Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

- Lord Byron

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility."

- Sigmund Freud

"Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.”

- Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of War

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 13, 2023

2. Why Is America Still Flying the A-10 Warthog, a Cold War Relic?

3. Steppe change: How Russia’s war on Ukraine is reshaping Kazakhstan

4. US special operations team working out of embassy in Ukraine: Sources

5. American and British special forces are inside Ukraine, leak claims

6. World leaders are lining up to meet Xi Jinping. Should the US be worried?

7. Could Beijing ‘borrow’ America’s Cold War Cuba strategy to lock down Taiwan?

8. The Airman Who Gave Gamers a Real Taste of War

9. Did The U.S. Get Rolled Again at the FAO?

10. US, Philippines agree to complete road map for security assistance

11. Moscow Expert And Russian Blitzkrieg Mentality: Russia Is Able To Annihilate Kazakhstan In A Matter Of 2 Months – OpEd

12. Pentagon Looking Into How Accused Leaker Accessed Top Secret Documents

13. Despite Leak, U.S. and Allies Will Keep Sharing Intelligence

14. Iraq: Twenty Years on, Two Narratives Emerge

15. Putin’s Mobilization of Masculinity in the Invasion of Ukraine—and the Role of Ukrainian Women in Stopping Him

16. (Leak) Suspect in leak probe talked about God, guns and war secrets

17. China vows not to sell arms to any party in Ukraine war

18. 1.25 Million Have 'Top Secret' Access In The US

19. After tragedy, US Air Force probes English training for foreign pilots

20. Deputy defense secretary to troops: Don’t share classified information

21. Is India’s Rise Inevitable?

22. Analysis | The U.S.’s gloominess on the war in Ukraine is now clear to see

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 13, 2023

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-13-2023

Key Takeaways

A senior Ukrainian official warned that Russia can reconstitute itself as a serious threat to Ukraine in the long run despite facing severe force generation problems at this time.
The Kremlin has not yet undertaken the necessary reorganization of its war effort to effectively leverage economies of scale to support large Russian force generation.
Ukrainian assessments confirm ISW’s longstanding assessment that Russia cannot conduct multiple offensive operations simultaneously at this time.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly personally approved the arrest of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich.
The Russian Federal State Security Service (FSB) on April 13 identified the individuals allegedly responsible for assassinating milblogger Maxim Fomin (alias Vladlen Tatarsky).
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued to make gains in Bakhmut, and continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces continue to reinforce and strengthen their positions in southern Ukraine in preparation for a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and his supporters continue to feud with St. Petersburg authorities and advertising companies allegedly obstructing Wagner Group recruitment efforts.
Wagner Group are reportedly training Ukrainian children to use weapons as part of the Russian Young Army Cadets National Movement (Yunarmiya) in occupied Ukraine.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 13, 2023

Apr 13, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, April 13, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Riley Bailey, George Barros, Grace Mappes, Angela Howard, and Frederick W. Kagan

April 13, 6 pm ET

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

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

A senior Ukrainian official warned that Russia can reconstitute itself as a serious threat to Ukraine in the long run despite facing severe force generation problems at this time. Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov stated on April 13 that Russian crypto-mobilization efforts are stagnating due to Russians’ growing awareness that causality rates for Russian soldiers in Ukraine are high. Hromov stated that Volgograd and Saratov oblasts have only met seven percent (134 of the 7,800 recruits) and 14 percent (270 of the 7,600 recruits) of their regional recruitment quotas for the first quarter of 2023 respectively.[1] Hromov also stated that Moscow is creating “alternative” private military companies (PMCs) to fill these gaps, but that these PMCs will not be as powerful as the Wagner Group in the near future, partially supporting previous ISW forecasts.[2] Hromov noted that Ukraine and its allies must not underestimate Russian force generation capabilities in the long run for a protracted war of attrition. ISW has previously warned that the US and NATO should not underestimate Russian capabilities in the long run, as Russia can regenerate by leveraging its population and defense industrial base (DIB) to threaten Ukraine and NATO if Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to fundamentally change Russia’s strategic resource allocation over the long run.[3] Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced plans on January 17 to form 12 new maneuver divisions over the course of several years, for example.[4]

The Kremlin has not yet undertaken the necessary reorganization of its war effort to effectively leverage economies of scale to support large-scale Russian force generation, however. Current Russian half-measures and decentralized recruitment efforts to regenerate forces such as crypto-mobilization, leaning on Russia’s regions to generate volunteers, relying on new small PMCs, and pressuring various Russian state-owned enterprises to sponsor and pay for recruitment campaigns seek to shift the resource burden to generate forces among different siloviki and elements of the Russian state.[5] The Kremlin is reportedly billing the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom for its volunteer recruitment efforts in occupied Donetsk Oblast, offering volunteers 400,000 rubles (approximately $4,900) salary per month.[6] A Russian State Duma official proposed the institution of a new 2–3% “military tax” on Russian citizens’ income — a provision that would allow Putin to reduce the burden on existing federal funds but would likely anger more Russians.[7] These various Russian groups’ resources are finite. The Kremlin’s currently unsustainable effort to commandeer them will exhaust itself without fundamental resource generation and resource allocation reform. These current efforts will generate some additional combat power in the short term, to be sure, but will do so with diminishing marginal returns at increasing cost. The Russian state’s current model of resource allocations and economies of scale do not synergize disjointed efforts to tap discrete resource pools. The Kremlin’s decision to continue relying on financially incentivizing voluntary recruits with both one-time payments and accrued lifetime benefits will create large long-term structural costs and will not be sustainable indefinitely.[8]

Ukrainian assessments confirm ISW’s longstanding assessment that Russia cannot conduct multiple offensive operations simultaneously at this time. Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov stated on April 13 that Russian forces deployed unspecified Russian forces from the Avdiivka area of operations to reinforce offensive operations around Bakhmut and that Russia has lost about 4,000 Wagner and conventional personnel in Bakhmut since around March 30.[9] Hromov’s statement supports ISW’s longstanding assessment that the Russian military — in its current form — is unable to conduct large-scale, simultaneous offensive campaigns on multiple axes.[10]

Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly personally approved the arrest of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich. Bloomberg reported on April 12 that Putin personally approved the arrest of Gershkovich on espionage charges before the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested Gershkovich in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast on March 30 for collecting information constituting a state secret about the activities of a Russian military-industrial complex enterprise.[11] Putin’s reported personal involvement in the arrest suggests that the arrest was likely a retaliatory response to the US arrest of Russian national Sergey Cherkasov on March 24 on charges of acting as agent of a foreign power.[12] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied that Putin ordered Gershkovich’s arrest and stated that Russian special services independently decided to arrest Gershkovich.[13] ISW has previously reported that the FSB has made other recent arrests in connection with information about defense enterprises in Sverdlovsk Oblast, and ISW assesses that the Kremlin may use the pretext of threats to Russia’s defense industrial base (DIB) to justify crackdowns and further conceal the activities of Russian defense industrial enterprises.[14] Putin’s reported personal involvement in the first arrest of a US journalist since the Cold War may indicate that the Kremlin viewed the arrest as a calculated escalation that it will attempt to use as leverage for extracting concessions from the United States.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed to have identified the individuals allegedly responsible for assassinating milblogger Maxim Fomin (known under the alias Vladlen Tatarsky) on April 13.[15] The FSB claimed that alleged Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) agents Darya Trepova and Yuriy Denisov worked with Russian Anti-Corruption Foundation associates Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhadanov — both located abroad — to track Fomin for months and eventually assassinate him.[16] The FSB stated that it added Denisov to the international wanted list after he fled Russia.[17] Anti-Corruption Foundation Director Ivan Zhandov claimed on April 13 that the FSB released this version of events to justify extending Anti-Corruption Foundation founder and Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s prison sentence.[18]

Key Takeaways

A senior Ukrainian official warned that Russia can reconstitute itself as a serious threat to Ukraine in the long run despite facing severe force generation problems at this time.
The Kremlin has not yet undertaken the necessary reorganization of its war effort to effectively leverage economies of scale to support large Russian force generation.
Ukrainian assessments confirm ISW’s longstanding assessment that Russia cannot conduct multiple offensive operations simultaneously at this time.
Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly personally approved the arrest of Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich.
The Russian Federal State Security Service (FSB) on April 13 identified the individuals allegedly responsible for assassinating milblogger Maxim Fomin (alias Vladlen Tatarsky).
Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line.
Russian forces continued to make gains in Bakhmut, and continued ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line.
Russian forces continue to reinforce and strengthen their positions in southern Ukraine in preparation for a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and his supporters continue to feud with St. Petersburg authorities and advertising companies allegedly obstructing Wagner Group recruitment efforts.
Wagner Group are reportedly training Ukrainian children to use weapons as part of the Russian Young Army Cadets National Movement (Yunarmiya) in occupied Ukraine.

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

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

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

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

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Svatove-Kreminna line on April 13. Geolocated footage published on April 12 indicates that Russian forces likely advanced south of Bilohorivka (12km south of Kreminna).[19] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Bilohorivka on April 13.[20] Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov reported that Russian forces deployed unspecified motorized rifle units, BARS (Russian Combat Reserve) Special Forces, and additional reconnaissance equipment to the Kreminna area, where a lack of rotations is reportedly leading to poor morale among Russian personnel.[21] Hromov reported that Russian forces continued attempts to push Ukrainian forces to positions on the west bank of the Zherebets River near Torske (14km west of Kreminna) and Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna).[22] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces also continued offensive operations near Yampolivka (16km west of Kreminna) and Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna), and that Ukrainian forces conducted a partially successful counterattack near Kryvoshyivka (11km northwest of Svatove) aiming to take control over a section of the N26 highway.[23]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces struck Russian positions in Svatove with HIMARS rockets on April 13.[24]

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

Russian forces continued to make territorial gains in Bakhmut on April 13. Geolocated footage shows that Russian forces advanced further west into central Bakhmut and made marginal advances in southern and southwestern Bakhmut.[25] Two prominent Russian milbloggers posted footage of themselves reportedly in central Bakhmut, signaling possible further Wagner Group advances in the city.[26] Russian sources claimed that Wagner forces seized an agricultural lyceum, a rail station, and a grain elevator in northern Bakhmut.[27] Advisor to Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Head, Yan Gagin, claimed that Wagner Group forces are close to encircling Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut, but Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin denied Gagin’s claim.[28] Prigozhin stated that Ukrainian forces continue to defend Bakhmut and provision and reinforce their forces within the city.[29] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks in Bakhmut, northwest of Bakhmut near Khromove (2km west) and Bohdanivka (6km northwest), and southwest of Bakhmut near Predtechyne (13km southwest).[30] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian Airborne (VDV) have assumed positions on Wagner’s northern flank near Vasyukivka (15km north of Bakhmut).[31]

Russian forces continued to conduct ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on April 13. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian ground attacks near Sieverne (5km west of Avdiivka), Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka), Pobieda (5km southwest of Donetsk City), and Novomykhailivka (10km southwest of Donetsk City).[32] Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces attacked the western, southern, and eastern approaches to Avdiivka and made advances near Krasnohorivka (3km north of Avdiivka) on April 12 and 13.[33] Other milbloggers claimed that Russian forces conducted ground attacks southwest of Avdiivka near Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka) and Nevelske (14km southwest of Avdiivka).[34] Russian and Ukrainian sources reported heavy fighting in Marinka.[35]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed or claimed ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on April 13.[36]

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

Russian forces continue to reinforce and strengthen their positions in southern Ukraine in preparation for a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive. Deputy Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff Brigadier General Oleksiy Hromov reported on April 13 that Russian forces have reinforced unspecified areas in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts to hinder potential Ukrainian advances.[37] The Ukrainian Zaporizhia Oblast Administration reported on April 13 that Russian forces continue to build fortifications and mine areas along the front line in Zaporizhia Oblast.[38]

A Russian source claimed that Ukrainian forces continued reconnaissance-in-force operations in Zaporizhia Oblast on April 13. A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted probing attacks near Russian defenses in the vicinity of Robotyne (14km south of Orikhiv).[39]

Russian forces continue to endanger the safety of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) as of April 13. Ukrainian state energy company Enerhoatom reported on April 13 that Russian forces continue to mine areas near the ZNPP and that one of the mines recently detonated near the control room of the fourth power unit at the facility.[40]

Russian forces continued routine fire west of Hulyaipole and in Mykolaiv and Kherson oblasts on April 13.[41] Ukrainian sources reported that Russian forces struck Kherson City and Ochakiv, Mykolaiv Oblast.[42]

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

Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin and Wagner supporters continue to feud with St. Petersburg authorities and advertising companies who they accuse of blocking Wagner’s recruitment efforts. A pair of pro-Wagner milbloggers amplified on April 13 a complaint from League of Defenders of the Interests of Local Wars and Military Conflicts representative Andrey Troshev to St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Beglov asking him to prevent advertising companies from refusing to advertise Wagner.[43] Troshev claimed that all Russian regional heads except for Beglov assist Wagner recruitment efforts as much as possible.[44] Prigozhin consistently publicly criticizes Beglov, likely in an attempt to expand his influence in St. Petersburg.[45] Prigozhin complained to Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin on April 13 that Beglov’s alleged failure to solve problems in St. Petersburg, extremely low popularity ratings, and failure to prevent social unrest are unacceptable in a time of war. Prigozhin asked the Duma to review legal amendments that would permit the termination of officials if more than 10 percent of the population vote for the dismissal of the official.[46]

Russian forces appear unable to maintain Iranian drones without access to foreign components. Ukrainian Center for Trophy and Prospective Arms Research representative Andriy Rudik stated on April 13 that recent samples of Iranian Shahed-136 drones and Russian Zala 421-16E drones include foreign-made GSM-transceivers, 30-year-old foreign-made relays, and other key parts either devoid of Russian components or heavily dependent on foreign components. Rudik noted that these components indicate that Russian cannot independently maintain Iranian drones.[47] Russian domestic drone manufacturers likely also rely heavily on foreign components to maintain and repair Iranian-provided drones.

Russian sources are continuing to debate the Russian legislature’s creating a unified register for military service notice distribution as the bill awaits Russian President Vladimir Putin’s signature.[48] Transbaikalia State Duma Parliamentarian Andrei Gurulev and Russian Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko noted on April 11 and 12 that the law has sparked a flurry of heated comments online and rumors of a pending wave of mobilization.[49] Gurulev denied rumors of the impending second mobilization wave.[50] Matvienko stated that legislators mistakenly did not explain the law to the public.[51] The Russian Ministry of Digital Development reportedly stated that it will have a working database of all Russians eligible for military service by April 2024.[52] State Duma Deputy Oleg Nilov asserted that Russian authorities should start using electronic summonses before the end of spring conscription.[53]

Russian authorities continue to prosecute individuals involved in alleged domestic resistance. A popular Russian news aggregator claimed on April 13 that the Russian State Duma introduced amendments to Russia’s Criminal Code that would punish individuals implementing international organizations’ decisions that contradict Russian law.[54] An independent Russian media outlet reported on April 12 that Russian authorities detained a 61-year-old woman for attempting an arson attack against a military enlistment office in Komi Republic.[55] Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov claimed on April 13 that a group combining four different Russian police services neutralized an unidentified individual from an unspecified “illegal formation.”[56] A prominent Russian milblogger and nationalist Russian news source on April 12 accused Russian authorities of failing to do enough to crack down on two bars in central Moscow that supposedly collect funds to support Ukrainian forces.[57]

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

Wagner Group members reportedly are training Ukrainian children to use weapons as part of the Russian Young Army Cadets National Movement (Yunarmiya) in occupied Ukraine. Mariupol Mayor Advisor Petro Andryushenko amplified footage on April 13 reportedly showing Wagner forces training Ukrainian children in Mariupol to use guns and fight.[58]

Russian occupation officials continue to restrict civilian movements and strengthen counter-intelligence measures in occupied territories to improve Russia’s operational security ahead of an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian occupation officials tightened regulations for taxi operators and now require them to present passes at checkpoints in Tokmak, Zaporizhia Oblast.[59] Russian authorities reportedly banned Russian forces from accepting food from locals or communicating with locals.[60] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are increasing the patrol quantity, seizing locals’ phones, and banning civilians from leaving localities in Troitske Raion, Luhansk Oblast.[61] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces increased roadblocks and patrols in Hrafske, Donetsk Oblast and are undertaking filtration measures in Blahodatne, Donetsk Oblast.[62] Russian outlets reported that occupation authorities detained a Berdyansk, Zaporizhia Oblast resident on suspicion of transferring information on Russian military movements to Ukrainian forces.[63] Ukrainian Kherson Oblast Administration Advisor Serhiy Khlan stated that Russian forces arrested Ukrainian collaborator Pavel Filipchuk in Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast.[64] Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated that Russian occupation officials are coercing civilians to evacuate to Russian and occupied Crimea by amplifying claims that Ukrainian counteroffensives will harm the livelihoods of residents in occupied territories.[65]

Russian occupation officials and authorities in Russian regions bordering Ukraine are canceling traditional May 9 Victory Day parades likely due to security concerns.[66] Head of the Kherson Oblast Occupation Administration Vladimir Saldo claimed that his administration cancelled Victory Day celebrations due to active martial law in occupied Kherson Oblast.[67] The UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) assessed that these cancellations highlight a disparity between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to present the “special military operation” as the spirit of World War II and the battlefield realities of his war in Ukraine.[68]

Russian occupation officials continue to nationalize Ukrainian property and are announcing plans to expand infrastructure projects on the Arabat Spit. Saldo stated that Russian officials will nationalize property belonging to Ukrainian oligarchs who did not register their properties under the Russian federal system.[69] Saldo also announced that Putin has instructed occupation officials to construct main gas pipelines from Dzhankoi to Henichesk.[70]

Significant activity in Belarus (ISW assesses that a Russian or Belarusian attack into northern Ukraine in early 2023 is extraordinarily unlikely and has thus restructured this section of the update. It will no longer include counter-indicators for such an offensive.)

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, but these are not indicators that Russian and Belarusian forces are preparing for an imminent attack on Ukraine from Belarus. ISW will revise this text and its assessment if it observes any unambiguous indicators that Russia or Belarus is preparing to attack northern Ukraine.

Belarusian maneuver elements continue conducting exercises in Belarus. A battalion of the Belarusian 38th Air Assault Brigade completed battalion tactical exercises at the Brest Training Ground in Brest, Belarus on April 13.[71]

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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B... https://lb dot ua/society/2023/04/13/551884_nayblizhchim_chasom_rf_naroshchuvatime.html;

[2] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B... https://lb dot ua/society/2023/04/13/551884_nayblizhchim_chasom_rf_naroshchuvatime.html;

[3] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[4] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[5] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[6] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[7] https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/15445; https://t.me/readovkanews/56778

[8] https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7517; https://t.me/Sladkov_plus/7516

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...

[10] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/ukraine-conflict-updates

[11] https://isw.pub/UkrWar033023 ; https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles...

[12] https://isw.pub/UkrWar033023

[13] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-12/putin-approved-arrest...

[14] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[15] https://t.me/vrogov/8698; https://t.me/vrogov/8704; https://t.me/rian_... ru/20230413/tatarskiy-1864969047.html; https://t.me/readovkanews/56762; https://t.me/readovkanews/56768; http...

[16] https://t.me/vrogov/8698; https://t.me/vrogov/8704; https://t.me/rian_... ru/20230413/tatarskiy-1864969047.html; https://t.me/readovkanews/56762; https://t.me/readovkanews/56768; http...

[17] https://meduza dot io/news/2023/04/13/fsb-darya-trepova-sovershila-terakt-v-peterburge-posle-neodnokratnyh-prizyvov-leonida-volkova-i-ivana-zhdanova-k-podryvnoy-deyatelnosti; https://ria dot ru/20230413/tatarskiy-1864969047.html

[18] https://t.me/ioannZH/1543

[19] https://twitter.com/neonhandrail/status/1646371837566394369; https://tw...

[20] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02b4CQRgHnSvYWqoVLmt...

[21] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...

[22] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...

[23] https://t.me/wargonzo/11913

[24] https://t.me/miroshnik_r/11048; https://t.me/miroshnik_r/11042 ; http...

[26] https://t.me/epoddubny/15515; https://t.me/kommunist/16924; https://t.me/sashakots/39280

[27] https://voennoedelo dot com/posts/id41962-vqzgdeyd4ng9wja4plti?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop; https://sn-gazeta dot ru/interesnoe/topwar-nochyu-vs-rf-nanesli-udary-po-voennym-obektam-vs-ukrainy-v-slavyanske-kramatorske-i-pokrovske-2/; https://t.me/rybar/45762; https://t.me/milchronicles/1769

[28] https://t.me/miroshnik_r/11047; https://t.me/rian_ru/199732; https://t.me/concordgroup_official/746

[29] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/746

[30] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02b4CQRgHnSvYWqoVLmt... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0B2Zuvf1vxFny1mkzSK4...

[31] https://t.me/rybar/45762

[32] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02b4CQRgHnSvYWqoVLmt... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0B2Zuvf1vxFny1mkzSK4...

[33] https://t.me/wargonzo/11913; https://t.me/rybar/45760

[34] https://t.me/readovkanews/56751; https://t.me/wargonzo/11913

[35] https://t.me/rybar/45763; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&a... https://t.me/rybar/45760

[36] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02b4CQRgHnSvYWqoVLmt... https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0B2Zuvf1vxFny1mkzSK4...

[37] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...

[38] https://t.me/zoda_gov_ua/18225

[39] https://t.me/wargonzo/11913

[40] https://t.me/energoatom_ua/12713

[41] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02b4CQRgHnSvYWqoVLmt...

[42] https://t.me/khersonskaODA/5125 ; https://t.me/khersonskaODA/5120 ; ...

[43] https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/3059; https://t.me/rlz_the_kraken/57657

[44] https://t.me/Prigozhin_hat/3059; https://t.me/rlz_the_kraken/57657

[45] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign...

[46] https://t.me/concordgroup_official/747

[47]https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02HKDhe9BFMESZATCKPi...

[48] https://t.me/readovkanews/56781

[49] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2309; https://t.me/sotaproject/56950; https...

[50] https://t.me/Baikal_People/2309; https://t.me/sotaproject/56950; https...

[51] https://t.me/rusbrief/108401

[52] https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1768

[53] https://t.me/ostorozhno_novosti/15445

[54] https://t.me/readovkanews/56787

[55] https://t.me/astrapress/24807

[56] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3522

[57] https://t.me/RKadyrov_95/3522

[58] https://t.me/andriyshTime/8544

[59] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/04/13/na-zaporizhzhi-vorog-namagayetsya-unemozhlyvyty-peredachu-informacziyi-pro-svoye-rozmishhennya-zsu/ ; https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0B2Zuvf1vxFny1mkzSK4...

[60] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2023/04/13/na-zaporizhzhi-vorog-namagayetsya-unemozhlyvyty-peredachu-informacziyi-pro-svoye-rozmishhennya-zsu/

[61] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid02b4CQRgHnSvYWqoVLmt...

[62] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/pfbid0B2Zuvf1vxFny1mkzSK4...

[63] https://t.me/readovkanews/56774; https://t.me/russkiy_opolchenec/36320

[64] https://www.facebook.com/sergey.khlan/posts/pfbid0SZDwv4KHDgDt4WLgEn6TBx...

[65] https://armyinform.com dot ua/2023/04/13/u-krymu-prymusovo-zaluchayut-evakujovanyh-ukrayincziv-do-vykonannya-najvazhchyh-robit-ganna-malyar/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoSlPfTUkLo&ab_channel=%D0%92%D1%96%D0%B...

[66] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1646404616014241794?s=20; https://...

[67] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/672

[68] https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1646404616014241794?s=20; https://...

[69] https://t.me/VGA_Kherson/8583

[70] https://t.me/SALDO_VGA/670

[71] https://t.me/modmilby/25707; https://t.me/modmilby/25717

Why Is America Still Flying the A-10 Warthog, a Cold War Relic?

Lawmakers protecting jobs and commerce for their districts block the military from retiring outdated equipment, impairing effort to counter rapidly modernizing Chinese forces

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-10-warthog-why-is-america-still-flying-cold-war-relic-f34f607f?mod=hp_lead_pos7

By Daniel Nasaw | Photographs by Ash Ponders for The Wall Street Journal

April 13, 2023 9:08 am ET

Every day, teams of technicians at a vast Air Force base in Tucson, Ariz., tend to a fleet of attack jets the Pentagon has been trying to retire for more than a decade. They have picked replacement parts from the base’s famous “Boneyard,” where old military planes go for scrap, which stretches far into the surrounding desert.

The Air Force has said for years that the A-10 jets, nicknamed Warthogs for their bulky silhouette and toughness in a fight, have passed their prime and will be vulnerable in the wars of the future. The production line where they were made fell silent in the mid-1980s, and the average A-10 here is four decades old. Its job can be done by newer, more advanced planes, the Air Force says.

“The A-10, while it has served us well, is simply not a part of the battlefield of the future,” said Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for plans and programs.

Congress has other ideas. Bowing to members whose constituencies are dependent on the jet for jobs and the flow of federal tax dollars, it has instead insisted nearly all the planes keep flying at a cost of more than $4 billion over the past 10 years.

This kind of intervention is common—and is impairing the U.S.’s ability to respond to rapidly modernizing Chinese forces in a new era of great-power competition, say current and former senior defense officials and military analysts.

A SERIES EXAMINING THE PROBLEMS CONFRONTING AMERICA'S MILITARY:

The U.S. Is Not Yet Ready for the Era of ‘Great Power’ Conflict

How Beijing Boxed America Out of the South China Sea

Why Is America Still Flying the A-10 Warthog, a Cold War Relic?

View the Full Series

Efforts by lawmakers to bring military jobs and funding to their districts and keep them there are as old as Congress itself. But they come at a huge opportunity cost at a time when the U.S. is facing its most formidable adversary since the end of the Cold War. Congress is in effect forcing the Pentagon to spend billions on programs for which it sees no role in future wars.

Lawmakers also barred the Air Force from retiring its C-40 VIP passenger planes, which are 18 years old on average and have undergone significant upgrades, and limited the service’s authority to shrink its fleet of aging E-3 AWACS radar planes until it can replace them with more advanced E-7 Wedgetails.

Congress protected the oldest planes in the large fleet of F-15 jet fighters, many of which are flown by Air National Guard units across the country, as well as the Air Force’s oldest F-22s, both of which the Air Force wants to replace with more advanced planes.

The A-10's interior. The jets are nicknamed Warthogs for their bulky silhouette and toughness in a fight.

It allowed the Navy to retire only four Littoral Combat Ships—a class of vessel plagued by technical failures but supporting thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in contracts in the districts where the ships are based. It also blocked the Navy from retiring any EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes until 2027. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro told the House in May last year the plane was a low priority for the service, “specifically with regards to the high-end fight against China right now,” and the Navy sought permission to send Growlers that don’t fly from aircraft carriers to the Boneyard.

“If there were one ask I would have of the Congress, it would be to allow the Air Force to retire its old and irrelevant airplanes so that we can free up the resources we need…to confront China,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in December 2021.

The Air Force’s “old iron,” he said, referring to obsolete planes, is “an anchor holding back the Air Force.”

The Pentagon says it would rather dedicate the staff and resources consumed by the A-10s to other planes, most notably the F-35. The new jet uses stealth technology to evade detection and penetrate contested airspace, and can fly almost three times as fast as the A-10. The Air Force says it can take on the air support of ground troops that the A-10 Warthog specializes in, as well as fight other planes, track enemy forces, conduct electronic warfare and more.

The Warthog, on the other hand, is extremely vulnerable to China’s air defenses. And war planners say a fight in the Indo-Pacific region is unlikely to entail mass movements of U.S. ground forces who would need the Warthog’s protection. “We certainly aren’t going to march to Beijing,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Joseph Guastella.

The Warthogs are the mainstay of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, an institution that looms large economically and culturally in Tucson. It contributes more than $2.5 billion each year to the local economy and, along with the main campus of the University of Arizona, shapes the city’s character.

The sprawling, 16-square-mile military base counts more than 46,000 people, including 11,000 male and female airmen plus their dependents, and 29,000 retirees, among its community. The 355th Wing, which flies dozens of Warthogs, is the base’s anchor squadron.

The plane’s defenders in Congress and elsewhere cite the extraordinary job it did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some argue the Air Force hasn’t shown the F-35 is capable of taking on its task.

“The A-10 has been the most capable aircraft at the close air support mission and protecting our troops on the ground,” said Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot. “I’m going to continue pushing the Air Force to show how our military is going to maintain this capability into the future.”

An F-35 jet at the Vermont Air National Guard Base in South Burlington, Vt., in 2019.

PHOTO: WILSON RING/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Senators and congressmen from other districts that stand to lose if the Air Force sends the A-10 to the Boneyard have also been staunch advocates.

Tucson’s Davis-Monthan airfield opened in the 1920s and was dedicated with a fly-in by Charles Lindbergh. The base site and the vastness of the Sonoran Desert around it made it ideal for the nation’s growing fleet of heavy bombers, and Davis-Monthan grew rapidly during World War II and through the early years of the Cold War.

The arid climate also made it an ideal place for the Air Force to keep old planes, occasionally to be restored but mostly to be stripped for parts or scrap. The Boneyard—its nickname unloved by some of the base’s officers and staff—opened immediately after World War II to store bombers and transport planes, and now holds more than 3,000 aircraft.

Tucson exploded in population alongside the base. In 1950, Tucson had a population of 45,000. Ten years later, it had grown to 213,000, and in 2020 it topped 540,000.

Major U.S. defense contractors have offices in Tucson, and many civilians, reservists and National Guard members work at the base.

“They’re really entwined in the whole fabric of the community,” said Sandi Eghtesadi, owner of a local insurance business. “A lot of [reservists and National Guard] are doctors, lawyers, teachers, police officers, border patrol, construction workers, you name it. They’re well trained, they’re drug free, they’re leaders in the community.”

The first Warthogs arrived at the base in the mid-1970s. Built by Fairchild Republic Co., now part of Northrop Grumman Corp., the jet was designed primarily to blow up Soviet tanks on the plains of Europe. The U.S. eventually purchased more than 700 planes, but as early as 1984, the Air Force was concerned that the plane wouldn’t survive a fight against increasingly sophisticated Soviet air defenses.

The A-10 flew extensively in the Gulf War, and many of the oldest planes in the fleet reached the end of their service lives. The Air Force hung on to the remaining A-10s and began refurbishing and upgrading them.

The nature of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan was well-suited to the A-10. The U.S. dominated the skies, enabling the A-10s to linger over the battlefield unthreatened. U.S. and allied forces fought small formations of lightly armed enemy fighters with no clear geographic delineation between friendly and enemy territory.

The Boneyard, where old military planes go for scrap, at the Davis-Monthan base in December.

Aircraft worker Ken Cox harvests part of the tail assembly from an A-10 in the Boneyard.

War planners and ground troops came to depend on a skilled A-10 pilot’s ability to make repeated passes and blast enemy positions with its fearsome 30mm Gatling gun—a multibarreled machine gun.

“It kills everything that it sees,” said Andrew Wood, a retired A-10 pilot who saw extensive action in Afghanistan. “It was built for a very specific mission set, and it does it very, very well.”

Threat of Chinese missiles

As far back as 2012, though, the Air Force again saw the end of the Warthog’s usefulness looming on the horizon. The war in Iraq had ended and Afghanistan was beginning to wind down, and the U.S. was shifting its planning to a potential confrontation with China.

War planners feared Beijing’s surface-to-air missiles and jet fighters could smash the lumbering A-10s, reviving the same concerns that prompted the Air Force to consider scrapping the plane in the 1980s.

The Air Force told Congress, which controls military spending in annual defense policy laws, that it planned to retire more than 100 A-10s. The following year’s defense policy law, passed in December 2013, contained a provision barring the Air Force from retiring any more, the first in what would be regular congressional skirmishes.

Then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made the Pentagon’s case during the following year’s go-round.

Afghan leaders Mohammad Qasim Fahim and Hamid Karzai looked at a U.S. Air Force A-10 at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2002.

PHOTO: JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES

“The A-10 Warthog is a venerable platform, and this was a tough decision,” Mr. Hagel told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2014. “But it is a 40-year-old single-purpose airplane originally designed to kill enemy tanks on a Cold War battlefield. It cannot survive or operate effectively where there are more advanced aircraft or air defenses.”

A month later, then-Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, who represented Tucson, pleaded with the House Appropriations Committee not to let the Air Force retire the A-10s, citing ground troops’ reliance on the plane, its excellence in the close air support role and the costs Congress had already sunk into updating it.

“There hasn’t been one representative from this part of the country, be they Republican or Democrat, that hasn’t wanted to support the A-10,” Mr. Barber, who lost a bid for re-election in 2014, said in an interview recently.

The debate continued for years with the same result: The Air Force would propose to mothball some of its A-10s, and Congress would bar it from doing so.

By 2021, the U.S. was preparing to leave Afghanistan after 20 years. When Congress began work on the year’s major defense legislation, the Air Force pushed again to retire more A-10s.

On the chopping block was the active duty combat squadron at Davis-Monthan, and 35 of the base’s A-10s.

To soften the blow in Tucson, the Air Force said it would move to Davis-Monthan an A-10 training and testing squadron and HH-60 rescue helicopters from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Overall, the plan would result in a small increase in personnel at Davis-Monthan, the Air Force said. For its part in the deal, Nellis was to receive advanced fighters, as well as investments in training and testing infrastructure.

A-10s in the Boneyard at the Davis-Monthan base in December. The Air Force has been trying to retire its fleet of the jets for more than a decade.

A refurbished wing for an A-10 at the base in October.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown traveled to Davis-Monthan to brief Arizona lawmakers on the plan, and Lt. Gen. David Nahom discussed it with a prominent Davis-Monthan booster group.

The plan soon hit another wall in Congress. That December, lawmakers passed a defense policy law that once again prohibited the Air Force from retiring the A-10s. The service shelved the proposal to bring the HH-60 rescue helicopters to Davis-Monthan.

Drag on the F-35 program

The Air Force said if it had been allowed to retire the A-10s at its desired pace, it would have freed up more than 900 total pilots, mechanics and support personnel that could be reassigned to advanced aircraft, especially the F-35. IN 2021, IT SAID IT WOULD ESTABLISH THREE NEW F-35 SQUADRONS AT TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE IN THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE. SENIOR AIR FORCE OFFICERS AND OFFICIALS SAID THE BAR ON RETIRING THE A-10S IS COMPLICATING THAT PLAN.

“Is it just pure politics?” Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott asked Gen. Brown and Air Force Secretary Kendall at a May 2022 hearing, complaining about what he described as money wasted on A-10s. “I just don’t get this, this idea that we have to maintain something we’re not anticipating using anytime again. And we’re not spending enough money on F-35s.”

In the House that same month, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, the Arizona Democrat who then represented the district that includes Davis-Monthan, argued the A-10 remained relevant while Russian and Ukrainian forces were fighting a ground war, and pressed the same two senior Air Force officials to invest in new wings for the planes.

A-10s in the Boneyard. The Air Force would like to replace the jets with F-35s, which use stealth technology and can fly almost three times as fast.

“This is something we have heard from the Air Force for more than a decade,” she said about the Air Force’s contention the plane wouldn’t be useful in the wars of the future. “And yet the A-10 continued to be called upon.”

Some defense analysts and former U.S. officials have urged the Biden administration to send A-10s to Kyiv, but others say the planes wouldn’t last against Russian air defenses, and the Ukrainians would need extensive training and support to fly them.

Last year, Sen. Scott’s proposal to retire 63 A-10s was defeated by lawmakers siding with Arizona’s Sen. Kelly, who also sat on the Armed Services committee.

Ultimately, the defense policy law passed in December permitted the Air Force to retire 21 A-10s. It was an acknowledgment by Congress that with the U.S. out of Afghanistan, it was getting harder and harder to justify keeping the A-10s in the air, officials and defense analysts said. In March, the Air Force asked Congress to let the service retire 42 more A-10s in the coming fiscal year, with Secretary Kendall citing tough choices “required to move the department of the Air Force into the future.”

In recent weeks the Air Force briefed members of the Arizona congressional delegation on a new plan for Davis-Monthan, and Sen. Kelly and other members told Secretary Kendall in a letter they “were encouraged by the Air Force’s intention to bring new, durable flying missions to the base.”

The service recently said it would move some A-10s to the Middle East, where U.S. and coalition forces face off against lightly armed militia fighters or Iranian naval craft, situations where the jets can be most effective. That shift, in turn, will enable the Pentagon to move more modern, multirole fighters to the Pacific and Europe.

The Air Force plans to spend another $466 million on its fleet of A-10s over the next four years on fresh wings, upgraded displays and radios and other improvements, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Thousands of pilots, mechanics, and support personnel at Davis-Monthan keep the Warthogs flying. In huge sheds, technicians rebuild their wings and install advanced electronics and avionics, and make other upgrades. Where they can’t strip a part off an A-10 in the Boneyard, the technicians search their supply networks for spare parts, find workshops to make custom components, or fabricate their own.

Workers have hand crafted the pieces of ballistic foam that protect the fuel tanks in the planes’ wings, and have made hydraulic lines by hand. In one case, the wing shop’s advanced machine tool wasn’t big enough to make a 16-foot wing section. The technicians tried building it in halves, but that didn’t work, so the job went to a high-tech manufacturer in Utah that has machined parts for a NASA Mars lander and the James Webb Space Telescope.

“The supply system, as you can imagine, is a little bereft of parts,” said Mark Seitz, a civilian who oversees much of the work.

The Davis-Monthan base looms large economically and culturally in Tucson, which grew up around the base since it opened in the 1920s.

Design by Andrew Levinson.

Write to Daniel Nasaw at daniel.nasaw@wsj.com

Appeared in the April 14, 2023, print edition as 'Why Is America Still Flying the A-10 Warthog, a Cold War Relic?'.

3. Steppe change: How Russia’s war on Ukraine is reshaping Kazakhstan

Looks like we need to get to work in Kazakhstan, or rather perhaps the EU should. This is a relatively detailed assessment.

A friend commented to me that this could be a case study in "Diplomatic FID" and "Economic FID".

Conclusion:

Change is under way in Kazakhstan, both domestically and in its geopolitical standing. The two sides are interrelated: the outcome of the war in Ukraine will fundamentally determine Kazakhstan’s relationship with Russia and its other international partners, but also its ability to conduct social, economic, and political reforms. Conversely, these reforms are a prerequisite to building a more stable, fair, and transparent political system, thus reducing the possibilities for external actors, including Russia, to take advantage of Kazakhstan’s domestic vulnerabilities. The EU can help Kazakhstan to overcome this critical juncture by encouraging and helping it towards genuine domestic transformation.

Steppe change: How Russia’s war on Ukraine is reshaping Kazakhstan

ecfr.eu · by Marie Dumoulin · April 13, 2023

Summary

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as an additional shock for Kazakhstan, which had already experienced serious domestic unrest in January 2022.
Kazakhstan has consistently distanced itself from Russia’s aggression and diversified its relationships with various countries, while preserving its bilateral relationship with Moscow.
The war has further highlighted the need for political reforms in Kazakhstan, yet complicated the government’s ability and willingness to implement them.
Kazakhstan is now cautiously navigating political change both domestically and in its foreign policy.
The EU has shown interest in engaging more with Kazakhstan. It can help the country to overcome this critical juncture by encouraging and supporting its genuine domestic transformation.

Introduction

Kazakhstan experienced a year of shocks and change in 2022. In early January, the country was shaken for five days by widespread protests and unrest. The protests started over sharp hikes in fuel prices, but quickly swept up a range of other domestic issues, growing violent in the former capital and biggest city of the country, Almaty. Scenes of chaos in Almaty were met with brutal repression from the government. To help quell the protests, Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, called for an intervention by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a Russian-dominated military alliance of six former Soviet republics.

Back then, this call was widely seen by observers in Kazakhstan and beyond as an act of allegiance to Moscow. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan has been one of Moscow’s closest and most reliable allies in the post-Soviet space and is part of all the regional organisations Russia has initiated in the region. It is one of the few former Soviet countries where the Russian language enjoys an official status and is still used by a vast majority of the population. Some saw the CSTO’s intervention as a prelude to Kazakhstan’s greater alignment with Russia and the end of its multi-vector foreign policy. But the balanced positions expressed by the Kazakhstani authorities after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine generated some hope in the West that the country would distance itself from Russia.

The war in Ukraine has had significant repercussions for Kazakhstan’s society, changing the country’s geopolitical standing and catalysing a shift in the way many Kazakhstani people see their own identity and Russia. It also created additional challenges for the government, which was attempting to pass political reforms and respond to the population’s socio-economic demands in light of the protests. These reforms would increase the government’s popular legitimacy and its ability to withstand possible outside pressures and assert its sovereignty. The geopolitical uncertainty triggered by the war could explain the very cautious approach adopted by the Kazakhstani authorities over the last months as it attempts to balance change with stability domestically, and to reduce Kazakhstan’s dependency on Russia while preserving the political relationship with Moscow.[1]

Since its independence, Kazakhstan has become one of the heavyweights of the region, both in terms of its economy – with its real GDP ranking as one of the highest in the post-Soviet space – and in terms of its active and diversified foreign policy. Its huge reserves of natural resources, including hydrocarbons, as well as uranium, coal, and various ores and rare metals, along with a relatively business-friendly environment (Kazakhstan ranks 25th globally in the World Bank’s “ease of doing business” database) have attracted numerous European companies to the country. The European Union is the biggest foreign investor in Kazakhstan, accounting for almost half of the country’s total foreign direct investment. It therefore has a direct interest in closely following the developments in the country. Kazakhstan’s political trajectory – be it marked by stagnation, renewed instability, or genuine political change – will have consequences for its relationship with the EU, and for the wider region, including other countries of the former Soviet Union, not least Russia, which will have to review its approach to the region if Kazakhstan takes a more assertive course.

This paper explores the changes that occurred in Kazakhstan’s domestic and foreign policy throughout 2022. It assesses to what extent the government has distanced itself from Moscow since the beginning of Russia’s war on Ukraine and the effects of the war on Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. It then considers how much change there has been in Kazakhstan’s domestic politics and how observers should understand the government’s actions since January 2022. Finally, it explains what the EU should expect and how it can sustain Kazakhstan’s ambitions for change.

A major geopolitical shock

Kazakhstan’s foreign policy balancing act

The government’s immediate response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reassured many in the West, who were concerned that the January 2022 events, referred to as ‘Bloody January’ in Kazakhstan, would bring the country closer to Russia. As early as 28 March, the deputy foreign minister, Roman Vasilenko, announced that Kazakhstan did not wish to “find itself behind a new iron curtain”, underlining that the country had no intention of being aligned with Russia and risking being subjected to Western sanctions. In a public discussion with Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June 2022, Tokayev made it very clear that his country remained committed to the principle of territorial integrity and therefore would not recognise the ‘quasi-states’ of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Kazakhstan’s diplomacy has constantly reaffirmed this position. Tokayev has been in contact with Volodymyr Zelensky on several occasions since February 2022. Most recently, speaking to his Ukrainian counterpart on 16 February 2023, Tokayev underlined Kazakhstan’s commitment to “a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict based on the United Nations Charter and universally accepted international law principles”, and mentioned Kazakhstan’s humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, two clear indications that Kazakhstan is distancing itself from Russia’s war. While Moscow’s closest allies – notably Belarus – voted against the major UN General Assembly resolutions on Russia, Kazakhstan abstained from the votes. Although it did not vote in support of these resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan’s abstention should be understood as a lack of support for Russia, given its close relationship with Moscow. A number of Russian journalists and politicians certainly understood Kazakhstan’s position this way, issuing aggressive statements, which the Russian authorities were always careful to deny. One Russian member of parliament, Konstantin Zatulin, explicitly raised questions about Kazakhstan’s future territorial integrity, stating, “if we have friendship … then no territorial questions are raised. But if that does not exist, everything is possible. As in the case of Ukraine.” The Russian media pundit, Tigran Keosayan, even accused Kazakhstan of “ingratitude” and warned it could “face the same consequences as Ukraine”.

Despite these actions, both the Kazakhstani and the Russian governments have continuously displayed their shared desire to continue bilateral cooperation, and have intensified bilateral contacts during 2022. Kazakhstan remains highly dependent on Russia for its exports, with 80 per cent of its oil exports transiting through the Russian pipeline system. It also relies heavily on supplies from Russia, most notably food but also refined oil products for instance. Furthermore, Russia retains strong levers of influence in the country through the presence of numerous ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking communities, as well as through the broadcasting of Russian media, diffusion of Russian films and literature, and ties between Russian and Kazakhstani businesses.

At the same time, however, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kazakhstani government has tried to develop its relations with other partners, including China. This has fed the anachronistic narrative that Central Asia is the theatre of a ‘great game’ between large global powers, in which a rapprochement with China necessarily implies a decrease in Russia’s influence. The fact that Xi Jinping paid his first visit abroad after the covid-19 pandemic to Astana was therefore widely viewed through the prism of this great power competition, with little if any attention paid to Kazakhstan’s own foreign policy agenda. In fact, Kazakhstan has not only maintained relations with Moscow, it has also strengthened its ties with Turkey, as well as other countries of Central Asia and the Caspian region, including Iran and other Gulf countries. Tokayev visited Qatar in June 2022, Saudi Arabia in July 2022, and the United Arab Emirates in January 2023. All these trips were opportunities to discuss investment and infrastructure projects in order to reduce Kazakhstan’s dependency on Russia. In some instances, as with Turkey, Tokayev agreed on far-reaching security and military-industrial cooperations, including the production of Turkish drones in Kazakhstan and intelligence-sharing. Kazakhstan has also intensified contacts with the EU, both with its institutions as well as with some member states, for example concluding ambitious agreements on the supply of oil and the joint production of hydrogen with Germany, and cooperation projects in the fields of energy, transport, and the agri-food industry with France. Visiting Astana, the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, underlined the strategic importance for the EU of developing its relations with Kazakhstan, including in areas such as critical raw materials and renewable energies.

The war in Ukraine has given Kazakhstan’s multi-vector foreign policy a new meaning: originally its main purpose was to put the country on the international map and attract foreign investors, but now its focus is to enable Kazakhstan to reduce its dependency on Russia. While there has been no real decrease in Russia’s influence in Kazakhstan, nor necessarily an increase in another regional power’s influence, the government has adopted a clear hedging strategy to maximise its geopolitical benefits and strengthen its own sovereignty.

The war’s impact on Kazakhstan’s economy

The war in Ukraine has exposed Kazakhstan’s vulnerabilities to the Russian economy. In the first two weeks of the conflict, Kazakhstan’s currency, the tenge, lost 20 per cent of its value against the dollar, accompanying the initial fall of the rouble. Russia’s suspension of certain exports to the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union in order to secure its own market, announced on 10 March, had an immediate impact on the prices and availability of a number of basic foodstuffs in Kazakhstan, demonstrating the country’s heavy dependency on its neighbour. Russia suspended its pipelines that transit Kazakhstan’s oil exports four times during 2022 – a move that was widely interpreted as a reaction to Kazakhstan distancing itself from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (although some observers suggested the suspensions may have in fact been a reaction to Western sanctions, and a way to hurt Western companies exploiting Kazakhstan’s oil fields in the Caspian Sea).

The war’s actual economic impact on Kazakhstan has been quite ambivalent: on the one hand, the rise in prices for a number of imported products (food, consumer goods, gas, and refined oil products) has a direct impact on the population’s purchasing power, and therefore potentially on the social situation. In December 2022, inflation exceeded 20 per cent over one year, which was the highest increase in the last 25 years. Growth also slowed to 3.4 per cent in 2022, from 4.1 per cent in 2021. On the other hand, Kazakhstan’s exports to Russia increased by 22 per cent in the first ten months of 2022, which raised suspicions that Kazakhstan was being used to circumvent some of the Western sanctions despite its assurances to the contrary. High oil and gas prices also had a positive impact on the country’s trade balance. Kazakhstan could also benefit from the relocation of a number of foreign companies which have been forced to leave the Russian market. Nevertheless, the uncertainties resulting from the regional geopolitical context will likely, overall, continue to weigh on the country’s economy.

Kazakhstan’s response to Russian immigration

Another visible consequence of the war in Ukraine has been the arrival of many Russian nationals to Kazakhstan. This happened in two waves: in February and March 2022, Russians who were opposed to the war, described as mostly young and qualified from rather privileged social backgrounds, arrived in Kazakhstan; then in September, after the announcement of partial mobilisation in Russia, several tens of thousands of young Russian men from all social backgrounds fled to Kazakhstan to avoid the draft. No official figures are available on the number of Russians who have settled in Kazakhstan since the beginning of the war. At the end of November 2022, Kazakhstan’s minister of labour and social protection, Tamara Duisenova, quoted the figure of 400,000 arrivals since September. However, this only takes into account the second wave of arrivals and does not indicate the number of Russian nationals who remained in Kazakhstan, rather than transited through the country to other destinations or eventually returned to Russia.

At first, the authorities were very positive about the arrival of Russian nationals, stressing that Kazakhstan should take in people who are in difficulty in their country of origin, and that the people arriving were essentially a well-educated workforce that would contribute to the country’s economic growth. However, opinion polls show that the population’s perception is more equivocal: 38 per cent are opposed to the reception of this population. Two main reasons seem to equally explain this reluctance: the fear of rising prices and rents for 31 per cent of the respondents (among the 18-29 age group, 47 per cent held this view) and the fear that these migrants might be infiltrated by supporters of the ‘Russian world’ who could destabilise the country for 30 per cent. Conversely, 27 per cent of respondents were in favour of giving shelter to Russians fleeing the mobilisation and the vast majority of them (77 per cent) mentioned the duty to offer hospitality to people in difficulty. On 31 December 2022, the government modified the rules concerning visa-free circulation between Kazakhstan and other countries of the Eurasian Economic Union, making it impossible for people to stay for more than 90 days over half a year without an employment contract or another official justification for their stay, including study or family reunification. This will probably make it more difficult for a high number of Russian relokanty to remain in Kazakhstan.

Opposing views about the war among the public

The divisions of opinion on Russian immigration to Kazakhstan reflect the wider polarisation of Kazakhstani society regarding the war itself. According to a poll conducted in several Central Asian countries by the Central Asia Barometer, 28 per cent of Kazakhstanis attribute the main responsibility for the war to Russia, 19 per cent to Ukraine, and 10 per cent to the United States.

Another survey, conducted in Kazakhstan in March and November, gives an indication of the evolution of public opinion regarding the war. While only 10 per cent of respondents supported Ukraine in March 2022, 22 per cent did so in November; conversely, the proportion of respondents supporting Russia fell sharply from 39 per cent in the spring to 13 per cent at the end of the year, while 59 per cent held a neutral position between the two parties.

According to the same survey, 22 per cent of respondents consider that Russia is waging a war of conquest in Ukraine (compared to 13 per cent last spring) and 18 per cent that it is fighting against NATO (26 per cent in the spring), while 15 per cent adhere to the Russian discourse that Russia’s war is fighting ‘Nazis’. Although clear divisions remain among the Kazakhstani public, the dynamic is therefore evolving towards more support for Ukraine and more distance from the Russian narrative about the war.

The most significant factors in explaining these divisions are age and sources of information. Twenty-three per cent of 18-24 year-olds support Ukraine and 6 per cent support Russia, compared to 14 per cent and 34 per cent respectively among the over 60s. Most young people use the internet as a source of information, while the older generation likely rely more on the television, including on Russian channels. Russian television channels attract a large audience in Kazakhstan: 18 per cent of the poll’s respondents indicated them as a source of their information on the war in Ukraine, while 25 per cent said they watch Kazakhstani television channels.

The generational difference in these views is linked to differences in historical experiences. While the older generation grew up in the Soviet Union and do not necessarily question Moscow’s dominance in the post-Soviet space, younger people have always lived in an independent country and are less inclined to accept it. They also have more knowledge about traumatic episodes of Soviet Kazakhstan’s history, including the forced settlement of Kazakh nomads at the end of the 1920s, which led to a massive famine and the death of about one-third of the Kazakh population. This episode, which had little coverage in Soviet historiography, echoes the Ukrainian Holodomor – the great famine that killed millions in Ukraine in 1932-1933. This reinforces the identification of younger people from Kazakhstan with their Ukrainian counterparts.

As a result, a new form of national consciousness has emerged, which questions the colonial dimension of Russian imperial and Soviet policies vis-à-vis Kazakhstan, among the young urban middle class. Until now, many of these young people often spoke Russian rather than Kazakh and consumed a lot of Russian media and cultural products. Now, they are increasingly using the Kazakh language, looking for Kazakh-speaking content, and discussing their country’s national identity, which had previously been a largely marginal debate, limited to some Kazakh-speaking intellectual circles since 1991. Kazakhstani businessmen installed Kazakh yurts – the traditional dwelling of Kazakh nomads and a central element of the Kazakh traditional way of life – in a number of Ukrainian cities to provide warmth to Ukrainians affected by energy shortages. The so-called yurts of invincibility were a vivid illustration of the reinvention of Kazakh national symbols in the context of the war in Ukraine. Beyond this, aid for Ukraine was also collected in a number of Kazakhstani cities, and demonstrations were organised in Almaty against the war. The fact that they were authorised by the government speaks volumes about Kazakhstan’s position regarding the war.

Divisions among the public also reflect the importance of access to information to the views of the Kazakhstani population, and explain the criticisms addressed to the Kazakhstani government for its refusal to limit the broadcasting of Russian television channels in the country. This was despite the fact that the Russian media control body, Roskomnadzor, does not hesitate to demand the removal of certain content by Kazakhstani news websites. Under these conditions, some people in Kazakhstan are concerned about the influence that Russia retains over a part of society and the consequences that this influence could have for national security: Russia could well be able to turn some segments of the population against others, or against the government, if it decided to, and the country may have only limited capacity to defend itself in such a scenario. The Kazakhstani authorities have tried to set a number of examples in the country to avoid controversies about the war spreading: in August 2022, a couple living in northern Kazakhstan was convicted for supporting separatism; Russian artists openly supporting the war in Ukraine have been barred from performing in the country; and in early 2023, a member of parliament was excluded from his party and deprived of his mandate because of his openly pro-Russian stance. But limiting the broadcasting of Russian channels is probably seen as one step too far, and the government has remained very cautious to not antagonise Russia and give it pretexts to claim that the rights of the Russian-speaking community in Kazakhstan are violated.

The war in Ukraine has not significantly transformed Kazakhstan’s foreign policy – which has continued to follow a multi-vector approach, though with an increased attention to reducing the country’s dependencies on Russia, while preserving its relationship with Moscow. But it has changed the society itself, giving birth to new debates about national identity, as well as new divides and fears of increased polarisation. The very cautious approach adopted by the Kazakhstani government, insisting on principles of international law but being careful not to antagonise Russia, can be explained by the high sensitivity of this issue domestically.

Unrest at home

The war in Ukraine came as an additional shock for a society that was already deeply traumatised by the events of ‘Bloody January’. The part that Russia played in these events, through the CSTO intervention to support Tokayev, made it clear that Russia continues to play a central role in Kazakhstan’s domestic politics. As some Kazakhstani experts and civil society activists put it: the future political trajectory of Kazakhstan will be heavily determined by the outcome of the war in Ukraine. Political change is more likely if the Kazakhstani government is not able to rely on Moscow’s support in the event of a Russian defeat. A victorious Russia would, on the contrary, try to entrench its grip on the region by consolidating the political status quo, in Kazakhstan and elsewhere. In light of the war, the reforms are therefore even more pressing. But the war will also likely complicate progress at home: against the backdrop of a polarised society that is wary of rising prices due to the geopolitical context, the government may find it even harder than before to respond to the population’s discontent.

The January 2022 events have mostly been described as resulting from the convergence of three different strands: a social and economic protest triggered by a brutal increase in fuel prices in western regions of the country; political dissent against the lack of citizens’ participation in political decisions and justice; and an intra-elite feud contesting Tokayev’s position as the head of state. The discontent was not new; deep socio-economic frustrations had been bubbling in the population for several years and had led to recurrent protests. The political grievances also built on movements born in 2019 to protest former President Nursultan Nazarbayev handing over power to Tokayev, which was seen back then as a way to stage a democratic process while ensuring the continuation of Nazarbayev’s rule through the appointment of a hand-picked successor.

As early as 11 January 2022, Tokayev promised full transparency on the events of the previous days, as well as future political reforms and more social justice. But the brutal repression of protests tainted Tokayev’s attempts to reassure the public that he had heard their demands. More than a year after ‘Bloody January’, there is still little clarity about the events. Competing narratives have emerged, with the government describing the events as a “coup” attempt, while political and human rights activists underline the genuine social frustrations and demands for political change. They insist on the need for full transparency about the repression of peaceful protests and accountability for the perpetrators, and increasingly question the reformist intentions of the government.

A poll published in February 2023 made clear that, though a plurality of respondents adhere to the official narrative about the events (which were described as a “provocation organized by some political forces to seize power” by 37.9 per cent of respondents), a majority does not trust the information disseminated by official sources about these events (53 per cent either “rather distrust” them or “don’t trust [them] at all”) and they are highly critical of the government’s actions. A total of 39.3 per cent reported that they had not seen any political change since January 2022 but still expect some change to happen, while 24.7 per cent considers any political change unlikely. Over the last year, political change has indeed been slow, but Tokayev seems intent to continue implementing the reforms he announced.

Three criteria can help measure the extent of domestic changes: the efforts to deliver transparency and justice about the events of ‘Bloody January’; the extent and nature of the political reforms adopted since then; and finally the turnover among Kazakhstani political elites, including appointments in the administration and public companies.

Limited transparency on 'Bloody January'

Soon after Tokayev’s address on 11 January, the general prosecutor of Kazakhstan, Berik Asylov, disclosed that 238 had been killed and more than 4,500 injured in the protests, though these figures were disputed by a number of witnesses and observers, and no details were given about the circumstances of the deaths. One year after ‘Bloody January’, the authorities indicated that 142 of the 238 had been killed after violating the curfew imposed on 5 January and that six people had died in custody in the aftermath of the protests.

Given the chaos which prevailed, particularly in Almaty, during the 5 and 6 January, establishing the whole truth would be difficult. But human rights organisations have pointed to the authorities’ unwillingness to shed light on these events, which they believe is due to the possibility that questioning the responsibility of the security forces may alienate them from Tokayev. Failing loyalty for Tokayev in parts of the security apparatus may have contributed to his decision to call for the CSTO’s intervention and it is therefore likely that he will try to retain the support he does have by sparing the apparatus as a whole, while still trying to accommodate the demands for transparency. Lawsuits have been brought against some members of the security forces following allegations of torture connected to the January unrest – authorities’ reports differ on how many – but only a limited number have been brought to court so far. In January 2023, two police officers from Almaty were convicted on torture charges and sentenced to three years in prison. This decision was seen as a first step towards ending the impunity of the security services, but human rights organisations have stressed that no systematic work is being carried out to evaluate the actions of the security forces during the events and to bring perpetrators to account. In some instances, victims and their families have been asked to withdraw their complaints in exchange for amnesty for their deceased relatives and the promised financial compensation for their loss. The authorities have presented the law granting amnesty to participants in the January events, which should benefit more than 1,000 protesters who have already been convicted, as an expression of mercy for the perpetrators of the violence. Yet it also serves to draw a line under the events and remove the need for further investigations, and is unlikely to satisfy public demands for transparency.

On 23 December 2022, Tokayev unveiled a monument to the victims of ‘Bloody January’ and described the events as “a time of trial” for the people of Kazakhstan, when “the foundations of [Kazakhstan’s] statehood were under threat”. On 8 January 2022, the former head of Kazakhstan’s national intelligence agency (the KNB), Karim Masimov, was detained on charges of high treason. A year later, during a parliamentary hearing devoted to the ‘Bloody January’ events, the general prosecutor made clear that Masimov was considered the main organiser of an attempted coup. His trial started on 18 November 2022 behind closed doors, which prevents him from disclosing information that could implicate other actors, including those among Nazarbayev’s entourage. This will likely fail to satisfy the public’s demands for transparency and will continue to taint the authorities’ management of the aftermath of Bloody January.

Half-hearted reforms

The protests in January 2022 took place in the context of an ongoing genuine demand for political change. In his address on 16 March 2022, Tokayev acknowledged the “long-standing public demands for radical changes” and presented a comprehensive programme of measures to modernise the country’s political system and establish a “new Kazakhstan”, which he described as “an effective state with a strong civil society”. In a not-so-implicit criticism of the drifts that took place under his predecessor’s rule, which included nepotism and widespread corruption to benefit Nazarbayev’s entourage, he described a set of constitutional amendments and other political reforms. These were essentially aimed at depersonalising the presidential institution so that there is a clear differentiation between the president as a person and as an institution. They also shifted the balance of power among state institutions to strengthen the parliament and the re-established constitutional court, and enhanced local governance.

Some of these reforms were passed, the most visible of which being removing the articles devoted to the “father of the nation” – that is, Nazarbayev – from the constitution, which eventually led to the annulation of the law on the first president. This law was adopted in 2000 and granted a number of lifelong privileges to the former head of state. The constitutional amendments were adopted during a referendum in June. In September, Tokayev announced snap presidential elections for 20 November 2022, along with an additional change to the constitution to extend the presidential term to seven years and remove the possibility to serve two successive terms. This prompted some observers to describe the June referendum as a test or even a rehearsal of the early presidential election.

However, by the time the presidential election was announced, little progress had been made on other important political reforms, such as the registration of new political parties. The announced revision of the electoral law was promulgated on 5 November, shortly before the election, but entered into force only in January 2023; far from allowing more transparency of the electoral process, it limits the possibilities for polling and electoral observation, raising concerns among civil society. Only two new political parties have been registered since March (and none had been by the time the election was held), while some 15 other parties – including opposition movements – have been denied registration for years. Announcing and holding the presidential election before conducting political liberalisation, and with little advanced notice, was seen as a way to pre-empt any credible opposition from taking part. As a matter of fact, none of the four other presidential candidates enjoyed any popular support or even fame, and the election campaign was conducted as a mere formality, without any real competition. Despite his call for a “new Kazakhstan”, Tokayev seems to have largely repeated the typical methods of his predecessor, who systematically called for snap elections to avoid any real, well-prepared challenge to his own re-election.

On 20 November 2022, Tokayev secured his re-election with 81.3 per cent of the votes and a turnout of 69.4 per cent. But to many observers, the way he was re-elected further discredited his own promises for political change, and therefore nurtured part of the public’s frustration. There are various ways to explain this discrepancy between his promises and actions. Firstly, although Tokayev’s own political culture – marked by his experience as a diplomat, including in the UN framework – makes him probably more open than many in his generation, he is nevertheless cautious about political liberalisation. After protests tainted his election in 2019, and then his reputation in January 2022, he may have wanted to obtain visible electoral support to ensure his adversaries could not contest his legitimacy. Secondly, with his previous term due to end in 2024, he likely felt the need to give himself more time to enact the promised social, economic, and political reforms. Finally, there was a risk that his adversaries from Nazarbayev’s entourage could seize on the unrest to try to prevent his re-election in 2024, or that the social and economic impact of the war in Ukraine could undermine his chances. Holding an early presidential election could have been intended to reduce these uncertainties and political risks.

With the renewal of half of the members of the senate on 14 January 2023 and the early election of the lower house of parliament, the Majlis, held on 19 March 2023, it seems the first chapter of institutional reforms announced after January 2022 is over. The Majlis election was marked by a low turnout of just 54 per cent – almost ten percentage points lower than for the previous elections in 2021 – which already had a historically low turnout. Six political parties out of the seven allowed to take part reached the 5 per cent threshold to enter the new parliament, including the newly registered Respublika party and the long-time opposition Nationwide Social Democratic Party, whose elected members of parliament became the first from the party since its initial registration in 2007. Some independent candidates were elected in single-mandate constituencies. Yet a number of well-known opposition figures were denied the right to candidacy and others criticised the unfair campaigning conditions. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe electoral observation mission noted that the election saw increased possibilities for competition, but underlined significant shortcomings in the counting of votes. Some independent and opposition candidates denounced irregularities and refused to recognise the outcomes of the vote, calling for a rerun. Overall, with around 53 per cent of the votes and 23 out of 29 single-mandate constituencies, the ruling party Amanat (a rebranding of Nazarbayev’s Nur Otan) secured two-thirds of the seats in the Majlis, holding 63 seats out of 98. Tokayev announced a new chapter in reforms after the elections, and it remains to be seen whether this next chapter will be marked by more political liberalisation or a mere consolidation of the existing system.

A cautious replacement of elites

On 5 January, Tokayev appointed a number of close allies to key positions in the presidential administration and the security services, including the secretary of state, the head of the presidential administration and his first deputy, and the director of the KNB and his deputies. At the same time, he reappointed almost the same government as before, with one of the few new appointments being Alikhan Smailov as prime minister.

Throughout 2022, Tokayev replaced half of the ministers who were in office in January 2022. However, in most cases, ministers were replaced by their deputy or at least by someone who had spent most of their career in the same branch of the administration. This cautious replacement could be an attempt to reassure senior officials about the extent of the changes to be expected or to form a technocratic elite, within which functions are acquired through competence and no longer through proximity to political power. (These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive.)

Tokayev also carried out a large-scale replacement of senior staff, starting with the security forces in January and February, and continuing with members of the executive branch of the regional governments – many of which were renewed before the summer – and ministries and agencies in charge of economic and social policies. This gives a clear idea about his priorities: after securing the loyalty of the security apparatus, the second step was to establish links with the local level and give the public a sense of proximity to the executive branch of the government, and then further focus on economic development and a more effective social policy.

Alongside the replacement of these officials, Tokayev began a gradual transformation of large public enterprises, starting with a progressive reshuffling of the Samruk-Kazyna fund, which previously owned the country’s main public enterprises. At the end of January 2022, the government passed a reform to reduce the fund’s senior management by half and decrease the number of companies it controls. This reduced the influence Nazarbayev’s son-in-law, Timur Kulibayev, retained in the fund through some of his associates holding senior positions even after he had resigned from its senior management back in 2011. Nazarbayev’s other sons-in-law, who ran two companies belonging to the Samruk-Kazyna group, were dismissed, and Kulibayev stepped down as president of the country’s main entrepreneurs’ organisation, the Atameken Union. The fate of Nazarbayev’s sons-in-law illustrates a more general trend, whereby Nazarbayev’s relatives were dismissed or had to step down from official positions they had before January 2022 and, in some instances, to return to the state some of their business assets. Other examples include Nazarbayev’s nephew, Samat Abish, who was dismissed from his position as second-in-command in the KNB; and his eldest daughter, Dariga Nazarbayeva, who left her seat as a senator. The youngest daughter, Aliya Nazarbayeva, had to give up her company, which collected environmental taxes on all imported vehicles and provided her with considerable but highly unpopular revenues.

Other relatives of the former head of state not only had to give up their assets, but faced legal proceedings. Another one of Nazarbayev’s nephews, Kairat Satybaldy, suspected of having been one of the instigators of the January events, was sentenced in September to six years in prison for embezzlement at the expense of the telephone operator, Kazakhtelekom (in which he had already relinquished his shares back in March 2022). The businessman, Kairat Boranbayev, whose daughter married a grandson of Nazarbayev, was detained in March and is also being prosecuted for suspected embezzlement. Finally, an investigation was opened into suspicions of extortion by Nazarbayev’s brother, Bolat Nazarbayev, who is said to hold one of the country’s largest fortunes (notably from shares in the Kazakhmys mining company, but he is also said to have controlled the country’s main marketplaces, as well as the bulk of revenues from the Khorgos border port, through which most trade with China transits).

Tokayev’s treatment of Nazarbayev’s relatives is said by some observers to send a signal that if they stay out of politics, they will be able to retain some of their business interests. Other observers expected him to continue stripping them of their assets once he was re-elected. It is not clear whether this strategy is designed to reform the system, or if Tokayev intends to adapt it in order to exercise power in the same way Nazarbayev did before him. In any case, these elites still control a large share of Kazakhstan’s economy and thus retain the capacity to block the functioning of the country. By signalling through the prosecution of some of the elite that he has the capacity to threaten their positions, without attacking many of the old elite head on, Tokayev avoids raising their opposition while satisfying the expectations of the population. In order to consolidate his power and carry out his announced modernisation of the state, he seems ready to accept at least a temporary form of compromise with the old elite.

However, most political observers agree that Tokayev is forced to rely on existing staff because he does not have his own network within the elite. This probably helped him succeed Nazarbayev in 2019, as he was seen as dependent on the former president and his entourage and therefore loyal to them. Since January 2022, Tokayev has relied on a small number of close allies. The state secretary, Erlan Karin – a political scientist who has advised Tokayev since the early 2000s and headed the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies, which is attached to the presidency from 2014 to 2017, and the public radio and television company until 2019 – is said to be the most influential. Others include former diplomat and long-time associate to Tokayev, Murat Nurtleu, who headed the presidential administration after January 2022 and was appointed as foreign minister following the March 2023 parliamentary election; and the deputy head of the presidential administration and former minister of the economy, Timur Suleimenov, a US-trained finance expert with experience in the private sector, who served as a member of the Eurasian Economic Commission from 2012 to 2017. These people now occupy key positions in the political system. Other positions were assigned to senior technocrats on the basis of their experience, but this could also ultimately strengthen their loyalty to Tokayev and thus his own political edge.

While the changes made since January 2022 indicate a willingness to change the functioning of the political system and answer some of the population’s demands, the extent of actual change remains limited and Tokayev’s motivations and desire for change remain unclear. The limited political change since January 2022 can be explained by Tokayev’s caution and limited margin for manoeuvre due to domestic constraints (first and foremost the need for him to establish his own power base in the system) as well as from the repercussions in Kazakhstan of Russia’s war against Ukraine. However, the elections organised in November 2022 and March 2023 were characterised by similarities with previous elections rather than change, despite the stated goal of making them a step towards a “new Kazakhstan”. In any case, the population’s demands for change do not seem to have been met so far with decisive steps towards reforms on the part of the government.

Recommendations for the EU

The January 2022 protests and the war in Ukraine have left Kazakhstan in a precarious position, which requires bold policy change alongside a very cautious approach both domestically and in terms of foreign policy. With its clear position on the war in Ukraine and its active diplomacy, Kazakhstan is now clearly on the geopolitical map for most Europeans, and the EU has shown interest in engaging more with the country. However, in devising its policy towards Kazakhstan, the EU should avoid three main traps:

Firstly, it should not overestimate the willingness or the ability of the Kazakhstani government to distance itself from Russia: even if it were willing to do so, there are a number of objective factors that lead it to have a very cautious approach vis-à-vis its northern neighbour. Kazakhstan should not be pushed into making choices which could endanger its own stability.
Secondly, it should not underestimate the obstacles towards political change: the slow pace of reforms and the likely limited ambitions of the government in terms of democratisation may generate frustration among parts of the public. But many observers consider that Tokayev is aware of the public’s expectations for change and willing to deliver, though the tendency over the last months has been to aim for quick-fixes and populistic measures.
Finally, the EU should not consider Kazakhstan only through the prism of great power competition. Kazakhstan has built ties with various international partners since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and deepened the meaning of its multi-vector foreign policy. The EU would be mistaken to think that the country would come under Chinese influence if Russian influence declines. Kazakhstan has agency and uses it to develop international partnerships. This means that the EU is only one of many possible partners and should build and use its edge smartly.

The EU actually has edge: it is Kazakhstan’s biggest trading partner and foreign investor; it enjoys a rather positive image among the Kazakhstani people, especially among younger generations; it has influence as a norm-setter on a number of issues of direct interest for Kazakhstan (including trade and environmental issues); and it can provide expertise and technical assistance in areas where Kazakhstan urgently needs it. On this basis, the EU should devise the following approach towards Kazakhstan:

Take Tokayev’s reforms seriously

The EU should take President Tokayev at his word on his reformatory intentions and insist, in bilateral meetings between EU member states and Kazakhstan as well as those between Kazakhstan and EU institutions, on the need to carry out reforms and establish functioning state institutions before the end of his mandate. These should include the need for his successor to be designated in a competitive election and not be appointed before being elected. There should be no blank cheque, but some understanding that reversing the shortcomings and abuses of nearly three decades of his predecessor’s rule may not happen overnight.

Insist on transparency

The need for transparency on the events of January 2022 and accountability should continue to be an important message. Complete transparency will probably be difficult to achieve, but government agencies should be able to work with civil society organisations to document the various cases as clearly as possible. The EU could also insist on the need for further cooperation between civil society organisations and government agencies to enhance the space for citizens’ information and political participation. The EU-Kazakhstan annual dialogue on human rights could offer an avenue to convey these messages.

Focus on judicial reform

The judicial system carries great weight at various levels: it should be the main instrument for fighting corruption as well as increasing accountability; and a functioning judiciary is key to give citizens a sense of justice and thus increase their trust in institutions. The re-establishment of a proper constitutional court through the constitutional amendments adopted in June is a first step in this direction. Promoting the rule of law is one of the priority areas for EU cooperation with Kazakhstan between 2021 and 2027. This cooperation should focus specifically on the reform of the judiciary. The EU should offer expertise and technical assistance to the Kazakhstani government to carry out a broader reform of the judiciary. It has a direct interest in doing so, as a functioning and transparent judiciary is key to protecting EU companies’ investments in the country.

Support a new social and economic strategy

The Kazakhstani authorities need to address the important social and economic demands of the population not only through one-shot charity or populistic measures, but by devising a proper strategy regarding key areas like housing, education, healthcare, and transport. In these areas, previous governments have focused on grand prestige projects, marred by widespread misappropriation. Given the demographic challenges the country will continue to face, with very dynamic population growth in the southern regions and a population decrease in the north, as well as rapid urban migration to cities such as Almaty and Astana, these issues need to be addressed urgently and in a systematic manner. The EU and its member states could use their bilateral instruments of cooperation with Kazakhstan to provide advice and assistance on these issues and help Kazakhstan define and carry out a consistent strategy.

Promote access to independent media

The EU should support independent media and civil society organisations that give access to information regarding the war in Ukraine, as well as EU and Western policies in this context. The online media outlet from Kyrgyzstan, Kloop, has begun an initiative to organise trips for Central Asian journalists to Ukraine. The EU and its member states could support similar initiatives for Kazakhstani journalists, given the importance of fighting Russian disinformation in the country. A focus on generating and spreading trusted local information in Russian as well as Kazakh languages is key in this regard.

Engage with Kazakhstan on international issues, including the implementation of sanctions

Given Kazakhstan’s geopolitical situation and its willingness to affirm distinct foreign policy positions, the EU and its member states should engage in regular, deepened political dialogue on international issues and regional crises with the country. This would increase the EU’s understanding of Kazakhstan’s positions, allow both to share insights about the positions of various regional stakeholders, and help keep Kazakhstan committed to a rules-based international order. The EU should also make it clear that it expects Kazakhstan to act as a responsible partner and not help Russia bypass EU sanctions. The EU could offer assistance to Kazakhstan to put the necessary monitoring mechanisms in place, provided Kazakhstan clearly commits to not giving Russia back-channels to EU sanctions.

Conclusion

Change is under way in Kazakhstan, both domestically and in its geopolitical standing. The two sides are interrelated: the outcome of the war in Ukraine will fundamentally determine Kazakhstan’s relationship with Russia and its other international partners, but also its ability to conduct social, economic, and political reforms. Conversely, these reforms are a prerequisite to building a more stable, fair, and transparent political system, thus reducing the possibilities for external actors, including Russia, to take advantage of Kazakhstan’s domestic vulnerabilities. The EU can help Kazakhstan to overcome this critical juncture by encouraging and helping it towards genuine domestic transformation.

About the author

Marie Dumoulin is director of the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining ECFR, Dumoulin worked as a French career diplomat.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my interlocutors in Kazakhstan, who agreed to share some of their insights and analysis with me, including Dimash Alzhanov, Daniyar Ashimbayev, Serik Beysembayev, Andrey Chebotarev, Joanna Lillis, Dosym Satpayev, Yevgeniy Zhovtis, as well as the teams from MediaNet International Centre for Journalism and Demoscope. My gratitude also goes to all those who agreed to meet me during my trip to Almaty and Astana, share their experiences over the last year, or exchange views about the geopolitical context. I have tried to reflect the wide diversity of views expressed by my many interlocutors, but the interpretations, right or wrong, are my own.

This research would not have been possible without the support of the Swedish ministry for foreign affairs, as well as Meridiam. Special thanks go to Arnaud Kalika for his interest in understanding ongoing political processes in Kazakhstan.

My colleagues in the Wider Europe programme and ECFR Paris office have been a great source of inspiration and support. Tefta Kelmendi deserves my particular gratitude for her patience.

Flora Bell has been a great editor and has turned my half-formulated thoughts into understandable English; Nastassia Zenovich helped to visualise the data quoted in this paper. A special thanks to both of them!

The findings of this policy brief are based on a series of interviews conducted by the author with leading experts, journalists, and NGOs, as well as members of the public and people close to decision-makers during a field trip to Almaty and Astana between October and November 2022. Not all sources agreed to be personally quoted.

ecfr.eu · by Marie Dumoulin · April 13, 2023

4. US special operations team working out of embassy in Ukraine: Sources

I have seen about 15 or more articles highlighting this "information."

Excerpts:

That document mentioned 14 U.S. special operations forces in Ukraine in late February in a round-up description of other NATO countries that had special operations forces inside Ukraine.

Dated to Feb. 28, the apparently leaked document seems to list a total of 97 special operations forces from five NATO countries operating in Ukraine with the highest number coming from the United Kingdom and numbers comparable to the U.S. team from other countries.

...

"We've had U.S. forces serving at the embassy as part of the Defense Attache Office, which is where these guys are assigned," Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Nov. 1 press briefing.

"We've been very clear there are no combat forces in Ukraine, no US forces conducting combat operations in Ukraine," Ryder said at the time. "These are personnel that are assigned to conduct security cooperation and assistance as part of the Defense Attache Office."

US special operations team working out of embassy in Ukraine: Sources

ABCNews.com · by ABC News

A small U.S. military special operations team has been based at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv since early in the war in Ukraine that began in February 2022, according to a former and a current U.S official.

Both officials stressed to ABC News on Wednesday that the U.S. military team does not go out on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and only operates out of the U.S. Embassy.

Among several duties this team provides is security for VIPs and intelligence assistance to Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, according to the current U.S. official. The official stressed that they are not on the front lines and they are not accompanying Ukrainian troops in Ukraine.

The U.S. Embassy resumes its work after a three-month break due to the Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine, May 18, 2022.

Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The former U.S. official told ABC News that in addition to providing assistance with the oversight of U.S. equipment and supplies being sent to Ukraine, the team has assisted Ukrainian military planners with operations that have resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of Russian military casualties.

MORE: Russia-Ukraine live updates: 2 US citizens died fighting in Ukraine, State Dept. says

The presence of U.S. military personnel working at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was first disclosed by the Pentagon last November.

Ukrainian servicemen ride on tanks towards the front line with Russian forces in the Lugansk region of Ukraine, Feb. 25, 2022.

Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

But the information that there are presumably special operations forces was included in one of the 38 apparently highly classified documents that appear to have been leaked on the internet and that have been reviewed by ABC News. ABC News has not independently verified the authenticity of these documents.

MORE: Timeline in leak of secret US documents

That document mentioned 14 U.S. special operations forces in Ukraine in late February in a round-up description of other NATO countries that had special operations forces inside Ukraine.

Dated to Feb. 28, the apparently leaked document seems to list a total of 97 special operations forces from five NATO countries operating in Ukraine with the highest number coming from the United Kingdom and numbers comparable to the U.S. team from other countries.

US service members wait at the Pope Army Airfield before deploying to Europe at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Feb. 3, 2022. The US plans to deploy 3,000 troops to fortify NATO forces in Eastern Europe amid fears Russia could invade Ukraine.

Allison Joyce/AFP via Getty Images

The purported leaked document also noted the presence of additional U.S. military personnel working at the embassy with the Defense Attaché's office and the Defense Cooperation Office.

Last November, the Pentagon's top spokesman noted the presence of U.S. military personnel at the embassy to help with the accountability of the billions of U.S. military assistance being provided to Ukraine and emphasized they were not in Ukraine in a combat role.

"We've had U.S. forces serving at the embassy as part of the Defense Attache Office, which is where these guys are assigned," Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Nov. 1 press briefing.

"We've been very clear there are no combat forces in Ukraine, no US forces conducting combat operations in Ukraine," Ryder said at the time. "These are personnel that are assigned to conduct security cooperation and assistance as part of the Defense Attache Office."

ABCNews.com · by ABC News

5. American and British special forces are inside Ukraine, leak claims

American and British special forces are inside Ukraine, leak claims

American and British special forces are inside Ukraine, leaked documents claim: More than 60 elite troops from both countries are operating in warzone against Putin's forces

One document claims 14 US special forces personnel are deployed in Ukraine
The UK has allegedly deployed 50 troops, more than the other states combined

By DAVID AVERRE and CHRISTIAN OLIVER

PUBLISHED: 06:41 EDT, 12 April 2023 | UPDATED: 07:30 EDT, 12 April 2023

Daily Mail · by David Averre · April 12, 2023

As many as 64 US and British special forces operators are currently deployed in Ukraine, an allegedly leaked American intelligence document has suggested.

A total of 14 US special forces are claimed to be operating on Ukrainian soil, with as many as 50 from Britain - the largest of the listed contingents.

It is claimed they are operating alongside more than a dozen actors each from fellow NATO states Latvia and France, the document states, which is dated March 23.

Some of the classified documents, which were leaked online and have been widely circulated on social media, appear to have been doctored, according to Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher.

But a Pentagon spokesman also told reporters that the document posed a 'very serious risk to national security.'

Britain has the largest contingent of special forces on Ukrainian soil, alongside more than a dozen operators each from fellow NATO states Latvia, France, the US, according to an allegedly leaked document dated March 23

Ukrainian soldier aims a gun in a dugout in Ukraine in undated footage

Ukrainian servicemen fire an artillery shell near the frontline area amid the Russia-Ukraine war, in Bakhmut, Ukraine on April 2, 2023

US defense officials have been adamant a leak had taken place, with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowing to 'investigate and turn over every rock until we find the source of this and the extent of it'.

In its entirety, the classified documents - which have not been individually authenticated by U.S. officials - range from briefing slides mapping out Ukrainian military positions to assessments of international support for Ukraine and other sensitive topics, including under what circumstances Russian President Vladimir Putin might use nuclear weapons.

There's no clear answer on how many documents were leaked. Some estimates put the total number in the hundreds.

The UK Ministry of Defense warned against taking allegations contained in the reported leak of classified information at 'face value', posting on Twitter: 'The widely reported leak of alleged classified US information has demonstrated a serious level of inaccuracy.'

Former head of the Royal Marines, Lt. Gen. Robert Magowan, confirmed in December that British commandos had already deployed twice to Ukraine in 2022 - first in January to evacuate the British Embassy in Kyiv, and again in April 'to provide protection to critical personnel'.

Lt Gen Magowan said the personnel had served in Ukraine 'with a high level of political and military risk'.

The leaked documents have revealed a trove of information about the Ukraine war, including details of US spying operations - not only in Russia, but also among its allies including South Korea, Israel, Ukraine and the UK.

They show how US intelligence has been able to provide Kyiv with extensive details of planned Russian attacks, but also revealed that Ukraine's air defenses are almost exhausted.

And one section titled 'US/NATO SOF in UKR' appeared to reveal the number of Western special forces present in Ukraine.

Britain has allegedly deployed 50 operators - the most of any Western nation - alongside 17 Latvian, 15 French, 14 American and a lone operator from the Netherlands.

But the documents did not shed light on where in Ukraine the operators have deployed, or in what capacity.

The leaked documents may first have been published in a chatroom on Discord, a social media platform popular with gamers, Associated Press reported.

According to one member of the chat, an unidentified poster shared documents that were allegedly classified, first typing them out with the poster's own thoughts.

Then, as of a few months ago, the poster began to share images of printed documents with folds in them, suggesting they had likely been taken directly from a secure printer.

A Ukrainian soldier looks out a passing APC on the frontline in Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Monday, April 10, 2022

Ukrainian service member, Naza, 21, commander from 28th mechanised brigade repositions his machine gun during a fire exchange at the frontline, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine in the region of Bakhmut, Ukraine, April 5, 2023

A probe was launched on Friday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department as investigators attempt to quickly identify the source of the breach.

Typically, classified documents can only be printed using a secure process, which may make it easier for officials to find the source of the leak.

The posts appear to have gone unnoticed outside of the chat until a few weeks ago, when they began to circulate more widely on social media.

Asked on Monday if the US government was effectively waiting for more intelligence documents to show up online, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby replied: 'The truth and the honest answer to your question is: we don't know. And is that a matter of concern to us? You're darn right it is.'

Defense Secretary Austin, the first senior US official to comment on the leak, said the Pentagon was aware that documents had been posted dated February 28 and March 1, but was not sure if there were other documents that had been online before.

US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, speaking later at Rice University in Texas, called the leaks 'deeply unfortunate,' but did not give details on what he said were 'quite intense' investigations by the Pentagon and the Justice Department.

'We need to learn lessons from that, as well, about how we can tighten procedures,' Burns said.

Investigators are working to determine what person or group might have had the ability and motivation to release the intelligence reports. The leaks could be the most damaging release of US government information since the 2013 publication of thousands of documents on WikiLeaks.

YouTuber wow_mao, who was thrust onto the international stage after classified Pentagon papers were leaked on a Discord server he hosts, has said that the 'US government should fear these losers'

Milancy Harris, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, is leading the Pentagon's review to assess the potential impact of the leaked documents, a US official told Reuters.

The sensitive material was first shared on an obscure online meme group run by a 20-year-old university student living in the UK on a part of the messaging app Discord.

The student, a self-professed 'micro celebrity' calling himself wow_mao, posted a video discussing the fallout onto YouTube and told a journalist it was 'hilarious'.

He said a moderator on his Discord chat group called the End of Wow Mao Zone 'shared 30 plus leaked documents concerning the Russia-Ukraine war' on March 1 and one month later he was unwittingly at the centre of the scandal.

In an interview with the New York Times, wow_mao said he spent 'little time' on the Discord server and mostly focused on his YouTube channel where he has about 250,000 subscribers.

He declined to share his real name to the outlet but said he is British and Filipino and was living in the UK.

'It was just spread onto the nicheiest [sic], nerdiest parts of the internet,' he said. 'That's the kind of people who would find these documents — losers. That's who the U.S. government really has to fear.'

A lack of respect for the government was cited as why the documents were most likely leaked, wow_mao telling the outlet: 'They'll always find it funny to mock them and cut under them in some sort of way.'

Users investigating the leak on the server revealed a moderator named Lucca had been behind the leak. The origins of the documents reported earlier by Bellingcat who said they later spread to other sites such as the imageboard 4Chan before appearing on Telegram, Twitter and then major media publishers around the world in recent days.

The New York Times reported that a Twitter account using the name 'MrLucca,' who used the same profile photo of Lucca on Discord, said that he'd sourced the documents from yet another Discord server.

'Found some info from a now banned server and passed it on,' the user wrote, according to screenshots of the conversation obtained by the outlet. The Twitter and Discord accounts have since been deleted.

Daily Mail · by David Averre · April 12, 2023

6. World leaders are lining up to meet Xi Jinping. Should the US be worried?

Excerpts:

But how Beijing navigates these initiatives, observers say, comes down to a bottom line that’s integrally related to Xi’s global ambitions and world view.

“It will be difficult for China to respond positively to some of the requests made by either the Americans or Europeans, because doing this would produce the risk of making the Russians upset,” said Li in Singapore.

“Russia is the only major power that shares a lot of (China’s) views on how the world and the global system should look and how various political issues should be handled. Russia is irreplaceable for China,” he said.

That point was highlighted in another moment on Xi’s recent diplomatic agenda: his travel to Moscow in March for his own state visit – the first since he stepped into a third presidential term that same month.

And while China’s diplomacy – and deals – in the past week may not have been heavily impacted by the optics of that relationship, analysts say how Beijing handles the conflict will continue to affect views on China globally.

Perceptions about Xi’s potential influence over Putin have provided “leverage that allows (Xi) to get a lot of attention, and perhaps get mileage and support that he would otherwise not have,” said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

“Ultimately, the test will come down to whether Xi is actually able to exert any real influence on Putin, especially in terms of ceasing the war,” he said.

World leaders are lining up to meet Xi Jinping. Should the US be worried? | CNN

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · April 14, 2023

Hong Kong CNN —

Xi Jinping has had a busy couple of weeks.

Since late last month the Chinese leader has hosted heads of state and government chiefs from Spain, Singapore, Malaysia, France and the European Union – an unusual pace of diplomatic activity that comes as countries look to Beijing as the global economy sputters in the wake of the pandemic and war in Ukraine.

On Friday, that list grew to include Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is expected to sign a host of bilateral deals with Xi – and, like several of the leaders before him, arrives with hopes of making progress toward ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.

But for Xi, this revolving door of visiting leaders – making the trip even as China has refused to condemn the Russian invasion – is also an opportunity to assert his vision for a global order not dictated by American rules – and push back against perceived threats.

That’s especially urgent for the Chinese leader now, observers say.

Three years of scaled-back diplomacy due to China’s strict Covid-19 controls coupled with economic challenges, entrenched competition with the United States and rising European concerns about Beijing’s foreign policy have left Xi under pressure to act.

“(Chinese leaders) believe it’s time now for China to make its strategic plans,” said Li Mingjiang, an associate professor of international relations at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“A potentially good outcome is to weaken American alliances … so that’s why we’re seeing quite strenuous efforts made by Beijing to try to stabilize and improve relations with European countries, and also to try to improve and strengthen cooperation with emerging economies,” he said.

Driving a wedge

As world leaders return to Beijing despite international concerns over the growing China-Russia relationship and Beijing’s intimidation of Taiwan, Xi has used the opportunity to thread his conversations with veiled criticism of the US and keywords that signal Xi’s own view for how to reshape global power.

Speaking to Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong late last month, Xi stressed that Asian countries together should “firmly oppose bullying, decoupling or severing industrial and supply chains,” while he urged Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to “resolutely resist the Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation.”

To Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez that same day, he warned that the “sound development of China-EU relations requires the EU to uphold strategic independence,” according to readouts from the Chinese side.

Beijing has watched uneasily as the war in Ukraine has driven the US and its European allies closer. Now, analysts say playing up its economic partnerships and exploiting differences between countries on the two sides of the Atlantic is key.

Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters

Macron counting on China's Xi 'to reason' with Russia over Ukraine war

When French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Beijing last week, Xi drew comparisons between China and France: both “major countries with a tradition of independence,” Xi said, and “firm advocates for a multi-polar world” – or a world without a dominant superpower.

After a day of meetings in Beijing, Xi met Macron in the southern commercial hub of Guangzhou to continue an “informal” conversation – sipping tea and listening to the plucked melodies of traditional Chinese music before a state dinner.

Macron, who has long advocated for Europe to develop an independent geopolitical policy and defense capabilities that needn’t rely on Washington, appeared receptive.

He released a 51-point joint statement with China outlining cooperation on areas from nuclear energy to food security and told reporters traveling with him that when it comes to the US-China rivalry Europe must not be “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” according to a Politico interview.

Macron’s comments have sparked backlash in Europe and the US, but analysts say they were likely seen as a triumph in Beijing.

“Everything that can weaken the US, divide the West and move countries closer to China is good for Xi,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University. “Hence, Macron’s trip is seen in Beijing as a major victory.”

Lula’s back

Xi may be preparing for another potential diplomatic win when he meets Lula on Friday.

The leftist Brazilian leader, who ushered in a boom in China-Brazil trade ties during his first stint in power some two decades ago, is traveling with a delegation of business leaders, state governors, congressmen and ministers, and expected to close a raft of bilateral deals from agriculture and livestock to technology.

Lula’s return to power already shifts the dynamics of the China-Brazil relationship, which saw tense moments under former leader Jair Bolsonaro, who embraced anti-China rhetoric.

Lula has already started out his state visit in Shanghai with a nod to Brazil and China cooperation, attending the former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s inauguration as head of the New Development Bank of BRICS, the bloc of emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that offers an alternative power grouping to the Western-centric G7.

“Xi will find in Lula a BRICS enthusiast, openness to reforms in the global governance system and the desire to avoid automatic alignment with the US,” said Luiza Duarte, a research fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington.

Meanwhile, Lula’s expected warm welcome in Beijing “raises comparison with his frustrating less than 24-hour visit to Washington,” she said, referring to the Brazilian leader’s February 10 visit to the White House.

The meeting was seen at the time as a key outreach from the newly inaugurated Lula to the US.

But Beijing may use the “lack of deliverables” from that meeting “to position itself as a more appealing alternative for bilateral cooperation,” said Duarte.

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva gestures at the inauguration of the President of the New Development Bank, Dilma Rousseff in Shanghai, China, April 13, 2023.

Ricardo Stuckert/Handout via Reuters

Ukraine question

Looming over diplomacy in Beijing is the Russian assault in Ukraine.

Some leaders – like Macron – have viewed Xi, a close friend and diplomatic partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a potential ally that could help push Putin toward peace.

But their relationship has also raised concern, with US officials earlier this year warning that China was considering providing the Kremlin with lethal aid – a claim Beijing has denied.

While France and China agreed to several points related to the war in their meeting – including opposition to attacks on nuclear power plants and the protection of women and children – Macron did not ultimately push Xi to commit on paper to any position China has not already publicly said.

Brazil, in advance of Lula’s trip, has offered another view: creating – as the country’s foreign minister put it – “a group of mediator countries” including China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 21, 2023.

Grigory Sysoyev/AFP/SPUTNIK/Getty Images

No path to peace: Five key takeaways from Xi and Putin's talks in Moscow

But how Beijing navigates these initiatives, observers say, comes down to a bottom line that’s integrally related to Xi’s global ambitions and world view.

“It will be difficult for China to respond positively to some of the requests made by either the Americans or Europeans, because doing this would produce the risk of making the Russians upset,” said Li in Singapore.

“Russia is the only major power that shares a lot of (China’s) views on how the world and the global system should look and how various political issues should be handled. Russia is irreplaceable for China,” he said.

That point was highlighted in another moment on Xi’s recent diplomatic agenda: his travel to Moscow in March for his own state visit – the first since he stepped into a third presidential term that same month.

And while China’s diplomacy – and deals – in the past week may not have been heavily impacted by the optics of that relationship, analysts say how Beijing handles the conflict will continue to affect views on China globally.

Perceptions about Xi’s potential influence over Putin have provided “leverage that allows (Xi) to get a lot of attention, and perhaps get mileage and support that he would otherwise not have,” said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor at the National University of Singapore.

“Ultimately, the test will come down to whether Xi is actually able to exert any real influence on Putin, especially in terms of ceasing the war,” he said.

CNN’s Tatiana Arias contributed reporting.

CNN · by Simone McCarthy · April 14, 2023

7. Could Beijing ‘borrow’ America’s Cold War Cuba strategy to lock down Taiwan?

Excerpts:

Again, playing devil’s advocate, there is no doubt, ballistic missiles whether nuclear armed or not are indeed an offensive weapons system, they are however, equally a defensive weapons system afforded this capacity through the level of tactical and strategic deterrence they confer. So could both parties actually be right?

In light of these points, could Beijing actually leverage loss definitions to enforce its own “quarantine” on Taiwan?

Building international consensus is critical

One of the core pillars of President Kennedy’s strategy for implementing the quarantine on Cuba was the support of the international community and coalition building that was essential to success in the United Nations.

As part of this push, President Kennedy rallied the Organisation of American States (OAS) to support the US push for a quarantine on Cuba, while effectively bluffing the Soviets through the implementation of a quarantine, rather than a formal blockade.

The Kennedy administration built further legal consensus via support from the OAS and the supporting Rio Treaty of collective defence for the Western Hemisphere, bringing together the collective security concerns of nations in the hemisphere and directly engaging their buy in.

This approach is explained by then US Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral George Anderson, in a position paper presented to President Kennedy, whereby he explains, “This initially was to involve a naval blockade against offensive weapons within the framework of the Organization of American States and the Rio Treaty. Such a blockade might be expanded to cover all types of goods and air transport. The action was to be backed up by surveillance of Cuba.”

This was further reinforced by support from the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy, Canada, and Australia, along with other global US allies who sought a peaceful resolution to the threats posed and enabled the United States to leverage its good will at a time of critical importance.

Following a similar approach could work for Beijing, should it seek to implement a quarantine on Taiwan. While the nature of Beijing’s international relationships vary, the growing interconnectedness, debt-trap diplomacy, and efforts to build parallel international structures or outright subverting them positions the superpower extremely well in any future claim.

Could Beijing ‘borrow’ America’s Cold War Cuba strategy to lock down Taiwan?

defenceconnect.com.au · by Stephen Kuper · April 11, 2023

It is widely recognised as one of, if not the closest, the world has come to full-blown nuclear Armageddon, the fallout of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the diplomatic games of brinkmanship between the nuclear-armed superpowers continue to resonate well into the 21st century.

The game of brinkmanship between President John F Kennedy and Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had its roots in earlier meetings between the two leaders over the status of strategic nuclear weapons systems in Europe and Turkey, culminating in the Berlin Crisis of 1961.

Indeed, the perception among Soviet advisers at the time was that President Kennedy was “too young, intellectual, not prepared well for decision making in crisis situations ... too intelligent and too weak”. This was further reinforced by Khrushchev in the aftermath of the Berlin Crisis when he was quoted as saying, “I know for certain that Kennedy doesn’t have a strong background, nor, generally speaking, does he have the courage to stand up to a serious challenge.”

This formed the basis for the Soviet’s bold ambitions to balance the strategic scales by placing nuclear weapons close to the US mainland, effectively countering the US Titan missile systems based in Turkey, further undermining President Kennedy in the aftermath of the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Under the guise of humanitarian aid and development assistance, the Soviets responded to the calls for aid from Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, playing perfectly into the hands of the Soviets who were eager to increase their first strike capabilities against the mainland United States and counter the vast edge in nuclear and conventional forces enjoyed by the Americans.

The Soviet deployment of some 40,000 Soviet troops disguised as “machine operators”, “agricultural specialists”, and “irrigation specialists” laid the groundwork for what would ultimately become an immense Soviet military build-up, including conventional platforms like MiG-21 fighters and Il-28 bombers, ultimately paving the way for the fielding of SA-2 surface-to-air missile systems and R-12 theatre ballistic missiles and the R-14 intermediate range ballistic missiles.

This conventional and nuclear-build up would embolden the Cuban regime to warn the United States against any repeat of the Bay of Pigs, with Cuban President Osvaldo Torrado telling the United Nations General Assembly in 1962, “If ... we are attacked, we will defend ourselves. I repeat, we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves; we have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons, which we would have preferred not to acquire, and which we do not wish to employ.”

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But what does all of this have to do with Taiwan?

Broadly speaking, the two nations, Cuba and Taiwan, are island nations geographically close to a global superpower embroiled in a broader geopolitical and global strategic competition with another global superpower, and are home to political systems considered anathema to the neighbouring superpower.

Both island nations also represent the remnants of the Cold War competition between the liberal democratic, capitalist world and the communist autocratic systems, which is gaining new life as the United States and China square off against one another in the 21st century’s great game of geopolitical and strategic competition.

This has been reinforced by China’s President Xi Jinping who has frequently reiterated that the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China is one of the key priorities for the Chinese Communist Party, with President Xi stating at the Party’s 20th Congress recently, “Resolving the Taiwan issue is the Chinese people’s own business, and it [is] up to the Chinese people to decide.

“We insist on striving for the prospect of peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and best efforts, but we will never promise to give up the use of force and reserve the option to take all necessary measures … The historical wheels of national reunification and national rejuvenation are rolling forward, and the complete reunification of the motherland must be achieved, and it must be achieved!” President Xi said.

Standing opposite is Washington’s longstanding support for the Taiwanese people and insistence that Beijing must continue to honour the right to self-determination of the Taiwanese people and subsequent defence support for the island democracy, enabling Taiwan to resist any forceable reunification attempts.

Blockade or quarantine? The line is pretty thin

Since the end of the Chinese Civil War and the successful rise of Mao’s Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the United States has moved to provide the Taiwanese military with sufficient capabilities to defend itself from any open hostilities or forcible attempts at reunification with mainland China.

As Beijing has increasingly stepped up its regional ambitions and embarked on the largest peacetime military modernisation and expansion in history, Taipei has increasingly looked to the US to provide increasing guarantees beyond the concept of strategic ambiguity to guarantee its security.

This has only ramped up Chinese military exercises and antagonism towards the island democracy, with a series of exercises over the past few months demonstrating the increasing multi-domain capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army and in particular, its capacity to effectively isolate the island enacting immense cost on the United States and allies who might seek to intervene and sway the balance of power in favour of Taiwan.

While Chinese fighter aircraft, bombers, and tanker aircraft dominated the skies over the Taiwan Strait conducting a series of precision strikes and combat air patrols, destroyers, frigates, swarms of submarines, and at least one Chinese aircraft carrier prowled the waters demonstrating the full spectrum dominance of the Chinese military and its capacity to mass force in a cohesive manner toward a single target.

In response, the United States and Western allies, often considered distracted by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, have stepped up support for the besieged island democracy, ramping up rhetoric and, in the case of the United States, stepping up the modernisation of the Taiwanese military, seeking to reinforce the key regional partner.

In March of this year, the United States approved US$619 million (AU$929.7 million) in military equipment including some 200 AMRAAM missiles, 100 HARM missiles to equip Taiwan’s F-16 fleet of fighter jets, combined with several suites of aircraft spare parts, modernisation and sustainment components in February, a US$180 million deal to provide the VOLCANO vehicle-launched anti-tank weapons system and a number of other weapons systems deals that would, as the US State Department explained: “The proposed sale will contribute to the recipient’s capability to provide for the defense of its airspace, regional security, and interoperability with the United States. The recipient will have no difficulty absorbing this equipment into its armed forces.”

Importantly, as with all of the recent sales to Taiwan, the US State Department has moved to reassure China, “The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.”

However, how long will Beijing take that line as gospel? And what are its options?

Well, looking at the similarities in the scenario, Beijing could seek to pursue a “quarantine” of Taiwan, effectively prohibiting the US supply of weapons systems, munitions, and other key technologies and industrial inputs to the island.

Sounds far-fetched? Well in some ways, Beijing has already recently implemented such an operation, with the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration conducting a three-day special joint patrol and inspection operation in the waters of the Taiwan Strait, including moves to board and inspect ships traversing the waters beginning on 6 April.

How is this similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the ensuing quarantine of Cuba?

US concerns about the legality of any naval “blockade”, which under international law is considered an act of war, were reflected in the options presented to President Kennedy by the Executive Committee of the National Security Committee (EXCOMM), namely:

Do nothing: American vulnerability to Soviet missiles was not new.
Diplomacy: use diplomatic pressure to get the Soviet Union to remove the missiles.
Secret approach: offer Castro the choice of splitting with the Soviets or being invaded.
Invasion: full-force invasion of Cuba and overthrow of Castro.
Air strike: use the US Air Force to attack all known missile sites.
Blockade: use the US Navy to block any missiles from arriving in Cuba.

Playing devil’s advocate, Taiwan, like Cuba, insists that all of its weapons systems are “defensive” in nature, nevertheless, President Kennedy in his address to the nation, explained, “To halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.”

Note here, that it is the United States which defined what it believed to be “offensive weapons”, despite the protestations from the Cuban government and the refutations and reassurances by the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin who “was instructed by Soviet Chairman Nikita S Khrushchev to assure President Kennedy that there would be no ground-to-ground missiles or offensive weapons placed in Cuba”.

Again, playing devil’s advocate, there is no doubt, ballistic missiles whether nuclear armed or not are indeed an offensive weapons system, they are however, equally a defensive weapons system afforded this capacity through the level of tactical and strategic deterrence they confer. So could both parties actually be right?

In light of these points, could Beijing actually leverage loss definitions to enforce its own “quarantine” on Taiwan?

Building international consensus is critical

One of the core pillars of President Kennedy’s strategy for implementing the quarantine on Cuba was the support of the international community and coalition building that was essential to success in the United Nations.

As part of this push, President Kennedy rallied the Organisation of American States (OAS) to support the US push for a quarantine on Cuba, while effectively bluffing the Soviets through the implementation of a quarantine, rather than a formal blockade.

The Kennedy administration built further legal consensus via support from the OAS and the supporting Rio Treaty of collective defence for the Western Hemisphere, bringing together the collective security concerns of nations in the hemisphere and directly engaging their buy in.

This approach is explained by then US Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral George Anderson, in a position paper presented to President Kennedy, whereby he explains, “This initially was to involve a naval blockade against offensive weapons within the framework of the Organization of American States and the Rio Treaty. Such a blockade might be expanded to cover all types of goods and air transport. The action was to be backed up by surveillance of Cuba.”

This was further reinforced by support from the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy, Canada, and Australia, along with other global US allies who sought a peaceful resolution to the threats posed and enabled the United States to leverage its good will at a time of critical importance.

Following a similar approach could work for Beijing, should it seek to implement a quarantine on Taiwan. While the nature of Beijing’s international relationships vary, the growing interconnectedness, debt-trap diplomacy, and efforts to build parallel international structures or outright subverting them positions the superpower extremely well in any future claim.

Organisations like the BRICS economic, political, and strategic bloc of nations including Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa, coupled with increasing Chinese influence in Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East and parts of the South Pacific all represent a major challenge to the status quo, while equally undermining the efficacy of the United Nations and other multilateral organisations, thus improving Beijing’s chances of successfully advocating for a quarantine.

Further compounding any push is the declining goodwill toward the United States, particularly following recent decades of foreign adventurism, failed expeditionary operations in the Middle East, declining political cohesion, and mounting economic weakness.

Either way, it is possible for Beijing to take such an approach, and perhaps unwittingly, Washington has provided the road map and both abdicated and surrendered the global stage at an equally troubling period in history.

Lessons for Australia’s future strategic planning

There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition.

Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region.

While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.

Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains:

"A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation."

Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of "it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother" will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.

As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Could Beijing ‘borrow’ America’s Cold War Cuba strategy to lock down Taiwan?

Stephen Kuper

Last Updated: 13 April 2023 Published: 13 April 2023

defenceconnect.com.au · by Stephen Kuper · April 11, 2023

8. The Airman Who Gave Gamers a Real Taste of War

The Airman Who Gave Gamers a Real Taste of War

By Aric Toler, Christiaan Triebert, Haley Willis, Malachy Browne, Michael Schwirtz and Riley Mellen

April 13, 2023

The New York Times · by Riley Mellen · April 13, 2023

Visual Investigations

The group liked online war games. But then Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old National Guard airman, began showing them classified documents, members say.

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Federal authorities arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, who they believe is linked to a trove of leaked classified U.S. intelligence documents.

By Aric Toler, Michael Schwirtz and

April 13, 2023

The 21-year-old National Guard airman was frantic as he joined a call with members of a small online gamer community that has improbably ended up at the center of a federal investigation into a major U.S. security breach.

It sounded as if the airman, Jack Teixeira, was in a speeding car, said a member of the group who uses the screen name Vahki.

“Guys, it’s been good — I love you all,” Airman Teixeira said, Vahki recounted. “I never wanted it to get like this. I prayed to God that this would never happen. And I prayed and prayed and prayed. Only God can decide what happens from now on.”

On Thursday, the F.B.I. arrested Airman Teixeira, an hour and a half after The New York Times identified him as the administrator of the online group, Thug Shaker Central, where a cache of leaked intelligence documents that riveted the world for a week first appeared.

It was Airman Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts National Guard, his friends in the group said, who somehow obtained the classified documents and posted them to the group. From there, they eventually spilled into the open, potentially compromising U.S. intelligence gathering and damaging relations with allies.

In interviews, members of Thug Shaker Central said their group had started out as a place where young men and teenage boys could gather amid the isolation of the pandemic to bond over their love of guns, share memes — sometimes racist ones — and play war-themed video games.

But Airman Teixeira, who one member of the group called O.G. and was also its unofficial leader, wanted to teach the young acolytes who gravitated to him about actual war, members said.

And so, beginning in at least October, Airman Teixeira, who was attached to the Guard’s intelligence unit, began sharing descriptions of classified information, group members and law enforcement officials said, eventually uploading hundreds of pages of documents, including detailed battlefield maps from Ukraine and confidential assessments of Russia’s war machine.

His goal, group members said, was both to inform and impress.

A photograph of Jack Teixeira posted on social media.

Airman Teixeira’s access to secret information and his ability to know about major global events before they appeared on front pages stoked the curiosity of the group, which numbered 20 to 30 people.

“Everyone respected O.G.,” Vahki said in an interview. “He was the man, the myth. And he was the legend. Everyone respected this guy.”

What Airman Teixeira was not, Vahki said, was a whistle-blower in the vein of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, whose outrage over perceived injustices led them to break the law and reveal closely held government secrets.

The secret documents in the news now, Airman Teixeira’s friends said, were never meant to leave their small corner of the internet.

“This guy was a Christian, antiwar, just wanted to inform some of his friends about what’s going on,” said Vahki, a 17-year-old recent high school graduate who identified himself by the screen name he used. “We have some people in our group who are in Ukraine. We like fighting games; we like war games.”

Now, their world is crumbling around them.

A New York Times report last week about the discovery of classified Ukraine war documents circulating online prompted the Pentagon to open an investigation, followed by national security officials racing to close down access to sensitive materials and reassure distraught allies that the U.S. government was still in control of its secrets.

The extent of the damage caused by the leak is not yet fully known.

The materials Airman Teixeira is accused of sharing revealed how deeply the Russian government had been penetrated by U.S. and allied intelligence agencies, which gained the ability to provide near-real-time information to the Ukrainians about planned Russian strikes.

They also showed that America’s spy services were eavesdropping on allies like Israel and South Korea, as well as the Ukrainian leadership, embarrassing revelations that could erode trust at a time when Washington was trying to present a unified front in the conflict with Moscow.

The police blocking Maple Street in North Dighton, Mass., near the home of Airman Teixeira, on Thursday.Credit...Alex Gagne for The New York Times

On Thursday, F.B.I. agents wearing helmets and flak jackets and carrying military-style assault rifles descended on the home where Airman Teixeira lived with his mother and took him into custody.

How The Times uses visuals to investigate the news. Our Visual Investigations team is made up of more than a dozen journalists who combine digital sleuthing and forensic analysis with traditional reporting to deconstruct news events. They have uncovered important details about drone strikes, police shootings and the Capitol riot.

Learn more about how the team works.

It all started innocuously, his online circle of friends said. As the pandemic closed schools and workplaces, plunging the world into isolation, the young men in Thug Shaker Central gravitated to one another online, finding solace in their shared interests, mostly video games like Project Zomboid, in which players try to survive in a post-apocalyptic Kentucky overrun by zombies.

They first met on a server called Oxide Hub, a large military-focused community on Discord, a social media platform popular among gamers — but abandoned it in favor of a closed, tighter-knit group.

They did not hide some of their extreme ideological views. On Steam, another popular gamer platform, members of the group traded racist and antisemitic epithets and appeared in other groups featuring Nazi iconography.

Vahki admitted to retweeting racist memes. “There’s no point hiding it,” Vahki said. “I’m not a good person.”

Airman Teixeira named the group Thug Shaker Central, which members acknowledged was an inside joke based on an internet meme. The investigative collective Bellingcat first reported that the group was the original source of the leaks. The Washington Post also reported details about the group.

Airman Teixeira, the friends said, was popular online and known as an active creator of memes. Online, he went by a number of different screen names, among them TheExcaliburEffect, jackdjdtex and TexKilledYou.

He grew up in North Dighton, Mass. Photographs from family members’ social media accounts show him curled up with his family’s two dogs, riding ATVs and wearing Boston Celtics gear. His mother posted pictures of his family members in the military every Veterans Day.

Following their footsteps, the young man joined the military after he graduated from Dighton-Rehoboth Regional High School in the summer of 2020, missing his graduation ceremony to attend his basic training obligations at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. He finished his technical training the following year and officially entered active duty with the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 102nd Intelligence Wing on Oct. 1, 2021.

Among the dozens of birthday wishes and baby pictures of Airman Teixeira on his sister’s social media feeds was a clue that he might be the leaker. One photograph captured a kitchen countertop that appeared identical to the surface on which the classified documents were photographed.

In addition to games, Airman Teixeira’s online group also shared an interest in guns. Vahki said he was a good marksman, and records unearthed by The Times show that he exchanged gun equipment with his fellow gamers.

“We’re gunners, we’re gear nerds,” Vahki said, adding that group members have spent hundreds of dollars on gear both in the virtual world and in real life.

But Airman Teixeira also began posting a different sort of content.

It started as long daily memos with complicated and, at times, confusing summaries of international events that members of the group found difficult to follow. Sometimes he would admonish his younger friends for not taking the information seriously, Vahki said.

Around October last year, his frustration led him to start posting original documents, including detailed battle maps from the war in Ukraine marked “TOP SECRET.” From October to March, Vahki said, the airman posted about 350 documents to the group.

The documents might have remained confined to Thug Shaker Central were it not for a member of the group named Lucca, a 17-year-old from California, who might not have fully grasped the gravity of the documents he had been given access to.

On March 2, Lucca was involved in a conversation about the Ukraine war in a public Discord group called #War-Posting when he published several dozen documents from the cache that had been uploaded to Thug Shaker Central.

For a month, the documents bounced around esoteric chat groups, including one popular with players of the online game Minecraft and another for fans of a moderately popular British YouTuber. They went seemingly unnoticed by anyone who understood their importance until early April, when some of the documents began appearing on the Telegram messaging app channels of supporters of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

As the news began to spread, Airman Teixeira started closing down his online accounts and bidding farewell to online friends.

“He was very freaked out,” Vahki said. “This isn’t something like an ‘oopsie-daisy — I’m going to be reprimanded.’ This is life-in-prison type stuff.”

The entrance to to the base where Airman Teixeira served in Pocasset, Mass.Credit...Cj Gunther/EPA, via Shutterstock

Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

The New York Times · by Riley Mellen · April 13, 2023

9. Did The U.S. Get Rolled Again at the FAO?

Strategic competition takes place within international organizations. Do we have our head in the game there?

Did The U.S. Get Rolled Again at the FAO?

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel F. Runde · April 13, 2023

In the 2019 election for the director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Chinese candidate, Qu Dongyu, won a resounding victory with 108 of the 191 total available votes. In comparison, the French candidate, Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle, earned 71 while the U.S.-backed Georgian candidate, Davit Kirvalidze, earned only 12. The staggering electoral defeat of the West at the hands of China during this 2019 election was a watershed moment. It was a signal to the United States and its allies that moving forward, mainland China would put forward credible candidates and knew how to run effective international political campaigns to get them elected. Qu Dongyu is up for reelection in about 2 months. Incumbent candidates in multilateral system elections almost always unanimously get reelected. However, Qu Dongyu should have been challenged by a credible candidate and defeated. Unfortunately, it looks like the U.S., and our allies, may have gotten rolled: after having a couple of challengers, Qu is now running unopposed and will sail to re-election.

Although the FAO is a lesser known international organization based in Rome, it plays a critical role in driving international efforts to address food insecurity and setting international standards for food and animal safety and quality. It is not what one might call the “commanding heights of the multilateral system” such as the IMF or the World Bank. Two organizations were spun out of the FAO: IFAD (a specialized international financial institution) and the World Food Program (delivers food aid). FAO is a standard setter and a repository of critical data and intellectual property. For example, the FAO sets standards for what counts as a “potato” or a “strawberry.” This may sound silly but this influences national and international research & development monies, and what counts in the context of global trade. The FAO also plays a role in pandemics because many pandemics stem from so-called “zoonotic transmission,” the transmission of diseases from animals to people. Additionally, the FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture maintains and facilitates access to a gene pool of roughly 64 crops that make up 80 percent of the world’s plant-based food. The FAO also keeps a database of where the most fertile land is in the world-something useful if you were considering “land grabs” for agriculture.

Iraq and Tajikistan put forward two candidates, seeking to challenge Qu, but the Iraqi candidate, Khalaf Ahmed, withdrew from the race on March 6th, followed by the withdrawal of Tajikistan’s Dilshod Sharifi on April 3rd. The deadline for nomination submissions passed on February 28th, removing the possibility of alternate candidates.

Qu’s leadership of the FAO has been controversial, and he has towed a pro-Russian line at the FAO. In 2021, Qu postponed an independent review of FAO management by the U.N.’s independent Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), requesting that it be delayed until 2024 conveniently after the 2023 reelection period. Secondly, and more importantly, the FAO under Qu’s leadership, took a clearly favorable Russian position on the food crisis generated by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and their subsequent war crimes. Qu has refused to support international sanctions on Russian exports, parroting Russian concerns and reflecting the Chinese position. Taking the Russia-China line, the FAO initially referred to Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation”, a phrase used by Vladimir Putin, instead of calling it the illegal invasion that it is. The FAO was initially and noticeably reluctant to make direct links between the food and fuel price spikes that have affected poor people in developing countries and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Incredibly, Qu has repeatedly identified Western sanctions against Russia as a significant problem.

There is, however, another possibility to consider. The World Food Program (WFP), which has historically been led by an American, was conceived and launched by the FAO in 1961. Ambassador Cindy McCain, former U.S. Ambassador to the UN agencies in Rome, was appointed as Executive Director of the WFP on March 2nd and officially took the helm on April 5th. With her appointment date falling so closely to the withdrawal of the Iraqi and Tajikistani candidates from the FAO race, could there be a potential linkage? The United States traditionally puts forward a candidate for Executive Director and the UN Secretary General and the FAO Director General vet the candidate with the ability to decline the US nominee. It is possible that a deal may have been struck to ensure that Ambassador McCain was confirmed as executive director at the WFP in exchange for a clearing of the field for Qu. This is mere speculation, but the timeline of events makes a deal plausible.

Ultimately, the good news is that, while at one point China held leadership in 4 of the top 15 international technical agencies, today they only hold the FAO, a useful organization but not one of the most strategically important multilateral organizations. Given the economic influence of China as the second-largest economy in the world, perhaps there was a calculated decision by the administration that allowing China to hold one agency in exchange for Ambassador Cindy McCain’s easy accession to the WFP was an acceptable, although distasteful, deal.

Daniel F. Runde is a Senior Vice President at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also the author of the book The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership Through Soft Power (Bombardier Books, 2023).

In this article:

Written By Daniel F. Runde

Daniel F. Runde is a senior vice president, director of the Project on Prosperity and Development (PPD), and holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading global think tank. Mr. Runde also served as the acting director for the CSIS Americas Program from 2020-2022. His work is oriented around U.S. leadership in building a more democratic and prosperous world. Among his many other contributions, Mr. Runde was as an architect of the BUILD Act, contributed to the reauthorization of the U.S. EXIM Bank in 2018, and was an architect of Prosper Africa, a U.S. government initiative to deepen the United States' commercial and development engagement in Africa.

19fortyfive.com · by Daniel F. Runde · April 13, 2023

10. US, Philippines agree to complete road map for security assistance

Excerpt:

"Adoption of a security sector assistance roadmap in the coming months will guide shared defense modernization investments and inform the delivery of priority platforms over the next 5 to 10 years," the two sides said in a statement.

US, Philippines agree to complete road map for security assistance

Reuters · by Idrees Ali

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Reuters) - Top defense and diplomatic officials of the United States and Philippines agreed on Tuesday to complete a road map in coming months for the delivery of U.S. defense assistance to the Southeast Asian nation over the next five to 10 years.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the long-time allies, who share concerns about an increasingly assertive China, discussed delivery of "priority defense platforms", in a move that prompted China to express concern.

Platforms from radars to drones, military transport aircraft and coastal and air defense systems figured in the so-called "2+2" meeting in Washington that also involved U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Philippine counterparts.

"Adoption of a security sector assistance roadmap in the coming months will guide shared defense modernization investments and inform the delivery of priority platforms over the next 5 to 10 years," the two sides said in a statement.

Philippines Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo told the same news conference the two sides "redoubled" their commitment to modernizing the Philippines-U.S. alliance.

That step, he added, recognised that "Our partnership will need to play a stronger role in preserving an international law-based international order."

On Wednesday, China's foreign ministry said it was "seriously concerned and strongly dissatisfied" with the joint statement, adding that the document "distorts and smears China's legitimate maritime law enforcement actions".

"We are willing to properly resolve maritime disputes through negotiation and consultation," said ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin at a regular briefing.

"But we will firmly uphold our own territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests."

Experts say the United States sees the Philippines as a potential location for rockets, missiles and artillery systems to counter a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.

Austin said it was "too early" to discuss what assets the United States would like to station at Philippine military bases under a recently expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

Manalo said the EDCA sites were mainly aimed at improving military interoperability, tackling humanitarian disasters and perhaps "respond to other types of security challenges," but did not elaborate.

The Pentagon has not specified the use of the additional sites, except that work would include airport expansion and training involving naval assets.

Manalo said on Monday Washington and Manila will need to discuss what the U.S. may do with its access to the EDCA sites.

"We remind the relevant countries in the region that relying on extraterritorial forces will not only fail to maintain their own security, but will instead increase tension and will certainly harm themselves," said Wang, the Chinese official.

EDCA allows U.S. access to Philippine bases for joint training, pre-positioning of equipment and building of facilities such as runways, fuel storage and military housing, but not a permanent presence.

The joint statement said the United States expected to boost its allocated spending for EDCA sites to more than $100 million by the end of 2023, up from a previous $80 million.

Both agreed to fast-track new two-way defense guidelines.

Such guidelines aim to provide strategic direction and to lay out each side's responsibilities, said Greg Poling, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The U.S. and Japan negotiated defense guidelines in 1978 for the Cold War, 1998 focused on North Korea, and 2015 focused on China, whereas the U.S. and Philippines have never done so," he said.

The Washington meeting came after more than 17,000 Philippine and U.S. soldiers began their largest ever joint military drills on Tuesday, highlighting their shared concern about China, which has rival territorial claims to the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea.

U.S.-Philippine ties have warmed under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, and the 2+2 meeting underlined that, as the first of its kind in seven years. But Manila treads a delicate path with China, the region's economic powerhouse.

Marcos assured China on Monday that military bases accessible to the U.S. would not be used in offensive action, stressing that the deal with Washington was designed to boost his country's defenses.

Reporting by David Brunnstron, Idrees Ali, Kanishka Singh and Simon Lewis; Additional reporting by Liz Lee and Qiaoyi Li in Beijing; Editing by Edward Tobin and Clarence Fernandez

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Idrees Ali

Thomson Reuters

National security correspondent focusing on the Pentagon in Washington D.C. Reports on U.S. military activity and operations throughout the world and the impact that they have. Has reported from over two dozen countries to include Iraq, Afghanistan, and much of the Middle East, Asia and Europe. From Karachi, Pakistan.

Reuters · by Idrees Ali

11. Moscow Expert And Russian Blitzkrieg Mentality: Russia Is Able To Annihilate Kazakhstan In A Matter Of 2 Months – OpEd

Hmmmm... What kind of prediction did we make about how long it would take in Ukraine?

Moscow Expert And Russian Blitzkrieg Mentality: Russia Is Able To Annihilate Kazakhstan In A Matter Of 2 Months – OpEd

eurasiareview.com · by Akhas Tazhutov · April 13, 2023

In the post-Soviet era, such mindset has seemingly become an integral part of the Russian way of thinking and the Kremlin propaganda machine. Shortly before the first Russian-Chechen war in 1994-1996, the then Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev had claimed the Chechens would be swept away in ‘a bloodless blitzkrieg’ with minimal forces. But the Russian forces of going on to Grozny in four directions were far from minimal, counting elements from seven motorized rifle regiments and one independent brigade mounted in wheeled BTR-80 armored personnel carriers and tracked BMP-2 fighting vehicles, two tank battalions with T-72 and T-80 main battle tanks, and two parachute regiments.

What happened next is well known. It took almost three months of heavy fighting before the Russian Army was able to capture Grozny. But the fighting continued unabated. The Russian side apparently was hoping for a quick victory but ended up getting entangled in a 2-year bloody war. Russia then proved to be unable to come out of it as a winner. Shortly before it was ended with the signing of the Khasavyurt agreements and the conclusion of a peace treaty, Pavel Grachev was dismissed from the post of Defense Minister.

It seems that Moscow learned no lesson from this history. In 2014, Vladimir Putin said Russian forces could conquer the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, in two weeks if he had so ordered. On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin sent the Russian military forces into Ukraine. The Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for almost fourteen months. The Russian taking of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, seems less likely now than a year previously. In Russia, there, however, is a blitzkrieg mentality still. The desire for conquering, submitting and even burying others in a matter of days, weeks or months and in one way or another seems to persist.

Ukraina.ru, in an article entitled ‘Andrey Grozin: Russia and China will not allow turning Kazakhstan into a second Ukraine’, quoted Andrey Grozin, the head of the Central Asia and Kazakhstan department in the Commonwealth of Independent States Institute, as saying the following: “Russia in case of anything can just bury Kazakhstan in a matter of two months, not even sending in its military forces. To do this, it will be enough for the Russian Federation to cut off all transit communications in and out [of the Central Asian country]”. This material attracted interest from other media outlets. A number of publications quoted the comments by Andrey Grozin about Kazakhstan’s foreign policy and how can Russia influence it (here and here , among others).

Those words by the well-known Russian political expert may not be as harmless as one would think. Early 2022, just over a year ago, Andrey Grozin believed that it was more important for Russia to resolve first the Kazakhstani issue, than the Ukrainian one. He then said: “The problem is that [Kassym-Jomart] Tokayev is being seen as a person who wants to be friends with everyone and is afraid to ruin relations with everyone.

Ukraine, with all its nonsense, is a kind of nuisance, but you can live with it. And Kazakhstan, which is run by Russia’s enemies or is not run by anyone at all (the latter is the most likely one of the bad scenarios), is something, we mustn’t even think about. Should that happen, we will have to deploy not peacekeepers to the [neighboring Central Asian] country, but a real military contingent, in order to take control of the logistics hubs simply so that we retain access to the south [the other four States of Central Asia]. Or else there will be, if you will permit the vulgarism, a complete and total ass.

We will somehow get through with the insane Ukrainian authorities, if not this year, then next. Yet this is just a small piece of geography. [While] Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world in terms of area. There is the 7,500-kilometre (4,750 mi) of unguarded border between them [the Republic of Kazakhstan] and us [the Russian Federation]…

We can’t wall ourselves off from Kazakhstan, even if we wanted to. Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova are countries, which are important to Russia. I mean, in terms of ideology, economy and military potential. As for Kazakhstan, it is different. It is kind of like Ukraine presented in a concentrated form”.

It is important to emphasize in this quotation the following words: “Should that happen, we will have to deploy not peacekeepers to the [neighboring Central Asian] country, but a real military contingent, in order to take control of the logistics hubs simply so that we retain access to the south [the other four States of Central Asia]”. It turns out that, by and large, Russia, if anything, ‘will have to’ send its armed forces into Kazakhstan, rather than simply ‘cut off all transit communications in and out [of the Central Asian country]’.

The above is a great example of how the Russian expert thought and propaganda works when the question arises of how to treat the neighboring Central Asian country. It’s rather usual for them to easily allow themselves to do with regard to Kazakhstan what they would not do in relation to other post-Soviet countries. Most of the latter have proved themselves able to induce the Russian side to reckon with them. It’s quite another thing when the largest country in Central Asia and its indigenous population are involved. Moscow and those representing it continues to behave with respect to Kazakhstan and ethnic Kazakhs as if the Central Asian State is one of the autonomous republics of Russia and the Russians can freely afford to insult its native population the same way they do this to the ethnic minorities of East Asian origin in the Russian Federation, such as the Buryats, Tuvans, Yakuts, Khakas and Kalmyks. Buryats and Kalmyks, by the way, say that the heads of their autonomous republics are unable to openly defend their peoples. The question arises of what is the situation in this aspect in Kazakhstan.

Here is just one illustration in this respect. According to Uralskweek.kz, in spring last year, Maxim Yakovchenko, a native of West Kazakhstan province, had issued the following comment in social networks: “URALSK, PETROPAVLOVSK, PAVLODAR, ETC. SHOULD BE GIVEN TO RUSSIA”. He next had called the Kazakhs ‘monkeys’. In the autumn of that year, he was charged under Penal Code, sections 174 (‘inciting hatred’) and 180 (‘separatism’). Maxim Yakovchenko left for Russia. He was declared wanted and detained on December 1 in Rostov-on-Don. As reported by the press, Maxim Yakovchenko has been granted refugee status in Russia and can’t be extradited.

As they say in Russia, ‘There is no extradition from the Don’. Kazakhstan’s Deputy Prime Minister – Foreign Minister Murat Nurtleu recently said that Russia is a reliable ally for Kazakhstan. But that does not change the fact that the Russian Federation has taken the one who called the Kazakhs ‘monkeys’ under its protection. The example of those Russians, who insult Kazakhstan and ethnic Kazakhs with impunity, seems to be finding its followers in other post-Soviet countries. Vesti.uz website just recently published an article entitled ‘How were the Kazakhs brought to the human level’. The very title of this piece says it all, so further comment is unnecessary.

Akhas Tazhutov, a political analyst

eurasiareview.com · by Akhas Tazhutov · April 13, 2023

12. Pentagon Looking Into How Accused Leaker Accessed Top Secret Documents

Pentagon Looking Into How Accused Leaker Accessed Top Secret Documents

Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman, arrested in connection with leak

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-looking-into-how-accused-leaker-accessed-top-secret-documents-6c6b0972

By Nancy A. Youssef

and Daniel Nasaw

April 14, 2023 5:30 am ET

WASHINGTON—Among the most puzzling questions to emerge since the arrest of a young Massachusetts man in connection with the leak of purported highly classified intelligence is how a junior airman would have gained access to some of the U.S. government’s most closely guarded documents.

Federal authorities on Thursday arrested Jack Teixeira in Dighton, Mass., for the suspected unauthorized removal, handling and distribution of secret information, officials said. Mr. Teixeira, 21 years old, holds the rank of airman first class in an intelligence unit of the Massachusetts Air National Guard and is a junior Air Force communications specialist, according to his service record. His job title—cyber transport systems journeyman—gives no obvious hint why he would have access to the types of files that were leaked. He joined the Air Force National Guard in September 2019, according to his service record. Mr. Teixeira is expected to appear Friday in federal court in Massachusetts.

Watch: Air Guardsman Arrested in Connection With Leaked Documents

Despite Leak, U.S. and Allies Will Keep Sharing Intelligence

Even after WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden disclosures, Washington enhanced information ties with close partners

https://www.wsj.com/articles/despite-leak-u-s-and-allies-will-keep-sharing-intelligence-f4ba4aa2?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

By Daniel MichaelsFollow

April 14, 2023 5:30 am ET

Deepening intelligence ties between the U.S. and its allies in an increasingly adversarial world mean that Washington’s foreign partners see little choice but to shake off the apparent leak of classified documents and won’t curtail cooperation.

Among the dozens of purportedly secret documents posted online are details of U.S. and allied militaries, politics and strategic weak points. They include information and analysis concerning Ukraine’s armed forces as they prepare for an offensive against Russian forces occupying large parts of the country. The photographed pages also include what is presented as confidential information about Israel, South Korea, Egypt and other countries. Much of the information, the papers say, was obtained by U.S. intelligence agencies through intercepts of foreign communications.

The leak, like others in recent years, is embarrassing and damaging for the U.S. and its allies not just because it may have exposed secrets that could compromise espionage operations, military plans or diplomatic efforts. The exposure also puts in the public eye practices such as spying on allies that almost all countries do and know about, but rarely discuss.

Watch: Air Guardsman Arrested in Connection With Leaked Documents

Iraq: Twenty Years on, Two Narratives Emerge - War on the Rocks

warontherocks.com · by Gregory A. Daddis · April 14, 2023

I recently had the privilege to participate in a retrospective symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the American war in Iraq. Hosted by Columbus State University and the National Infantry Museum, the conference brought to the newly renamed Fort Moore, Georgia a diverse assembly of panelists. As a historian and veteran, I had the chance to present alongside a currently serving U.S. Army officer, an Iraqi interpreter, veterans of America’s armed forces, a Gold Star spouse (and veteran herself), regional scholars from Iraq and the Iraqi diaspora, cultural anthropologists, military historians, and even a former Army vice chief of staff.

Despite this variety of experiences and opinions, two distinct yet incongruent narratives emerged. Most, if not all, veterans of “Iraqi Freedom” told an inward-facing story focusing on tactical and operational “lessons” largely devoid of political context. Meanwhile, Iraqi scholars and civilians shared a vastly different tale of political and social upheaval that concentrated far more on the costs of war than on the supposed benefits of U.S. interventionism. If these two narratives are allowed to harden in the years to come, historians will never be able to fully make sense of one of the most momentous and tragic wars of the early 21st century. Instead, the challenge remains in reconciling them in order to understand what happened in Iraq during and after the 2003 invasion.

The contested history of the American war in Vietnam, which I have focused on in my own research, provides a way forward. After Vietnam, far too many veterans and scholars waited for decades before sharing their stories with each other. The symposium I attended demonstrates the benefits of having more candid discussions between civilians and veterans sooner rather than later. The result of these efforts will be a more comprehensive history that draws together the views of soldiers and civilians, of Americans and Iraqis, and of the political and the military.

Lessons “Learned”

Tales of the American veteran experience at the symposium were powerful. The stories I heard reinforced my notion that the vast majority of U.S. servicemembers went to Iraq hopeful that they were part of some larger, benevolent mission, only to be disappointed by the experience. And yet any visible sense of bitterness seemed absent.

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Rather, combat veterans in particular leaned into testimonials that highlighted both an individual and institutional preference to focus less on the political and social context of their war, and more on tactical “lessons,” often in a deliberately didactic manner. Here were tutorials that, if properly excavated, could be universalized for future warriors. Perhaps this choice should be unsurprising, given that none of these veterans were involved in the political decisions leading to one of the worst foreign policy decisions after 9/11.

Instead, what emerged were prescriptions for anticipating the rise of local insurgencies, for properly preparing for “future threats,” and for accurately “targeting” the enemy in population-centric warfare. One veteran lamented that the Army, as an institution, had been unprepared for the war it embarked upon and had lacked the “intellectual capacity” to prepare for both countering insurgencies and for implementing “Phase IV” post-conflict reconstruction operations. Here were professionals seeking to codify “lessons learned” so their military heirs might not make similar mistakes in the future.

Yet an underlying sense of hubris remained, despite the dubious outcome of these veterans’ efforts. Discussing the Iraqi people, one speaker claimed that “we gave them a stable government,” perhaps to insinuate that our putative allies had failed where “we” had succeeded. (The ghosts of Vietnam die hard, I suppose.) Another veteran panelist, in similar tones, explained how “we were going to restructure the Iraqi army” and how “we were going to rebuild Iraq.” This despite another American panelist’s judgment that “we didn’t understand Iraq at all.”

Among these speakers, the language of “we” and “me” was prevalent. Perhaps that makes sense. War is personal and our stories are just that — our own. Listening to these veterans, however, I couldn’t help but think that tales relying on “my” experience were being extrapolated into the history of the entire war. True, most all panelists acknowledged that where and when one served in Iraq mattered. Multiple, distinct wars unfolded over a 20-year period. One Vietnam veteran similarly recalled, years ago, that the U.S. Army had fought a “mosaic war” in Southeast Asia. That depiction remains apt. But these Iraq veterans seemed to be suggesting that they owned a certain narrative of their war that put civilians — Americans and even Iraqis themselves — at a disadvantage in efforts to make sense of what happened. If you didn’t serve in Iraq, they intimated, how could you speak intelligently of the war and what it left behind?

Overcoming the Civil-Military Divide

Yet relying on “you weren’t there” arguments only underwrites an already expansive civil-military divide in the United States. In fact, the veteran panelists seemed idealistically unaware that they might be contributing to this gap between the military and larger civilian society. One spoke of going to parties and inevitably hunkering in a corner with the three or four other veterans in the room because that’s where he felt most comfortable. Others seemed to be wrestling still with the “thank you for your service” phenomenon that prevailed after 9/11. One Gold Star spouse who lost her husband in Iraq while she was serving in Afghanistan painfully shared that most civilians “had no idea” what the gold star on her jacket lapel even meant. Finally, one special operations aviator thoughtfully wondered aloud about who, in fact, were the “bad guys” in Iraq before catching himself and declaring there was “no way I’m going to talk about this with civilians.”

I understood the reticence, for American veterans from World War II to Vietnam long have shared their frustrations in being unable to find a receptive audience at home capable of understanding the worst of war. But this creates a vicious cycle: How are civilians supposed to debate national security issues when veterans won’t help to educate them about what war truly means from their perspective? Lacking knowledge, what else can citizens do but offer their thanks and leave it to informed others to make foreign policy decisions on their behalf?

Overcoming this divide won’t be easy. It requires civilians to accept their obligation to actively learn about the costs and consequences of war. And it requires veterans to share their pain so others may learn from it. That’s a hard task for anyone who has experienced trauma. But listening from the symposium seats, I wondered if veterans were doing themselves a disservice by not mingling more at parties and sharing the stories that we all need to hear.

Political Questions

This preference for tribal exclusivity contributed to the final element of the dominant narrative among veteran panelists — they had won the war militarily, but others had lost the war politically. The refrain echoed from nearly every single Vietnam memoir I had ever read. In my own comments, I suggested that such a framing is misguided. If we believe a certain Prussian theorist, then one cannot separate the military from the political when talking about war. (Obviously, military professionals, even retired ones, have good reasons for wanting to avoid direct commentary on the political “side.”) Veteran panelists surely debated what “winning” actually meant in Iraq, but most seemed to concur, in the words of one, that the effort was “worth the blood and cost,” at least for the Americans. Of course, he conceded, Iraqis might disagree.

As a historian of the American war in Vietnam, assertions like this proved among the most troubling. Faced with arguments that the “surge” worked from a strictly military perspective or that the war was won militarily, only to be reversed by weak-kneed civilian politicians back home, I question how much we truly will learn from this war. Such claims fail to wrestle with deeper questions because they unnaturally divorce the military from its necessary political context. Do supposed lessons of “enemy targeting” matter if we’re not asking bigger questions about why the United States invaded in the first place and for what purpose? Does it matter if the Army could have improved its tactical performance if we are not challenging our larger assumptions about the use of military force overseas to begin with?

Dominant narratives, of course, are difficult to challenge. They’re dominant for a reason. In this case, military veterans were inclined naturally to share “operational lessons learned,” likely because that’s what they knew best. Scholars of Iraq, on the contrary, cared little for such stories, wanting instead to highlight a narrative focusing on the social, political, and environmental consequences of a long and bloody conflict. How to unite these two accounts will be a challenge for all of us in the years to come.

One reason for this challenge surely comes from our veneration of veterans, which arguably has clouded our ability to place military affairs in their proper political context. It feels safer to focus on soldier-centric storylines. We can say “thank you” to veterans and embrace their victory narrative — or, conversely, their betrayal narrative — while avoiding more uncomfortable conversations about political malfeasance and culpability. We can share in heroic tales of martial glory that help to bolster a sense of American exceptionalism, while sidestepping the possibility that there are limits to American power overseas. And, perhaps most importantly, we can dodge awkward exchanges with those Iraqis whose lives America left upended in a war of choice and flawed expectations.

The View from Iraq

The Iraqi scholar participants shared a far different narrative, one that concentrated less on military tactics and operations — or on “victory” — and more on the enduring cultural, political, and ecological costs of war. Listening to them speak, I wondered if I was hearing anecdotes about the same war. The challenge for historians will be to weave together these narratives into something more complete than an American story on one side and Iraqi one on the other. Bringing everyone to the same symposium is a start, but without more work people will continue to talk past each other.

Notably, all the Iraqi scholars at the conference were also American. Thus, the distinction in perspective was not between Iraqis and Americans but between Iraq scholars and U.S. military personnel with, relatively speaking, little expertise on Iraq. When veterans used “we” to draw a contrast with, and often dismiss, American civilians who “were not there,” it overlooked the fact that many of these Iraqi-born American panelists had been.

One anthropologist, who studies Iraq’s political landscape and whose family suffered considerably under Saddam Hussein’s regime, began by arguing that American veterans spoke of Iraq in the “abstract” and thus were guilty of “nuanced ambivalence.” It was as if, she asserted, “Iraq was an empty place” before the Americans arrived and, perhaps, even while they were fighting there. As with the veteran panelists, I sensed little bitterness in her remarks and instead more of a hope that other Americans might finally see their long, sullied history in Iraq. No doubt this scholar was correct in asserting that few audience members understood how the United States had supported Saddam during the 1980s Iran-Iraq War or how U.S. economic sanctions in the 1990s had a devastating effect on Iraqi children.

Another professor studying the war’s ecological impacts said that in the land of her mother’s birth what prevailed was the “memory of Americans as agents of terror.” It was easy for any of us to imagine ourselves as “righteous,” she argued, but clearly there were implications when that righteousness was hitched to the world’s most well-funded military establishment. To be fair, it seems plausible that other Iraqis feel differently, or at least more ambiguously, given the diversity of experiences in a chaotic wartime environment.

From these panelists’ perspectives, the religious component of the Iraq war also unfolded in ways far different than what most Americans understood. For those in the United States, the popular narrative pitted Shia against Sunni as if they were sports teams one could root for or against. This scholar, however, suggested that U.S. military commanders had “sectarianized” democracy in their attempts to lessen the violence in Iraq and build a stable, democratic-leaning Iraq. American-style democracy, she maintained, became “infused with ethnic identity.” Before the war, we learned, concepts of identity had rested on more fluid constructs. Of course, sectarian conflict had deeper roots beyond the U.S. occupation and even Hussein’s deliberate attempts to increase sectarian divides in the 1990s. Still, it was hard listening to such informed evaluations and not think of Graham Greene’s well-intentioned yet naïve “quiet” American making local matters worse by his very presence in South Vietnam.

And, as in Vietnamese narratives, these panelists discussed the structural displacement of peoples caused by an American invasion. Wars have an ugly habit of forcibly removing families from their homes and the one in Iraq proved no different. According to one panelist representing the Costs of War Project, the 2003 invasion “displaced approximately 1 in 25 Iraqis from their homes, with fighting connected with the Islamic State contributing to additional displacement.”

Finally, the Iraqi-American panelists opened a conversation that at least some Americans find uncomfortable, about how racism continues to afflict U.S. foreign policy. To one Iraqi scholar, Americans had failed in portraying the complexity of their society. We were “never presented as human beings,” she argued, even if the Bush administration worked publicly to humanize Iraqis. Another maintained that it was necessary to talk about Iraqi deaths, because “if we humanize Iraqis better, we humanize ourselves better.” The historian in me thought of how words like “savage” and “inhuman” have littered our military lexicon for centuries now. The veteran in me knew the use of “haji” was fairly common among American soldiers. Apparently, we still have some way to go in thinking about our “enemies” as human beings and not just as inanimate “targets.”

Uniting Wartime Narratives

Twenty years on, listening to panels bringing together American and Iraqi perspectives of the 2003 war demonstrated that there remain, in emerging American narratives at least, two very different Iraq wars. Even the word “invasion” took on different connotations during this symposium depending on whether the speaker was Iraqi or American.

Narratives, of course, help us to grapple with the past. But narratives of war that divorce the political from the military or the American from the “other” are bound to leave us with a distorted version of that past. Here, the experience of writing history about Vietnam offers a warning that suggests a more fruitful way forward. For decades, Americans reflecting on the war focused on their own tactical successes and strategic failures. Soldiers shared the travails of fighting against a determined yet phantom-like enemy, while senior officers habitually spoke of political missteps that led to defeat. Vietnamese voices far too often remained silent outside of scholarly circles. In short, we had to wait some 50-odd years for the two strands of narratives on the Vietnam War — American and Vietnamese — to finally start coming together and get us to a fuller appreciation of what actually happened.

Americans shouldn’t wait that long with Iraq, and don’t have to if they start bringing these diverse threads together now. Veterans and historians can instead follow this symposium’s example, replicating the inclusion of divergent voices in our storytelling and in our scholarship. Veterans should move beyond their exceptionalist narratives and actually talk to civilians and scholars, while civilians should stop mindlessly thanking veterans and actually engage with the complexity of their experiences. Historians, for their part, should actively seek conflicting sources that challenge our often-incomplete view of the world. Iraqi sources are just as important as American ones, just as Vietnamese sources were (and are) to our understanding of U.S. military interventions overseas. As the U.S. assault destroyed many Iraqi government archives, preserving sources that remain and making them more accessible takes on even greater importance. Finally, America’s collective effort to write the history of Iraq will only succeed when it is no longer beholden to those senior officers and policymakers who have a vested interest in selling the war as an American success story.

If we truly hope to gain perspective from the long American experience in Iraq and obtain more than just a checklist of military “lessons learned,” everyone involved will have to integrate our narratives of the war far more effectively and quickly than we have in the past.

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Gregory A. Daddis holds the USS Midway Chair in Modern U.S. Military History at San Diego State University. In 2009, he served as the command historian of the Multi-National Corps, Iraq. He currently is a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at Pembroke College, Oxford University.

Image: Department of Defense

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warontherocks.com · by Gregory A. Daddis · April 14, 2023

15. Putin’s Mobilization of Masculinity in the Invasion of Ukraine—and the Role of Ukrainian Women in Stopping Him

Conclusion:

There is also an important lesson for Western policymakers, particularly in how best to prepare its militaries for major conflicts. In a May 2021 tweet contrasting Russian military ads depicting shirtless men doing pushups and soldiers jumping out of airplanes with an American Army advertisement celebrating a female soldier’s unconventional upbringing, Republican Senator Ted Cruz proclaimed, “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea….” But Cruz’s ideal, hypermasculine military has fallen spectacularly short in Ukraine, and it bears considering how the qualities prioritized by Ukraine’s armed forces—cunning, speed, adaptability—combined with the effective mobilization of women might be cultivated by Western militaries as they prepare for new conflicts. Contrary to Cruz’s assumption, it appears that speed and flexibility on the one hand, and mental strength and courage on the other, are far more effective than performative hypermasculinity. As Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted in October in reference to Greek mythology, “Victory’s name is female.”

Putin’s Mobilization of Masculinity in the Invasion of Ukraine—and the Role of Ukrainian Women in Stopping Him - Irregular Warfare Initiative

irregularwarfare.org · by Josh Roose, Jacob Ware · April 14, 2023

Her statue watching over Kyiv’s Saint Michael’s Square, Saint Olga has played an important role in inspiring the defenders who have protected Ukraine since Russia’s invasion a year ago. In the 10th century, Olga avenged the killing of her husband Igor of Kyiv at the hands of the neighboring Devlian tribe, brutally putting down the Devlians’ subsequent efforts to subjugate her Kyivan Rus kingdom. Today, Olga serves as Ukraine’s patron saint of defiance and vengeance—two qualities in plentiful supply among the defenders repelling Russia’s brutish invasion.

Throughout its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has portrayed itself in wholly conventionally masculine ways—strong, powerful, entitled—while framing Ukraine as embodying traditionally feminized traits—weak, subservient, controlled. But Ukraine, channeling Olga’s example, has integrated women into the defense of the homeland in a broadly effective manner, adding to warfighting capability at both the front and in supporting roles. This choice has had considerable impacts on the ground, where Ukraine has arguably entered the war’s second year on top. Ukraine’s example serves to demonstrate the importance of rejecting the hypermasculine chest-beating about the role of women in Western militaries that has become pervasive in some political quarters.

Pre-Invasion: Putin’s Performative Hypermasculinity

In February 2022, just before the largest invasion since World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin told French President Emmanuel Macron in reference to Ukraine: “Whether you like it or don’t like it, bear with it, my beauty,” a reference to a Soviet-era punk-rock song about rape and necrophilia. (“Sleeping beauty in a coffin, I crept up and fucked her. Like it, or dislike it, sleep my beauty,” the song, by the group Red Mold, goes). In June 2022, then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would refer to the war as “a crazy, macho war of invasion and violence,” with Putin representing a “perfect example of toxic masculinity.” Johnson was referring both to the careful cultivation of a macho, alpha male image by Putin, with his aggressive rhetoric accompanied by carefully stage-managed photos hunting, horse-riding, and fishing—usually shirtless—and to Putin’s framing of the war itself.

Sociologists and political scientists often note that performative masculinity is usually associated with deep social injury: a sense of shame and humiliation and accompanying anger. Those demonstrating hypermasculine posturing are often compensating for hidden injuries and trying to recover a sense of dignity. In this context, individuals who perceive themselves to be a victim often become the aggressor, and have, time and again, proven themselves capable of brutal violence against those who they consider have humiliated them.

When Putin performs his hypermasculinity on the world stage, he has both international and domestic audiences in mind. Well aware of Russia’s reduced role in global politics, Putin has long harbored a deep resentment at the breakup of the Soviet Union after the fall of Communism, and seeks to reclaim the long-lost Russian Empire—as he sees it. Putin views the post-Soviet era as one of national emasculation and national shame and is prepared to inflict immense violence to turn this around.

Domestically, this ties into Putin’s attempts to reclaim a lost Soviet-era masculinity characterized by a powerful military, scientific breakthroughs including space exploration, and sporting success. Scholars such as Sarah Ashwin and Tatyana Lytkina have long argued that Russian men are “in crisis” and “domestically marginalized,” particularly at the lower end of the economic spectrum. Not counting the urban elite, who have fled the cities in an attempt to avoid conscription, these Russians are unable to meet the expectations of traditional Soviet conceptions of men as providers and heads of the family. It is no coincidence that the suicide rate for Russian men, from which Putin draws his conscripts, is the world’s highest, with unemployment, low socio-economic status, untreated mental illness, and substance abuse among the key contributing factors. In response, Putin has sought to “rehabilitate Russian masculinity” with laws criminalizing homosexuality and legalizing forms of domestic abuse. He has sought, with the Russian Orthodox Church, to contribute to the reinvigoration of a virile and traditional heterosexual masculinity targeting “weak” men. Both Putin and the Church seek to foster a return to traditional values where men embrace their former role as bread winner, with women prioritizing motherhood. Putin is, in effect, mobilizing both religion and masculinity in the service of a reinvigorated sense of Russian national identity.

The primary legitimation for the war offered by Putin is the protection of the rights of Russians and Russian-speaking people. But as the political scientist Elizaveta Gaufman argues, Russia has also portrayed Ukraine as a “damsel in distress,” a female and inferior geopolitical actor in need of Russian manhood and salvation from the corruption of the West. She notes further that he has framed the Ukrainian government as a neo-Nazi regime, painting the conflict as a battle between good and evil, but additionally as a battle between the masculine ideal represented by Putin and the deviant “sissy boys” represented by Ukrainian male politicians. Despite the clashing expansionist ambitions, herein lies his attractiveness to the Western far-right: as Jacob Heilbrunn notes, the far-right “see Putin as a defender of traditional Christian values and an opponent of LGBTQ, an opponent of transgender and an opponent of the weakening of masculine virtues that were responsible for the rise of the West.” To cite just one example of their rapprochement, Donald Trump Jr. recently called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an “ungrateful international welfare queen.”

The Russian Orthodox Church has dutifully supported the Invasion of the Ukraine on moral grounds. Speaking just a month after the invasion, Patriarch Kirill delivered a sermon stating that the West had for years been engaging in “the suppression and extermination of people in the Donbas” because they rejected homosexuality. Former President Dmitry Medvedev has stated “the goal is to stop the supreme ruler of Hell, whatever name he uses—Satan, Lucifer or Iblis.” In this context, the Ukraine conflict is represented as a battle not only against Western military imposition, but against Western immorality and to expand the reach of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russian men are consequently positioned not only as warriors fighting for their nation, but for their faith, a call taken up by some Muslim leaders in Russia similarly seeking Putin’s approval.

Yet those at the fore of efforts to cast the Russian military as a hypermasculine elite fighting force have proven largely unsuccessful in combat. Russian paratroopers of the 331st Parachute Regiment wearing the blue and white telnyashka singlet were a staple of Red Square Parades in Moscow and often photographed as muscular men engaged in hand-to-hand combat practice. They were described by Russian leadership as the “best of the best.” Yet up to half of the regiment’s forces that entered Ukraine have been killed or wounded since joining the battle at Hostomel Airport in the first days of the invasion, in what has been described as the event that ended the myth of the invincibility of Russian airborne troops.

The Role of Ukrainian Women

In the face of Russian aggression, Zelensky stands in powerful contrast to the cultivated hypermasculinity of Putin. The same president who was widely criticized for proclaiming Ukrainian women as part of Ukraine’s brand in 2019, would, a year into the invasion in March 2023, praise Ukrainian women as equals, presenting them with awards and thanking them for their sacrifice for their country. The former actor has assumed a new role—as defiant, courageous wartime leader. “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” he reportedly responded to an American offer of exfiltration.

The role of women has been an important, yet largely overlooked, story in the successful resistance to the Russian invasion. Many, including the journalist Iryna Slavinska, trace this to Ukraine’s strong history of feminism. Ukrainian women struggled against the Soviet-era gulag system and now fight against invasion, perhaps more aware than most of the consequences of failure. Many of the weapons flooding into Ukraine are now carried by women soldiers, who have mobilized in unprecedented numbers in support of the war effort. Ukrainian women in the armed forces number up to 60,000—around one-fifth of the total. “All Russians are scared of us,” one Ukrainian sniper, who some have nicknamed Joan of Arc, said. “Afraid of me, afraid of us. Ukrainian women.” Local organizations have dedicated time and effort to tailoring uniforms for thousands of women, while they fight on the front line. First Lady Olena Zelenska, meanwhile, has taken the lead on the psychological front, working to ensure Ukrainians have tools at their disposal to successfully process their trauma.

Of course, even this seemingly successful case study has its issues. Although Ukraine’s public relations campaign has sought to highlight its frontline female fighters, these soldiers are often placed in supporting roles, or worse, seen as distractions, “substitutes for absent men, rather than valued contributors in their own right.” They often must scrounge for proper-fitting fatigues. Those who are captured are subjected to a range of terrors not necessarily faced by men—including rape. Additionally, as men have been mobilized, women have been left to deal with hardship on the home front. But there are also promising suggestions that attitudes are changing, and now, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “the Ukrainian military is one of the most feminized armed forces in Europe.” “The belief that the army is no place for women is a relic of the Soviet mentality,” Oksana Hryhoryeva, a gender adviser to the commander of the Ukrainian military’s land forces, said. Ukraine, for its part, has clearly refused to accede to those preconceptions.

In building morale both at home and abroad, Ukraine has eagerly shared heroic stories of resolute civilian womanhood. Last February, multiple Western English-language news sites reported on Ukrainian mothers making Molotov cocktails in the early days of war—a story likely deliberately cultivated by Kyiv to convey to Russian soldiers that they would never manage to control Ukrainian pride behind the front lines. One Ukrainian grandmother from eastern Kyiv told CNN, “Let those Russian shits come here. We are ready to greet them.” In another viral story of brave women on the frontlines, one Ukrainian woman badgered Russian soldiers on video, telling them, “Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here.” Ukraine subsequently adopted its national flower, the sunflower, as an international symbol of solidarity. In Konotop, one Russian occupier was told, “You do not know our city. Here every second woman is a witch. You won’t be able to get a hard-on tomorrow.” And on March 5 last year, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security tweeted a picture of a mother walking her young child across the road, a large rifle slung over her other arm. “Every Ukrainian mother deserves to be called a Wonder Woman,” the caption read. In the rare instances when Russian soldiers begrudgingly respect Ukrainian female fighters, they compare them to men. “You have balls of iron, more than most men,” a Ukrainian woman arrested for spying behind Russian lines was told.

In response to continued Ukrainian resistance, many Russian soldiers have resorted, like powers of old facing guerilla and irregular warfare, to war crimes, seeking to terrorize the local population and their enemy with executions, castration, the rape of male and female captives, and other forms of sexual violence. The resistance of women to these atrocities through survival, sharing their stories, and fighting against the Russians has played a critical role in garnering international support. Indeed, branding matters—as the academic Valerie Sperling recently outlined, “there is a certain element of engaging women so overtly that I think is supposed to be Europeanizing and Westernizing.”

Women in Battles to Come

Ukraine might now be a model for how to effectively integrate women into a military, how to integrate elements of feminist theory into security policy, and how to draw successfully upon the role of women in the context of sustained combat operations against a numerically superior force. For Ukraine’s part, they will need to continue to champion the advances made during this past year, during the rest of the war as well as in the years to come. In July 2022, Zelensky ratified the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, and though Ukraine has not always been revered for gender equality, important steps taken over the past year should be recognized. “The Ukrainian women who, in and out of uniform, form a cornerstone of Ukraine’s resistance today will be at the center of the effort to rebuild tomorrow,” writes the analyst Olga Oliker. “If Kyiv matches its rhetoric with action, its military can reflect its society, give back to its heroes, and serve as a shining model for the world.”

There is also an important lesson for Western policymakers, particularly in how best to prepare its militaries for major conflicts. In a May 2021 tweet contrasting Russian military ads depicting shirtless men doing pushups and soldiers jumping out of airplanes with an American Army advertisement celebrating a female soldier’s unconventional upbringing, Republican Senator Ted Cruz proclaimed, “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea….” But Cruz’s ideal, hypermasculine military has fallen spectacularly short in Ukraine, and it bears considering how the qualities prioritized by Ukraine’s armed forces—cunning, speed, adaptability—combined with the effective mobilization of women might be cultivated by Western militaries as they prepare for new conflicts. Contrary to Cruz’s assumption, it appears that speed and flexibility on the one hand, and mental strength and courage on the other, are far more effective than performative hypermasculinity. As Ukraine’s defense ministry tweeted in October in reference to Greek mythology, “Victory’s name is female.”

Dr Josh Roose is a political sociologist and Associate Professor at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, Melbourne.

Jacob Ware is a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he studies domestic and international terrorism and counterterrorism. Ware is also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and serves on the editorial board for the Irregular Warfare Initiative.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Photo: Independence Day parade in Ukraine. Credit: spoilt.exile

Political Warfare and the Road to Invasion: Irregular Warfare in Ukraine Since 2014
Laura Jones and Kyle Atwell In Episode 56 of the Irregular Warfare Podcast, we conclude our two-part series focused on irregular warfare in Ukraine. In the previous episode, our guests discussed Russia’s…

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irregularwarfare.org · by Josh Roose, Jacob Ware · April 14, 2023

16. (Leak) Suspect in leak probe talked about God, guns and war secrets

Suspect in leak probe talked about God, guns and war secrets

AP · by NOMAAN MERCHANT · April 13, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The suspect was relatively easy to find.

In a social media world that produces traceable digital fingerprints, it didn’t take long for federal authorities and journalists adept at sifting through data to land on the name of Jack Teixeira.

Teixeira, 21, who served in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, was arrested Thursday in connection with the far-reaching leak of classified documents that have shaken capitals from Washington to Kyiv to Seoul with revelations of U.S. spying on allies and foes alike and the disclosure of sensitive military intelligence about the war in Ukraine.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said Teixeira would be charged with the unauthorized removal of classified national defense information.

There were clues in messages posted in a chatroom on Discord, a social media platform where Teixeira is believed to have posted for years about guns, games and his favorite memes — and, according to some others chatting with him, closely guarded U.S. secrets.

The investigative website Bellingcat and The New York Times first publicly identified Teixeira, minutes before federal officials confirmed he was a subject of interest in the investigation. They reported tracking profiles on other more obscure sites linked to Teixeira.

The suspect, as part of his duties, reportedly had access to highly classified information.

The case underscores the challenges the U.S. and other governments have in keeping secrets in an era of omnipresent data and an ever growing army of savvy users who know how to exploit it.

When asked how such a young service member could have had access to highly sensitive documents, the Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, said it was the nature of the military to trust its very young service members with high and sometimes grave levels of responsibility, including high levels of security clearance.

Soldiers fresh out of high school went to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and other combat zones for a generation, often using top-secret intelligence and programs to target adversaries.

“We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age. Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, and the responsibility and trust that we put into those individuals to lead troops into combat,” Ryder said.

In previous Associated Press stories, the leaker was identified as “the O.G.” by a member of an online chat group where Teixeira and others posted for years. The member of the chat group declined to give his name to the AP, citing concerns for his personal safety.

The chat group, called “Thug Shaker Central,” drew roughly two dozen enthusiasts who talked about their favorite types of guns and also shared memes and jokes, some of them racist. The group also included a running discussion on wars that included talk of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In that discussion, “the O.G.” would for months post material that he said was classified — originally typing it out with his own notations, then a few months ago switching to posting images of folded-up papers because he felt his writings weren’t being taken seriously, the person said.

A different participant in the group shared some of the files several weeks ago in a different chat group — and from there they appear to have spread across the Internet.

The person who spoke to the AP said he had not communicated with Teixeira on Thursday but had stayed in touch earlier in the week. Teixeira had said he knew the FBI was looking for him, the person said.

Teixeira was an airman first class detailed to an Air Force intelligence unit, according to Facebook posts from the 102nd Intelligence Wing based at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts.

Teixeira’s specialty in the Air National Guard was as a “cyber transport systems specialist,” essentially an IT specialist responsible for military communications networks, including their cabling and hubs. In that role Teixeira would have had a higher level of security clearance because he would have also been tasked with responsibility to access and ensure protection for the network, a defense official told the AP.

The National Guard issued a statement saying it was aware of the investigation and “takes this issue very seriously.”

“National security is our foremost priority and any attempt to undermine it compromises our values and degrades trust among our members, the public, allies and partners,” the statement said.

Local police on Thursday had blocked off the street in front of a home listed as belonging to his family.

The person who spoke to the AP says “the O.G.” — who he acknowledged Thursday was Teixeira — was an observant Christian who often spoke of God and prayed with members of the chat group.

While he was enlisted, Teixeira opposed many of the priorities of the U.S. government and denounced the military “since it was run by the elite politicians,” the person said, adding that he didn’t know why Teixeira had signed up in the first place.

“He expressed regret (about) joining a lot,” the person said. “He even said he’d kick my ass if I thought about joining.”

But the person has stressed that he didn’t believe Teixeira leaked documents to undermine the U.S. government or for an ideological reason.

When The New York Times first published a story last week about the documents, the person said, members of the group were on a video call when “the O.G.” talked to them.

“Basically what he said was, ‘I’m sorry, guys, I prayed every single day that this wouldn’t happen,’” the person said. “‘I prayed, and I prayed, and now it’s only up to God what happens next.’”

___

Associated Press writer Tara Copp contributed to this report.

AP · by NOMAAN MERCHANT · April 13, 2023

17. China vows not to sell arms to any party in Ukraine war

China vows not to sell arms to any party in Ukraine war

AP · April 14, 2023

BEIJING (AP) — China won’t sell weapons to either side in the war in Ukraine, the country’s foreign minister said Friday, responding to Western concerns that Beijing could provide military assistance to Russia.

China has maintained that it is neutral in the conflict, while backing Russia politically, rhetorically and economically at a time when Western nations have imposed punishing sanctions and sought to isolate Moscow for its invasion of its neighbor.

Qin Gang is the highest-level Chinese official to make such an explicit statement about arms sales to Russia. He added that China would also regulate the export of items with dual civilian and military use.

“Regarding the export of military items, China adopts a prudent and responsible attitude,” Qin said at a news conference alongside visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock. “China will not provide weapons to relevant parties of the conflict, and manage and control the exports of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations.”

The minister also reiterated China’s willingness to help find a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

At the same news conference, Qin also blamed Taiwan’s government for heightened regional tensions after Beijing held large-scale military drills in an attempt to intimidate the island it claims as its own territory.

Taiwan

China sanctions US Congress member for Taiwan visit

US displays firepower in combat drills with Philippines

China warns of rocket debris in area northeast of Taiwan

Germany appeals for reducing tensions over Taiwan

In February, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. had intelligence suggesting China was considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia — and warned that such involvement in the Kremlin’s war effort would be a “serious problem.”

In recent days, European leaders have issued similar warnings, even as they visited China, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief lashed out at Beijing, saying its support of Russia during the invasion was “a blatant violation” of its United Nations commitments.

In her remarks, Baerbock also referred to China’s role as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, saying it bore a special responsibility for helping end the conflict.

“But I have to wonder why the Chinese positioning so far does not include a call for the aggressor, Russia, to stop the war,” she said. “We all know that President (Vladimir) Putin would have the opportunity to do so at any time, and the people in Ukraine would like nothing more than to finally be able to live in peace again.”

A visit to Moscow last month by Chinese leader Xi Jinping underscored how Beijing is increasingly becoming the senior partner in the relationship as it provides Russia with an economic lifeline and political cover. China announced Friday that Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu would visit Russia next week for meetings with counterpart Sergei Shoigu and other military officials.

On both Ukraine and Taiwan, Qin articulated well-worn defenses of Chinese policies that underscore Beijing’s rejection of criticisms from the West, particularly the U.S. Under the ardently nationalist Xi, China has sharpened its rhetoric, particularly on the issue of Taiwan, which split from mainland China amid civil war in 1949.

Tensions around the island rose significantly after China deployed warships and fighter planes near Taiwan last weekend in retaliation for a meeting between U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the island’s president, Tsai Ing-wen.

China insists that self-governing Taiwan submit to its rule, either peacefully or by force, and Qin said the pursuit of independence by Taiwan’s government and its foreign supporters — a veiled reference to chief ally the United States — were the reason for the tensions.

Baerbock warned that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, through which much of the world’s international trade passes, would bring global disaster.

“We therefore view the increasing tensions in the Taiwan Strait with great concern,” she said. “Conflicts must be resolved peacefully.”

Apparently rejecting Baerbock’s concerns, Qin said Taiwan was “China’s internal affair and bore no outside interference.”

“Taiwan independence and peace can not co-exist,” he said.

AP · April 14, 2023

18. 1.25 Million Have 'Top Secret' Access In The US

I guess we should be surprised there are not more leaks.

Graphic at the link (as of 2019)

: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/125-million-have-top-secret-access-us

1.25 Million Have 'Top Secret' Access In The US | ZeroHedge

BY TYLER DURDEN

THURSDAY, APR 13, 2023 - 11:20 PM

ZeroHedge

The recent leak of classified Pentagon documents has highlighted the vulnerability of the system which grants access to classified government information.

Initially suspected to have been an intelligence operation by a state actor, evidence is increasingly indicating that the leak originated from an individual working on a U.S. military base - motivated by impressing members of an online chat group.

As Statista's Martin Armstrong details below, the federal government grants top secret security clearance to large numbers of government employees and contractors: 1.25 million according to the latest publicly available figures.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Speaking in Ireland on Thursday, President Biden spoke publicly for the first time on the issue, saying there was a "full-blown" investigation into the issue and that despite the potentially damaging nature of the leak, "“there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence.”

ZeroHedge

19. After tragedy, US Air Force probes English training for foreign pilots

After tragedy, US Air Force probes English training for foreign pilots

airforcetimes.com · by Rachel Cohen · April 13, 2023

JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas — Two years after a Japanese air force pilot and his American instructor died in a military jet crash in Alabama, officials are mulling whether a U.S.-run program that teaches English to foreign aviators is partly to blame.

The incident has prompted U.S. Air Force leaders to take a closer look at the quality of the instruction they provide, and consider how to better accommodate foreign students. It has opened fresh discussion of how much time and money the program needs to succeed.

It has also highlighted a breakdown in communication between the Air Force-led Defense Language Institute’s English Language Center here, the organizations that oversee it, pilot training units across the service, and the nations that send their students to Texas.

“The Japanese are nervous because of what happened,” said Terry Harsh, an instructor at the center, in a recent interview here. “They come through here, asking, ‘I don’t want the same thing to happen to me — why did he die? Why did a professional American instructor pilot die with him?’ These are language issues, and they’re very concerning.”

The fatal T-38C Talon training sortie on Feb. 19, 2021, killed 24-year-old 1st Lt. Scot Ames, an instructor pilot at Mississippi’s Columbus Air Force Base, and his 25-year-old Japanese trainee, Capt. Renshi Uesaki.

An official accident investigation concluded that Ames and Uesaki made errors in judgment that caused the crash. Investigators noted that Uesaki struggled with the language barrier despite completing six months of English training in 2019.

That “directly impacted his ability to receive and process instruction as well as listen and talk on the radios,” the report said. “This challenge was exacerbated while flying instrument sorties, which required more frequent communications” with air traffic control.

Uesaki passed his English comprehension test upon arriving at Lackland but needed more time to improve in conversation. He finished the course as an “‘average’ to ‘slightly above average’” student, according to the accident report.

But he continued having difficulty speaking and understanding technical aviation vocabulary, which affected his ability to comprehend instructions and make radio calls while flying. Those communication challenges often overwhelmed Uesaki and caused him to lose focus in the cockpit, the report said.

“The cause of the mishap was [Ames’s] loss of situational awareness on final approach and failure to take timely and necessary actions as a dangerous situation developed,” the Air Force wrote in its accident report. “[Uesaki] substantially contributed to the mishap after becoming task-saturated in the traffic pattern and placing and leaving the throttles in idle.”

Foreign pilot deaths in U.S.-led military training are infrequent, but they do occur. At least four foreign airmen have died in the U.S. in the past decade: Uesaki; two Iraqi pilots, Brig. Gen. Rasid Mohammed Sadiq and Capt. Noor Faleh Rassan Al-Khazali; and a Taiwanese airman, Maj. Kao Ting-cheng.

All but Uesaki were flying F-16 Fighting Falcon jets over Arizona when they crashed in separate incidents in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Foreign deaths account for around 6% of the 80 people who have died in U.S. Air Force-affiliated aircraft mishaps since 2013, according to the Air Force Safety Center.

But losing an American instructor pilot brought scrutiny of the program to a new level, Harsh said. The crash sparked meetings across the U.S. Air Force’s training enterprise and with Japanese military officials to discuss what went wrong — and how to stop it from happening again.

“The Air Force command structure went into a different gear,” said Harsh, a former scout helicopter pilot who has taught at the center for over a decade. “They were like, ‘What do you teach? What’s going on at DLI?’”

Teaching the world to fly

The English Language Center has been the first step on the path to a military air career for thousands of people around the world.

Its college-level aviation program is one piece of the center’s broader security cooperation mission that reaches around 6,000 students from more than 100 countries each year. The school offers a general English curriculum and remedial classes ahead of more difficult courses that prepare troops for military jobs.

Each country picks the airmen it wants to send to the U.S., where they receive a more in-depth education in English — the official language of the skies — than they may otherwise get at home.

To join, people must pass a series of proficiency tests that judge their speaking and listening abilities. They have to score at least a two — meaning they could shop for groceries or rent a car — on a scale where three is fluent, Harsh said.

The nine-week aviation course prepares airmen to hold conversations with pilots in flight, crew members in the back of an aircraft, and air traffic control towers. Anyone from air traffic controllers to flight nurses can attend the course, which offers fixed-wing and rotary-wing specialties.

Around 350 foreigners from about 50 countries go through the aviation program each year, Harsh said. NATO airmen don’t often attend because they tend to be more fluent in English than people from other parts of the world.

Students are drilled on NATO’s “alpha-zulu” phonetic alphabet and the niche vocabulary, acronyms and scenarios that crackle across U.S. military radios — no accents allowed.

“These little differences have led to accidents in the past, and we really want to emphasize the importance of being clear on the radio,” Harsh said.

They take lessons on subjects like crew management and leadership, with occasional time in simulators, while learning from American airmen and their foreign classmates.

The center also tries to work through the cultural differences that can lead to safety issues, like deference to older or higher-ranking airmen. Teachers urge the international students to get comfortable asking questions.

“It’s not really a rank thing when you get in the cockpit,” Harsh said. “If you don’t ask, the instructor pilot is going to assume you know.”

If something seems amiss, he added, “Don’t assume that the IP is not making a mistake.”

“You have the right — it’s your life — to challenge that instructor pilot respectfully,” he said.

The goal is to get students up to speed so they can enter the next phase of training, like undergraduate pilot school, without a significant language barrier.

But Harsh said there’s a big difference between how fluent they need to be to finish the program and how fluent they should be to fly safely. He estimates that airmen need at least another six months of class time to be comfortably proficient, for which the United States or the partner countries would need to foot the bill.

“We’ve tried to emphasize to the military departments, this does not succeed without you,” he said. “You’ve determined the language prerequisites. DLI wildly succeeds in meeting that mark. But that’s not what the students need.”

Nearly everyone who arrives at the center passes, Harsh said. But when they reach their next stop, like undergraduate pilot training, that completion rate falls to around 78%.

“That training gap is a safety issue,” he said. “[The solution is] time and money. And nobody wants to pay that.”

Changes needed

The Defense Language Institute is updating the aviation English program, a process that will take another few years to come to fruition.

One of the biggest changes the English Language Center could make is forging closer ties between military experts, the follow-on training units and the curriculum team, Harsh said.

The curriculum is largely written by civilians without expertise in real-world military aviation, he said. That creates an artificial standard that makes students feel prepared until they reach their training unit.

He argues the solution is to embed military experts in the curriculum department who can act as a liaison between the training unit and the English program. That way, the expert could keep the English program apprised of what instructor pilots need and vice versa.

Harsh wishes the school had a better system in place to collect feedback from its students, like interviews, but acknowledges that it would add time and effort for already busy staffers and stressed students.

Once a year, center staff visits the follow-on training units that take its students to see how well the foreigners do within the first month. That still doesn’t paint the full picture, Harsh said.

He wants more qualitative and quantitative data on how students are faring: Why did someone need to log extra hours in the cockpit? What have their instructors said in post-flight reports?

“That is gold to us. I’ve never seen it,” Harsh said. “Without that feedback loop, we’re shooting arrows in the dark.”

And he wants the instructors that receive the students down the line to be more aware of who they’re getting.

Airmen need to establish “safe words” before they fly, he said. If an international student gets overwhelmed in the air, they can use the safe word to let their instructor know they need to pause to discuss what they’re doing.

Those simple steps can protect the instructor pilots, too.

“Be somewhat accommodating,” he said. “This is incredibly difficult. Imagine going to Japan or Korea or an Arab community to try to learn how to fly.”

Now the Air Force is trying to make clearer how proficient a student will be when they leave the language program, and what should be expected of students who finish it.

In February, Air Force international affairs staffers, flight instructors, and members of the Defense Language Institute, Air Education and Training Command and 19th Air Force — a subunit that manages pilot training — met to review the English language course’s curriculum and how it is delivered, said Air Force spokesperson Marilyn Holliday.

The English Language Center has worked on a rubric for instructor pilots to gauge how well their international students communicate, she said. Instructor pilots are helping the center make videos to familiarize international students with pre- and post-flight briefings, and pilot training bases have also provided the center with scripts so that students can rehearse conversations about take-off, flight patterns and landing.

“The visit … served as a forum to identify and bridge training and academic gaps between English language curriculum and instruction as it applies to international students,” Holliday said. “The working group will reconvene in mid-April to re-engage and assess progress on all tasks.”

The Japanese Self-Defense Forces did not respond to a request for comment on their discussions with American air training officials.

Business as normal

Business has continued as usual after the 2021 crash, said Col. Joe Schaefer, commandant of the English Language Center.

The U.S. Air Force still graduates around 50 foreign pilots each year; Schaefer said the program has maintained its relationship with Japan, a key ally in the Pacific. It retains a Japanese liaison officer who looks out for the country’s students while in the U.S.

On the first anniversary of Uesaki’s death, Schaefer said the Japanese liaison delivered a letter to Lt. Gen. Brad Webb, then the head of Air Education and Training Command.

It was a note from the pilot’s mother: Thank you for caring.

About Rachel S. Cohen

Rachel Cohen joined Air Force Times as senior reporter in March 2021. Her work has appeared in Air Force Magazine, Inside Defense, Inside Health Policy, the Frederick News-Post (Md.), the Washington Post, and others.

20. Deputy defense secretary to troops: Don’t share classified information

Deputy defense secretary to troops: Don’t share classified information

militarytimes.com · by Geoff Ziezulewicz · April 13, 2023

As the federal government deals with the fallout from the leak of Pentagon intelligence, which led to the arrest of an Air National Guard member Thursday, Defense Department leadership sent a memo to the force Wednesday reminding troops of their responsibilities in handling classified information.

The one-page memo, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks and obtained by Military Times, is addressed to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant command heads and “defense agency and DoD field activity directors.”

Pentagon press officials confirmed the memo’s authenticity, and multiple servicemembers told Military Times they had received it in their inboxes this week.

“Do not access or download documents with classified markings from unclassified websites —either from home or work,” the memo states. “As the data may be classified, it may be associated with hostile foreign elements, or it may contain malicious code or embedded capabilities that could introduce cyber threats into our information systems.

“If you have already accessed or downloaded such documents on an unclassified network or device, please consult with your supervisor and contact your organization’s IT/cybersecurity service provider immediately for guidance,” the memo continues.

In a memo Wednesday, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks reminded all troops that unauthorized disclosure of classified information, whether intentional or unintentional, “is a reportable security incident.” (Air Force Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders/DoD))

The memo further directs troops to contact the Defense Department if the media or congressional members contact them.

FBI arrests Air National Guardsman in probe of Pentagon intel leak

Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira is suspected of uploading classified documents to a social media group.

Hicks’ memo notes the “recent reporting on the unauthorized disclosure” of purported Pentagon and intelligence community documents and reminds DoD personnel that unauthorized disclosure of classified information, whether intentional or unintentional, “is a reportable security incident.”

The memo also urges personnel not to speculate about such unauthorized disclosures and reminds them not to discuss classified information with unauthorized people.

“Personnel with access to classified information are trusted stewards of that information and the responsibility to safeguard classified information is a lifetime requirement for each individual granted a security clearance,” Hicks’ memo states.

The FBI arrested Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira, 21, “without incident” Thursday afternoon in connection with the intel leak, Attorney General Merrick Garland told reporters. He described Teixeira as a Massachusetts Air National Guard employee.

“He will have an initial appearance at the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts,” Garland added, though he did not give a date or time.

The New York Times first reported on Thursday that Teixeira is assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing.

Teixeira is a cyber transport systems journeyman, a sort of information technology specialist, at Otis Air National Guard Base, an installation located within Joint Base Cape Cod, according to service details released by the Air Force Thursday,

He has served in the Air Guard since September 2019 and earned the Air Force Achievement Medal.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Teixeira was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at the time of the leaks, which occurred earlier this year but were first acknowledged by the Pentagon on April 7.

Military Times reporter Meghann Myers contributed to this report.

About Geoff Ziezulewicz

Geoff is a senior staff reporter for Military Times, focusing on the Navy. He covered Iraq and Afghanistan extensively and was most recently a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. He welcomes any and all kinds of tips at geoffz@militarytimes.com.

21. Is India’s Rise Inevitable?

Excerpts:

Mody’s critique of India’s woeful human development record is more compelling, but here, too, his anger is misplaced. Under the Indian constitution, important public services such as law and order, public health, sanitation, and water are all the responsibilities of India’s state governments, not central authorities. New Delhi provides broad policy guidance and financial resources, but states are ultimately responsible for implementation. It is an open secret that most Indian states are hardly paragons of virtue; they are hotbeds of illiberalism, parochialism, and patronage politics. If anything, what is happening today at the national level is the scaling up of a model that was first perfected in India’s state capitals.

Furthermore, Mody’s dismissal of India’s developmental gains in the three decades since liberalization comes across as churlish. Decades ago, demographers sounded the alarm about India’s impending “population bomb.” Yet fertility has declined dramatically and has now dipped just below replacement levels, an unsung success in family planning. Women are seriously underrepresented in the labor force—an unsightly blight on India’s economic model—but they now turn out to vote in larger numbers than men in most state-level elections, and India’s long-standing male-heavy sex ratio has finally begun to rebalance. Mody may criticize the current government’s gambit to ramp up the distribution of private welfare amenities as a cynical vote-catching ploy, but research from peer countries finds that access to clean cooking fuel, electricity connections, and piped water can greatly improve job prospects, health standards, and gender norms inside the household. Surely, these basic amenities are requisites for building a country’s industrial base.

These shortcomings aside, India Is Broken is a useful corrective to the glib, one-sided conversation about India often encountered in think tanks and corporate boardrooms. In laying bare the inherent frailties of the Indian model, Mody also sends a message to Western policymakers who have made big bets on India’s ability to be an economic, political, and strategic bulwark against China and other authoritarian states. India may be touted as the “next big thing,” but as with any marketing campaign, one would be well advised to read the fine print.

Is India’s Rise Inevitable?

The Roots of New Delhi’s Dysfunction

By Milan Vaishnav

May/June 2023

Published on April 14, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Milan Vaishnav · April 14, 2023

Of the many tropes that have cluttered foreign policy analysis in recent decades, few are as widespread or as enduring as the inevitability of India’s rise. Built on a foundation of liberal democracy, fueled by a population of more than a billion people occupying a vast territory, and enabled by the United States’ desire to find a counterbalance to an expansionist China, India has been inching toward the geopolitical spotlight. Now, a confluence of recent events has convinced some observers—and arguably India’s own leadership—that its moment has finally arrived.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), India is set to be the world’s fastest-growing economy in 2023. Its GDP is expected to expand by 6.1 percent, well above the emerging market average of four percent and five times the pace of the industrialized world’s average of 1.2 percent. Amid China’s protracted slowdown, COVID-19 missteps, and rising labor costs, global firms interested in relocating their manufacturing facilities, including Apple and Foxconn, are considering expanding operations in India. Any day now, India’s growing population—last pegged at 1.41 billion—will surpass that of China. India’s relative youth (about 40 percent of the country is under the age of 25) is seen as valuable, not just because of the potential boost it provides to economic productivity but also because of what it signals about India’s latent consumer base in the coming decades. Armed with smartphones, connected to digital payment systems, and culturally predisposed to global brands such as Coke and Netflix, India’s young consumers occupy pride of place in the growth forecasts of many Fortune 500 companies.

Historically, India’s fractious politics have limited the country’s ability to expand infrastructure, reform tax laws and financial regulations, and improve basic welfare services, but that may be changing. The Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has won consecutive parliamentary majorities, in 2014 and 2019. The party’s success, coupled with the decline of its rival Congress Party, has all but assured governmental stability for the foreseeable future. Weaker Indian governments in the past often had to balance the competing agendas of factions in ruling coalitions and onerous horse-trading that resulted in inaction and sclerosis. The BJP will almost certainly maintain power in the 2024 general elections; the only question worth debating is the size of its majority. Its strong hold over Parliament gives the party the political heft required to push through long-pending economic reforms.

Students at an outdoor lesson, New Delhi, November 2022

Adnan Abidi / Reuters

Even India’s refusal to unequivocally condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has not damaged the country’s international standing. To the contrary, Western interlocutors are convinced that the combination of Russia’s Ukraine quagmire and China’s flagrant aggression on the Sino-Indian border makes the time ripe to wean India off its addiction to Russian arms and consolidate its anti-China posture. This year, India will simultaneously hold the presidencies of the G-20 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian political and security group historically dominated by China and Russia—a symbolic victory for its efforts to be seen as a leading, rather than a balancing, power on the global stage.

On closer inspection, the narrative hyping India’s inexorable rise appears less assured. Reckoning with India’s contradictions is an exercise in cognitive dissonance. Economically, it is a mixed bag. On the one hand, India is on track to become the world’s third-largest economy by the decade’s end. On the other, India’s services-heavy development model is hamstrung by weak job growth, premature deindustrialization, and a vast informal sector. Politically, meanwhile, India is touted as a shining democratic beacon in the Asia Pacific. But it is also one of the world’s most disappointing illiberal backsliders, with growing religious majoritarianism, weakening separation of powers, and a muzzled media. Few democracies can rival the array of affirmative action measures that India’s constitution affords historically disadvantaged minorities or match the diversity of its top leadership. Yet Muslims in Indian cities are increasingly ghettoized, women make up a minuscule share of the workforce, and manual scavenging—in which workers remove human excrement by hand—is a legally prohibited, yet widely observed, form of blue-collar employment.

Among this tangle of conflicting narratives is a new book by the economist Ashoka Mody that is well positioned to become an exemplar for the glass-half-empty view of India. India Is Broken methodically demolishes the bumper-sticker version of India’s story that CEOs and politicians conjure at glitzy international conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos. It takes readers on a tour of India’s dark underbelly, where corruption has triumphed over compassion, and democracy exists in theory but rarely in practice. Many recent critiques of India’s trajectory focus on Hindu nationalism and the rise of the BJP. But Mody goes further by connecting the failures of successive Indian governments—alternately led by the Congress, the BJP, and smaller regional parties—since independence, showing the deep roots of India’s troubles.

NOT ALL THAT GLITTERS

Mody, an Indian-born economic historian at Princeton, spent decades at the World Bank and the IMF troubleshooting international economic crises. On the day Mody took U.S. citizenship, Mody’s father said his son would “always be an Indian at heart.” It is that intimate connection to his homeland that propels Mody’s sense of outrage; he approaches his topic armed not with a scalpel intended to contour the conventional understanding of India but with a sledgehammer meant to smash it to bits.

Mody’s thesis is alluringly simple: after 75 years of independence, India’s democracy and economy are fundamentally broken. India may boast competitive elections—with more than 600 political parties, high voter turnouts, and the regular alternation of power—but Mody dismisses such mechanics of democracy as deficient indicators of democratic health. Instead, he notes that “weakened norms and accountability have made the rules and institutions of democracy a plaything of the privileged and powerful.” Today, criminal behavior and self-dealing have almost become prerequisites for political success. Four out of ten elected members of Parliament face pending criminal cases at the time of their election; eight out of ten are crorepatis, a term loosely translated to mean “millionaires”; and nearly all see prolific campaign spending as a worthwhile down payment on massive future returns.

When it comes to the vaunted Indian economy, Mody avoids economists’ traditional obsession with GDP and focuses instead on the availability of jobs and the level of human development. On this score, he argues that India has consistently failed to generate enough jobs to keep up with labor demand or to deliver quality public goods, such as health and education, that can equip its citizens with basic life skills. India’s employment struggles, Mody posits, are as old as the republic. He puts the country’s jobs shortfall in 1955 at around 25 million; in 2019, he writes, it was at least 80 million and was likely much higher after the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite tangible gains on poverty, India has not achieved commensurate progress on key standard of living metrics. Malnutrition remains stubbornly high even in better-off regions of the country: in the economically dynamic southern state of Tamil Nadu, 30 percent of young people are malnourished—ten percentage points higher than the number in Vietnam, despite similar levels of per capita income.

India has consistently failed to generate enough jobs to keep up with labor demand.

In his lament for India’s broken economy and democracy, Mody spares no one blame. He acknowledges that India’s inaugural prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a “beloved leader” who “did not seek personal gain or prestige,” but he eviscerates Nehru for putting “all his chips on heavy industrialization, a strategy that fared poorly in employing the large numbers who wanted jobs.” Nehru’s daughter and eventual political successor, Indira Gandhi, “established herself as a cynical, slogan-peddling politician intent on holding onto power.” Lacking any coherent economic or political ideology, “she saw preservation of her power as her main goal.” Modi, India’s current prime minister, may be a darling of the international community, but he is a “folk hero” for Hindutva—the BJP’s guiding ideology of Hindu nationalism—whose economic credentials were built not on promoting entrepreneurship but on “subsidizing favored industrialists.” Mody’s glum assessment leads him to see parallels between India today and “the Hindu-Muslim divide and egregious economic inequalities” of the torturous years leading up to the bloody partition of the subcontinent in 1947. If this is India’s moment in the spotlight, it could be for all the wrong reasons.

When taking aim at India’s flawed development model, there are plenty of targets to choose from. Federalism, weak state capacity, and the interventions of accountability institutions in New Delhi, including the Central Vigilance Commission (an anticorruption agency) and the Comptroller and Auditor General (which scrutinizes government expenditure), have all thrown sand in the gears of India’s growth. Mody places the blame elsewhere, arguing that India’s underperformance is about ideas, not interests or institutions. His indictment of the Indian political elite’s intellectual bankruptcy is premised on two charges: Indian leaders have never committed to a market-based economy or maintained a core conviction about the need to provide citizens with basic public goods.

DOOMED FROM THE START

In Mody’s account, Nehru’s flawed economic beliefs were the original sin that set India on a trajectory of jobless growth. Critics have long castigated Nehru for unabashedly propagating Fabian socialism, an ideology that marries a suspicion of markets with an embrace of state-led heavy industry. Nehru hoped this economic model would catalyze investment and self-sufficient growth in a newly decolonized India. Mody departs from this received wisdom, arguing that “whether [Nehru] was inspired by Fabian socialism, Soviet ideology, or his own professed commitment to equality and fairness, he practiced none of them.” In fact, Nehru was a disciple of the “big push” industrialization strategy popularized by the economist Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and modernization theorists such as Walt Rostow. As Nehru put it, he believed Indian industry would be “self-feeding, self-propelling, self-developing.”

Mody writes that by stubbornly committing to such a development model, Nehru missed a golden opportunity to mimic Japan’s success under the Meiji restoration, which was premised on a mutually reinforcing cycle of high-quality education, investments in agricultural productivity and domestic manufacturing, and the aggressive pursuit of exporting to foreign markets. Nehru, he writes, was too mesmerized by his effort to build massive steel plants, power stations, and dams—what the prime minister famously called the “temples of modern India”—to get his hands dirty negotiating the complex bureaucratic politics of funding and sustaining primary education.

A market in New Delhi, February 2023

Anushree Fadnavis / Reuters

The oligopolistic industrial structure, import controls, and onerous business licensing regime that Nehru built proved too politically tempting for his daughter, Indira Gandhi, to do away with. Under her reign, this “license raj” flourished, private entrepreneurship was stifled, and public goods were an afterthought. When asked about India’s developmental infirmities, Gandhi replied with a famous quip: “I don’t know how important literacy is. What has it done for the West?”

Only the prospect of sovereign bankruptcy in 1991 pushed India to open its economy and embrace significant liberalizing reforms, a transformational event whose importance Mody surprisingly downplays. In Mody’s telling, liberalization involved only the most grudging steps toward promoting a market economy, resulting in “the narrowest and most cynical economic growth strategy.” As for the historic reductions in poverty that India’s post-1991 growth surge helped bring about, Mody argues that lifting millions of citizens just above a meager poverty line of $1.90 a day is simply “wishing away the country’s poverty.”

Three decades after India’s economic opening, Mody sees no signs of an ideological commitment to markets or the fundamentals of human development. The “Gujarat model”—which entails the aggressive use of tax, land, and loan incentives to attract large corporate investment—that Modi (and the media) touted as he catapulted from provincial politician to the highest elected office in the land is “marauding development on steroids.” Even the record investments Modi’s government has made in the public distribution of private goods, such as toilets, gas cylinders, and electricity connections, have done little to impress the author; for him, they are symbolic amenities that help win elections rather than sustainable fixes to India’s human development travails.

ANGER MANAGEMENT

Mody’s critique of Indian democracy is harder to pin down. But his basic argument seems to be that charismatic Indian politicians have papered over India’s twin crises of lack of jobs and poor human development with a mix of populism, clientelism, and identity politics. Nehru may have worked tirelessly to foster a democratic ethos in newly independent India, but his economic failures triggered widespread anxiety and social protest. As long as Nehru was in power, Indian institutions held firm. But under a populist such as Indira Gandhi, economic and political turmoil were used as a pretext to undermine democratic institutions. In 1975, Gandhi ushered in a nearly two-year period of emergency rule in which elections were put on ice and basic civil liberties suspended. Gandhi’s role in India’s democratic decay was pivotal, in Mody’s view, because she willfully eroded democratic norms. “For when norms break,” Mody writes, “democracy goes into a ‘death spiral.’”

Although India’s descent into overt autocratic rule would prove short-lived, corruption and institutional subversion became the new normal. Economic anxiety provided plentiful oxygen for toxic identity politics, especially along religious lines. According to Mody, India’s “angry young men” have taken on many forms—from proponents of the chauvinist politics of the nativist Shiv Sena party to the mobs that in 1992 razed the Babri Masjid, a centuries-old mosque that Hindu nationalists claimed sat on sacred grounds, to the foot soldiers of the Hindutva movement, who have set their sights on fighting imaginary demons such as “love jihad,” a conspiracy theory claiming that Muslim men are seducing Hindu women to convert them to Islam. In this regard, Mody offers little sympathy for India’s secular politicians, whose commitment to liberal ideals was, in his view, skin-deep and who pandered to religious interests in the name of political expediency.

How might India escape from this path? Mody is silent on detailed policy prescriptions, instead advocating for broad reform principles. India must deepen democracy by promoting greater decentralization to municipal and village governments, where local citizens can more easily hold their leaders accountable. In addition, he calls for harnessing the power of civil society to build “civic communities” that can foster norms of equality, tolerance, and shared progress. Here, he finds inspiration in the work of the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam who emphasizes the democratic role of civic associations, nonprofits, professional organizations, and mutual aid societies. Techno-evangelists tout the ability of big data, artificial intelligence, and smartphones to improve welfare delivery, but Mody is not entirely sold. Technology can help, but it is no substitute for fiscal resources, social action, and human capital.

DOING ITS BEST

Mody is a gifted writer, and India Is Broken is the rare book that distills India’s complex political economy into digestible bites. But that is also the book’s great weakness. Mody’s account is powered by simple binaries that do not always stand up to scrutiny.

Mody makes it clear that India’s populace would have been better served had its leaders pursued the export-led, labor-intensive manufacturing model popularized by India’s East Asian neighbors. But there is one key difference: the successful East Asian “tigers” were all autocracies when they embarked on their new model, which allowed them to repress labor, enact sweeping land reform, and keep civil society in check. If anything, India’s growth as a democracy looks even more impressive in hindsight; as the economists Rohit Lamba and Arvind Subramanian have pointed out, since 1950, India has been the only continuous democracy (other than perhaps Botswana) to maintain an average GDP growth rate between three and 4.5 percent for nearly four decades (which India has done since its growth takeoff in 1980).

Mody’s critique of India’s woeful human development record is more compelling, but here, too, his anger is misplaced. Under the Indian constitution, important public services such as law and order, public health, sanitation, and water are all the responsibilities of India’s state governments, not central authorities. New Delhi provides broad policy guidance and financial resources, but states are ultimately responsible for implementation. It is an open secret that most Indian states are hardly paragons of virtue; they are hotbeds of illiberalism, parochialism, and patronage politics. If anything, what is happening today at the national level is the scaling up of a model that was first perfected in India’s state capitals.

Furthermore, Mody’s dismissal of India’s developmental gains in the three decades since liberalization comes across as churlish. Decades ago, demographers sounded the alarm about India’s impending “population bomb.” Yet fertility has declined dramatically and has now dipped just below replacement levels, an unsung success in family planning. Women are seriously underrepresented in the labor force—an unsightly blight on India’s economic model—but they now turn out to vote in larger numbers than men in most state-level elections, and India’s long-standing male-heavy sex ratio has finally begun to rebalance. Mody may criticize the current government’s gambit to ramp up the distribution of private welfare amenities as a cynical vote-catching ploy, but research from peer countries finds that access to clean cooking fuel, electricity connections, and piped water can greatly improve job prospects, health standards, and gender norms inside the household. Surely, these basic amenities are requisites for building a country’s industrial base.

These shortcomings aside, India Is Broken is a useful corrective to the glib, one-sided conversation about India often encountered in think tanks and corporate boardrooms. In laying bare the inherent frailties of the Indian model, Mody also sends a message to Western policymakers who have made big bets on India’s ability to be an economic, political, and strategic bulwark against China and other authoritarian states. India may be touted as the “next big thing,” but as with any marketing campaign, one would be well advised to read the fine print.

MILAN VAISHNAV is a Senior Fellow and Director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Foreign Affairs · by Milan Vaishnav · April 14, 2023

22. Analysis | The U.S.’s gloominess on the war in Ukraine is now clear to see

Analysis | The U.S.’s gloominess on the war in Ukraine is now clear to see

The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · April 14, 2023

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For months, U.S. officials have privately conveyed their concerns over the course of the war in Ukraine. In public, they stressed their enduring commitment to help Kyiv resist Russia’s brutal invasion and vowed to support its efforts as long as it takes. But in more candid discussions, with reporters and directly with Ukrainians, they pointed to a tougher reality: A total military victory for Ukraine seemed impossible; the military-industrial base in Western countries required to sustain the flow of foreign munitions and arms to the front was under severe strain; and, at some point, the support of Western publics, especially Americans, would wane, and the spigot gushing tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine would get turned off.

Then came the astonishing set of leaks of top secret Pentagon documents that surfaced. On Thursday afternoon, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, identified as Jack Teixeira, was arrested in the investigation into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military intelligence to an online group of young friends. According to my colleagues’ reporting, Teixeira had for months proliferated near-verbatim transcripts and, later, photographs of highly sensitive U.S. documents on a Discord chat server that he controlled. Those materials eventually surfaced on other social media platforms.

The trove of documents has offered revelations into the reaches of U.S. intelligence and its clandestine assessments of developments elsewhere. Among the latter are the deep misgivings of the U.S. national security establishment about the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, which, according to a leaked analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency, will likely drift into 2024 with no resolution in sight.

U.S. officials scrambled to contain the blowback from the exposed materials, some more embarrassing than others. “I’m concerned that it happened, but there’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great consequence,” President Biden told reporters in Ireland, in reference to questions about the leak, the bulk of which includes assessments from February and March.

Still, the documents regarding Ukraine paint an inescapably grim picture of the United States’ view of the conflict. According to my colleague John Hudson, the DIA assessment concluded that even if Ukraine recaptures “significant” amounts of territory — an outcome that U.S. intelligence found unlikely — those territorial gains would not lead to peace talks.

“Beyond forecasting a costly open-ended conflict, the newly disclosed document also predicts how Ukrainian and Russian military leaders will respond to battlefield challenges, and it anticipates that the year will end with the two sides achieving only ‘marginal’ territorial gains as a result of ‘insufficient troops and supplies for effective operations,’” Hudson wrote.

A separate document among the leaked materials predicted only modest success for an upcoming Ukrainian counteroffensive, which is aimed at retaking territory in the eastern region of Donbas and pushing south in a bid to sever Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, the peninsula it unilaterally annexed in 2014. New Russian fortifications as well as “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” the document warned.

Documents also pointed to Pentagon fears over Ukraine’s ability to sustain its air defense capabilities in the coming months. “One chart contained in the leak shows the burn rate of Ukrainian air defense projectiles and specifies the time frames for depletion, predicting that SA-11 systems will be out of commission by April 13, U.S.-made NASAMs by April 15, and SA-8s by May,” my colleagues reported, referring to different air defense systems. “On another chart, the prediction that particular types of ammunition will run dry suggests that Ukrainian defenders should prioritize their efforts by targeting Russian jets and helicopters but hold fire on smaller threats such as drones.”

None of this should be particularly surprising. My colleagues detailed last month how the Ukrainian military, which has suffered perhaps more than 120,000 casualties over the past year of fighting, is short on both ammunition and skilled troops. U.S. officials recently conducted strategic war game scenarios with Ukrainian counterparts, in an attempt to map out the paths ahead.

“All parties came away from those conversations with a sense that Ukraine was beginning to understand the limitations of what it could achieve in the offensive and preparing accordingly,” my colleagues reported this week, citing U.S. officials. “While severing the land bridge is unlikely to happen, these people said, the United States is hopeful that incremental gains could at least threaten the free flow of Russian equipment and personnel in the corridor, which has been a lifeline for invading forces.”

Ukrainian officials shrugged at the bleak implications in the intelligence assessments. “Everyone knows we’re low on ammunition — the president and the defense minister talk about that openly,” a senior Ukrainian official told my colleagues. “And it’s been obvious to everyone since November that the next counteroffensive will be focused on the south, first Melitopol and then Berdyansk. But the exact place — we can change that the week before.”

After a Tuesday phone call with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba tweeted that Blinken “reaffirmed the ironclad U.S. support and vehemently rejected any attempts to cast doubt on Ukraine’s capacity to win on the battlefield,” and added that the United States “remains Ukraine’s trustworthy partner, focused on advancing our victory and securing a just peace.”

But the apparent pessimism of U.S. officials about the course of the war underscores the question about what should come next. To some analysts, the prevailing conditions should justify a surge in support for Kyiv. “If Ukraine’s stocks of anti-air defenses are running low, send more,” wrote Dalibor Rohac of the American Enterprise Institute. “If the Ukrainian military is suffering from ‘force generation and sustainment shortfalls,’ step up and fill the relevant gaps.”

In a joint essay, Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations concurred, to an extent, arguing that the United States and Europe should in the near-term significantly step up their support for Ukraine’s war effort so that it may quickly regain as much lost territory as possible. But that should also come with a clear diplomatic strategy, they wrote, that offers meaningful inducements to both sides to accept a cease fire.

“For over a year, the West has allowed Ukraine to define success and set the war aims of the West,” wrote Haass and Kupchan in Foreign Affairs. “This policy, regardless of whether it made sense at the outset of the war, has now run its course.”

The Washington Post · by Ishaan Tharoor · April 14, 2023

De Oppresso Liber,

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

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

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RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 13, 2023

Tags

Why Is America Still Flying the A-10 Warthog, a Cold War Relic?

Lawmakers protecting jobs and commerce for their districts block the military from retiring outdated equipment, impairing effort to counter rapidly modernizing Chinese forces

A SERIES EXAMINING THE PROBLEMS CONFRONTING AMERICA'S MILITARY:

Threat of Chinese missiles

Drag on the F-35 program

Steppe change: How Russia’s war on Ukraine is reshaping Kazakhstan

Summary

Introduction

A major geopolitical shock

Kazakhstan’s foreign policy balancing act

The war’s impact on Kazakhstan’s economy

Kazakhstan’s response to Russian immigration

Opposing views about the war among the public

Unrest at home

Limited transparency on 'Bloody January'

Half-hearted reforms

A cautious replacement of elites

Recommendations for the EU

Take Tokayev’s reforms seriously

Insist on transparency

Focus on judicial reform

Support a new social and economic strategy

Promote access to independent media

Engage with Kazakhstan on international issues, including the implementation of sanctions

Conclusion

About the author

Acknowledgements

US special operations team working out of embassy in Ukraine: Sources

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By Milan Vaishnav

NOT ALL THAT GLITTERS

DOOMED FROM THE START

ANGER MANAGEMENT

DOING ITS BEST

Analysis | The U.S.’s gloominess on the war in Ukraine is now clear to see