplying all sorts of weapons and equipment to other states. It is arming the states with an aim to destabilize the globe at large. Despite Joe Biden’s election pledge to not “check [America’s] values at the door” when it comes to arms sales, the US has increased, not decreased, its weapons sales around the world, according to a new report of Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based thinktank.
Furthermore, as Pera Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) study, the United States accounted for 39 percent of major weapons deliveries for the five-year period from 2017–21, this is twice as large as Russia’s share, and over eight times China’s share to the world market. Defense Security Cooperation Agency director James Hursch said “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict has helped spur a greater demand for U.S. weapons, particularly from European nations who find themselves needing to replenish their own munitions stockpiles or have begun rethinking their own defense needs.”
“In this time of uncertainty, we have a clear way forward: Help Ukraine defend itself. Support the Ukrainian people. Hold Russia accountable,” Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State said in a statement in February this year when Russia launched an offensive against Ukraine. However, US arms sales would also pose challenges to its own security by promoting conflicts, provoking other regional powers, encouraging arms races, and drawing the US itself into excessive or counterproductive wars. US arms sales is also facilitating human rights abuses by associate states like India in Occupied territory i.e. Kashmir.
The definition of ‘Human’ and ‘Human Rights’ is different under western countries lens. From, last seven and half decades, the Muslims of Palestine and Kashmir are under occupation by Israel and India, but not a single western country came forward with military or security assistance. A question for Western Powers, ‘Who will hold India and Israel accountable?’. The hypocrite nature and double standards of major international players are making this world – a war zone. The issue of Palestine and Kashmir, and aggression done by Israel and India is far graver. However, no Human Rights advocate (Western States) pushed to at least take some proactive measures to end these two prolonged occupations.
The international arena is clouded with ‘Double Standards and Hypocrisy’. The US always wanted to be in East because of many reasons for instance natural resources, threat to its hegemony, emergence of a powerful eastern bloc, and to counter China and Russia’s rise as global powers. Furthermore, in this reference, one of the key measures taken were also to weaken the Muslim bloc by preoccupying Muslim countries with terrorism and counter-terrorism. Pakistan — the only nuclear Muslim state — is going through challenging time due to political instability and terrorism. Pakistan is suffering for being frontline non-NATO Ally in US war against terrorism. Additionally, in last few decades, we have witnessed a strong effort by some states to push propaganda against Islam and Muslims using overt and covert means including media outlets, academia, civil societies, and contaminating media (social, electronic, and print) with disinformation.
14. How China Is Using Vladimir Putin
Can this be exploited?
How China Is Using Vladimir Putin
Xi Jinping said his country and Putin’s Russia are friends with “no limits.” The reality is more complicated.
By Michael Schuman
The Atlantic · by Michael Schuman · December 29, 2022
Back in the 1960s, China and Russia squandered their chance to defeat the West when they became bitter rivals during the Cold War. Today, their presidents—who are expected to confer again this week—are trying to correct that fateful error. The world’s most powerful autocracies have joined forces for an assault on the liberal order led by the United States and its allies—a threat made all too real when Russia invaded democratic Ukraine in February with Chinese support. Authoritarianism was again on the march, and the world’s major democracies faced a grave challenge to their unity and resolve.
As 2022 has unfolded and the true nature of the Russia-China relationship has become more apparent, the danger it poses seems less acute. What has emerged is nothing like an axis of autocrats, but a lopsided partnership in which the terms are defined by its alpha member, Xi Jinping, primarily to serve China’s interests. This tells us a lot about the foreign-policy principles of China’s leaders and how those ideas may hamper Beijing’s quest to reshape the world order.
Historically, relations between China and Russia have been fraught with distrust and confrontation. The two came frighteningly close to nuclear war in the late 1960s, at the height of their Cold War schism. More recently, though, Beijing and Moscow have found common cause. Economically, they are mutually beneficial trading partners, with China’s industrial machine importing Russian oil, gas, coal, and other raw materials in exchange for high-tech Chinese goods.
Read: China is watching Ukraine with a lot of interest
Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have also forged a close personal connection. In 2019, Xi described Putin as a “best friend.” The glue of their friendship is a shared frustration with American global primacy. Each sees Washington as the main impediment to the achievement of their international ambitions. That’s why alarms rang more loudly in democratic capitals when Putin visited Xi in Beijing in early February and they issued a joint statement saying that “friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Fears rose in the U.S. and Europe that the two authoritarian states were embarking on a coordinated attack in Asia and Europe against the dominance of the West. Those fears seemed justified when, later that month, Putin launched his war against Ukraine.
The Sino-Russian partnership seemed to pay instant dividends. From Xi’s perspective, Putin’s invasion rolled back Western influence (or so it appeared) at little cost to China. Moscow, for its part, gained important political support from Beijing at a moment when the U.S. was aiming to isolate Russia on the world stage. Beijing has consistently blamed NATO for causing the war and supported Putin’s security concerns in Europe, which China’s top diplomat described earlier this year as “legitimate.”
Xi has also rebuffed calls to use his influence with Putin to help end the war or mediate between the Russian leader and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Although Xi told President Joe Biden in their November meeting that he was “highly concerned” about the Ukraine crisis, he also appeared to wash his hands of any responsibility to play a more active role in reaching a settlement. The official Chinese readout of the conversation stated that Beijing will encourage peace talks but looked forward to a dialogue between the U.S., NATO, and Russia.
Beijing’s diplomatic backing of Moscow’s position on Ukraine, as well as of Russia’s role in the world as a major power, has been of significant value to Putin. So has China’s more tangible assistance. As Russia’s financial and business ties to the West crumble under the weight of sanctions, trade with China has replaced some of the lost income. Total trade between China and Russia surged by nearly a third, to $172 billion so far this year. (By contrast, Russia’s trade with the U.S. plunged by about half, according to the latest available data.)
“For Russia, the key task for now is to generate enough revenue stream to pump money into the war machine, the budget, to feed all of the people who carry guns and support domestic security,” Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told me. “As the relationship between Russia and the West is being destroyed by both sides … the key revenue flows … are turning to the East, and China is the major player.”
Alexander Gabuev: Putin’s Doomsday scenario
Aside from the Ukraine war, and whatever its outcome, the China-Russia relationship is likely to deepen. Xi and Putin share a strong interest in reducing their economic reliance on the U.S. and its European and Asian partners, and both have a clear incentive to expand trade and investment between their economies. In a recent paper in the Naval War College Review, the scholars Andrew Erickson and Gabriel Collins foresee the potential for greater military cooperation between Russia and China as well. Moscow could enhance China’s naval capabilities by giving its fleet access to Russian ports in the Far East and by sharing technology, especially for undersea warfare. “Russian military pinnacle technologies,” they wrote, “could be coupled with China’s financial resources and industry to tip the Indo-Pacific security balance in favor of a Sino-Russian axis of autocracy at the expense of the United States and its allies and partners.”
Still, the events of the past year have shown that the “no limits” relationship does, in fact, have its limits. Beijing has not provided material support for Putin’s war effort, nor helped his government and banks evade the tough sanctions imposed by the West after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Self-interest is certainly at work here. In a March conversation, Biden warned Xi that China would face “consequences” if the Chinese leader directly aided Russia. That would likely entail sanctions on China—which the country, still heavily dependent on American and European trade, technology, and investment, can ill afford. And although Xi has backed Putin’s security concerns in Europe, he has shown some discomfort with Putin’s war. In their November meeting, Biden and Xi jointly criticized the Russian leader’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to Washington’s summary of the conversation.
Some analysts have interpreted a degree of waffling by Xi in that encounter as a signal that he is having second thoughts about his bet on Russia. Revealingly, perhaps, the bit about nukes was omitted from the account of the meeting released by China’s foreign ministry. But Chinese-Russian ties continue to develop. The same day that Zelensky was in Washington addressing Congress, Xi hosted former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Beijing.
Most likely, Xi’s diplomatic two-step is an indication of Beijing’s continuing attempts to play all sides. In that sense, it’s typical Chinese foreign policy. Beijing eschews the sort of commitments Washington has made to its close allies. China’s leaders prefer to maintain their own freedom of action, both at home and abroad, unfettered by promises made to other countries. Xi has enshrined this practice into his chief diplomatic program, the Global Security Initiative, a framework for reshaping the global order. Outlining its tenets, Xi declared that countries should “say no to group politics and bloc confrontation.” Attempts to form “small circles,” he said, are “doomed to fail.”
That means China will resist the formation of a new, authoritarian bloc with Russia (or any other countries) like the old Communist bloc that the Soviet Union once formed. Beijing’s commitment to such ideas suggests that it will never forge a true alliance with Russia that would require China’s leaders to coordinate policy more closely or that would bind them to mutual defense. Despite its current troubles, the Russian leadership may prefer it that way. Moscow may be wary of becoming too tied to—and too dependent on—China as well. The relationship between Xi and Putin is not equal. The Ukraine war has exposed Russia as a declining power, and its isolation from the West has left Putin little choice but to turn to Beijing. Xi is taking advantage.
Damir Marusic: Taiwan faces its Ukraine moment
For instance, China has been purchasing Russian oil at steep discounts. With access to dollar transactions curtailed by U.S. sanctions, Russian businesses are turning instead to the Chinese yuan, advancing Beijing’s longtime goal of promoting its currency as a rival to the greenback. The relationship is “more beneficial to China than for Russia,” Gabuev told me. “The asymmetry that was built into this relationship even before the war has been galvanized by the war.”
The stronger China becomes, the greater that imbalance grows, and the more Beijing may prod Moscow to align its interests with China’s—and the more nervous Russian leaders may become. “A Russia whose motives for aggressive military action in Europe likely include regaining the fear-based ‘respect’ accorded the Soviet Union in the past may tire of being viewed—and perhaps treated—as a vassal of China,” Erickson and Collins wrote. “Popular resentment at national subservience may prompt Putin or his ultimate successor to reset relations symbolically, and even substantively, away from Beijing’s preferences.”
The dynamics of Xi’s relations with Russia tell us that China isn’t a very good friend, and this will surely have consequences for Beijing’s quest for greater global influence. The U.S. has extended and entrenched its power through a network of close alliances and defense arrangements with nations that share values and foreign-policy objectives. China will do nothing of the sort. Beijing will more likely operate through bilateral ties, loose international groups (such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization), and initiatives it can control (such as its Belt and Road development program). It will engage with other countries only so far as such arrangements directly benefit it, as the partnership with Russia shows.
The question is whether such a strategy is sufficient for Beijing to achieve its foreign-policy ambitions. The U.S. certainly pursues its national priorities in its foreign affairs, sometimes ruthlessly, but it has also been willing to make sacrifices to promote its agenda—by, for instance, absorbing the costs of other countries’ defense. China has not always shunned such a practice. In historical periods when China was the unrivaled power in East Asia, the emperors of imperial dynasties often spent heavily on gifts and assistance for foreign states and dignitaries from the region. The display of generosity was designed to uphold the dynasties’ diplomatic system. Today’s Chinese leaders, however, seem much less willing to sacrifice wealth or make concessions in order to realize greater goals. Other countries, including Russia, may choose to respond in kind, limiting Beijing’s ability to exert its influence in a global struggle with the U.S. and its allies.
All the same, the China-Russia relationship could remain dangerous to the U.S. and democracy more broadly. Whatever differences or points of distrust they may have, Beijing and Moscow still share an objective of altering the world order, and they will continue to pursue that, within the constraints of their relations. “This is not an alliance,” Yun Sun, a director of the China program at the Stimson Center, told me. “Partners is a much-qualified word in terms of what each side will do for the other.” But Chinese leaders, she went on, “do see Russia as a useful partner—or useful instrument—in confronting the United States. That has not changed, and that is not going to change.”
The Atlantic · by Michael Schuman · December 29, 2022
15. US Military Develops AI Systems to Counter Iranian Drone Threats
I hope someone is sharing this with the ROK/US CFC and our Korean allies.
Video at the link.
US Military Develops AI Systems to Counter Iranian Drone Threats
https://armyintel.com/f/us-military-develops-ai-systems-to-counter-iranian-drone-threats
December 28, 2022
General Michael "Erik" Kurilla, Commander of US Central Command, announced during a press briefing that the US military has developed three innovative AI military systems to counter Iranian threats in the Middle East region. These systems, which cover land, sea, and air capabilities, are being implemented in response to the sophisticated and expanding capabilities of Iranian drones in the region. Kurilla specifically highlighted the increasing range and deadlier payloads of these drones as a threat to the US and its partner militaries.
"Iranian drones are a threat in the region. Iran commands an arsenal of drone systems ranging from small, short-range to modern intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance units. They are building larger drones that can fly further with increasingly deadly payloads," Kurilla explained.
To address these emerging threats, the US is downsizing its ground presence and instead relying on interconnected AI systems that will integrate with the region's militaries. One of these systems, Task Force 59, will consist of a fleet of over 100 maritime vessels based in Bahrain and Aqaba, Jordan, working together and communicating to provide a common operating picture to all participating militaries. Task Force 99, based in Qatar, will operate aerial drones equipped with tailored payloads and other capabilities to observe, detect, and gather data for an operations center. Task Force 39, the land component, will test concepts and technology, including a fleet of unmanned and manned ground vehicles, to defeat Iranian drones.
Kurilla also mentioned that the US is still partnering with Syrian Democratic Forces to counter threats from Daesh, and that while Daesh's capabilities in Iraq and Syria have been significantly degraded, the group still retains the ability to conduct operations in the region. The US military is continuing to advise, assist, and enable the Iraqi security forces in the fight against Daesh, and plans to release a full report on its Defeat Daesh operations in Iraq and Syria, including a tally of operations, raids, detentions, and killed Daesh operatives.
16. First Javelins. Then HIMARS. Now Patriot. What’s next?
Excerpts:
“The idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than is already going, there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world,” Biden said during the press conference with Zelenskyy. “They’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third World War.”
“Ukraine will defend itself at any cost,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said in an interview. “It will use the weapons that we have and even if we don’t have the weapons [that we need], we will fight with our teeth to get Russia out of our lands.”
First Javelins. Then HIMARS. Now Patriot. What’s next?
By PAUL MCLEARY, ERIN BANCO and LARA SELIGMAN
12/29/2022 04:30 AM EST
Politico
The Ukrainians want to continue pressing forward on the battlefield this winter to regain lost territory. Their success hinges in large part on new weapons shipments.
The massive influx of arms to Ukraine over the past 10 months marks a significant shift from Washington’s previous approach to Kyiv. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo
12/29/2022 04:30 AM EST
The evolving war in Ukraine will present difficult new tests in 2023 for the self-imposed red lines Western nations have placed on the weapons they provide to the country.
The bar might be harder to cross as the war grinds on, however as advanced fighter planes like American-made F-16s, U.S. and German-made tanks, and drones on the Ukrainian wish list await more difficult decisions in Western capitals about how much high-end equipment they can — or want to — send in the short-term.
The continued savage, close-quarters combat in Bakhmut and increasingly static frontlines in the south and east of the country augur a war that will grind on. The U.S. and Europe already have billions more in the pipeline to keep Ukraine fighting until a path to ending the war emerges. The question for the West and Ukraine now is: What sort of end should they be aiming for, and how do we get there?
That answer likely hinges in large part on what new weapons the U.S. and its European allies sign off on sending to Kyiv in the coming months, current and former officials say.
“What I think the U.S. and others are wrestling with now is: What does a successful endgame look like?” said one Western official, who like others interviewed requested anonymity to discuss strategy discussions. “When you’re looking at expanding, whether in terms of capability or literally expanding the battlefield in that way, there will be some questions raised about ‘does this make that day further off when we can get a kind of favorable conditions for the kind of settlement the Ukrainians want and we can support?’”
Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said miscalibrating could have disastrous consequences.
“The administration is going to use their best judgment on, how do you help Ukraine as much as possible without this growing into a conflict between the U.S. and Russia or NATO and Russia?” he said.
Ukraine’s leaders are arguing that longer-range missiles and modern battle tanks — the very weapons considered off-limits by many nations — are the only way to dislodge entrenched Russian positions and bring the conflict to an end. U.S. officials are still debating their effectiveness in the forthcoming fight and whether shipping them to Kyiv will provoke Russia into escalating the conflict to more dangerous levels that could prolong the timeline for potential peace talks.
Those talks don’t appear any closer, despite Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba’s suggestion this week that Kyiv is open to U.N.-brokered discussions by February, but only after Russia faces a war crimes tribunal. That’s a demand unlikely to be accepted by the Kremlin.
In the meantime, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s top priority remains more guns, ammunition and equipment. The leader reupped his pleas for more sophisticated weapons during his surprise visit to Washington last week. While President Joe Biden has remained unmoved by some of the requests for tanks, fighter planes and missiles, the visit did see some big announcements of expanded military support. Washington will soon be sending a Patriot air defense battery and new precision bombs, both of which were seen as almost impossible or impractical just weeks ago.
The massive influx of arms to Ukraine over the past 10 months marks a significant shift from Washington’s previous approach to Kyiv. Even after Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the Obama administration refused to provide offensive arms to Ukraine, instead opting to provide training programs and uncontroversial equipment such as night vision goggles. It wasn’t until the Trump administration that the Pentagon approved sending Javelin antitank weapons — and even then stipulated that the Javelins must be stored in the western part of the country, away from the front lines.
When it comes to weapons, Washington’s red lines have shifted again and again since the February invasion. In the space of a week in March, the U.S. and NATO pushed more than 17,000 Javelins into the country, a flood of weapons that shattered a political firewall that held across the Obama and Trump administrations. In the spring, the Biden administration began providing 155-millimeter howitzers. Then in June, the Pentagon announced that it would send the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, a modern rocket launcher that Kyiv has used to lethal effect, and which took months of wrangling to convince the Biden administration to send.
The announcement that the U.S. will soon transfer a Patriot battery and aerial smart bombs, the latest of many weapons packages once considered escalatory earlier in the war, hints at further potential policy changes next year as all sides look for a way to end the fighting.
Zelenskyy has been clear what kind of settlement he wants. The Ukrainian president and his top advisers have outlined a maximalist vision: the complete retaking of all land occupied by Russian forces since Putin’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea.
During last week’s joint press conference with Biden at the White House, Zelenskyy described a just peace as “no compromises as to the sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity of my country.” Biden was quick to align himself with that idea, saying, “I think we share the exact same vision.”
That runs up against Putin’s view, in which he has said there won’t be any peace talks with Ukraine if it means Russia would have to concede territory they had illegally annexed since 2014.
“We have to be prepared for the reality President Putin and the top leadership in the Kremlin show zero signs of diminishing their original war aims based on realities on the ground for now,” said Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
For now, the Ukrainian forces are focused on continuing to try and advance on the battlefield this winter even as the colder weather sets in.
“The victory in the war, I think it needs to be a stable, sustainable kind of situation,” said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council. “Any peace talks and freezing in fighting is not the end of the war. The population will not accept it ... I think the expectation is to restore all of our territories.”
If Ukraine continues to insist that only retaking Crimea will end the war, the fighting could continue for years, as long as both sides can find the equipment, and will, to wage war.
Both sides are currently dug in on opposite sides of the Dnipro River, after Russia withdrew its forces from the southern city of Kherson this fall. In order to advance, Ukrainian troops must cross the river and take and hold territory on the other side, in what amounts to a difficult amphibious assault much like the Normandy landing in World War II, said retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe.
But neither side is expected to be able to mount a major ground counteroffensive in the near future, as muddy weather conditions limit movement until the ground freezes completely in February.
Until then, Ukraine and Russia continue to wage smaller battles across the front lines in the south and east, with trench lines taking a pummeling from artillery and small drone strikes, and small patches of land changing hands on a daily basis.
And while the HIMARS has proven itself deadly accurate in targeting Russian positions, Putin’s forces have adjusted to that threat. The Russians have moved their command and control nodes and weapons depots out of the 80-mile range of HIMARS batteries to points further south in Crimea, said one person familiar with Ukrainian battlefield assessments. Those movements have blunted some of the weapons’ effectiveness, and increased calls for the longer-range ATACMS missiles, which can travel 190 miles before precisely striking a target.
“The HIMARS, that was a game changer,” Danylyuk said. “Right up until Russia managed to learn how to adapt to it. Now, we kind of reached the limit of what we can do with these advanced weapons. For the next stage, we need the longer-range weapons to achieve the goals that we achieved four months ago when we first received the HIMARS. We can do the same but the range should be longer.”
Hodges, the former U.S. Army Europe commander, argued that ATACMS missiles are “exactly what they need” right now. The longer-range weapons would allow Ukraine to hammer key Russian positions such as the Kerch bridge, Russian air bases on Crimea and communications lines.
Zelenskyy brought the weapon up during his talks with Biden, but the U.S. hasn’t budged in its refusal to send them, the person said.
While those longer-range missiles remain atop Ukraine’s wish list, other weapons could help Kyiv continue its offensives around Bakhmut and in the south. Military leaders have said for months that U.S. Abrams tanks and German Leopard tanks would tip the scales in some of the closer-range ground fighting they expect to see over the winter.
Ukrainian officials have asked the Biden administration to send just a handful of Abrams tanks — as few as three or four — to break German resistance to sending their own Leopards, according to one person familiar with the discussions. German officials have said publicly they won’t be the first country to send their own tanks to the fight, so the pitch by Kyiv is that even a small number of Abrams tanks would remove that obstacle.
Poland has donated 250 older Russian-made T-72 tanks, and the U.S. is paying for Czechia to upgrade another 45 T-72s for Ukraine, but no Western-made tanks have yet been delivered. While U.S. defense and military officials say tanks are not off the table, some argue that the training and logistics challenges associated with giving these weapons to Kyiv would prove counterproductive.
Kyiv is also calling for cluster munitions, which Russia has been using to deadly effect on the battlefield. But these weapons — officially called dual-purposed improvised conventional munitions — are banned by more than 100 countries, and there is no appetite in the Biden administration to send them. Instead, the U.S. and other countries continue to send tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition and mortars every few weeks as part of each new aid package.
And experts argued that more sophisticated weapons such as the Patriot system and ATACMS are not as important to the coming fight as effective training, logistics and tactics. Patriot, for example, is a long-range, high-altitude missile system used against intercontinental ballistic missiles and high-flying jets. One Patriot will not be enough to defend Ukraine’s entire 500-kilometer front, Hertling said, stressing that it must be used in combination with mid-range and low-altitude air defenses.
“Patriots are not going to do the kinds of things people think they are going to do right now,” he said. “It is not a be all, end all in terms of providing the air defense Ukraine needs.”
A new training program the Pentagon recently announced, which will teach Ukrainian soldiers new tactics for maneuvering infantry with supporting artillery, will be key to a successful river crossing, Hertling argued.
“I won’t say that will be unopposed, but it will be difficult for the Russians to oppose that kind of movement,” he said.
And the Biden White House has flatly refused to ATACMS because it views the weapon as too escalatory.
“The idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than is already going, there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world,” Biden said during the press conference with Zelenskyy. “They’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third World War.”
“Ukraine will defend itself at any cost,” Oleksiy Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said in an interview. “It will use the weapons that we have and even if we don’t have the weapons [that we need], we will fight with our teeth to get Russia out of our lands.”
Oriana Pawlyk contributed to this report.
POLITICO
Politico
17. 6 ways the Army can appeal to Gen Zers and recruit more than a few good men and women
Some pretty common sense advice.
6 ways the Army can appeal to Gen Zers and recruit more than a few good men and women
Army needs to change recruitment to overcome declining interest in military careers
foxnews.com · by David Sprott , Gregory F. Treverton | Fox News
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The U.S. Army fell short of its enlisted recruiting goals for 2022 by 25%. A hot job market was the proximate cause, but the crisis has been years in the making. It reflects a confluence of obesity, lack of high school diplomas and accelerated mental health crises among youth. So, too, while the all-volunteer force (AVF) has been a great success on many counts, it has separated the military from wider society, leaving declining interest in military service and the Army recruiting from a smaller and smaller pool of military families.
There are changes that the Army can make to address the negative long-term trends. Here are suggestions across six dimensions:
1. Message better
This is trite and easy to say but hard to do. Still, Gen Zers are likely to be more attracted to the Army if they knew what it really did. No doubt jumping out of airplanes would seem way cool on Instagram. No FOMO (fear of missing out) there. The Army provides a demanding, extreme career, and it has a compelling story to tell, offering not only skills training with significant value in the civilian marketplace but also a wide range of experiences. Those include: independence but with protection; military housing lets soldiers get married and live on their own without having to pay a fortune for a home.
BIDEN ADMIN LIFTS MILITARY VACCINE MANDATE WITH DEFENSE ACT
2. Target more carefully
Gen Z is diverse, and the risk is treating would-be recruits as single-minded when in fact motivations vary widely. Some are interested in developing specific career skills, while others may want a path to citizenship, general employment, or look to mature. Some will be moved by sincere patriotism and a desire to make an impact.
Students in the new Army prep course stand at attention after physical training exercises at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C., Aug. 27, 2022. The Army fell about 15,000 soldiers — or 25% — short of its recruitment goal this year, officials confirmed Friday, Sept. 30, despite a frantic effort to make up the widely expected gap in a year when all the military services struggled in a tight jobs market to find young people willing and fit to enlist. (AP Photo/Sean Rayford, File) (AP Photo/Sean Rayford)
3. Start early
With less brand awareness, the Army would be well served to get in the hearts and minds of those before they are able to join the service. Programs such as the junior lifeguard program offered by LA County Fire could be a great model to make the Army brand strong among potential recruits. Starting early is also a way to dispel misperceptions about what the standards are, then provide support to would-be recruits in getting fitter, passing the GED or preparing for the Armed Forces Qualification Test.
4. Help candidates meet standards that make sense
The Army is understandably loath to relax standards because the economy is hot, or to have looser standards for the Reserves. Yet some of the issues are no-brainers: age limits were relaxed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For both the active force and the Reserves, there is no reason the specialist who will never be in harm’s way must be as fit as the infantry soldier, just like infantry paratroopers don’t need deep cyber skills.
5. Rethink commitments
Silicon Valley salaries will make it very hard to recruit techies for the usual commitment, and so it is time to contemplate more flexibility: might patriotism and an interest in being active in another realm – experienced by most only in movies – tempt those techies and other sought-after specialists if the commitment were only a year, with companies committed to their return? More generally, the challenge in recruiting those Gen Zers is finding ways to plug into them rather than making them plug into you.
6. Recognize it’s about the mission and people
Management guru Peter Drucker’s motto was: "The best investment you will ever make are your employees." While the Air Force and Navy are platform centric, the Army, like the Marines, is people-centric, all about the individual warfighter. Assigning the best and brightest to the recruiting mission will serve not only the soldier but the Army itself.
The deep traditions and ingrained culture of the Army are a source of pride and institutional power but can also make the Army incredibly resistant to change – even for the better. Yet the culture is also "can do": from women in combat to "don’t ask, don’t tell," to open acceptance of gays, what was feared to risk institutional collapse turned out to be non-events that broadened the pool of talent. Now, Army "can do" compels it to innovate its recruiting processes and better connect the Army’s needs and opportunities to the strengths and aspirations of Gen Z.
Gregory F. Treverton is an executive advisor at SMA, Inc. He is also professor of the Practice at Dornsife College, University of Southern California, chair of the Global TechnoPolitics Forum. Previously, he served as chair of the U.S. National Intelligence Council.
David Sprott is the Henry Y. Hwang Dean and a professor of marketing in the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management and is on faculty at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. His research interests include retailing, branding, influence strategies, and marketing public policy.
foxnews.com · by David Sprott , Gregory F. Treverton | Fox News
18. Strategic Communication and Security Force Assistance: Critical Components for Ukrainian Success?
A lot to unpack, ponder, and reflect upon in this long read.
Excerpts:
The only way to prevent revisionist authoritarians from trying to ‘reset history’ is to ensure education systems, both military and civilian, are proactively discrediting any attempts by leaders – domestic and foreign – that attempt to revise and alter reality. Since the invasion, President Zelensky made country-specific historical references in many speeches. This form of StratCom works because it keeps historical facts anchored in truth. Each reference is a reminder of Ukrainian sovereignty and their role in defending the European flank and rules-based international order.[43]
The only way to prevent revisionist authoritarians from trying to ‘reset history’ is to ensure education systems, both military and civilian, are proactively discrediting any attempts by leaders – domestic and foreign – that attempt to revise and alter reality.
Finally, given that the survival of Ukraine and the transatlantic security community is dependent upon the U.S. – and somewhat on the UK, Germany, France – institutions like NATO must move beyond symbolic connections and interactions. There needs to be more formal and informal security cooperation, mentorship between NATO allies, and security cooperation with non-NATO militaries. Regardless of the Russian threat, the longer-term threat to NATO is China. Since 2019, NATO has been trying to pivot its resources, strategic thinking, and security cooperation to countries in the South China Sea region.[44] A future crisis involving China will necessitate Western political and military leaders implementing reforms based on Russo-Ukraine War lessons learned, especially SFA and StratCom.
Strategic Communication and Security Force Assistance: Critical Components for Ukrainian Success?
thedefencehorizon.org · December 29, 2022
Abstract: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is a pivotal moment in strategic competition between the U.S. and Russia and their respective allies and partners. A defining element of this conflict is defending the rules-based order and the European security architecture anchored along transatlantic ties. This paper explores two elements of these transatlantic security bonds: Instrumentality of strategic communication (StratCom) and security force assistance (SFA). We argue that StratCom – a mix of information warfare, public affairs, and public relations – and SFA (i.e., helping make another military more effective) have been mutually reinforcing elements, critical for Ukrainian success thus far. Political and military leaders must master the art of strategically conveying narratives to their armed forces and civil society while tailoring foreign messaging with clear StratCom approaches meant to leverage information space opportunities at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.
Problem statement: What is the value of aligning narratives at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, ensuring economic and military aid flows to Ukraine?
Bottom-line-up-front: The Russo-Ukraine War (2014-Present) has demonstrated the importance of Strategic Communication and Security Force Assistance. It is crucial to understand how interdependent these two approaches have been in generating critical narratives of Ukrainian battlefield success.
So what?: The success of Ukraine on the physical battlefield and in the digital space demonstrates the conceptual value of what war-fighting looks like in the New Battlespace. In the Information Age, traditional domains like air, land, and sea remain relevant. Still, less traditional domains like cyber, outer space, and civil society, become equally crucial components in 21st-century warfare because each is highly interconnected and dependent on one another. Policymakers and military leaders must alter their approaches to strategic competition to leverage each domain in pursuit of objectives against adversaries.
Strategic Communication and Security Force Assistance
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Source: shutterstock.com/Dilok Klaisataporn
Introduction
On 15 February 2022, deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation voted to support the resolution “on the appeal of the President” and the “need to recognize the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR).”[1] One week after this resolution passed the Duma, in his 21 February address, President Putin played out an alternative version of the situation in Ukraine, one in which he emphasized a common “history, culture and spiritual space.”[2] By the morning of 24 February, Putin took to TV once again, announcing the initiation of a “special military operation” to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine. Such events are likely to re-shape the post-Cold War international. Moreover, political and military leaders are rethinking how their armed forces should function in the new battlespaces. The Information Age of warfare places increasing value on using non-kinetic capabilities to influence and shape battlefields and audiences around the world.[3] Months into the conflict, the international community, and especially the West, are astonished by the resolve and effectiveness of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) against a numerically superior aggressor. Naturally, the question arises, which elements contributed to said resolve and effectiveness, and are there any lessons that can be drawn from the example of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war?
Political and military leaders are rethinking how their armed forces should function in the new battlespaces. The Information Age of warfare places increasing value on using non-kinetic capabilities to influence and shape battlefields and audiences around the world.
Within the geopolitical context of Russia reasserting itself in Eastern Europe and the U.S. reinforcing the rules-based order, this article explore two major components of the transatlantic security “bond”: The instrumentality of strategic communication (StratCom) and security force assistance (SFA). First, StratCom is about employing information warfare, public affairs, and public relations – to achieve influence and alter perceptions more favorably. Ukrainian officials, formally and informally, have effectively generated narratives about Russian aggression, atrocities (e.g., “Butchers of Bucha”), and their military incompetence.[4] Such efforts have ensured most western audiences – and their political leaders – keep supporting the Ukrainian government, civil society, and military. Secondly, since the Russian “Little Green Men” events of 2014, sixteen western countries have bilaterally provided SFA to Ukraine. Such train, advise, assist, and equip missions to UAF via formal mechanisms (e.g., training courses, weapon deliveries, etc.) and informal channels (e.g., secure messaging on Signal; sharing of information, intelligence, manuals, etc.), has increased militarily effectiveness. Moreover, such SFA has contributed to Ukrainian military leadership capabilities – with Ukrainian forces exhibiting higher levels of morale – while enabling a mix of Ukrainian forces (e.g., special operation forces, soldiers, volunteers, territorial defense units, partisans, foreign fighters, civil society actors, etc.) to outperform Russian forces.[5] Most remarkable, the emergence of informal SFA (i.e., unofficial communication, donations, etc.) has enhanced UAF effectiveness. This has enhanced capabilities, ensuring UAF have higher morale, better discipline, and more willpower to fight compared to Russian troops, which have been deserting at high rates in Ukraine.[6]
Combined, Ukrainian StratCom and Western SFA, have proven mutually reinforceable positions within the broader framework of the war as Ukrainian messaging has ensured steady flows of Western economic aid, intelligence, weapons, and training. In turn, Ukrainian StratCom abilities have reinforced positive Ukrainians narratives about such Western assistance being put to effective use against a belligerent Russia. Military leaders of today and tomorrow must master the art of strategically conveying narratives to their armed forces as well as civil society and political leaders, domestically and globally. StratCom, when properly employed in the new battlespace, ensures effective messaging to audiences domestically and globally. Additionally, effective StratCom requires planning at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels for gaining desired influence outcomes. Achieving unity of effort across all three levels enables lines of effort to attain objectives against an adversary.
StratCom is instrumental in building trust, confidence, and credible deterrence. Carefully crafted communication can also act as a tool for shaping attitudes and perceptions of domestic and global audiences. Similarly, StratCom is an effective non-kinetic weapon against an enemy and its supporters, while making adversarial influence initiatives less effective. What is said or, conversely, what is not said, are 'signals' to allies, partners, and adversaries. The way information is disseminated impacts modern war in its totality, be it for reasons of deterrence or compellence. Moreover, the internet and advanced communications has given way to cognitive warfare, which are digital and virtual “activities undertaken to manipulate environmental stimuli to control the mental states and behaviors of enemies as well as followers in both hot and cold wars.”[7] Such StratCom actions – when combined with other instruments of national power – can be synergetic, influencing the minds of supporters through tailored messaging that shapes the information environment.
StratCom is instrumental in building trust, confidence, and credible deterrence. Carefully crafted communication can also act as a tool for shaping attitudes and perceptions of domestic and global audiences.
Narrative Warfare: Influence Operations Shaping Audiences Globally
Influence operations – including weaponized narratives and cognitive warfare – are by no means a new way to conduct war.[8] Ukraine has been a perfect example of how Russia has weaponized narratives to legitimize their illegal annexation of territory and brutal ‘denazification’ behavior. Simultaneously, the Russo-Ukrainian conflict has illustrated how powerful influence campaigns are, how important preparedness is to counter them, and how instrumental social media can be in achieving strategic goals. Through effective StratCom, Ukrainians have seized the digital high ground with weaponized narratives. This has facilitated the isolation of Russia while enabling western aid flows to Ukraine.[9]
The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has illustrated how powerful influence campaigns are, how important preparedness is to counter them, and how instrumental social media can be in achieving strategic goals.
The internet and social media enable low-risk, cheap StratCom operations against an enemy and their supporters.[10] NATO identified the power of influence operations by establishing the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence in Riga, Latvia. The Centre defines StratCom as “the coordinated and appropriate use of NATO communications activities and capabilities in support of Alliance policies, operations and activities, and in order to advance NATO's aims.”[11] While this is an all-encompassing definition, it can be best distilled as “it is not what you say, but how you say it and when you say it” in such a way to achieve objectives. Hence, when it comes to influence and persuasion, there are four pillars: “knowing your purpose, understanding your audience, selecting an appropriate message structure strategy, and identifying the appropriate channel.”[12] Finally, informational influence is best defined by the American Psychological Association as “interpersonal processes that challenge the correctness of an individual’s beliefs or the appropriateness of his or her behavior, thereby promoting change.”[13] This influence may occur directly, as a result of communication and persuasion, or indirectly, through exposure to information and comparison of oneself with others.
Strategic Shaping through Weaponized Narratives
A major reason why Russian Armed Forces failed to achieve initial political objectives in Ukraine is due to years of Western SFA, which facilitated the creation of effective UAF combat power and political willpower for Kyiv to resist Moscow. Initial Ukrainian narratives centered on freedom, sovereignty, and a nationalist identity. Such efforts were tied to pursuing simple political goals: the survival of the Ukrainian state and the nation. Nevertheless, the invasion of Ukraine is part of a broader Russian ideological war against the Euro-Atlantic community and its security architecture.[14] Before invading, draft treaties presented to the U.S. and NATO by the Kremlin attempted to limit transatlantic security ties.[15] Western leaders wasted their time trying to ‘interpret’ such drafts, but they were illusions of grandeur provided by “leaders in Moscow attempting to reestablish Soviet Union 2.0.”[16]
In the months leading up to the Russian 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence community released specific, timely INTEL regarding Russian intentions. Unfortunately, many European leaders hurried to the Kremlin to appease Putin and “negotiate the war away,” instead of pursuing effective StratCom campaigns through speeches, social media, memes, and conventional media. The lack of Western unity signaled weakness to Russia. Leaders in Moscow had discerned similar Western apathy before invading Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014). Much like other Eastern European cultures in general, Russia does not respect weakness, flexibility, or negotiations without the threat of violence.[17] Winning the war of narratives is why Russian convinced themselves that their 2022 “special military operation” would succeed.
The lack of Western unity signaled weakness to Russia. Leaders in Moscow had discerned similar Western apathy before invading Georgia and Ukraine.
With social media growing in prominence over the last decade, Russia has tailored messaging to undermine the transatlantic community, amplifying societal divisions and polarizing politics. For instance, when the Taliban conquered Afghanistan in August 2021, the Kremlin flooded the information space in Ukraine with narratives of how the West would abandon Kyiv just like Kabul.[18] The imposition of pro-Kremlin narratives against neighbors fits a pattern of gray zone activities since the Bolshevik Revolution.[19] Even as the Soviet Union was nearing collapse, they conducted influence operations that encouraged revolution against the Romanian dictator Ceausescu. The goal was to depose Ceausescu and keep Romania within the USSR sphere of influence. These tactics still inform the Kremlin’s information warfare playbook: create chaos and build a weaponized narrative of ‘others’ to create strife.
However, Russia eventually failed to keep Romania in its orbit because the average Romanian wanted relations with the West, which included numerous non-security benefits. The Kremlin failed to deter and prevent Romanian NATO accession because the Romanian education system and political leaders ensured the memory of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Relevant domestic discourse and narratives guaranteed the historical relevance of the Soviet Red Army marching through Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, raping, killing, and pillaging. Russian military behavior was no different during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine (e.g., Bucha, Bersiaka, etc.).
Even after Romania joined NATO in 2004, the Kremlin continued information operations against Romania. However, with NATO Article 5 protection, Moscow utilized options below the Article 5 threshold. A similar Russian modus operandi was established against Estonia through the cyber-attacks of 2007, and in many other eastern European countries.[20] The logic cannot be missed that Russia decided to invade Georgia and Ukraine on the eve of discussions about these countries beginning their roadmaps to NATO accession in 2008 and 2014, respectively. Such Russian signaling has been projected against neighbors showing signs of shifting towards Europe or the U.S.
Narratives are a powerful weapon via the internet, shaping the human domain in ways not possible in the pre-internet age.[21] For instance, on 4 September 2022 tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Prague to protest against their pro-West government. Protesters aired many pro-Kremlin narratives about high energy prices in Europe because of support for Ukraine.[22] While the Czech Republic is a member of NATO and the EU, Russian hybrid warfare actions stoke societal angst across Europe. When weaponized narratives are applied consistently over a long period, they affect human cognition and implicitly influence decision-making at all levels across civil society and government. Cognitive dissonance remains an effective approach for the Kremlin in dividing and polarizing NATO countries. Former Warsaw Pact members joined NATO because they wanted protection from Russian repression and control. Europeans without personal experience living under Soviet rule are more likely to entertain Kremlin narratives about NATO being an American tool for maintaining rule over Europe and provoking Russia. In a September 2021 interview with Lithuanian StratCom officials, they described how Russia had weaponized immigration against the EU, especially the Baltic states. Officials provided evidence of Russia using social media advertising, which encouraged immigrants to fly to Belarus, where they were bussed to EU borders to create issues.
Dis-, mis-, and mal-information activities are non-kinetic 'thought bombs’ that are not perceived as national security threats in Western capitals. Hence, it is difficult to mobilize support and policies to defend against since it does not conceptually cross the ‘red line’ of a conventional attack. Moreover, one European country being shaped through Russian influence operations can have a domino effect on neighbors.
Social Media in Modern Competition
Ukrainian StratCom success has been a crucial element of current UAF counteroffensives against Russian forces occupying Ukraine. From the beginning of the conflict, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians posting live on TikTok and Instagram kept the international community alert to Russian movements across their country. Simultaneously, social media posts of Russian military movements normalized open-source intelligence (OSINT) sharing, making it difficult for Russian forces to move covertly, and also communicated to Ukrainians – and global citizens – that the fight was worth fighting. Such actions enabled high Ukrainian morale, despite initial Russian advances. As few journalists were on the ground when the war began, many conventional media outlets used OSINT posts to keep their audience updated. Later on, the UAF dropped surrender leaflets on Russian positions with a QR code, with the message of “Your ticket to a peaceful life. Show this card to a Ukrainian soldier - it will save your life and help you get back home.”[23] While such propaganda messaging is as old as the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, advertising these actions on social media further shapes and influences the information space against an adversary.
Influence and shaping operations throughout social media can be a double-edged sword since the validity of the posts can be questionable. The visual impact of seeing wounded Ukrainian civilians or of Russian troops being unable to cross a river sends powerful messages to global audiences interested in the outcome of the Russo-Ukraine War. The Ukrainian military's sinking of the Moskva is a good example. While Moscow-backed Ria Novosti reported 14 April 2022 “The cruiser Moskva sank while being towed during a storm,” the UAF announced their role in destroying the Moskva, the symbolic jewel of the Black Sea fleet.[24]
The visual impact of seeing wounded Ukrainian civilians or of Russian troops being unable to cross a river sends powerful messages to global audiences interested in the outcome of the Russo-Ukraine War.
As the UAF conventionally defends their homeland they simultaneously engage in StratCom operations, ensuring positive narratives that reinforce the need for continued economic and military aid. National instruments across the DIME (Diplomatic, Information, Military, Economic), are synchronized by the Ukrainian government in keeping Western audiences and governments engaged to ensure aid and support continue flowing into the country. Ukrainian civil society has also been vital in keeping audiences engaged through social media posts, to include pictures and videos, meant to go viral. Such informal StratCom by civil society enhances the formalized StratCom actions of the Ukrainian government and military. Ukrainian OSINT hobbyists like InformNaplam, facilitate the bridging of the gap between Ukrainian audiences and global netizens by them scouring information on the Russian military and translating it into English so that more prominent OSINT outlets like Bellingcat can use it to piece together damning intelligence reports about the Russian military and its conduct.[25] Other StratCom efforts elevate public discussions about rebuilding Ukraine after the war. It influences Western audiences from whether their governments should provide aid towards a narrative of how much their government should provide to Ukraine as part of a 21st-century version of the Marshall Plan.[26]
Formal and Informal Aid to Ukrainian Forces
Even before the Color Revolutions swept across Central and Eastern Europe after 2004, the U.S., UK, and certain NATO members had been working with the Ukrainian government and military since 1991, per a UK government report, to foster and assist with “defence reform, defence planning and capacity building.”[27] In 1993, the California National Guard via the U.S. National Guard State Partnership Program, codified a relationship with the UAF with “many objectives, including helping the nations become more interoperable with NATO forces, helping the partners become more transparent in military affairs and, perhaps most importantly, helping the nations know how a military works in a democracy.”[28] From 2000 until the February 2022 invasion, the U.S. provided the bulk of western SFA to Ukraine, including almost $2.8 billion in security assistance, about 16,000 Ukrainian troops trained, and over $700 million in arms sales[29]. The Russian invasion of Ukraine drastically changed this rate. Per the Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Ukraine has received over $25 billion in U.S. security assistance, with other large notable military aid provisions from: UK ($4.05 billion), Poland ($1.8 billion), Germany ($1.2 billion, and Canada ($930 million). More notable are the above-average contributions of smaller states. Estonia (0.9% of GDP), Latvia (0.9% of GDP), Poland (0.6% of GDP), Lithuania (0.4% of GDP), and Norway (0.4% of GDP) have provided the most support (as a percentage of their GDP) to Ukraine.[30]
From 2000 until the February 2022 invasion, the U.S. provided the bulk of western SFA to Ukraine, including almost $2.8 billion in security assistance, about 16,000 Ukrainian troops trained, and over $700 million in arms sales.
It is important to demarcate the time it took for larger amounts of SFA to flow towards Ukraine after the 24 February 2022 invasion. For instance, the Biden administration only committed $350 million of military aid to Ukraine two days after the invasion.[31] This is because “In the days leading up to the war, the intelligence community told [American] policymakers that Kyiv would likely fall within three to four days of a Russian invasion.”[32] By 8 March, the political willpower came as there were “growing calls in Washington for the CIA and the Pentagon to support a potential Ukrainian insurgency.”[33] By 11 March, a U.S. defense official noted that the “Russians did not expect the ferocious defense by the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian civilians.”[34] The following day, the U.S. pledged $200 million,[35] and another $800 million in military aid on 16 March.[36] Such SFA came flowing due to a flurry of videos, memes, and StratCom activities by the Ukrainian government and civil society that highlighted Russian “blunders, [and] stiff Ukrainian resistance.”[37]
Even though the Ukrainians initially sacrificed large swaths of territory, Russian forces became overextended with their logistics and artillery, which allowed the UAF to easily ambush Russian troops. Meanwhile, UAF and OSINT hobbyists filmed and captured much of these events, such as the infamous “40-mile-long armoured military column of tanks and heavy weaponry near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv for days” that was constantly ambushed, as some Russian troops froze to death in the stalled convoy.[38] Such a timeline of events demonstrates how initial SFA contributions before the war, such as Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, stalled Russian advances. UAF videos of these western weapons employed effectively against Russian forces spread throughout social media, shaping and influencing views about UAF capabilities. It provided enough evidence to policymakers in Western capitals to unleash waves of economic and military aid to Ukraine. Meanwhile, purposeful Ukrainian StratCom elevated narratives of unity and UAF bravery in standing up to a supposedly larger, better-equipped Russian military. Once the battle of Kyiv concluded on 31 March with the UAF victorious, international journalists and OSINT hobbyists identified numerous war crimes committed by occupying Russian forces, which further enhanced anti-Russian narratives through images of atrocities via social media that cemented western support to Ukraine.
Purposeful Ukrainian StratCom elevated narratives of unity and UAF bravery in standing up to a supposedly larger, better-equipped Russian military.
Beyond aid and codified bilateral security relationships between western countries and Ukraine, in 2016, the militaries of Lithuania and Poland formed a military unit with the UAF. Known as the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade (LITPOLUKRBRIG), this trilateral military unit is jointly based in Lublin, Poland, capable of commanding 4,500 troops for joint combined military operations.[39] Moreover, based on a 23 August 2022 interview with the LITPOLUKRBRIG Commander, his unit functions “outside of the NATO umbrella,” which means their unit can engage in some informal military activities with the UAF that formal NATO military units are unable to do. Such informal SFA occurs within this space as LITPOLUKRBRIG personnel utilize first-hand intelligence reports from Ukrainian troops to inform and improve the training courses and military exercises that the LITPOLUKRBRIG regularly conducts.
The power and value of informal SFA is missing from most academic research and literature. This is because informal SFA – such as advising and assisting without an explicit mandate – is more common than is assumed, not to mention difficulties tracking since military members typically do not report or tabulate the times in which they provide advice and guidance to a partner or allied military. For instance, in a 23 July 2022 interview, one U.S. service member described his time commanding an airfield in Qatar, where he commanded the airfield but spent more of his time advising Qatari military personnel on how to conduct their airfield operations. This type of informal SFA equally happens to deployed peacekeepers across Africa and the Middle East, where commanders of peacekeeping units have an explicit mandate for peacekeeping operations. Still, they spend more time consulting and advising host-nation military leadership on best practices, such as coordination and planning activities. Just through simple training courses and military exercises, when joint military forces work with one another, osmosis occurs, where best practices are developed to enhance professionalization among all participating military personnel.
Conclusion
According to Max Boot, there are four reasons why the Ukrainians have been so successful: (1) Western aid, (2) unity of Zelensky’s government, (3) “ingenuity, skill and fighting spirit of its armed forces,” and (4) “corruption and stupidity of the Putin regime.”[40] However, Boot omits the most crucial factor that has tied all four into a cohesive narrative, namely the value of StratCom. Robust pro-Ukrainian social media campaigns, alongside elite narratives, have vitally enabled Western SFA flowing formally and informally to Ukrainian forces. Moreover, Ukrainian narrative warfare has provided a singular voice of Ukrainian unity against Russia while equally showcasing the corrupt conduct of Russian political and military leadership.
As Clausewitz astutely identified the importance of government, military, and people in war, the Russo-Ukraine War has showcased a new battlespace where internet connectivity enables citizens around the world to participate in the war (i.e., informal SFA and StratCom, OSINT, etc.) or be shaped through desirable narratives. Successful Ukrainian StratCom has been utilized in unison with combat operations, ensuring internal cohesion while supporting transatlantic security ties. European militaries and NGOs should collectively function as a defensive community to shape the new battlespace because of the value of democratic, open systems that can operate more organically against authoritarian countries like Russia. Thus, any politician, citizen, or soldier can be a digital warrior because anything and everything will be weaponized, as anyone who uses the internet or engages in social media discussions is now a combatant in sociopolitical-information warfare.[41]
Ukrainian narrative warfare has provided a singular voice of Ukrainian unity against Russia while equally showcasing the corrupt conduct of Russian political and military leadership.
Russian leaders present ‘reimagined’ history and engage in revisionism to condition the world into an alternative version of events. President Putin provided his own vision of past, present, and future in his 12 July 2021 letter to Ukraine, stating Ukrainians and Russians as “one people” and that the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia. Our spiritual, human and civilizational ties formed for centuries and have their origins in the same sources.”[42] Such imperial ambitions and narratives by Putin made clear his StratCom narratives to domestic and international audiences. The arrogant view of Russian dominance over Ukrainians, the letter provided the veneer of legitimacy for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The only way to prevent revisionist authoritarians from trying to ‘reset history’ is to ensure education systems, both military and civilian, are proactively discrediting any attempts by leaders – domestic and foreign – that attempt to revise and alter reality. Since the invasion, President Zelensky made country-specific historical references in many speeches. This form of StratCom works because it keeps historical facts anchored in truth. Each reference is a reminder of Ukrainian sovereignty and their role in defending the European flank and rules-based international order.[43]
The only way to prevent revisionist authoritarians from trying to ‘reset history’ is to ensure education systems, both military and civilian, are proactively discrediting any attempts by leaders – domestic and foreign – that attempt to revise and alter reality.
Finally, given that the survival of Ukraine and the transatlantic security community is dependent upon the U.S. – and somewhat on the UK, Germany, France – institutions like NATO must move beyond symbolic connections and interactions. There needs to be more formal and informal security cooperation, mentorship between NATO allies, and security cooperation with non-NATO militaries. Regardless of the Russian threat, the longer-term threat to NATO is China. Since 2019, NATO has been trying to pivot its resources, strategic thinking, and security cooperation to countries in the South China Sea region.[44] A future crisis involving China will necessitate Western political and military leaders implementing reforms based on Russo-Ukraine War lessons learned, especially SFA and StratCom.
Dr. Olga R. Chiriac: Title VIII State Department Research Fellow, Middle East Institute, Washington DC; Associated Researcher, Center for Strategic Studies, Bucharest.
Dr. Jahara "Franky" Matisek (Lt Col, U.S. Air Force): Military Professor, Department of National Security Affairs, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI; Senior Fellow, Homeland Defense Institute, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, CO; Fellowship Director, Irregular Warfare Initiative at the Modern War Institute, West Point, NY.
This article was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award number FA9550-20-1-0277. The views expressed are those of Lt Col Matisek and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Naval War College, Department of Defense, or U.S. Government.
[1] “The deputies supported the resolution on the appeal to the President of the Russian Federation on the need to recognize the DPR and LPR,” State Duma of the Russian Federation, February 15, 2000, http://duma.gov.ru/news/53431/.
[2] “Address by the President of the Russian Federation,” The Kremlin, February 21, 2022, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/67828.
[3] Jahara Matisek and Buddhika Jayamaha, Old and New Battlespaces: Society, Military Power, and War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022).
[4] For example, see: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/3/eu-blacklists-bucha-butchers-in-latest-russia-sanctions.
[5] Christina L. Arabia, Andrew S. Bowen, and Cory Welt, “U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine,” CRS, October 21, 2022, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040.
[6] Zoe Strozewski, “Russian Force Sees 'Mass Desertion' Amid Putin's Recruitment Push: Report,” Newsweek, September 08, 2022, https://www.newsweek.com/russian-force-sees-mass-desertion-amid-putins-recruitment-push-report-1741284.
[7] Tzu-Chieh Hung and Tzu-Wei Hung, “How China's Cognitive Warfare Works: A Frontline Perspective of Taiwan's Anti-Disinformation Wars,” Journal of Global Security Studies 7, no. 4 (December 2022): https://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogac016, published: July 19, 2022.
[8] Koichiro Takagijuly, “The Future of China’s Cognitive Warfare: Lessons from the War in Ukraine” War on the Rocks, July 22, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/07/the-future-of-chinas-cognitive-warfare-lessons-from-the-war-in-ukraine/
[9] Laura Keenan, “How Ukraine Seized the Initiative on the Digital Front of the War with Russia,” Modern War Institute, September 01, 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/how-ukraine-seized-the-initiative-on-the-digital-front-of-the-war-with-russia/.
[10] John E, Shepard Jr, “Is Clausewitz Still Relevant?,” Parameters: Journal of the U.S. Army War College 20, no. 3, 87.
[11] NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, “About Strategic Communications,” https://stratcomcoe.org/about_us/about-strategic-communications/1.
[12] June West, “Strategic Communication to Inform or Persuade,” UVA Darden: Ideas to Action, February 12, 2015, https://ideas.darden.virginia.edu/strategic-communication-to-inform-or-persuade.
[13] APA, 2022, https://dictionary.apa.org/informational-influence.
[14] Ira Straus, “The war in Ukraine is an opportunity to upgrade the transatlantic architecture. Here’s how,” Atlantic Council, August 31, 2022, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-war-in-ukraine-is-an-opportunity-to-upgrade-the-transatlantic-architecture-heres-how/.
[15] See: https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2022/01/russias-new-draft-treaties-like-2009-but-worse
[16] This phrase was used by a Latvian deputy defence minister during interviews, September 24, 2021.
[17] Timothy Frye, Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2022); Gregory Sandstrom, “Global sociology–Russian style,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 33, no. 3 (2008): 607-630.
[18] Andrew Osborn, “Senior Russian security official questions U.S. commitment to Ukraine after Afghan exit,” Reuters, August 19, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/senior-russian-security-official-questions-us-commitment-ukraine-after-afghan-2021-08-19/.
[19] Jahara Matisek, “Shades of gray deterrence: Issues of fighting in the gray zone,” Journal of Strategic Security 10, no. 3 (2017): 1-26.
[20] Chiriac and Matisek, “Homeland Defense in the Information Space.”
[21] Matisek and Jayamaha, Old and New Battlespaces.
[22] Erika Soloman, “Protests in Prague Signal a Troubled Winter ahead in Europe,” The New York Times, September 28, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/world/europe/prague-protests-economy.html./
[23] https://twitter.com/chuckpfarrer/status/1569402374015401987?s=46&t=GhouO56nJtisY6lfhmS0xg.
[24] “The cruiser "Moskva" sank while being towed during a storm,” RIA News, April 14, 2022, https://ria.ru/20220414/kreyser-1783626130.html.
[25] https://informnapalm.org/en/.
[26] Ariel Cohen and Wesley A. Hill, “Ukraine’s “Marshall Plan” Should Come with Transparency,” Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, June 28, 2022, https://newlinesinstitute.org/ukraine/ukraines-marshall-plan-should-come-with-transparency/.
[27] Claire Mills and John Curtis, “Military assistance to Ukraine since the Russian invasion,” UK House of Commons library, August 15, 2022, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-9477/CBP-9477.pdf.
[28] https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article/2972128/ukraine-california-ties-show-worth-of-national-guard-program/.
[29] Security Assistance Monitor tracks all U.S. security assistance; see: https://securityassistance.org/map/.
[30] For most up to date information from the Kiel Institute; see: https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/.
[31] See: https://www.state.gov/additional-military-assistance-for-ukraine/.
[32] https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/13/politics/us-intelligence-review-ukraine/index.html.
[33] https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-biden-europe-avril-haines-5c9707de86165915e7ce9d10d18464f3.
[34] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2959856/russian-invaders-crash-into-ukrainian-resistance/.
[35] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/16/fact-sheet-on-u-s-security-assistance-for-ukraine/.
[36] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/03/16/fact-sheet-on-u-s-security-assistance-for-ukraine/.
[37] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/2964269/russian-military-efforts-stymied-by-blunders-stiff-ukrainian-resistance-defense/.
[38] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-troops-convoy-freezing-death-b2031696.html.
[39] Jahara Matisek and Will Reno, “Meet the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian Brigade, A Little-Known Unit that Presents a New Model for Security Cooperation,” Modern War Institute, September 28, 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/meet-the-lithuanian-polish-ukrainian-brigade-a-little-known-unit-that-presents-a-new-model-for-security-cooperation/
[40] Max Boot, “The 4 factors that explain Ukraine’s extraordinary military success,” Washington Post, September 12, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/12/ukraine-reasons-surprise-offensive-winning/.
[41] Olga Chiriac and Jahara Matisek, “Homeland Defense in the Information Space: Learning from Russian Influence Campaigns in Eastern Europe,” Modern War Institute, October 19, 2022, https://mwi.usma.edu/homeland-defense-in-the-information-space-learning-from-russian-influence-campaigns-in-eastern-europe/.
[42] President Vladimir Putin, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” President of Russia (official website), July 12, 2021, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181.
[43] Rayna Breuer, “Why Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speeches are so rousing,” DW, June 07, 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/why-ukrainian-leader-volodymyr-zelenskyys-speeches-are-so-rousing/a-62049158.
[44] Pierre Morcos, “NATO’s Pivot to China: A Challenging Path,” CSIS, June 08, 2021, https://www.csis.org/analysis/natos-pivot-china-challenging-path.
thedefencehorizon.org · December 29, 2022
19. Ukraine received over $120bln in Western assistance in 2022
The audit should reveal there are weapons and equipment combat losses but that the $120 billion has contributed to the successful defense of Ukraine.
Sobering conclusion:
However, US allies in Europe believe such an audit won't fully cut off funding, such as UK Parliament member Tobias Ellwood who said in October: "You’d be playing into Putin’s hands... If America pulls back, Putin could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat."
Ukraine received over $120bln in Western assistance in 2022
The West has backed Ukraine with more than $120 billion in assistance this year alone in light of the ongoing Ukraine war.
english.almayadeen.net · by Al Mayadeen English · December 28, 2022
- The Ukrainian National Bank
The total amount of official financial, military and humanitarian assistance announced and provided to Ukraine in 2022 has exceeded $120 billion, the National Bank of Ukraine said on Wednesday.
"The total amount of announced and provided official financial, military, and humanitarian assistance from partner countries already exceeds $120 billion," the NBU said in a statement.
The Council of the European Union, the NBU said, agreed on a new assistance mechanism for Ukraine in 2023 in the amount of 18 billion euros ($19.1 billion).
The head of the Ukrainian Parliament's Committee on Finance, Taxation, and Customs Policy, Danil Getmantsev, said Tuesday that the country's public debt exceeded $107.46 billion, as of the end of November
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden said days ago the US would continue sending aid to Kiev while increasing military support for the country, including in terms of air defense systems.
"We are going to continue to strengthen Ukraine's ability to defend itself, particularly air defense. That's why we're gonna be providing Ukraine with a Patriot missile battery and training Ukrainian forces to use it," Biden said.
Biden's words came in light of a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington, DC. The United States involved itself excessively in security arrangements to bring Zelensky to the US, according to the White House.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier that day that the United States will provide an additional $1.85 billion in military assistance for Ukraine, with the assistance consisting of a Patriot air defense system.
"$1.85 Billion in Additional US Military Assistance, including the First Transfer of Patriot Air Defense System," Blinken said in a press release.
The Pentagon also announced that one Patriot air defense system, additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), and High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs), among other military hardware, are included in the recently announced $1.85 billion US security assistance package for Ukraine.
According to the press release, the package also includes small arms, explosives, armored vehicles, mortar systems, and 500 precisely guided 155mm artillery rounds.
It is worth noting that earlier in November, the Biden administration is currently scurrying to track down the approximately $20 billion in military aid it sent to Ukraine, amid a warning by Republicans of impending audits after they take over the House in January.
Incoming House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has previously stated that Ukraine will not receive a "blank check". The purpose of the audit is meant to track how the funds are being delivered and exactly where - as prior suspicions point to many shipped arms ending up on the black market.
Controversial Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who announced the audit decision, promised to "hold our government accountable", as other colleagues such as Rep. Jason Crow echoed to the Washington Post: "The taxpayers deserve to know that investment is going where it's intended to go," adding: "In any war, there can be missteps and misallocation of supplies."
The lawmakers called out current monitoring efforts as inadequate since the Biden administration inspected just 10% of the 22,000 weapons transported to Ukraine between February and November 1, according to the Post.
However, US allies in Europe believe such an audit won't fully cut off funding, such as UK Parliament member Tobias Ellwood who said in October: "You’d be playing into Putin’s hands... If America pulls back, Putin could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat."
english.almayadeen.net · by Al Mayadeen English · December 28, 2022
20. China’s uncertain politics will force foreign firms to seek alternate production hubs
China’s uncertain politics will force foreign firms to seek alternate production hubs
Xi Jinping is most likely to juggle complex issues like delivering relative economic growth without compromising on ‘core interests’ throughout 2023.
AADIL BRAR
28 December, 2022 11:03 am IST
theprint.in · by Aadil Brar · December 28, 2022
The year 2023 will test President Xi Jinping’s quest to seek stability for the Chinese Communist Party through a national security contract. The Chinese economy’s health after the end of zero-Covid policy, presidential election in Taiwan, relations with the US, and the push to conduct head-of-state diplomacy in favourable regions will likely keep Beijing preoccupied in 2023.
The crucial test will be the transition to the next cycle of the National People’s Congress in March. The NPC meeting will officially announce the major political roles, including the next premier, who is likely to be Li Qiang – Xi’s number two.
Next year, we will also learn the names of the next foreign minister and the director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. The latter has a deep impact on Chinese foreign policy direction, including focus areas and personnel selection.
The individuals who will assume new roles will be hand-picked by Xi and will need to firmly hold the reins of bureaucracy as China goes through a difficult patch at home and abroad.
Dwindling economy
Beijing effectively ended the zero-Covid policy on 11 December following the almost nationwide anti-lockdown protests. This gave Xi an off-ramp from a stringent policy that held back the Chinese economy.
On 26 December, Beijing announced the scrapping of the quarantine requirement for foreign travellers from 8 January. The decision comes when Covid cases are rising across the mainland and reports of deaths are emerging.
Beijing was expected to step back from the stringent zero-Covid policy in March 2023. But the swift withdrawal, which opens the mainland for travel and puts pressure on the CCP’s image, shows Xi is more concerned about slowing economic activity. The government wants to create the conditions for reinvigorating the growth of the Chinese economy before the Chinese New Year.
On Monday, Xi sought to address the underlying concerns about what appears to be a sudden U-turn on zero-Covid policy.
“Governments at all levels should further intensify their efforts to effectively guarantee the needs of the masses for medical treatment and anti-epidemic supplies, and protect people’s lives and health,” Xi was quoted by Xinhua News Agency.
The supply-side shock because of China’s zero-Covid policy will continue to hold back the Chinese economy in 2023 as companies such as Apple, Volvo, and Ford look to reduce their dependence on Chinese production lines.
The size of the Chinese economy will keep attracting foreign companies to maintain their supply chains on the mainland, but the uncertainty of China’s political direction will force them to seek alternate production hubs. Beijing is likely to make them stay, but many have already left or are planning to leave.
Taiwan presidential election
Over the past year, Taiwan’s prominence in the US-China competition has kept Beijing on edge – which will likely continue. Taiwan will remain one of the top priorities for Beijing in 2023 as Taipei gears up for the presidential election.
The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) suffered a setback in recent local elections, which has added an element of uncertainty to the national election in 2024. Though the presidential election in Taiwan are driven by national issues, including relations with Beijing, the result of the local elections will provide China an opportunity to interfere in the presidential election.
On Monday, there were signs of heightened military tensions in the Taiwan Strait as Beijing sent 71 military aircraft towards Taipei, 47 of which crossed the median line. The likely cause of the massive airspace violations has been linked to the US National Defence Authorisation Act of 2023, which provides Taiwan with military aid and assistance.
The tensions between the mainland and Taipei are likely to remain in a state of flux throughout 2023. Other factors will complicate the peace in Taiwan Strait. The new US House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, is expected to visit Taipei next year, adding more pressure to US-China relations, as we saw during the Nancy Pelosi visit.
Adding to the existing tensions will be the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022, which is unlikely to pass both chambers of the US Congress in the current session. But the bipartisan support for the Act will intensify Beijing’s rhetoric about the US meddling in its relations with Taiwan.
The Taiwan Policy Act is not a minor piece of legislation. “The biggest adjustment in the US policy toward Taiwan in the past forty years,” Taiwanese officials have said while describing the Act.
Chinese foreign minister and state councillor Wang Yi has given some hints about the direction of the US-China relations. “What has happened proves time and again that China and the United States cannot decouple or sever supply chains. Under new circumstances, the common interests between China and the United States have increased, not decreased,” said Wang Yi in his annual foreign policy address.
Beijing will seek some stability and predictability in its relations with the US during 2023, following the one-on-one meeting between US President Joe Biden and Xi in Bali. But that doesn’t mean the US will abandon its recently stated national security strategy, which wants to maintain Washington’s strategic advantage at all costs.
We are likely to witness major visits by Xi to favourable regions such as ASEAN, the Middle East, Central Asia, Latin America, and other parts of the Global South as Beijing seeks to maintain its area of influence.
“Next year, head-of-state diplomacy will reach a new climax, and many highlights are expected in home-ground diplomacy. We will seize the momentum following the 20th CPC National Congress, spare no effort in strengthening overall planning and providing good services, and create new prospects for the cause of the Party and the country on the new journey in the new era,” Wang added.
China and Beijing
Xi’s recent visits to Central Asia and the Middle East suggest Beijing wants to influence countries that aren’t squarely under the US security and economic umbrella. Despite growing interest in conducting high-level diplomacy, Beijing’s rhetoric on safeguarding national sovereignty is unlikely to take a step back.
“We will unequivocally oppose all acts of hegemony, bullying and highhandedness, reject all unilateral protectionist moves, firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, resolutely fight all forces that attempt to hold back and even halt the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and hold the strategic initiative of national development and security firmly in our own hands,” said Wang in his address.
The other country that will keep Beijing preoccupied is Japan.
Japan’s New Defence Strategy will keep China engaged as Tokyo’s active defence policy doesn’t bode well for the Senkaku Islands dispute. On 22 December, the Chinese Coast Guard vessels stayed in Japanese territorial waters for 72 hours, marking the longest continuous intrusion since 2012.
The intrusion occurred in an area China describes as Diaoyu Island and contests Tokyo’s claim to the oceanic features. By doubling the defence budget, Tokyo is looking to counter Beijing’s militarism in the region with a $51.4 billion budget.
Beijing is unlikely to break the ice on relations with India as border tensions will remain high and the People’s Liberation Army’s territorial ingress into the Ladakh region unresolved.
At a recent rural work conference, Xi emphasised the need to “work on rural revitalisation”, encouraging people to settle along the border areas with India. These so-called poverty alleviation projects will likely include new villages on disputed territory along the Line of Actual Control, which will keep the border dispute alive.
Lastly, Beijing won’t play any active role in negotiating a peace in the Russia-Ukraine war and will continue to maintain “pro-Russia neutrality.” Beijing is unlikely to close itself off to the world or take a step back from its aggressive foreign policy approach. Xi will juggle complex issues like delivering relative economic growth without compromising on ‘core interests’ throughout 2023.
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He tweets @aadilbrar. Views are personal.
(Edited by Tarannum)
theprint.in · by Aadil Brar · December 28, 2022
21. Fraught shift from ‘Asia-Pacific’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’
Know your target audience. Moon Chung In delivered this speech in Beijing. This Is pro-China, anti-US. As usual there is very little that I agree on with Moon but I do think the name Asia-Pacific is a better term than INDOPACIFIC (recognizing that some friends on my distribution list are responsible for the term!). It is just my bias but it is Ais and the Pacific that are the two largest elements in the region. I can make the case that the INDOPACIFIC is purely maritime focussed on the Pacific and Indian Oceans. If INDO refers to India then we are excluding the rest of Asia. Agreement on the name is the only alignment I have with Moon. I think the rest of his article is a misunderstanding of US national security and foreign policy but again that was likely well received in Beijing.
Fraught shift from ‘Asia-Pacific’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’
How to de-risk a lexical change that represents dangerous trends: fragmentation, decoupling and confrontation
asiatimes.com · by More by Moon Chung-in · December 30, 2022
I belong to the generation of “Asia-Pacific,” and am rather a stranger to the new idea of “Indo-Pacific.” But nowadays, wherever you go – Europe, Japan, South Korea, the United States and even Southeast Asia – “Indo-Pacific” has become the dominant theme.
In my opinion, the Indo-Pacific concept is very much based on the traditional American maritime strategy. The concept of Asia-Pacific, by contrast, originated from the combination of maritime and continental thinking for peaceful co-existence in our part of the world.
China and Russia – two continental powers – have customarily been included in the Asia-Pacific region, as seen in their membership of APEC. But I now see that the Indo-Pacific concept is radically replacing the Asia-Pacific one, and the Asian continent is disappearing from geopolitical maps (if not geographic ones).
Asia map: Wikipedia
Consequently, confrontation between the US-led Indo-Pacific and the old Asia-Pacific region has become more visible than ever before. It is a bad omen for peace, security and stability in our part of the world. That’s my starting proposition.
My second proposition is that South Korea is in a very difficult situation because of growing tensions between Beijing and Washington. Geopolitical confrontation and economic competition between the two powers, particularly in the areas of trade and technology, have been intensifying. A clash of values between liberal and illiberal states has also become visible, reminiscent of the old Cold War.
South Korea faces a serious dilemma of choice in this bilateral confrontation. Pressures have come mostly from the US side. From a geopolitical point of view, Washington has been pushing Seoul to embrace the Indo-Pacific strategy and to cooperate with the Quad and AUKUS, aiming to encircle China.
Although the US is its most important ally, South Korea is not in a position to antagonize China. In the geo-economic arena, the US has been seeking to decouple China from global supply chains. South Korea joined the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and has been strengthening economic ties with the US. But China remains Seoul’s largest trading partner, accounting for 25% of its total trade volume.
Therefore, it is not easy for South Korea to join the decoupling effort wholeheartedly.
Washington has also been urging Seoul to deepen bilateral technology cooperation at the expense of China. Take semiconductors. The Joe Biden administration has wanted South Korea’s leading semiconductor manufacturers to invest in the US and divert away from the Chinese market, within the framework of the American Chip 4 initiative.
But these companies export about 60% of their products to China (40% to the Chinese mainland, 20% to Hong Kong), while importing almost 60% of chip-related critical materials from China. Therefore, they cannot easily discard China.
And in the area of values, I see tensions. The US has been championing a liberal coalition to fight against illiberal states such as China and Russia. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s government has given the impression that it has joined the liberal coalition by emphasizing freedom, human rights and democracy.
Such a stance could pose a major problem in dealing with China in the years to come.
All these developments are worrisome. The polarization of the international system and the rise of bloc diplomacy in the region could bring major security, diplomatic and economic dilemmas to South Korea. And we cannot anticipate security, stability and peaceful development in this part of the world under such a devolving regional order.
The author, Moon Chung-in. Photo: Korea and the World
What should be done? My basic idea is this: First, I think that there has got to be a restoration of the Asia-Pacific concept.
The Indo-Pacific is associated with the logic of bloc diplomacy, exclusivity and the geopolitical division of maritime and continental powers. This makes the disappearance of “Asia” troublesome for all Asians. Therefore, it is important for us to reassess the meaning and implications of the Indo-Pacific more critically, and revalue the traditional Asia-Pacific concept for inclusiveness, cooperation and stability.
Second, cooperative security needs to be re-energized. Now we see the big clash in this part of the world between America-centered collective defense based on alliances and China’s vision of a collective security system based on the United Nations Charter and multilateral security cooperation. To overcome such tensions and subsequent instability, we need to re-energize cooperative security while enhancing preventive diplomacy.
Third, I would also like to highlight the urgency of open regionalism. The Indo-Pacific economic framework; the logic of decoupling, reshoring, friend-shoring; and Chip 4 – all involve closed regionalism.
Closed regionalism contradicts basic norms, principles and rules of the liberal international trading order that the United States has created and sustained. We should return to open regionalism.
Although its performance has been rather dismal, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is a good example of open regionalism. Even the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a multinational free-trade area, is based on the concept of open regionalism. Thus, the current pattern of closed regionalism is really going against the stream of history.
Fourth, multilateralism must be resuscitated. The world is becoming fragmented. In a fragmented world, we cannot find harmony, stability and peaceful development. It is necessary for us to return to the basic norms, principles and rules of multilateralism in order to avoid a fragmented world.
I really want to emphasize the importance of preventing a clash of civilizations. The Western idea of dividing the world into liberal and illiberal states is extremely misleading and even destabilizing. Boosting tensions and conflicts between the two blocs is even worse. Every society has its own cultural and historical contexts, and we need to learn how to respect the differences and live harmoniously.
Finally, mutual respect and strategic empathy should guide our terms of engagement. That is the best way to enhance peaceful co-existence among different civilizations. Mutual respect comes from strategic empathy. When we put ourselves in the shoes of others, we can have a better understanding of their point of view. That reduces potential for misunderstanding and conflict.
I think that such inter-subjective understanding is the surest way to peaceful co-existence, harmony and common prosperity.
The above article is the text of a speech Moon Chung-in delivered at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum in November, which was subsequently published by China US Focus. It is republished by Asia Times with the permission of the author.
asiatimes.com · by More by Moon Chung-in · December 30, 2022
22. Zelenskyy Was Used By Joe Biden as a Pawn
Zelenskyy Was Used By Joe Biden as a Pawn
19fortyfive.com · by Victoria Coates · December 29, 2022
Americans need President Biden to explain what his strategy is for Ukraine, and why they should pay for it – Broad, bi-partisan support for the bravery exhibited by Ukrainians in general—and President Voldomyr Zelenskyy in particular—remains strong in America, but it is in danger of being eroded. Unfortunately, President Joe Biden invited the Ukrainian leader to come to Washington in the final days of the 117th Congress. The purpose of the visit was not to shore up support for Ukraine but rather to ensure passage of the bloated omnibus spending bill, thereby making Ukraine a partisan rather than national security issue.
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The Biden administration cynically decided to cast votes on this $1.7 trillion package of domestic pork as a referendum on the $46 billion for Ukraine it contains. This piece of political theater will only exacerbate the partisan divide Biden has created on this issue. Of course, none of this was Zelenskyy’s fault, as he was in no position to refuse when the American president issued an invitation that was for all intents and purposes a command.
President Biden has framed support for Ukraine as a binary choice between appeasing Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and providing unlimited support for Ukraine—hence Zelenskyy’s appearance on the eve of the omnibus vote. Americans should reject this false choice, regardless of their support for Ukraine or its president. The U.S. Congress cannot issue a blank, undated check to anyone for any purpose, and lawmakers have every right to ask questions about these large expenditures on a conflict to which we are not party, especially given Biden’s failure to articulate a clear strategy outlining America’s vital national security interests in the war, and how he is prepared to support Ukrainian victory.
The incremental, tepid support the Biden administration has offered over the last 10 months appears to be perpetuating an uneasy stalemate in which Ukraine can survive, but cannot decisively win the war. Given the ongoing hardships Ukrainians are enduring, not to mention the drain on America and our NATO allies, lawmakers should prioritize ending the war favorably to Kiev and Washington. From an American perspective this would mean Putin agreeing to terms that render him militarily and/or politically deterred from venturing into Europe for the foreseeable future. A worst-case scenario would be a wounded—but not defeated—Putin who could peddle the outcome as a quasi-victory to the Russian people and live to fight another day. We need to end Putin’s pattern of territorial aggression in Europe, not repeat it yet again in five years’ time, when it might involve a NATO country requiring direct American engagement.
Conservatives should, however, resist the impulse to reflexively reject support for Ukraine, just as they are resisting the demand for “as much as it takes for as long as it takes.” There is actually an argument to be made for escalating our military support to force Putin to spend money he doesn’t have to bolster his war effort—an echo of how Ronald Reagan won the Cold War.
We don’t need to mortgage our children’s future to achieve this end. Any additional aid requests should focus on providing the lethal military aid the U.S. can best supply. European countries, such as Germany and France, can and should take the lead on economic and civil society assistance where the U.S. is currently bearing a disproportionate burden. But to be effective, such a strategy would have to be robustly supported by both parties and accompanied by the truly crushing American and EU economic sanctions the Biden administration has thus far been unwilling to impose due to concerns about domestic energy prices—once again demonstrating that U.S. national security is subject to the whims of the President’s political agenda.
Resistance to Russian aggression and the atrocities that have typified Putin’s invasion is something that both parties could continue to support. But that unifying cause would have been much better served had Zelenskyy visited Washington two weeks from now to address the new 118th Congress that better reflects the current views of the American people. How much more effective it would have been to have the Ukrainian president standing in front of a Democratic Vice President and a Republican Speaker of the House, sitting side by side. He could also have engaged with the new majority in the House and enlisted their help in demonstrating the Ukrainian commitment to protecting U.S. support with unprecedented transparency and anti-corruption measures.
The timing of Zelenskyy’s trip made him little more than a pawn in the Democrats’ strategy to ensure lame-duck passage of yet another massively wasteful spending bill. To restore national unity on Ukraine, Zelenskyy would be well-advised to make another visit to Washington next year, and Biden should do the American people the courtesy of directly laying out to them his strategy to win the war.
Victoria Coates is a senior research fellow specializing in international affairs and national security issues at The Heritage Foundation’s Thatcher Center for Freedom.
19fortyfive.com · by Victoria Coates · December 29, 2022
23. A Look at the New Veterans Headed to Congress in January
A Look at the New Veterans Headed to Congress in January
military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · December 29, 2022
Nineteen veterans will begin roaming the halls of Congress next week, contributing to one of the biggest classes of lawmakers who served in the military in recent years.
The 118th Congress' cohort of 97 total veterans includes a couple historic firsts: Congress' first two Black West Point graduates.
Two female veterans will also be joining Congress. That's short of the record three women veterans who entered Congress in 2018. But when including incumbents, the seven total women veterans still matches the record total number set by the 116th Congress.
Sixteen of the freshman veterans are Republicans, who won a narrow majority in the House after Democrats performed better in the midterm elections than expected.
At least one of the veterans joining Congress was at the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol, though he denies ever entering the building and has not been charged with any crime.
And one of the 19 "new" veterans is actually a familiar face. Navy SEAL veteran Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., is returning to Congress after leaving in early 2019 to become the interior secretary in the Trump administration. Zinke resigned as interior secretary amid allegations, later substantiated by an inspector general, that he violated ethics rules.
Here's a deeper look at the new veterans in the incoming Congress:
The West Point Buddies
Republican Reps.-elect Wesley Hunt of Texas and John James of Michigan will be the first two Black graduates of West Point to serve in Congress.
What's more, Hunt and James were both in the class of 2004 with another relatively new veteran member of Congress, Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan of New York, who won a special election in August and was elected to serve a full term in November.
The trio have expressed optimism their shared military history can help them work together at a time when Congress is expected to be paralyzed by partisanship.
"Working with somebody who you build that trust with, at West Point and at war, will be essential to move this nation forward," James told news outlet Politico last month.
James served in the Army for eight years, a career that included multiple tours in Iraq as an Apache helicopter pilot. The Ranger-qualified aviation officer, who ran unsuccessful campaigns for the Senate in 2018 and 2020, has said he flew 750 combat hours in Iraq. In addition to being one of Congress' first Black West Point graduates, he is the first Black Republican that Michigan has sent to Congress.
Hunt also served in the Army for eight years as an Apache pilot. He had one deployment to Iraq and two deployments to Saudi Arabia, where he served as a diplomatic liaison officer. Hunt narrowly lost a House race in 2020 and won this year in a newly drawn district that was reportedly shaped with him in mind. As a candidate, Hunt launched his own political action committee aimed at helping elect other Republicans named the Hellfire PAC in a nod to his military background, and he has spoken about the need to diversify the GOP.
Both James and Hunt have become regulars on Fox News in recent years, echoing GOP talking points that "wokeness" and politics are distracting the military from its core mission.
The Women
Republican Reps.-elect Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida will join the small club of women with military experience in Congress.
A historically underrepresented group, the women veterans in Congress often band together across party lines to tackle issues affecting female service members, such as military sexual assault and ill-fitting body armor.
Kiggans is replacing a fellow female Navy veteran, Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria, who was more hawkish on military issues than most Democrats but angered Republicans by participating in the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection. Kiggans has said she was inspired to get into politics after seeing the success of Democratic women veterans, including Luria, in 2018 and thinking, "Where are the Republican veteran women?"
Kiggans, who has served in the Virginia state senate for the last two years, was a Navy pilot for 10 years. During her military career, she flew H-46 and H-3 helicopters and deployed twice to the Persian Gulf. After leaving the Navy, she used GI Bill benefits to attend nursing school, becoming an adult geriatric primary care nurse practitioner.
Luna is an Air Force veteran who served on active duty for five years as an airfield manager in Missouri and Florida, and also had a brief stint in the Oregon Air National Guard. Luna, who ran an unsuccessful House race in 2020, will be Florida's first Mexican-American female member of Congress.
In recent years, the former Obama supporter worked to build her conservative bona fides, amassing a large social media following with fiery posts and working as the director for Hispanic engagement at conservative youth group Turning Point USA and then as chair of Hispanic initiatives at advocacy group PragerU. She has said one of her top issues in Congress will be care for veterans after seeing shortfalls in the care her husband, who was wounded while serving in Afghanistan, received.
The January 6-er
While some of the most ardent 2020 election deniers lost their races this year, at least one veteran who was committed to that cause and came to Washington on Jan. 6 won.
Republican Rep.-elect Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin is a retired Navy SEAL who served for 26 years. His campaign biography says his career included a deployment to Bosnia-Herzegovina, multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and time in the Horn of Africa, Asia, Europe, and South and Central America.
In a 2015 book called "Book of Man: A Navy Seal's Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood," Van Orden, who has also had some minor acting roles, reportedly detailed a time he exposed a male lieutenant's enlarged scrotum to two young female officers, an incident he later claimed was part of medical training.
Van Orden, who ran an unsuccessful House race in 2020, has said he was in D.C. on Jan. 6 for "meetings and to stand for the integrity of our electoral system." He acknowledged walking down the Mall toward the Capitol, but insists he wasn't on Capitol grounds and left the area as the situation turned violent.
"When it became clear that a protest had become a mob, I left the area as to remain there could be construed as tacitly approving this unlawful conduct," Van Orden wrote in an op-ed days after Jan. 6. "At no time did I enter the grounds, let alone the building."
The Daily Beast, citing pictures and video posted to social media, reported that Van Orden was in a restricted area on Capitol grounds that would have required crossing a police barricade to get to and that live video of him there was posted after the attack started. Van Orden is not one of the more than 900 people who have been charged in connection with the attack.
After his victory this year, Van Orden espoused a unifying tone, saying that "we have to get back to the place where we represent everyone."
The Rest
The remaining freshman veterans are:
- Rep.-elect Eli Crane, R-Ariz., a former Navy SEAL who joined a week after Sept. 11, 2001, and deployed five times, including three times to Iraq with SEAL Team 3.
- Rep.-elect Cory Mills, R-Fla., an Army veteran who survived an improvised explosive device attack in 2006.
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Rep.-elect Rich McCormick, R-Ga., a Marine Corps-turned-Navy veteran who served as the department head for the emergency medicine department in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
- Rep.-elect Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, an Air Force veteran who flew nearly 1,000 combat flight hours during three deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly in reconnaissance aircraft.
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Rep.-elect Don Davis, D-N.C., an Air Force Academy graduate who served as a mortuary officer at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
- Rep.-elect Jeff Jackson, D-N.C., a major in the North Carolina Army National Guard's judge advocate general's corps who served in Kandahar while in the Army Reserve.
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Rep.-elect Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., a Naval Academy graduate who served as a surface warfare officer for eight years.
- Rep.-elect Brandon Williams, R-N.Y., a Navy veteran who served as a nuclear submarine officer for five years, volunteering to join in the lead-up to the first Gulf War.
- Rep.-elect Max Miller, R-Ohio, a Marine Corps reservist with no deployments who worked as an aide to former President Donald Trump.
- Rep.-elect Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., a Naval Academy graduate whose six years of service included a tour in Iraq as a civil affairs officer.
- Rep.-elect Keith Self, R-Texas, a West Point graduate and former Green Beret who first served from 1975 to 1999 and was then recalled to active duty in 2002 and 2003 to serve in Afghanistan and Qatar on the staff of the commander of Central Command.
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Rep.-elect Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, a retired Navy SEAL who was medically discharged after suffering a traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury in a helicopter crash, and is the twin brother of fellow Navy SEAL veteran Marcus Luttrell, known for being the only survivor of 2005 Operation Red Wings ambush in Afghanistan.
- Sen.-elect J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, a former public affairs officer in the Marine Corps for four years, including time in Iraq, who is most known for his memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy," and his work as a venture capitalist.
-- Rebecca Kheel can be reached at rebecca.kheel@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @reporterkheel.
military.com · by Rebecca Kheel · December 29, 2022
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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