Quotes of the Day:
"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me. All I ask is that you respect me as a human being."
- Jackie Robinson
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
- Marcus Aurelius
“[Free] government…must act by general and equal laws that are previously known to all…In this sense…liberty is the perfection of civil society.”
- David Hume
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 15 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. UKRAINE INVASION UPDATE 23
3. Zelensky asks Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism
4. Taiwan says China's threats will only increase support for island
5. Russian Legislator and Two Staff Members Charged with Conspiring to Have U.S. Citizen Act as an Illegal Agent of the Russian Government in the United States
6. Ukraine May Get U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Strike Drones
7. [OPINION] The Philippines as disinformation battleground in the Ukraine War
8. Panel: China Planning a 'Go Big, Go Early' Strategy Against Taiwan
9. Zelenskyy Turns to the Laws of War in Prosecuting Kremlin Ally Caught in Uniform
10. This Is The Shadowy Special Operations Mothership You've Never Heard Of
11. What should the US Navy learn from Moskva's demise?
12. Liberation Without Victory
13. The Lessons of Ukraine for Taiwan—and the U.S.
14. Ukraine braces for a ‘knife fight’ in the Donbas
15. Understanding global disinformation and information operations
16. The PsyOps war comes to west Ukraine
17. ‘Neptune’ missile strike shows strength of Ukraine’s homegrown weapons
18. Removing Russia from the U.N. Security Council is a punishment that would matter | Column
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 15 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 15 (PUTIN'S WAR)
Mason Clark and Kateryna Stepanenko
April 15, 4:30pm ET
Russian forces continued small-scale, tactical attacks on the Izyum and Severodonetsk axes; additional reinforcements to date have not enabled any breakthroughs of Ukrainian defenses. Russian forces continue to deploy reinforcements to eastern Ukraine but show no indication of taking an operational pause. The Russian military appears to be carrying out an approach in eastern Ukrainian similar to its failed efforts north of Kyiv in early March—continuing to funnel small groups of forces into unsuccessful attacks against Ukrainian defensive positions without taking the operational pause that is likely necessary to prepare for a more successful offensive campaign. Russian forces continue to grind down Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol, though ISW cannot currently assess how long these forces will hold out and their current supply status.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to grind down Ukrainian defenses in southwestern and eastern Mariupol, though ISW cannot confirm any major new territorial changes in the past 24 hours. Ukrainian defenders reported that the situation is “deteriorating” and Russian forces are deploying additional artillery and heavy weapons.
- Russian forces continued unsuccessful daily attacks against Rubizhne, Popasna, and Marinka and heavy shelling along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine.
- Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks from Izyum toward both Slovyansk and Barvinkove.
CORRECTION: ISW mistakenly reported on April 14 that the Russian guided-missile cruiser Moskva was equipped with Kalibr surface-to-surface missiles. The Moskva was in fact equipped to fire Bazalt anti-ship missiles. The Moskva was unlikely to have participated in strikes on Ukrainian land targets, as we incorrectly stated. We apologize for the error.
Ukrainian military intelligence reported on April 15 that sanctions are increasingly disrupting Russia’s ability to replace equipment losses.[1] The GUR stated that Uralvagonzavod, the largest tank manufacturer in the world and producer of Russia’s T-72 main battle tank, is facing rising interest rates on loans, rising prices on materials and components (including armored steel), and shortages of imported components. The GUR said that Russian import substitution efforts are failing to maintain existing contracts.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate main effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued to grind down Ukrainian defenses in southwestern and eastern Mariupol on April 15, though ISW cannot confirm any major new territorial changes.[2] The commander of Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade stated on April 15 that the situation in Mariupol is “deteriorating” and that Russian forces are “aggressively attacking” Ukrainian positions but said Ukrainian forces would not surrender.[3] Petro Andryushenko, advisor to Mariupol’s mayor, said Russian forces are deploying unspecified heavy weapons and artillery to the Iliych area to support assaults on the Azovstal Steel Plant, though ISW cannot independently confirm this report.[4] The Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported that Russian long-range Tu-22M3 bombers struck Mariupol on April 15 for the first time in the war amid continued heavy Russian shelling and widespread reports of damage to the city.[5] Russian forces will likely increase their pace of air and artillery strikes due to the slow pace of ground assaults against entrenched Ukrainian defenders.
Subordinate main effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued unsuccessful daily attacks against Rubizhne, Popasna, and Marinka and heavy shelling along the line of contact in eastern Ukraine but did not make any territorial advances on April 15.[6] Ukraine’s Defense Ministry stated on April 15 that Russia's 58th and 8th Combined Arms Armies are the primary Russian forces in Donbas, in addition to the 1st and 2nd Army Corps of the DNR and LNR, respectively.[7] Russian forces likely require a true operational pause to cohere the forces that could enable them to advance through frontal assaults in eastern Ukraine.
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast, and fix Ukrainian forces around Kharkiv in place)
Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks from Izyum toward both Slovyansk and Barvinkove on April 15.[8] Several Ukrainian sources (including civilian administrators in Kharkiv and Izyum) stated Russian forces continued to deploy to the Izyum axis, but ISW cannot confirm any specific troops movements.[9] Russian forces—primarily elements of the 6th Combined Arms Army (Western Military District) and 14th Army Corps (Northern Fleet) continued to shell Kharkiv and screen Russian efforts to reinforce the Izyum axis.[10]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern axis: (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
There has been no significant change around Kherson in the past 24 hours. Russian forces conducted limited attacks on Ukrainian positions west of Kherson and continued to shell Mykolayiv but did not make any advances.[11]
Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
There has been no significant activity reported on this axis in the last 24 hours.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive operations in the Donbas region, feeding reinforcements into the fight as they become available rather than gathering reinforcements and replacements for a more coordinated and coherent offensive.
- Ukrainian defenders of Mariupol will not be able to hold out indefinitely, but it remains unclear how quickly Russia will be able to secure the city.
[1] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/v-rf-zupyniaietsia-vyrobnytstvo-novykh-tankiv-cherez-finansovi-problemy-ta-vidsutnist-importnykh-komplektuiuchykh.html.
[4] https://t dot me/andriyshTime/276; https://t dot me/mariupolnow/6508.
[7] https://armyinform dot com.ua/2022/04/15/rosarmiya-nastupatyme-v-napryamku-syevyerodoneczka-slovyanska-ta-volnovahy-aby-stvoryty-umovy-dlya-otochennya/.
2. UKRAINE INVASION UPDATE 23
UKRAINE INVASION UPDATE 23
Institute for the Study of War, Russia Team
with the Critical Threats Project, AEI
April 15
The Ukraine Invasion Update is a weekly synthetic product covering key political and rhetorical events related to renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine. This update covers events from April 8-14. All of the ISW Russia’s team’s coverage of the war in Ukraine—including daily military assessments and maps, past Conflict Updates, and several supplemental assessments—are available on our Ukraine Crisis Coverage landing page.
Key Takeaways April 8-14
- Ukraine and Russia are both unlikely to advance ceasefire negotiations until the ongoing Russian campaign in eastern Ukraine develops further. The Kremlin likely seeks to capture at minimum the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, while Kyiv seeks to further degrade the Russian military and potentially conduct major counteroffensives.
- Russian President Vladimir Putin may be purging elements of his intelligence service and blaming close allies for Russian intelligence and planning failures in the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
- The Kremlin is likely falsely blaming Ukrainian forces for planning or conducting provocations in areas where Russian forces intend to commit or have already committed atrocities.
- Independent actors are unlikely to be able to verify Ukraine’s April 11 claim that Russian forces used chemical weapons in Mariupol, but Russian forces retain the capability to use chemical weapons beyond this specific instance.
- The Kremlin is reframing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a Western war against Russia in a likely effort to maintain Russian domestic acceptance of the war.
- Belarus and Russia are increasing economic ties—and likely Kremlin influence over Belarus—as sanctions cut off both states from international markets.
- Finland and Sweden are increasingly reconsidering their non-aligned status and may move to join NATO in the coming months.
- Western countries continued to search for alternatives to Russian energy while the Kremlin tried to downplay the effects of Western sanctions on its economy and energy sector.
- NATO countries continue to secure their eastern borders and provide military assistance (including several high-end capabilities) to Ukraine to counter Russian aggression.
Key Events April 8-14
Negotiations:
Ceasefire negotiations have effectively collapsed. Both Russian and Ukrainian officials are unprepared to engage in serious negotiations in the coming weeks in any format. Virtual negotiations are continuing without progress.[1] Kyiv and Moscow are both likely counting on the outcome of Russia’s offensive in eastern Ukraine to recalibrate their negotiating positions.
Kyiv is unlikely to accept a peace deal without Russian forces withdrawing to at minimum their pre-February 24 positions and likely hopes to further degrade the Russian military in eastern Ukraine and possibly retake Russian-occupied territory before reengaging with the Kremlin. Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak stated on April 9 that Ukraine is prepared to pay a high price for victory and that Ukrainian military victories in the east will provide substantial leverage to negotiate “powerful” security guarantees with the Kremlin. Podolyak and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky separately emphasized on April 11 that Ukraine is not prepared “to give up territory for peace.”[2] Ukrainian anger over Russian atrocities against Ukrainian civilians will additionally likely entrench Ukraine’s unwillingness to negotiate with the Kremlin.[3]
The Kremlin will likely stall negotiations until Russian forces redeploy from other axes to eastern Ukraine, hoping to translate any Russian military gains into leverage over Ukrainian negotiators. Putin said on April 12 that negotiations have reached an impasse.[4] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on April 8 that Russia could complete its invasion of Ukraine in the “foreseeable future.”[5] Russian forces will likely continue ongoing offensive operations in the Donbas region, feeding reinforcements into the fight as they become available rather than gathering reinforcements and replacements for a more coordinated and coherent offensive.[6] The Kremlin likely hopes to capture at minimum the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts before resuming negotiations.
A direct meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents remains unlikely in the coming weeks. Peskov said on April 14 that Putin is not opposed to meeting with Zelensky, but that negotiators must first agree to the text of an agreement, effectively postponing further negotiations and limiting the possibility of direct negotiations between Putin and Zelensky.[7] Ukrainian Presidential advisor Podolyak said on April 13 that only a direct meeting between Zelensky and Putin can end the war, but that Ukraine must first prove itself economically and on the battlefield.[8]
Kremlin Narratives
The United States and its partners will likely be unable to verify Ukrainian claims of Russian use of chemical weapons in Mariupol, a location the Kremlin may have intentionally chosen due to international observers’ lack of access to the area.[9] The Ukrainian Azov Regiment claimed in a Telegram post that a Russian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) dropped a “poisonous substance of unknown origin” on Ukrainian defenders in Mariupol’s Azovstal steel plant.[10] Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov confirmed a “chemical poisoning” on April 12, citing military forces.[11] Ukrainian Donetsk Regional Military Governor Pavel Kirilenko confirmed on April 12 that Russian forces dropped an unknown substance from a drone but said it was too early to identify whether the substance could be classified as a chemical weapon.[12] The inability to verify the attack introduces doubt into the Ukrainian narrative and sets the stage to dismiss future Ukrainian reports of Russian chemical attacks. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States and Ukraine are not in a position to confirm the Russian deployment of chemical weapons in Mariupol due to challenges in verifying the attack.[13]
However, the Kremlin has previously set informational conditions to blame Ukrainian forces for Russian-conducted attacks in eastern Ukraine and retains the capability to conduct chemical warfare.[14] The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed it had “reliable data” on April 7 that Ukraine was planning a chemical provocation against Russia and has repeatedly and falsely accused Ukraine of developing chemical and biochemical weapons in alleged US-funded biolabs throughout the country.[15] The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on April 10 that Ukrainian “Neo-Nazis” were preparing a chemical “provocation” at the Avdiivka Coke and Chemical Plant in Donetsk Oblast, stating they planned to blow up toxic chemical storage facilities when DNR forces approached the plant.[16] The alleged April 11 Russian chemical attack targeted a different coke and chemical plant in Donetsk. These pre-emptive claims are part of the standard Kremlin playbook for chemical weapons usage in Syria: Kremlin-linked media outlets first claim that opposition forces are planning a chemical weapons attack in a given region, then attack the area themselves, allegedly proving their narrative.[17] Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Defense Spokesperson Eduard Basurin called for Russian forces to use chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops in the Azovstal area of Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, mere hours before the reported attack.[18] While we cannot confirm this specific claim of a Russian chemical attack, Russian forces retain the capability and possible intent to use chemical weapons in Ukraine.
The Kremlin is likely falsely blaming Ukrainian forces for planning or conducting provocations in areas where Russian forces intend to commit or have already committed atrocities. The Kremlin likely seeks to introduce doubt into future attributions of war crimes and to diminish global support for Ukraine by blaming Ukrainian forces for crimes already committed by Russian forces. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry reported on April 13 that the Kremlin ordered Russian forces use mobile crematoriums to destroy evidence of civilian deaths, and Russian forces will likely take additional measures moving forward to hide evidence of their violence against civilians.[19]
- Russian media amplified statements on April 9 by a biological weapons “expert” that Ukrainian forces blew up a nitric acid tank in Rubizhne, Donestk Oblast. These claims follow two Russian strikes that ignited nitric acid tanks at a chemical plant in Rubizhne on April 5 and April 9.[20]
- DNR Head Denis Pushilin claimed on April 9 that Ukrainian forces are preparing a “series of massive attacks on the cities of Donbas” to blame civilian deaths on Russian troops.[21] Russian forces are redeploying en masse for a larger-scale offensive in Donbas that will likely lead to civilian deaths. The Kremlin is likely attempting to preempt blame for those civilian deaths to avoid the international backlash that occurred after Russian forces withdrew from the Kyiv region, leaving behind evidence of atrocities against civilians in Bucha.[22] Putin said on April 12 that Ukrainians “are being used against Russia” and that the “Bucha tragedy is a fake” and a British special operation.[23]
- The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed on April 10 that Ukrainian servicemembers “are preparing another provocation to accuse Russia of the alleged massacres of civilians in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv.”[24] Tass claimed that Ukrainian forces intend to use bodies killed by Ukrainian shelling to stage alleged Russian war crimes in Irpin. This claim likely does not indicate planned future attacks; Russian forces withdrew from the Kyiv axis in late March and early April. Instead, the Kremlin likely intends this claim to reinforce its narrative that Ukrainian forces staged the Bucha massacre.
- Russian news outlet Pravda amplified claims on April 11 that Ukrainian forces were ordered to execute civilians in Rubizhne, where heavy fighting has taken place.[25] That false claim indicates that Russian forces may be killing civilians in Rubizhne and intend to blame any civilian deaths on Ukrainian defenders.
- Kremlin Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Maria Zakharova warned on April 13 about the plans of Ukrainian authorities to organize a provocation in Sumy, from which Russian forces were withdrawing as of April 14.[26] This claim indicates that Ukrainian forces retaking Sumy may uncover additional evidence of Russian atrocities against civilians.
- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov claimed on April 13 that Ukrainian forces are “plotting” additional chemical weapons attacks in Donbas and said that the Kremlin could not rule out the “repetition” of attacks on locations containing toxic substances, a reference to the nitric acid tanks in Rubizhne.[27] This claim indicates that the Kremlin may conduct additional chemical weapons attacks in eastern Ukraine and will likely continue to target dangerous areas, including chemical plants.
- The Kremlin falsely framed the April 8 Russian strike on Ukraine’s Kramatorsk train station as a Ukrainian provocation to deflect responsibility and justify Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine. Pro-Kremlin media initially claimed on April 8 that Russian forces targeted Ukrainian forces and their equipment at the Kramatorsk station but retracted these statements after Ukrainian officials reported over 50 civilian casualties.[28] Russian state media outlet Tass later reported on April 8 that the Kremlin believes that the Ukrainian “provocation” justifies Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.[29]
The Kremlin continued to set conditions for additional chemical, biochemical, or radiological false-flag attacks against Ukraine for which it would blame Ukrainian forces and the West. The Kremlin has emphasized this long-running narrative since December 2021.
- Russian Deputy Security Council Head Dmitry Medvedev reiterated on April 12 that the United States is funding biolabs and developing biological weapons in Ukraine.[30]
- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said on April 13 that the Kremlin “could not rule out a scenario” in which nuclear material was brought to Ukraine from other countries. Syromolotov did not specify who would bring such material, to what type of material he was referring, or for what such material might be used.[31] ISW previously assessed that the Kremlin could conduct a radiological false flag attack in Ukraine.[32] The Kremlin has repeatedly and falsely claimed that Ukraine was seeking a nuclear weapon to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Chief of the Russian Military Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces Igor Kirillov expressed concern over alleged US bioweapons research on April 14.[33]
- Kirillov announced on April 14 that the Russian Ministry of Defense had uncovered the names of US and European officials in charge of the alleged US bioweapons program in Ukraine.[34]
- Kirillov reiterated his claim on April 14 that Ukrainian forces purchased 50 drones that can spray toxic chemicals to conduct chemical and biochemical attacks, likely to reinforce the Kremlin narrative that the reported chemical weapons attack in Mariupol was a Ukrainian false flag and to deflect blame for any future Russian chemical weapons attacks in Ukraine.[35]
The Kremlin is reframing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a Western war against Russia in a likely effort to maintain Russian domestic acceptance of the war. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that the purpose of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is to end the “reckless” US expansion towards global dominance on April 11, diverging from the Kremlin’s typical narrative that it invaded Ukraine to “denazify” the government.[36] Lavrov claimed that the United States and the European Union used the Russian military operation in Ukraine as a pretext for unprecedented aggression against Russia in order to subordinate Moscow.[37] Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed Lavrov’s claims on April 12, stating that the United States is fighting Russia for world domination via Ukrainian proxies in a conflict ”more complex than the Cold War.”[38] Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned that Russia will treat any US or NATO military shipments to Ukraine as legitimate military targets on April 13, threatening potential military escalation against the West.[39] Kremlin efforts to rhetorically frame the war in Ukraine as a struggle with the United States and its allies are unlikely to deter ongoing Western support for Ukraine. The Kremlin instead likely intends to maintain Russian domestic acceptance of the war in Ukraine amid mounting casualties and economic costs by framing the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine as a defensive war with the West.
Russian Domestic Opposition and Censorship
Russian and Russian-controlled regions bordering Ukraine declared yellow (high) levels of terrorist alerts on April 11, likely to facilitate the transfer of Russian forces through civilian areas toward eastern Ukraine. Governors in Krasnodar, Belgorod, and Voronezh oblasts, as well as Crimea, declared an increased terrorist threat level in some districts on April 11. [40] The Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff assessed on April 13 that Russia likely ordered these measures to facilitate troop movements through Russian border areas into Ukraine.[41] The Kremlin may also seek to play up the threat that Ukrainian forces may pose to Russian territory to maintain Russian domestic support for the Russian invasion. Russia’s interior ministry claimed on April 14 to be taking comprehensive measures in response to alleged bomb threats from Ukrainian territory.[42] Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov threatened to target decision-making centers in Kyiv in retaliation for alleged Ukrainian “attempts of sabotage and strikes” within Russian territory.[43] Russian officials alleged that Ukrainian forces fired mortars into and conducted airstrikes on the Russian region of Bryansk on April 13 and 14.[44] ISW could not independently confirm these reports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin may be purging elements of his intelligence service and blaming close allies for Russian intelligence and planning failures in the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov reported on April 12 that Russian authorities transferred Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, a senior official in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the head of the Fifth Service, from house arrest to the notorious Lefortovo Prison.[45] Beseda was reportedly placed under house arrest before March 19 due to the early failures in Russia’s invasion.[46] His Fifth Service is the de-facto foreign intelligence arm of the FSB and the branch responsible for political subversion in Russia’s near abroad, including Ukraine. Anonymous sources told the Moscow Times that the Kremlin is questioning Beseda for his failure to create a viable pro-Kremlin opposition in Ukraine to aid Russia in its invasion. Bellingcat reported on April 11 that the FSB also fired or arrested around 150 officers from the Fifth Service over intelligence failures in Ukraine.[47]
Former Russian parliamentarian Ilya Ponomarev claimed on April 11 that Russian military sources told him that longtime Putin ally Vladislav Surkov is under house arrest in Moscow.[48] The arrests of Surkov and Beseda, as well as the FSB purges, indicate that Putin is increasingly skeptical of the advice that led to Russia’s failures in Ukraine. However, purging longtime intelligence officials with Ukraine expertise may harm the Kremlin’s ability to monitor Ukrainian leadership and to make informed military decisions. Such purges could also harm morale in the rest of the FSB, leading to generally worsened intelligence provisions.
The Kremlin is attempting to deter the expression of anti-war sentiments among politicians and the Russian public. Russian authorities detained opposition politician and founding member of the Russian Anti-War committee Vladimir Kara-Murza on April 11, likely to intimidate opposition activists.[49] Russian courts on April 12 sentenced four former editors of the student publication Doxa to two years each of hard labor for involving minors in anti-government protests.[50] The four had been detained in April 2021; the Kremlin likely ordered harsher court sentences against protest organizers to be delivered now to deter additional anti-war protests or dissent surrounding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russian Reactions to Sanctions:
Russian officials seek to claim that Western sanctions, not Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are undermining international institutions even as Russia selectively defaulted on its debts. Russian Security Council Deputy Head Dmitry Medvedev stated on April 8 that sanctions against Russia could “cause further collapse of all international institutions” and may result in “a destroyed world order and severe consequences for the global economy.”[51] Medvedev warned that anti-Russia sanctions qualify as acts of aggression and that Russia has the right to “self-defense.”[52] The Duma began deliberating a new bill on April 7 that would punish entities inside Russia that comply with Western sanctions with a 10-year prison sentence, up to 5 years of forced labor, or a 1 million ruble fine.[53]
Sanctions are continuing to damage Russia’s already-fragile economy. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on April 7 that Russia began preparing for current sanctions a year ago and asserted that Russia is “safe from the point of view of the economy and macro stability.”[54] The S&P announced on April 8 that Russia fell into selective debt default after Russia offered its required payment in rubles, not dollars, on April 4.[55] The S&P said that ruble payments were insufficient because debt holders could not easily transfer rubles into other denominations. The S&P also stated on April 8 that Russia has a 30-day grace period to pay its debt in dollars. Western sanctions will impede Russia’s ability to access $315 billion of its foreign currency reserves. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov claimed on April 8 that Russia “will sue” and rejected the legitimacy of Russia’s debt default, asserting that Russia “took all the necessary actions to ensure that investors received their payments.”[56] Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Gennady Gatilov framed India and China on April 8 as partners for Russia when claiming that Russia “intends to counteract the diplomatic war” with the West.[57]
Belarus:
Belarus and Russia are increasing economic ties—and likely Kremlin influence over Belarus—as sanctions cut both states off from international markets. Belarusian state media outlet Belta claimed on April 12 that the US “has declared a full-scale war” on the Union State.[58] Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko stated on April 13 that there are “new windows of opportunity” for Russia and Belarus as Western sanctions impact the Union State market.[59] Russian President Vladimir Putin called Belarusians and Russians “brothers” on April 12 and emphasized the need to deepen Russian-Belarusian integration “against the backdrop of Western sanctions.”[60] Lukashenko stated on April 8 that Belarus will support Russia "in the case of any difficulties” and specifically mentioned that Belarus can increase fuel supplies to Russia.[61] Lukashenko also pointed to the EU energy and agricultural markets when stating on April 7 that sanctions “make the states that impose them weaker.”[62] Putin and Lukashenko also agreed on a project for a common electrical power market, additional joint military exercises, favorable prices for oil and gas for Belarusian domestic consumption with payments in rubles, and the joint construction of a nuclear power plant to be commissioned by the end of 2022.[63]
Russian Occupation:
The arrest of Viktor Medvedchuk, Russia's key political proxy in Ukraine, will likely provide a morale boost to Ukrainian forces and a political boost to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukrainian forces captured “Putin’s man in Ukraine,” pro-Kremlin Ukrainian Member of Parliament Viktor Medvedchuk, on April 12 following his escape from house arrest in February.[64] The Kremlin may have intended to appoint Medvedchuk as the head of a Russian proxy regime in Kyiv after Russian forces overthrew the Ukrainian government early in the invasion. Zelensky said on April 12 that Ukrainian forces captured Medvedchuk disguised as a Ukrainian soldier during an attempt to flee Ukraine.[65] Zelensky said Medvedchuk wearing a military uniform places him under the laws of war and offered to trade Medvedchuk for Ukrainian POWs.[66] The Kremlin responded that Medvedchuk is not a Russian citizen in a likely attempt to downplay the political importance of his arrest. [67] First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Konstantin Zatulin criticized Ukrainian officials on April 13 as “engaged in the trade of their own citizens” for offering to exchange Medvedchuk for captured Ukrainian soldiers.[68] Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov falsely claimed on April 13 that Medvedchuk had never had a ”behind the scenes” relationship with Russia.[69]
Drivers of Russian Threat Perceptions:
Finland and Sweden are increasingly reconsidering their non-aligned status and may move to join NATO in the coming months. European Union members Finland and Sweden held a joint press conference in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 13 to discuss how evolving security concerns have led them to explore the possibility of joining NATO.[70] The Finnish government released a white paper on April 13 that outlines the security concerns Finland faces following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and assesses whether Finland should pursue NATO membership.[71] Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin stated that an independent decision for Finland to pursue accession to the Western military alliance would be made in the coming weeks.[72] Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson expressed that Sweden is rethinking their security position and considering requesting to join NATO but did not specify a timeline for that decision.[73] Andersson said that the Swedish government is working on a security environment report, similar to the report Finland issued, that is due at the end of May to assess whether Sweden should pursue NATO membership.[74] Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russia would more than double the number of forces in its western flank and deploy nuclear weapons to the Baltic region to restore “balance” to the Baltics if Finland and Sweden join NATO.[75]
Western countries continued to search for alternatives to Russian energy while the Kremlin tried to downplay the effects of Western sanctions on its economy and energy sector.
- EU and US diplomats told the New York Times on April 14 that the European Union is planning a phased ban on Russian oil imports, likely before the end of the year.[76] The EU is unlikely to ban Russian gas imports, on which many Europeans rely for heating and electricity, in the immediate future. The EU began a phased ban on Russian coal imports on April 7.
- Italy signed a declaration of intent with Algeria on April 11 to increase the supply of Algerian natural gas to Italy and wean itself off Russian energy.[77]
- Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced on April 12 that Greece has accelerated plans to explore natural gas to wean itself off Russian energy.[78]
- Tass likely falsely claimed on April 10 that European states have recently significantly increased their purchases of Russian gas.[79]
- The world’s top oil trader, Vitol Group, announced on April 13 that it will stop trading Russian oil by the end of 2022.[80]
- Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on April 8 that Russia will “reorient coal supplies to alternative markets” when the EU stops importing coal and emphasized that coal “is still a very popular commodity.”[81]
- Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov told Russian newspaper Izvestia on April 13 that the Kremlin is prepared to sell oil and oil energy products at any price range to friendly countries.[82]
- Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted on April 14 that Western sanctions were disrupting the Russian energy sector and that payments for energy exports were under strain since sanctions by “unfriendly countries” have been delaying the transfer of funds.[83] Putin warned that Western countries’ attempts to phase out Russian energy will have disastrous economic effects. Putin argued that there is no “reasonable replacement” for Russian gas and that supplies from other countries will cost Europeans much more.[84]
NATO countries continue to secure their eastern borders and provide military assistance to Ukraine to counter Russian aggression.
- NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated on April 10 that NATO is working on developing a permanent military presence along its eastern borders given a perpetual Russian security threat.[85]
- US President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on April 13 and pledged an additional $800 million in military assistance, including heavier weaponry such as artillery systems, armored personnel carriers, Javelins, helicopters, and 300 additional Switchblade drones.[86] Anonymous US defense officials told the Washington Post on April 14 that the United States will resume directly training the Ukrainian military as part of the package.[87]
- Slovakia supplied Ukraine with an S-300 air defense system on April 8, highlighting NATO’s inclination to send heavier weaponry to Ukraine to help defend against Russian missiles and airstrikes.[88] The United States sent one Patriot missile system, along with a US crew to operate it, to Slovakia as a replacement for its own defenses.[89] Slovakia is reportedly also considering sending MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to ensure the protection of its own airspace as it moves away from Russian military supplies.[90]
- Australia announced on April 8 that it will send three Bushmaster armored personnel carriers to Ukraine with 17 more to follow. [91]
- The United Kingdom will provide Ukraine with 120 armored vehicles and new anti-ship missile systems following United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on April 9.[92]
- EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell announced that the EU will allocate $544.3 million to provide weapons to the Ukrainian army on April 9.[93]
- The European Union has approved an additional $542 million to reimburse member states for military aid they are providing Ukraine on April 13.[94]
- The German company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann has offered to sell Ukraine 100 Panzerhaubitze 2000 self-propelled howitzers according to the German newspaper Welt.[95]
- Latvia stated on April 13 that it will train Ukrainian troops to use the drones it has provided Ukraine.[96]
Foreign Involvement:
Turkish Defense Company Baykar has likely sold additional military supplies to Ukraine since March 25. Two Ukrainian aircraft flew from Tekirdag, northwestern Turkey, to Rzeszow, Poland, on March 25 and April 10.[97] Baykar’s training and armament shipping centers are located in Tekirdag. Ukraine has ordered at least 36 of Baykar’s Bayraktar TB2 armed drones and unspecified other military equipment in the past several years.[98] Several Ukrainian officials also met with Baykar CEO Haluk Bayraktar and Turkish government officials to discuss “military-technical” cooperation on March 29-30 following March 29 Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul, Turkey.[99] Ukraine imported $59.1 million of Turkish defense products from Turkey in the first quarter of 2022, compared to $1.9 million in Q1 2021—a thirty-fold increase[100] An anonymous Turkish official told Reuters on April 8 that Russian officials complained to Turkey over its drone sales to Ukraine.[101] The Turkish government played down any governmental support to Baykar’s sales in response, likely to maintain critical defense and economic ties with Russia. However, Baykar is closely tied to the Turkish government, including through Selcuk Bayraktar, Baykar’s Chief Technology Officer and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law. The Turkish government often plays the leading role in negotiating and approving defense sales between Turkish companies and foreign governments.
[2] https://www dot president dot gov.ua/news/mihajlo-podolyak-poziciyi-ukrayini-na-peregovorah-z-rosiyeyu-74265; https://www dot rbc.ua/rus/news/zelenskiy-vozmozhnyh-ustupkah-rossii-gotovy-1649680707.html; https://interfax dot com.ua/news/general/823186.html
[3] https://www dot rbc.ua/rus/news/zelenskiy-rezni-buche-vozmozhnost-peregovorov-1649960363.html; https://iz dot ru/1320810/2022-04-14/zelenskii-zaiavil-o-suzhenii-vozmozhnostei-dlia-peregovorov-o-mire-s-rf
[4] https://novosti dot dn dot ua/news/322733-putin-zayavil-o-tupike-v-peregovorah-s-ukrainoj
[19] https://interfax dot com.ua/news/general/823756.html; https://www dot ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/3456348-russians-use-13-mobile-crematoriums-to-burn-civilian-bodies-in-mariupol-intelligence.html
[21] https://riafan dot ru/22871431-pushilin_ukrainskie_siloviki_gotovyatsya_nanesti_ryad_massirovannih_udarov_po_donbassu
[23] https://meduza dot io/paragraph/2022/04/12/putin-nazval-ubiystva-v-buche-feykom-i-provokatsiey-lukashenko-peredal-emu-dokumenty-o-spetsoperatsii-anglichan-v-etom-gorode; https://inforesist dot org/putin-s-lukashenko-nazvali-reznyu-v-buche-fejkom-i-speczoperacziej-anglichan/
[26] https://riafan dot ru/23017705-zaharova_predupredila_o_planah_vlastei_ukraini_po_organizatsii_provokatsii_v_sumskoi_oblasti
[27] https://riafan dot ru/22990386-mid_rossii_ukrainskie_natsionalisti_mogut_pribegnut_k_himicheskomu_terrorizmu
[31] https://iz dot ru/1319831/2022-04-13/v-mid-rf-dopustili-vvoz-na-ukrainu-iadernogo-materiala-iz-za-rubezha
[33] https://russian dot rt.com/world/news/990417-mo-biooruzhie-ssha?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
[39] https://iz dot ru/1320048/2022-04-13/riabkov-predupredil-ssha-o-posledstviiakh-pri-popytkakh-zamedlit-spetcoperatciiu-rf
[50] https://meduza dot io/news/2022/04/12/redaktorov-doxa-prigovorili-k-ispravitelnym-rabotam-po-delu-o-vovlechenii-podrostkov-v-protesty
[56] https://iz dot ru/1318388/inna-grigoreva-petr-marchenko/my-budem-suditsia
[57] https://tass dot com/politics/1434953; https://tass dot com/politics/1434953; https://paper dot dropbox.com/ep/redirect/external-link?url=https%3A%2F%2Fria.ru%2F20220408%2Fsanktsii-1782569113.html&hmac=aOj4GgJwGrzK%2FxCqYIdwSM0XWmTqxrgpjkJIkoJJLM8%3D
[58] https://www.belta dot by/politics/view/schekin-zapad-objjavil-polnomasshtabnuju-vojnu-sojuznomu-gosudarstvu-495755-2022/.
[59] https://www dot belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-vidit-dlja-belarusi-i-rossii-novye-okna-vozmozhnostej-na-fone-sanktsij-zapada-494726-2022/
[60] https://www.belta dot by/politics/view/putin-v-nyneshnej-situatsii-vazhno-uglubljat-belorussko-rossijskuju-integratsiju-495674-2022/; https://www.belta dot by/politics/view/putin-belorusy-nashi-ne-mladshie-bratjja-a-prosto-bratjja-495687-2022/; https://iz dot ru/1319455/2022-04-12/putin-otmetil-vazhnost-integratcii-rossii-i-belorussii-na-fone-sanktcii; https://tass dot ru/politika/14354909
[61] https://iz dot ru/1317516/2022-04-08/lukashenko-poobeshchal-rf-podderzhku-ot-belorussii-pri-liubykh-trudnostiakh
[62] https://www.belta dot by/president/view/lukashenko-u-belarusi-i-rossii-esche-budut-uchitsja-kak-preodolevat-sanktsii-495793-2022/
[67] https://nv dot ua/world/geopolitics/v-kremle-otreagirovali-na-predlozhenie-zelenskogo-po-obmenu-medvedchuka-poslednie-novosti-50233547.html
[68] https://iz dot ru/1320097/2022-04-13/v-gd-raskritikovali-predlozhenie-zelenskogo-po-obmenu-medvedchuka-na-plennykh
[69] https://hromadske dot ua/posts/u-kremli-vidhrestilisya-vid-medvedchuka-ale-obicyayut-stezhiti-za-jogo-doleyu; https://iz dot ru/1320103/2022-04-13/peskov-zaiavil-ob-otsutstvii-zakulisnykh-otnoshenii-medvedchuka-s-rossiei
3. Zelensky asks Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism
Excerpts:
“This proposition is not without merit,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. “The question is, economically, what are the implications?”
The decision to add a country is significant because, once on the list, countries are rarely removed. Such a move typically requires an extraordinary event such as regime change — which brought about the removal of Iraq from the list in 2004 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein — or a significant pivot in U.S. policy.
Cuba was removed from the list during the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Havana, a move that was reversed by the Trump administration. Sudan was taken off the list after 27 years as a part of the Trump administration’s effort to reward countries that normalize relations with Israel.
“The list has no room for improvement short of perfection,” wrote Daniel Byman in an analysis of the measure for the Brookings Institution, “so states that dramatically cut their support [for terrorism] but retain some residual ties do not benefit.”
Zelensky asks Biden to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism
Yesterday at 12:53 p.m. EDT
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made a direct appeal to President Biden for the United States to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the U.S. arsenal.
Zelensky’s request, which has not previously been reported, came during a recent phone call with Biden that centered on the West’s multifaceted response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to people familiar with the conversation.
Biden did not commit to specific actions during the call, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive dialogue between the two leaders. The president has told his Ukrainian counterpart he is willing to explore a range of proposals to exert greater pressure on Moscow, they added.
Even during the Cold War, Washington refrained from designating the Soviet Union in this manner despite Moscow’s support for groups considered terrorist actors throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Such a measure could have a range of impacts, including the imposition of economic penalties on dozens of other nations that continue to do business with Russia, the freezing of Moscow’s assets in the United States, including real estate, and the prohibition of a variety of dual-use exports.
Zelensky’s proposal comes as Washington seeks to hold together its delicate network of alliances amid rising energy prices and mounting inflation that have been exacerbated by the unprecedented array of sanctions against Russia.
“Adding Russia to the state sponsors of terrorism list would be the nuclear economic option,” Jason Blazakis, a former State Department official and expert on terrorism designations, wrote in a recent essay.
Since 1979, Republican and Democratic administrations have used the terror designation sparingly, targeting only a handful of pariah states where the United States has limited interests.
The label, which requires a finding by the secretary of state, can be applied to any country that has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” according to a State Department fact sheet. The list currently names four countries: North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria.
Some hawkish Republicans in Congress have pressed for the Biden administration to add Russia to the list. But administration officials have been noncommittal, saying only that they would consider the proposal, said a congressional aide familiar with the conversations.
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked directly about U.S. support for the designation at a news conference last month, he said, “We are and we will look at everything.”
“Our focus first and foremost is on doing everything we can to help bring this war to a quick end, to stop the suffering of the Ukrainian people,” he told reporters at the State Department.
Zelensky’s voicing support for the measure adds momentum to the push as world leaders seek to support the Ukrainian president through ever more-powerful military, economic and diplomatic means.
But some of Zelensky’s requests have been turned down in the past, including his demand for MiG-29 fighter jets that some NATO countries said risked starting a wider Russian war in Europe. He has also asked European countries to close their ports to Russian ships and to stop buying Russian oil, which they continue to do.
On the merits, designating Russia could be easier than it was for nations currently on the list. Cuba was added by the Trump administration in January 2021, shortly before Biden took office, for its refusal to extradite an American who fled to Cuba after being convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, as well as its support for a Colombian guerrilla movement. Opponents criticized the move as exploiting the designation for political purposes.
By contrast, Russia’s killing of civilians in Ukraine and Syria, its alleged assassinations and attempted assassinations of dissidents and spies in foreign countries, and its support for separatists in Ukraine whom the United States has accused of murder, rape and torture could more easily fit the State Department’s criteria.
“This proposition is not without merit,” said Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center. “The question is, economically, what are the implications?”
The decision to add a country is significant because, once on the list, countries are rarely removed. Such a move typically requires an extraordinary event such as regime change — which brought about the removal of Iraq from the list in 2004 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein — or a significant pivot in U.S. policy.
Cuba was removed from the list during the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Havana, a move that was reversed by the Trump administration. Sudan was taken off the list after 27 years as a part of the Trump administration’s effort to reward countries that normalize relations with Israel.
“The list has no room for improvement short of perfection,” wrote Daniel Byman in an analysis of the measure for the Brookings Institution, “so states that dramatically cut their support [for terrorism] but retain some residual ties do not benefit.”
4. Taiwan says China's threats will only increase support for island
Excerpts:
In a statement late on Friday, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry condemned China's "recalcitrant and ridiculous" reaction to the two-visit, the first by a group of U.S. lawmakers this year.
"The threat of force by the Chinese Communist Party's totalitarian government against Taiwan will only strengthen the Taiwanese people's will to defend freedom and democracy, and will also attract support for democratic Taiwan from the United States and even more democratic partners," it said.
Taiwan will continue to deepen cooperation with the United States and other like-minded countries to defend the free and open Indo-Pacific region, and prevent China's "continuous expansion", the ministry said.
Taiwan says China's threats will only increase support for island
April 16, 2022
1:55 AM EDT
Last Updated 8 hours ago
TAIPEI, April 16 (Reuters) - China's military threats against Taiwan will only increase support for the island from the United States and other democracies, the foreign ministry said after China conducted drills nearby as U.S. lawmakers visited Taipei.
Beijing blamed the lawmakers, who included chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Bob Menendez, for raising tensions with their "provocative" trip. China claims democratically ruled Taiwan as its own territory. read more
In a statement late on Friday, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry condemned China's "recalcitrant and ridiculous" reaction to the two-visit, the first by a group of U.S. lawmakers this year.
"The threat of force by the Chinese Communist Party's totalitarian government against Taiwan will only strengthen the Taiwanese people's will to defend freedom and democracy, and will also attract support for democratic Taiwan from the United States and even more democratic partners," it said.
Taiwan will continue to deepen cooperation with the United States and other like-minded countries to defend the free and open Indo-Pacific region, and prevent China's "continuous expansion", the ministry said.
Senator Ben Sasse, one of the six bipartisan lawmakers who visited Taiwan and met President Tsai Ing-wen, said in a statement that China could not bully the United States or its elected representatives.
"The American people have no love of tyrants and instead instinctively support the freedom-loving people of Taiwan," he said.
Taiwan has been heartened by the U.S. support offered by the Biden administration, which has repeatedly talked of its "rock-solid" commitment to the democratically governed island.
While the United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it is the island's most important international supporter and arms supplier. That has added to strains in Sino-U.S. relations.
Taiwan's government says only the island's 23 million people can decide their future.
In a pre-recorded video message to a forum organised by Taiwan independence groups on Saturday, Tsai said Russia's invasion of Ukraine showed the threat democracies face from authoritarianism.
"Taiwan's position is to uphold sovereignty, uphold democracy, stand with like-minded countries, assist each other, and contribute our strength," she said.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by William Mallard
5. Russian Legislator and Two Staff Members Charged with Conspiring to Have U.S. Citizen Act as an Illegal Agent of the Russian Government in the United States
Beware Russians bearing gifts.
Russian Legislator and Two Staff Members Charged with Conspiring to Have U.S. Citizen Act as an Illegal Agent of the Russian Government in the United States
Russian Legislator Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Babakov and Staff Members Aleksandr Nikolayevich Vorobev and Mikhail Alekseyevich Plisyuk, Allegedly Conspired to Violate U.S. Sanctions, Have a U.S. Citizen Act as an Unregistered Agent of Russia, and Fraudulently Obtain Visas to Enter the U.S. in Furtherance of a Global Foreign Influence Scheme for the Russian Government
Three citizens of the Russian Federation (Russia) are charged in an indictment, which was unsealed today, with conspiring to use an agent of Russia in the United States without prior notice to the Attorney General, conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions and conspiring to commit visa fraud.
According to court documents, beginning in or around January 2012 through at least June 2017, Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Babakov, 59; Aleksandr Nikolayevich Vorobev, 52; and Mikhail Alekseyevich Plisyuk, 58, operated an international foreign influence and disinformation network to advance the interests of Russia.
“The indictment alleges that a high-ranking Putin-aligned legislator and his closest staffers, all three of whom are sanctioned, engaged in a global campaign to influence and gain access to U.S. elected officials,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Department will not hesitate to prosecute those who seek to covertly influence the American political process and evade U.S. sanctions.”
“Russian legislator Aleksandr Babakov and two of his staffers allegedly orchestrated a covert Russian propaganda campaign in the United States in order to advance Russia’s malevolent political designs against Ukraine and other countries, including the United States.,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “Today’s indictment demonstrates that Russia’s illegitimate actions against Ukraine extend beyond the battlefield, as political influencers under Russia’s control allegedly plotted to steer geopolitical change in Russia’s favor through surreptitious and illegal means in the United States and elsewhere in the West. Such malign foreign interference will be exposed, and we will pursue justice against its perpetrators.”
“This FBI investigation highlights the lengths the Russian government will go to undermine our rule of law,” said Assistant Director Alan E. Kohler Jr. of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division. “The FBI is committed to protecting the United States from foreign malign influence and upholding the sanctions in place to keep our democracy safe.”
As alleged in the indictment, Babakov, a member of the Russian legislature, Vorobev, his Chief of Staff, and Plisyuk, another member of Babakov’s staff, used a nonprofit organization based in Russia, the Institute for International Integration Studies, as a front for this global foreign influence campaign to advance Russia’s foreign policy objectives. Through these operations aimed at influencing the course of international affairs, the defendants worked to weaken U.S. partnerships with European allies, undermine Western sanctions and promote Russia’s illicit actions designed to destroy the sovereignty of Ukraine. The defendants schemed to affect U.S. policy towards Russia through staged events, paid propaganda and the recruitment of at least one American citizen (CC-1) to do their bidding in an unofficial capacity and without notice to the Attorney General, as required by law. In pursuit of these goals, the defendants sought to co-opt U.S. and European politicians and to influence public opinion in their favor, using American and European citizens as their proxies to validate them, bring them access to power, evade sanctions and obscure their true objective to advance Russia’s foreign policy.
Among other things, the defendants contacted members of the U.S. Congress from 2012 into 2017 to seek meetings and to offer free travel to at least one Congressmember on behalf of Babakov, as well as other foreign officials aligned and associated with Babakov. For example, in 2012, at the direction of the defendants, CC-1 sought to secure a meeting for Babakov with multiple members of Congress, including by offering an “all expenses paid” trip to a particular Congressmember to meet with European politicians and receive “an award.” Congressmembers rebuffed these efforts.
In March 2017, the defendants sought to arrange a meeting for Babakov with a member of the U.S. Congress in pursuit of the objective of “strengthen[ing] the ties of cooperation between” Russia and the United States. To secure that meeting, the defendants, through CC-1, transmitted a letter drafted by CC-1 and signed by Babakov to a particular Congressmember.
Also in March 2017, the defendants contacted at least one member of the U.S. Congress to offer free travel to a Babakov-affiliated conference in Yalta, part of Russia-controlled Crimea, as a service to benefit the purported “Prime Minister of Crimea,” Sergey Aksyonov. Aksyonov was organizing and attending the conference, and had been sanctioned by the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as a Specially Designated National (SDN) since 2014 based on his role in actions and policies threatening the sovereignty of Ukraine. The defendants worked together and with their associates to organize, facilitate and promote the Yalta conference, including by soliciting Americans to attend and present at the conference and receive funding from Aksyonov’s organizing committee, for the benefit of Akysonov and his Russia-backed purported government of Crimea. The Congressmember did not accept the offer.
In connection with these foreign influence activities, the defendants also submitted fraudulent visa applications in February 2017 seeking to travel to the United States under the false pretense of each traveling alone for a “vacation,” when in fact they planned to conduct unofficial meetings with U.S. politicians and advisors to further their influence objectives. In June 2017, OFAC sanctioned the three defendants as SDNs. The defendants’ visa applications were ultimately denied in January 2018, disrupting the defendants’ planned meetings in the United States.
Babakov currently serves as the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian legislature. From approximately September 2014 to October 2021, Babakov served as a member of the Russian Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian legislature, and therefore had the title of Senator. From approximately 2003 to 2014, Babakov served as a member of the State Duma, where he held prominent roles such as Chair of the State Duma Commission on Legislative Provisions for Development of the Military-Industrial Complex of the Russian Federation. In or around 2011, Babakov joined the United Russia party, which is the political party of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On or around June 17, 2012, Putin appointed Babakov to be the Russian Federation’s Special Representative for Cooperation with Organizations Representing Russians Living Abroad. Babakov has become a leader in the “For Truth” party formed in or about 2021, which supports Putin. At all times relevant to the indictment, Vorobev has held the position of Chief of Staff for Babakov, and Plisyuk has served on Babakov’s staff.
Babakov, Vorobev and Plisyuk are charged with one count of conspiring to have a U.S. citizen act as a Russian agent in the United States without notifying the Attorney General, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of conspiring to violate and evade U.S. sanctions, in violation of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; and one count of conspiring to commit visa fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The case is being investigated by the FBI’s New York Field Office with valuable assistance provided by the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kimberly J. Ravener and Kyle A. Wirshba for the Southern District of New York are prosecuting the case, with assistance from Trial Attorney Scott Claffee of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.
On March 2, the Attorney General announced the launch of Task Force KleptoCapture, an interagency law enforcement task force dedicated to enforcing the sweeping sanctions, export restrictions and economic countermeasures that the United States has imposed, along with allies and partners, in response to Russia’s unprovoked military invasion of Ukraine. The task force will leverage all the Department’s tools and authorities against efforts to evade or undermine the economic actions taken by the U.S. government in response to Russian military aggression.
An indictment is merely an allegation, and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
6. Ukraine May Get U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Strike Drones
I would like to see how the Reaper works in a higher intensity war.
Ukraine May Get U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Strike Drones
Forbes · by Michael Peck · April 14, 2022
An MQ-9 Reaper flies by August 8, 2007 at CreechGetty Images
Ukraine is in talks to purchase American-made heavy attack drones that could shift the balance of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Ukrainian officials met in Washington last week with General Atomics, the California-based manufacturer of military drones, including the MQ-9 Reaper, the U.S. Air Force’s primary reconnaissance and strike UAV. Though the U.S. government would have to approve any sale, it is unlikely that such talks between Ukraine and a U.S. defense contractor would have happened without a green light from the Biden administration.
“We have aircraft available now for immediate transfer,” General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley told me. “With support from the U.S. government, those aircraft could be in the hands of Ukrainian military pilots in a matter of days.”
General Atomics already has experience in quickly delivering MQ-9s to other nations. “In the past, we worked with the U.S. government to send MQ-9 Reapers to a partner nation in less than 30 days,” said Brinkley. “The logistics footprint could be minimal, also much less than what people associate with American UAS logistics footprints.”
The Biden administration is already planning to supply Ukraine with more advanced arms, according to the Washington Post. Concerned that heavy weapons, such as tanks and jet fighters, would escalate the conflict, the U.S. has carefully provided Ukraine with smaller weapons, such as man-portable Javelin anti-tank and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and even small 5-pound Switchblade “kamikaze drones.”
The MQ-9 would be a far different beast. While General Atomics did not mention specific models that it might sell, the most likely candidate would be the Reaper, which along with the earlier MQ-1 Predator has been the backbone of U.S. military drone operations for more than 20 years.
Equipped with laser-guided missiles, the TB-2 – of which Ukraine is believed to have around 20 — has destroyed hundreds of Russian tanks, artillery pieces and anti-aircraft weapons. Despite considerable Russian investment in air defense, Russia’s fighters and anti-aircraft weapons have proven surprisingly ineffective against Ukrainian UAVs, including hobby drones modified into surveillance and attack craft.
Bayraktar TB2 drone performs during TEKNOFEST 2021Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
But comparing the TB-2 to an MQ-9 is like comparing a Humvee to a passenger sedan. The MQ-9 has a wingspan of 66 feet compared to 39 feet for the TB-2. The MQ-9 weighs in at about 11,000 pounds fully loaded with fuel and weapons, compared to 1,400 pounds for the TB-2. The Reaper is twice as fast, with a speed of about 300 miles per hour versus about 135 miles per hour for the TB-2.
Perhaps most significant is the MQ-9’s vastly superior range: up to 1,200 miles for the base model and 1,600 miles for the ER (extended range) version, compared to just 93 miles for the TB-2. The Turkish drone would have to operate fairly close to the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine, rendering it more vulnerable to Russian air and missile strikes on airfields. But the MQ-9 has the range to operate from safer bases in eastern Ukraine: given that the distance from the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to Kiev in the east is 291 miles – and Lviv to the southern port of Odessa is 800 miles – the extra reach of the Reaper could be crucial to preserving Ukraine’s drone fleet from Russian retaliation. Indeed, the MQ-9 would have the range to strike deep into Russia, and as far as Moscow.
General Atomics maintains that Ukraine would benefit from more sophisticated American drones. “They would greatly expand the ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] capacity of the entire military force and provide highly lethal strike capabilities not afforded by smaller combat UAVs,” Brinkley said.
However, there are obstacles to any Ukrainian MQ-9 purchase. The most obvious is training and familiarization: the Ukrainian military is accustomed to operating Russian (actually Soviet-era) equipment rather than Western designs, and the U.S. Air Force requires a year of training for UAV pilots.
However, General Atomics is confident that it could quickly train Ukrainian crews. “Military pilots already familiar with UAV operations could be trained to fly our aircraft quickly,” Brinkley said.
“Every public estimate currently being offered by observers regarding logistics footprints and training timelines is based on the way the U.S. military employs the aircraft under best case scenarios. In a crisis such as this, rapid training and deployment efforts could radically reduce those estimates and footprints.”
“Ukraine has skilled military pilots familiar with UAV operations who are motivated to defend and protect their homes,” Brinkley added. “We are not starting from scratch.”
Another question is survivability. While Russian air defenses have proven remarkably ineffective against drones, history teaches that armies eventually adapt. So far, the MQ-9 has been used in areas – Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria – where the enemy lacked serious air defenses. Supersonic Russian jet fighters – if competently handled – against slow-moving drones could be a problem.
Nonetheless, drones have emerged as the scourge of the Russian army, which relies on tanks and artillery to sustain its offensive. Even a handful of U.S-made heavy attack drones – flown by determined Ukrainian pilots – could give the outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainians the edge they desperately need.
Read MoreRead Less
Forbes · by Michael Peck · April 14, 2022
7. [OPINION] The Philippines as disinformation battleground in the Ukraine War
Let slip the "elves" of disinformation war.
Conclusion:
With large-scale information operations ongoing throughout the world, it is increasingly important for Filipinos to become critical of the information that they consume. Facts should continuously be verified, and new government institutions may need to be established to combat the disinformation, which has increasingly pervaded social media. In Lithuania, a frequent target of Russian propaganda operations, the government has established an office to fight disinformation. The nickname for people working there are “elves.” Why? Because in their mythology, elves fight trolls. Perhaps the Philippines should begin formalizing its own team of elves to combat disinformation trolls operating inside and outside of the country.
[OPINION] The Philippines as disinformation battleground in the Ukraine War
On March 17, the Philippine Star’s Diplomatic Pouch section included an opinion piece written by Russian Ambassador Marat Pavlov. In it, the envoy discussed that the incursion into Ukraine was a “special operation” aimed at “demilitarization and denazification” of the Kiev government, and that Moscow had “no plans to occupy” the country. The response from European diplomats on social media were swift, direct, and included accusations that the Russian Ambassador was spreading disinformation in a Philippine news outlet.
British Ambassador Laure Beaufils tweeted that it was “upsetting to see these lies in print.” He went on to say: “Let’s be clear: Russia invaded a sovereign state. It is committing war crimes and shows complete disregard for international law and civilian life.” German Ambassador Anke Reiffenstuel expressed shock and irritation at “the disinformation by Russia on Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Finally, European Union Ambassador Luc Véron accused the opinion piece of containing “blatant untruths.” As he put it: “Plain truth is that Russia has invaded Ukraine and attacking its population. Russia disregards sovereignty and territorial integrity.” He then enjoined his audiences to “fight disinformation.”
This incident indicates that even as the military conflict between Russian and Ukrainian forces is being fought on the ground, the Philippines, along with the rest of the world have become battlegrounds over disinformation. As Russia’s news outlets and diplomats advance a benevolent vision of liberating Ukraine, other countries maintain that the invasion was an unprovoked attack upon a sovereign state. International condemnation of the Kremlin’s actions was most prominently demonstrated on March 1, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution condemning Russia’s “special military operation” by a vote of 141 in favor, five against, and 35 abstentions. The Philippines was one of the countries that voted in support of the resolution.
The Philippine position notwithstanding, it is possible to observe the propagation of Russia’s vision of the Ukraine conflict when one examines the comment sections of Philippine news outlets that have published reportage on the Ukraine invasion on social media. In one such post on Facebook, a commenter discussed that the Philippines was taking the wrong side on the Ukraine conflict by condemning Russia. As they put it, the Philippine government should consider that 14,000 ethnic Russians in Ukraine’s Donbas region had been killed by soldiers of the Kiev government. A similar comment accused the Ukrainian military, the American government, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of exterminating 13,000 citizens in the Donbas region.
However, there is no evidence of any mass killings occurring in the disputed Donbas region. According to the International Crisis Group and CNN, 14,000 people had died because Donbas was the site of an armed conflict between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian army. Despite the lack of factual evidence, comments claiming that thousands had been killed by the Kiev government continued to be written in response to articles by Philippine news outlets. Such statements undermine the Philippines’ condemnation of the invasion, and support Russia’s justification for a “special military operation” to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.
It is unclear whether the commenters making claims reflecting the Russian government’s vision were genuine social media users or disinformation agents, but their presence indicates in the comments section of Philippine news outlets indicates that our country is not immune from information warfare, even if Southeast Asia is physically distant from eastern Europe.
The Philippines is not alone in being targeted for disinformation, however. On April 1, the Canadian signals intelligence agency published information about the presence of numerous Russian-backed disinformation campaigns. The false claims being spread included claims that Ukraine was “harvesting organs of fallen soldiers, women, and children,” and Russian protesters opposing the invasion supported neo-Nazis and genocide, and that Russia’s operation was only intended to capture what it described as dangerous nationalists.
The disinformation operations online should also be considered in light of developing reports that journalists are being targeted by Russian forces. Reporters Without Borders maintains a list of casualties, and these include correspondents who have been abducted, arrested, or fired upon by Russian troops. Reporters provide us with facts on the ground that can be used to substantiate or disprove claims made on social media. However, their endangerment diminishes the verified information that the world receives. Without facts from the ground, the ability to combat disinformation is weakened. As such, even as soldiers are fighting one another with guns and artillery in Ukraine, agents of disinformation are also at work online, where social media has become a battleground in its own right.
With large-scale information operations ongoing throughout the world, it is increasingly important for Filipinos to become critical of the information that they consume. Facts should continuously be verified, and new government institutions may need to be established to combat the disinformation, which has increasingly pervaded social media. In Lithuania, a frequent target of Russian propaganda operations, the government has established an office to fight disinformation. The nickname for people working there are “elves.” Why? Because in their mythology, elves fight trolls. Perhaps the Philippines should begin formalizing its own team of elves to combat disinformation trolls operating inside and outside of the country. – Rappler.com
Manuel Enverga III is Director and Assistant Professor at the European Studies Program of the Ateneo de Manila University, where he also serves as Jean Monnet Coordinator. His teaching and research has focused on a diverse set of topics, which include European politics, culture, regionalism, and digital diplomacy. Outside of his academic work, he hosts The Eurospeak Podcast, where he and his guests discuss how European cultural influences impact daily life.
8. Panel: China Planning a 'Go Big, Go Early' Strategy Against Taiwan
Excerpts:
There are limits to the missile defense of Guam, Hawaii and North America, the panel agreed.
Costlow added he totally rejects the idea that “if there is one leaker the missile defense has failed.”
Clark and the others said the reality of cruise, hypersonic or ballistic missile attacks or missiles launched from bombers point out the need to disperse operations on the island and also distributing forces. Other facilities across the region – like Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, the Northern Mariana Islands and northern Australia – in a long campaign with China and the defense of Taiwan take on new importance. He added part of a campaign is to show potential adversaries and allies what options are available to defend national interests – hypersonic missiles, directed energy, forward presence and training with forces in places like Taiwan.
There is “a range of active and passive defenses we can take,” Costlow said. “You can make Guam more resilient” and have other bases for operations when the island is down.
Panel: China Planning a 'Go Big, Go Early' Strategy Against Taiwan - USNI News
While it’s unclear what lessons Chinese military planners are learning from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they learned to “go big and go early” from America’s quick victory in the first Gulf War, a panel of defense analysts agreed Thursday.
It’s a strategy the Chinese could use against Taiwan.
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said if the Chinese don’t win early on they’ll see their cross-strait invasion become “very messy, very quickly.” He added it would “become a slog,” as the Russian drive on Kyiv became. Later, Clark added he didn’t expect China to have the same “nuts and bolts failures” that the Russians have experienced in logistics and command in Ukraine.
Matthew Costlow, a senior analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy, said a key to the defense of Taiwan and deterring Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific is denying Beijing’s “hopes of … an easy asymmetric victory.” Critical to doing that is Guam, a U.S. territory, and America’s allies and partners.
China has seen how European allies and partners have rallied to Ukraine’s support in sending military and humanitarian aid and “the international backlash” imposed on the Kremlin following the invasion. The backlash included harsher and more targeted sanctions against Russian financial and political elites since Moscow launched the unprovoked attack.
“Guam reduces the tyranny of distance” as a logistics and operational hub for the United States in the vast Indo-Pacific. It raises “the prospects of a long-drawn out conflict” for China if Beijing opts for military action in the region.
Patty-Jane Geller, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said “It’s certainly worth the investment” to beef up Guam’s defenses and to address the island’s missile defense requirements against long-range attack. “China is already building more missiles” to get its way in the Indo-Pacific, regardless of whether the U.S. builds up defenses on Guam or even if Washington pulls back from the U.S. territory to a further removed operational and logistics hub.
Guam hosts a major naval support facility and Anderson Air Force Base, which is capable of handling U.S. long-range bombers.
The defense of Guam is actually “related to homeland missile defense,” Costlow said. Clark said an attack on the island should be taken in the same way as an attack on Hawaii or the West Coast would be in Washington and Beijing needs to understand that, particularly if it is threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
This was a message Adm. Phil Davidson stressed during his tenure as the top commander in the Indo-Pacific and has continued advocating since he retired. Adm. John Aquilino, the current commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has also emphasized that a missile defense system for Guam is his top unfunded priority.
“We have our citizens to defend” on Guam, Geller said, adding the U.S. public in North America must understand that. This emphasis on “our citizens” sends a clear signal to allies that the region is important to the United States.
There are limits to the missile defense of Guam, Hawaii and North America, the panel agreed.
Costlow added he totally rejects the idea that “if there is one leaker the missile defense has failed.”
Clark and the others said the reality of cruise, hypersonic or ballistic missile attacks or missiles launched from bombers point out the need to disperse operations on the island and also distributing forces. Other facilities across the region – like Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan, the Northern Mariana Islands and northern Australia – in a long campaign with China and the defense of Taiwan take on new importance. He added part of a campaign is to show potential adversaries and allies what options are available to defend national interests – hypersonic missiles, directed energy, forward presence and training with forces in places like Taiwan.
There is “a range of active and passive defenses we can take,” Costlow said. “You can make Guam more resilient” and have other bases for operations when the island is down.
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9. Zelenskyy Turns to the Laws of War in Prosecuting Kremlin Ally Caught in Uniform
Hmmm....Careful here. Ukraine must maintain the moral high ground.
This might be something the US Embassy should be quietly advising the Ukrainians on.
Excerpts:
Lewis adds that the venue for a potential criminal proceeding against Medvedchuk depends partly on the nature of the allegations against him. Nearly every country has domestic laws prohibiting espionage, for example, though under international humanitarian law, a spy in an armed conflict may not be convicted and sentenced without a trial.
“Therefore, summary execution is prohibited,” Lewis says. “For their part, war crimes may be prosecuted in national courts or the ICC.”
Several legal analysts who spoke with U.S. News drew attention to the spotless fatigues and boots Medvedchuk wears in the photo Ukraine released that don’t match his otherwise haggard appearance – nor that of someone previously on the run and captured by secret service operatives. They wonder whether officials in Kyiv might have dressed him as such to exploit the judicial punishments unique to a war zone. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment about those questions or the apparent discrepancy.
Ukrainian intelligence officials said later on Wednesday that Medvedchuk was participating in a ruse orchestrated by a Russian exfiltration team to sneak him out of the embattled war zone – which could explain his garments. The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, learned of the operation and intercepted Medvedchuk before he could flee.
Medvedchuk was already facing charges of treason which could subject him to the death penalty. The magnitude of war crimes that he now faces, however, would present a much stronger basis for Ukraine to negotiate the repatriation of its prisoners of war in Russia’s hands.
“Whether or not there’s more to the story, the Ukrainians have him in custody and can trade him, just as we and other countries have exchanged prisoners of various kinds in the past,” says Eugene R. Fidell, adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, where he teaches military law. “In other words, regardless of whether he had done something to become subject to the law of armed conflict, he can be traded.”
Zelenskyy Turns to the Laws of War in Prosecuting Kremlin Ally Caught in Uniform
Viktor Medvedchuk, the influential oligarch and Putin ally supposedly caught wearing a Ukrainian army uniform now finds himself at the center of a dramatic escalation in the fighting.
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April 14, 2022, at 4:14 p.m.
The Ukrainian security service released a photo this week of a disheveled man in a conspicuously crisp Ukrainian army uniform manacled in a chair next to a radiator.
For President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the picture of Viktor Medvedchuk that Kyiv released on social media presents a triumph for the Ukrainian secret service operatives who tracked down the Russian oligarch missing for nearly two months in the midst of a brutal conflict. The close ally of President Vladimir Putin now represents a lucrative prize to trade for the release of soldiers in Russian captivity, as the Ukrainian leader suggested in a pre-dawn video address on Wednesday.
To Putin, the publicized arrest of his goddaughter’s father represented a threat to his interests and leverage over the former Soviet state. It prompted other senior Kremlin officials to assert early Wednesday that a comparable fate would befall influential officials in Ukraine if Zelenskyy follows through on what they consider kidnapping and extortion. Ukrainian leaders should “carefully look around and firmly lock their doors at night,” as Russia’s Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned.
Photos: Inside Ukrainian Hospitals
Analysts who specialize in the laws of armed conflict, however, see a potential quagmire in the photo, particularly if Zelenskyy, in fact, seeks to capitalize on the central assertion in his remarks: that because Medvedchuk was wearing military fatigues, he is subject to new, more potent legal scrutiny and the high-profile punishments that accompany them.
“We don’t know why he was wearing a Ukrainian uniform, but under the laws of war, it is prohibited to make use of the emblems or military uniform of an adverse party in the conflict in order to ‘shield, favor, protect or impede military operations,’” says Burrus Carnahan, professorial lecturer in law at George Washington University, citing a section the Geneva Convention. “Violation of that article could be punishable by the Ukrainians as a war crime. Also, if Medvedchuk was gathering information for the Russian side while dressed in a Ukrainian uniform, he could be punished as a spy, a charge probably easier to prove.”
“In effect,” he adds, “President Zelenskyy is offering to forgo possible punishment for these offenses in exchange for release of Ukrainian POWs.”
Others wonder why Zelenskyy is choosing to escalate the situation, seemingly needlessly.
“He's subject to ordinary Ukrainian law. No need to invoke the laws of war,” says Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University and specialist in the law and ethics of armed conflict. “And I don't see what turns on his wearing a Ukrainian uniform, since he wasn't engaged in hostilities or espionage from what I've read.”
A former Ukrainian politician, Medvedchuk had been under house arrest for charges of high treason when he mysteriously disappeared days after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24. Once known as the “Gray Cardinal,” the man with no known military experience has served as a key conduit in relations between Putin’s Russia and the former Soviet state before facing his recent legal prosecution. Many expected he would have taken on a senior leadership role in a puppet regime Putin reportedly wanted to install in Kyiv through his latest invasion.
It remains unclear why he was wearing a military uniform at the time Ukrainian operatives took the photo they released this week, but the government in Kyiv is wasting no time exploiting that fact to their benefit.
Carnahan cites as an example the aftermath of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II in which the U.S. Army tried and executed several German soldiers captured in U.S. uniforms behind American lines acting as U.S. military policemen and purposefully misdirecting reinforcements away from the battlefield.
Medvedchuk faces three potential violations of international humanitarian law: an improper use of an adversary’s military uniform; espionage, which would waive prisoner-of-war status and remains in effect even if the detainee wears an adversary’s uniform; and “perfidious acts,” a term employed in the Geneva Conventions to describe those who knowingly abuse good-faith legal protections – such as those afforded to uniformed soldiers – to commit a hostile act.
Regardless of the basis for future prosecutions against Medvedchuk, his present circumstances put new pressure on the Kremlin to act before Ukraine institutes its own legal proceedings or even turns over Medvedchuk to an international legal body like the International Criminal Court.
“In theory, perhaps some members of the Russian leadership might be interested in seeking to reduce Mr. Medvedchuk’s susceptibility to being subject to a proceeding in a court in Ukraine or, if the [International Criminal Court] or a foreign court institutes proceedings against him, in his potential transfer outside Ukraine,” says Dustin Lewis, research director for the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict, adding that he would need more clarity on the facts of Medvedchuk's detention to determine which legal provisions may be applicable.
Lewis adds that the venue for a potential criminal proceeding against Medvedchuk depends partly on the nature of the allegations against him. Nearly every country has domestic laws prohibiting espionage, for example, though under international humanitarian law, a spy in an armed conflict may not be convicted and sentenced without a trial.
“Therefore, summary execution is prohibited,” Lewis says. “For their part, war crimes may be prosecuted in national courts or the ICC.”
Several legal analysts who spoke with U.S. News drew attention to the spotless fatigues and boots Medvedchuk wears in the photo Ukraine released that don’t match his otherwise haggard appearance – nor that of someone previously on the run and captured by secret service operatives. They wonder whether officials in Kyiv might have dressed him as such to exploit the judicial punishments unique to a war zone. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment about those questions or the apparent discrepancy.
Ukrainian intelligence officials said later on Wednesday that Medvedchuk was participating in a ruse orchestrated by a Russian exfiltration team to sneak him out of the embattled war zone – which could explain his garments. The Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU, learned of the operation and intercepted Medvedchuk before he could flee.
Medvedchuk was already facing charges of treason which could subject him to the death penalty. The magnitude of war crimes that he now faces, however, would present a much stronger basis for Ukraine to negotiate the repatriation of its prisoners of war in Russia’s hands.
“Whether or not there’s more to the story, the Ukrainians have him in custody and can trade him, just as we and other countries have exchanged prisoners of various kinds in the past,” says Eugene R. Fidell, adjunct professor at the New York University School of Law, where he teaches military law. “In other words, regardless of whether he had done something to become subject to the law of armed conflict, he can be traded.”
10. This Is The Shadowy Special Operations Mothership You've Never Heard Of
This Is The Shadowy Special Operations Mothership You've Never Heard Of
For a ghost of a special operations ship, the Carolyn Chouest has an amazing history but lack of funding may spell the end of her mission.
BY
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APR 14, 2022 4:12 PM
thedrive.com · by Howard Altman, Joseph Trevithick · April 14, 2022
For several years, a mysterious and relatively unassuming ship called the Carolyn Chouest has plied the waters of the Pacific, executing an unknown number of secret special operations missions whose details may never be known.
But the ghost-like vessel with a fascinating history, known now as an afloat staging base, may have finally encountered an unbeatable adversary.
The Pentagon's budget axe.
At a time when U.S. military leaders continuously refer to China as a “pacing threat” of great concern, the Pentagon wants to save money by ending its lease of the Carolyn Chouest. It's a unique, multi-purpose converted submarine support vessel now used by special operations forces in the Pacific. Unless Congress insists otherwise, that mission will end Thanksgiving week.
In a document released late last month, the Pentagon said it wants to “discontinue” the Special Operations Command Pacific Afloat Staging Base under a plan to trim $2.7 billion by retiring “vulnerable systems and programs that no longer meet mission and/or security needs to support more relevant modernization efforts.”
The Carolyn Chouest, photographed near the Sasebo Navy Base in Japan last year. Photo courtesy of @l8IDcv9vtqupUhG.
That decision has raised questions on both the Senate and House Armed Services committees. Each tell The War Zone that they want an explanation about the impact of no longer having the Carolyn Chouest's capabilities.
But beyond that, little is known about the current capabilities of this mysterious ship, which does not appear in the Navy’s Military Sealift Command inventory list even though MSC manages the ship’s operational budget as part of the Navy’s Working Capital Fund. Another special operations boat - the highly modified MV Ocean Trader - is also leased by MSC but does not appear on its inventory list. You can read more about that elusive mothership here.
The Carolyn Chouest was most recently spotted by ship trackers near Marine Air Corps Station Iwakuni, Japan on March 2.
The elusive ship actually has a remarkable past, with its mission changing dramatically over time. As a result, it appears radically different from the vessel that was launched in 1994.
At least as originally built, Carolyn Chouest's main power came from two 12-cylinder Caterpillar diesel engines that pushed out a combined 10,800 horsepower to two Kort Nozzle variable pitch propellers. A state-of-the-art, computer-controlled 1,000 horsepower, drop-down, variable speed, omnidirectional thruster gave her enhanced maneuvering capabilities and the ability to stay on station without an anchor. The ship could turn in her own length, and accurately maintain position, even in high seas, as well use its bow thruster to work in shallow waters and for docking.
The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command first chartered Carolyn Chouest in the mid-1990s to support the activities of the NR-1, a highly specialized nuclear-powered mini-submarine capable of diving to extreme depths. The 146-foot long, 12-foot wide boat mini-sub entered service in 1969 and was the Navy’s smallest nuclear submarine, being capable of "underwater search and recovery, oceanographic research missions, installation and maintenance of underwater equipment to a depth of almost a half a mile."
The NR-1, "the Navy's smallest and only research submarine" at sea in 2007. Photo courtesy of Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.
NR-1 was used for a variety of classified missions, as well as research and development and test and evaluation tasks. In 1976, the Navy disclosed that NR-1 had been used to help recover sensitive portions of an F-14 Tomcat, including at least one AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missile, after the jet fell off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy and into the Atlantic Ocean during an exercise. It also supported non-military missions, including helping to recover components of the Space Shuttle Challenger after it was destroyed in an explosion shortly after its launch in 1986.
In 1995, with the help of Carolyn Chouest, NR-1 was used to survey the wreck of the HMHS Britannic, the sister ship of the RMS Titantic, which was used as a hospital ship during World War I and had sunk off the coast of Greece after hitting a naval mine in 1916. In 2002, the pair helped chart the location of the Civil War-era USS Monitor, the Navy's first ironclad ship, which sank during a storm off the coast of North Carolina in 1862.
The Carolyn Chouest originally served as a support vessel for the Navy's NR-1 experimental submarine. Both vessels are seen here at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 24, 2006. Department of Defense photograph.
Carolyn Chouest carried out various other missions that did not involve NR-1. In 1999, it helped with the recovery of the wreck of EgyptAir Flight 990 off the coast of Massachusetts. The ship deployed a remotely operated underwater vehicle, or ROV, named Magnum to help with those efforts. The ship also towed the Canadian Navy's Victoria class submarine HMCS Chicoutimi back to port after it suffered a major fire, which killed one sailor and injured two more, off the coast of Ireland in 2004.
NR-1's tight cockpit during a mission in 1995.
During its time as a submarine support vessel, the Carolyn Chouest was considered “a flat-bottomed ocean-going tug that didn't cut the waves very well,” according to a 2018 Kitsap Sun article about the NR-1, which didn’t have the power to travel to sea on its own and needed the help of the Carolyn Chouest. The ship also featured its own onboard laboratory facilities and could accommodate up to 40 people at a time, including its crew and supporting personnel, such as the crew of the NR-1.
The Los Angeles class fast attack submarine USS Alexandria and the Submarine Support Vessel Carolyn Chouest sit covered in snow on a blustery, snowy day at Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton. Photo by Seaman John Narewski.
In 2008, the Navy decommissioned NR-1. Carolyn Chouest continued to operate under contract to the Navy, but the details about its subsequent service are murky.
Pictures of the ship show that, at least by 2011, it had been reconfigured to some degree with an additional superstructure installed over its previously open rear deck. The addition featured multiple cranes and the ship was seen carrying various cargo containers on top, which might have been configured for use as various kinds of workspaces.
Sometime between the 2011-2012 and 2017-2018 timeframes, Carolyn Chouest underwent a much more significant conversion into a sea base platform specially configured to support U.S. special operations forces in the Pacific region. The cost of the modifications is unclear. They are not spelled out in budget documents and officials from SOCOM, the Navy and the Edison Chouest Offshore shipyard did not provide answers. INDOPACOM declined to comment. It was also repainted in the process, trading its orange hull and yellow superstructure for a much more discreet blue-and-white motif.
The Carolyn Chouest at the Naha Military Port in Japan, June 12, 2021. Photograph courtesy @takucht
In its current configuration, Carolyn Chouest still features the raised superstructure at the rear, with pictures showing containers, again possibly being used as workspaces or for storage, as well as a catapult for launching small drones, on top of it. The ship's central superstructure has also been enlarged, which would provide additional spaces for personnel accommodation, mission planning, and more. Overall, it is now also absolutely festooned with antenna domes typically associated with satellite communications systems, as well as other kinds of extremely-high-frequency (EHF) and ultra-high-frequency (UHF) communications arrays.
The Carolyn Chouest at the Naha Military Port in Japan, June 12, 2021. You can see the Navy Special Warfare Combat Craft Assault boats and a RHIB stored along its side. Photograph courtesy @takucht
Pictures and videos of Carolyn Chouest from ship spotters in Japan show it can also carry a variety of jet skis, rigid-hulled inflatable boats (RHIB), and other watercraft commonly employed by U.S. special operations forces. The imagery on multiple occasions shows it loaded with at least two Naval Special Warfare Combatant Craft Assault special operations speedboats, which you can read more about here.
Carolyn Chouest, which has been spotted operating around Japan, Singapore, and Guam since 2017, according to online ship tracking software, has been serving a role very similar to that of the MV Ocean Trader, the other far more elaborate shadowy special operations sea base operating under contract to the Navy. It has also been spotted equipped with a drone-launching catapult and carrying CCA boats.
However, unlike Carolyn Chouest, Ocean Trader, which was most recently spotted off the coast of southern France, features hangars to go along with a large flight deck on top that can support various kinds of special operations helicopters. The ship also has a large garage-like bay that can carry all types of vehicles, in addition to its Combat Craft Assault boats that sit behind apertures on the sides of its upper hull.
Questions about when, why and how it was modified were also unanswered Wednesday afternoon by SOCOM, the Navy and the shipbuilder, Edison Chouest Offshore.
We will provide those answers as soon as they are available.
But there's more to the decision to end the Carolyn Chouest's lease than just wanting to stop paying for a vessel that cost U.S. Special Operations Command upwards of at least $40 million since 2008.
The issue, a defense official told The War Zone, is that the Carolyn Chouest had been chartered using what was known as overseas contingency funds. That was money designed to fight the so-called global war on terrorism. However, with the end of the war in Afghanistan looming and fewer troops deployed to Iraq, the Biden administration emptied that pot of money in April, 2021.
So with that money no longer available, the current lease will not be renewed.
The ship is in SOCOM's budget out of expediency, according to the defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to explain the process.
Sometime around 2008, the geographic combatant command then known as U.S. Pacific Command had a need for this type of vessel. It just so happened that the Carolyn Chouest's main mission, as a support vessel for NR1, was ending. So it was the right-sized ship at the right time to meet PACOM's needs.
And because SOCOM already had a contract with the Edison Chouest Offshore shipyard, the lease for the Carolyn Chouest was put under its purview, but paid for by OCO funds.
At the time, PACOM was assisting the Philippines in its ongoing fight against Islamic insurgents, so that was how the funding was justified.
ECO was awarded a $7.4 million contract to exercise an option under a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract “with reimbursable elements for one maritime support vessel,” according to the Defense Department.
“This vessel will be utilized to launch, recover, refuel, and resupply of small crafts” in the then-U.S. Pacific Command (now INDOPACOM) region.
The contract included a 12-month base period, three 12-month option periods, and one 11-month option period.
If all options were exercised, it would have brought the total value of the contract to a little more than $41 million.
Two subsequent contracts were set by the Navy, one in December 2019 for $7.6 million, and one in December 2020 for $7.7 million.
Work on the third contract was to be performed in the INDOPACOM region. It was “expected to be completed, if all options are exercised by Nov. 21, 2022,” according to the Defense Department. “The option will be funded by fiscal 2021 (Navy) working capital funds in the amount of $6,001,581 that will expire at the end of the fiscal year; and fiscal 2022 (Navy) working capital funds in the amount of $1,738,974 that will expire at the end of fiscal 2022.”
The U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting authority.
Though the Pentagon now wants to discontinue leasing the Carolyn Chouest, a former commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines told The War Zone that afloat staging bases like it are important assets for special operations forces in the Pacific.
“It is my opinion that US SOF would greatly benefit from an afloat staging base through INDOPACOM,” said David Maxwell, a retired Army Special Forces colonel who worked with the USNS GySgt. Fred W. Stockham afloat staging base when he served as the commander of JSOTF-P in 2006 and 2007.
Back in 2006, the USNS GySgt. Fred W. Stockham, seen here in 2016, is a major roll-on-roll-off logistics ship, but also stood in as an afloat staging base for operations against insurgents in the Philippines. (U.S. Navy photograph by Bill Mesta/released)
Afloat staging bases “provide support, staging, and command and control capabilities when land bases are not available due to operations in the vicinity of denied areas or due lack of host nation access in the region which might be due to political considerations,” said Maxwell. “It will provide SOCPAC and assigned SOF the agility and flexibility to operate throughout the region.”
SOCPAC, he said, “should have an organic capability so assigned SOF can routinely train using this capability in order to be ready when contingencies arise.”
Special Operations Forces, he added, “should not conduct operations from an afloat staging with the first time use being during a contingency.”
Maxwell said there is another advantage of afloat staging. It “provides SOF the ability to base forces in the vicinity of operational areas and potentially outside of an adversary's engagement ability.”
The vessels offer the ability “to launch and recover SOF teams” and can serve “as an intelligence platform to support mission planning and deployed elements,” he said. “It can provide logistical support to deployed forces.”
When Maxwell commanded JSOTF-P, “we employed an afloat staging base to support operations by Philippine special operations forces throughout the Sulu archipelago to great effect.," he said. "I think this is a very necessary capability and I would recommend it be fully resourced.”
Two key Congressional committees share concerns about the Pentagon's decision to end the Carolyn Chouest lease.
“I am always concerned, and many of my colleagues are too, when the Department of Defense ‘divests to invest,’ because oftentimes, investment never follows,” Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe, (R-Okla) told The War Zone. “In this case, as we always do, the Armed Services Committee will look at the proposal closely to decide whether the risks to mission and force are acceptable.”
The House Armed Services Committee is going to look into the Pentagon’s decision to end the Carolyn Chouest lease as well.
“We’re beginning dialogue with the Department to understand the impact and why this decision was made,” a House Armed Services Committee aide told The War Zone Tuesday afternoon.
The Carolyn Chouest wasn't the only vessel the Pentagon is seeking to cut from its budget as part of the $2.7 billion re-prioritization initiative.
Several other Navy vessels - including both Montford Point class expeditionary transfer dock ships - are also on the chopping block. You can read more about those ships here. Then again, the Carolyn Chouest is a leased capability, so it isn't exactly the same as divesting ships from the fleet. Regardless, it is a very low cost asset to keep available compared to the Navy's far more costly to operate warships.
But the Pentagon now has a number of extremely capable Expeditionary Sea Base ships in its inventory.
The ships - 785-long, displacing 90,000 tons fully loaded and based on the Alaska class crude oil tanker - were originally called Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) and the MLP Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB), respectively, according to the Navy.
The USS Hershel "Woody" Williams, seen here in Rota, Spain on Oct. 4, 2020, is one of a new class of expeditionary sea base ships. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class John J. Owen
The ESBs, designed for aviation facilities, berthing, equipment staging support, and command and control, have a four-spot flight deck, mission deck and hangar. You can read more about these ships here.
These are massively more capable ships than the Carolyn Chouest, and one of them, USS Miguel Keith (ESB 5), is now operating in the Pacific. This could be one factor that led to the Carolyn Chouest's lack of funding. Still, these are absolutely massive ships, they do not offer the extremely low-profile and low cost of operation that something like the Carolyn Chouest provides. They are also not fully tailored to the special operations support mission. And, of course, a ship can only be in one place at one time. Not every mission requires a gigantic ESB. In fact, the vast majority of them do not. So it could be argued that these assets could be seen as complementary more than swappable.
As the Pentagon's decision on that afloat staging base makes its way through the congressional budget process, more information about the vessel and its capabilities will likely become public. And it is quite possible that enough rationale will be provided to get this shadowy ship's lease renewed.
Update 6:50 PM EST:
U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Army Col. Curt Kellogg has provided additional information about the Carolyn Chouest lease. In Fiscal Year 2017, the U.S. government put out a bid for a contractor-owned and operated vessel.
“Several companies submitted bids with Edison Chouest Offshore winning the contract resulting in their making modifications to the Carolyn Chouest to meet the requirements of the contract,” Kellogg said. The contract “is for a base year plus four option years at a pre-negotiated price for the option years. Total value of the 5-year charter is $60.1 million, including all operating costs for ship, civilian mariner crew, fuel, port services, food and other miscellaneous support services per the contract.”
The vessel is at the end of a 5-year Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, “and USSOCOM ended the budget line to fund other higher priority requirements,” he said.
Contact the author: Howard@thewarzone.com
thedrive.com · by Howard Altman, Joseph Trevithick · April 14, 2022
11. What should the US Navy learn from Moskva's demise?
Don't get struck by a Ukrainian missile.
Seriously, we need effective missile defense which is damn hard and expensive.
What should the US Navy learn from Moskva's demise? - Breaking Defense
China's investment in anti-ship weaponry poses a "major problem" for the US Navy's ability to fight in the Indo-Pacific, a Singapore-based analyst told Breaking Defense.
The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, a flagship of Russian Black Sea Fleet, enters Sevastopol bay. (Photo by VASILY BATANOV/AFP via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON: Even as Ukraine has proved its military tenacity in ground fighting against Russian troops, observers of the conflict were stunned late this week after the Ukrainian military announced it successfully struck the Russian Black Sea fleet’s flagship with a pair of cruise missiles.
The notion of Ukraine’s military, the veritable underdog in the fight, bringing down the Moskva, a warship named for Russia’s capital city, was not only a strategic victory but a symbolic one.
Russia’s defense ministry put out a variety of statements suggesting the ship suffered an accidental fire or explosion, but today a senior US defense official told reporters the ship was indeed hit by two Ukrainian Neptune missiles.
But just as analysts were calculating what the Russian loss meant for the future of the European conflict, the sinking of such a high-profile ship also prompted a more introspective question for some US naval observers: If Ukraine could sink a flagship vessel with a cruise missile, how well would American ships do in a similar situation, as it could see in, for example, the Indo-Pacific against China?
The answer, three naval warfare experts told Breaking Defense, is complicated, but generally the US Navy is much better positioned to defend against or recover from such an attack.
Anti-ship munitions are relatively inexpensive and the Chinese have invested in plenty of them, making the threat very real. But Russia’s surface fleet’s ship designs are outdated and flawed in ways that lend them to catastrophic results from even a single successful hit. Their defenses also haven’t been updated as vigorously as America’s. Further, the apparent incompetence of Russia’s crews likely played a key role in the ship’s inability to recover following the strike — a skill US Navy sailors have demonstrated time and again.
“The USN does confront a major problem against the Chinese in the Indo-Pacific” with respect to its cruise missiles, said Collin Koh, a research fellow at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “Yet on the flipside, the PLA Navy is also steadily building principal surface combatants, and if the US military is able to enhance its anti-ship arsenal then a counter-threat can be posed to the Chinese in the same manner.”
(Relatively) Small Munitions, Big Impacts
Capable anti-ship cruise missiles are readily available in the global arms market, and China, for one, has amassed a “potent arsenal” of them, according to Koh.
To be effective, Koh said, a missile doesn’t have to sink a ship outright — it just needs to do enough damage that the crew’s attention is diverted from launching attacks to keeping themselves afloat. If a weaker force focuses large numbers of missiles on a single ship, they have good odds of landing one or two useful hits.
Details of the Moskva’s final moments above water are still foggy, but there is consensus that the ship did not sink immediately following the strike, but rather succumbed to the damage while transiting back to port.
The Israeli Navy experienced a similar incident in 2006 when the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah managed to strike the corvette INS Hanit from land, Koh noted.
“The strike didn’t sink the warship [Hanit] but put it out of action. This incident, and the latest Moskva sinking, reinforces the notion that in today’s naval warfare, weaker parties can still pose an asymmetric threat to stronger naval adversaries,” he said.
The Importance Of Ship Design, Upgraded Defenses And Steady Sailors
But there are a few reasons it may be apples and oranges to compare the Moskva and ships in the US Navy’s current surface force.
The first has to do with the design of the Moskva and other Soviet fleet ships, said Jerry Hendrix, a retired US Navy captain and a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute based in Indianapolis. Produced in the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union chose to store offensive weaponry above deck. That means it only takes one well placed hit to start a fire, which then heats up the canisters storing the missiles, transforming them into ticking time bombs.
“I don’t think that we can understate just the inherent poor design of the Slava class or for that matter, the Kirov class, or the Udaloys that came out at this time,” Hendrix said, referring to different Soviet-era ship types still in service. “This particular design of ship that the Russians or the Soviet Union invested in significantly really sets itself up for the sort of cascade failure.”
By contrast, the US Navy stores offensive munitions below deck, meaning if a fire threatens to start “cooking” a missile, then the crew can quickly flood the space before more damage is caused.
Another issue, Hendrix said, was the Russian’s surface fleet, which has not seen as much investment and attention as its more capable submarine force, has “archaic” air defense systems that simply aren’t designed for the trajectories of modern cruise and ballistic missiles, nor are they sensitive enough to pick up smaller contacts. The US Navy’s Aegis Combat System, on the other hand, has been persistently upgraded for decades to adapt to new threats.
“Our Aegis platforms have been designed, and then upgraded, and modified specifically looking everywhere from the surface to ballistic missile trajectories, which are coming down nearly vertically,” he said. (Aegis reportedly intercepted a missile attack on a US ship off the coast of Yemen in 2016.)
James Foggo III, a retired four-star Navy admiral who now leads the Center for Maritime Strategy, told Breaking Defense today the crews themselves are also key factors in whether a ship can overcome an attack.
He noted the timing of Moskva’s sinking coincides with the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Falklands War. In that conflict, there were two vessels, one British and one Argentine, that were destroyed in eerily similar incidents to what happened to the Russian warship.
In both cases, Foggo said, the crews should have been able to either defend against the attack or at least mitigate the damage after the fact. In both cases, the crews failed to do either.
The Argentine ship had watertight doors, designed to isolate flooding in the event an attack breaches the hull. The crew’s inability to control the flooding indicated a poor state of readiness on their part, Foggo said. In the British ship’s case, the crew reportedly failed to see the missile coming. Subsequently, the ship caught fire which spread and destroyed the vessel before it could return to port, he said.
“I don’t have any facts other than speculation [about the Moskva], but I will tell you that it smacks of the situation on [the Argentine ship]. Complacency,” he said.
‘It’s An Embarrassment To Putin’
Although Russia’s defense ministry refuses to credit Moskva’s transformation into an artificial reef to Ukraine, it does acknowledge the ship is gone. And that is likely a very hard pill for the Russians to swallow.
Sending the warship named after the country’s capital into this war “was essentially Moscow sending a signal that we’re here and we’re going to stay,” said Hendrix. “So don’t underestimate the impact of the loss of this ship… It’s an embarrassment for Putin. It’s an embarrassment for Russia, and it is a real blow to the national prestige of Russia.”
Foggo said he was particularly concerned about what retaliatory measures the Russians would take after losing a flagship. He said many countries’ flagships are typically well-maintained, and relatively state-of-the-art vessels that are meant to represent the best of a nation. Moskva was rumored to be Putin’s favorite.
Foggo also pointed outed there is an irony about Moskva’s fate, and its status of flagship. Early on in the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government ordered its own navy’s flagship, the frigate Hetman Sahaidachny, to be scuttled, or intentionally sunk, in Nikolaev port northeast of Odesa in order to keep the Russians from seizing it. Foggo said that the Moskva and other ships in its class were built at the same port when Ukraine was part of the USSR.
“And that’s where the Ukrainian flagship remains sunk. And now the Ukrainians, if it’s true, sunk Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet,” he said. “It’s just — I mean, you can’t make this up. It’s like a Hollywood script.”
12. Liberation Without Victory
I have said this half in jest but the Ukrainian sense of humor and the Russia lack thereof will be a contributing factor to Ukrainian success. But it goes to the moral is the physical as three is to one ( or so said Bonaprate)
Excerpts:
Is Putin afraid of humor?
“Very much so,” Zelensky said. Humor, he explained, reveals deeper truths. The famous television series in which Zelensky starred, Servant of the People, mocked the pomposity of Ukrainian politicians, attacked corruption, and presented the little guy as a hero; many of his sketches were clever satires of political leaders and their attitudes. “Jesters were allowed to tell the truth in ancient kingdoms,” he said, but Russia “fears the truth.” Comedy remains “a powerful weapon” because it is accessible. “Complex mechanisms and political formulations are difficult for humans to grasp. But through humor, it’s easy; it’s a shortcut.”
Humor in Ukraine is now mainly of the darkest kind. At certain moments, Zelensky appeared stunned by the cruelty of it all. He tried to explain why he cannot feel—why most Ukrainians cannot feel—much sense of satisfaction in their underdog battlefield victories. Yes, they expelled the mighty Russian army from the northern part of the country. Yes, they killed, by their count, more than 19,000 Russian soldiers. Yes, they claim to have captured, destroyed, or damaged more than 600 tanks. Yes, they say they’ve sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Yes, they changed the image of their country, and their understanding of themselves. But the price has been colossal.
Too many Ukrainians, Zelensky told us, died not in battle, but “in the act of torture.” Children got frostbite hiding in cellars; women were raped; elderly people died of starvation; pedestrians were shot down in the street. “How will these people be able to enjoy the victory?” he asked. “They will not be able to do to the Russian soldiers what [the Russians] did to their children or daughters … so they do not feel this victory.” Real victory, he said, will come only when the perpetrators are tried, convicted, and sentenced.
But when will that be? “How long do we have to wait? It’s a long process, these courts, tribunals, international courts.”
Liberation Without Victory
In a wide-ranging conversation at his compound in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tells The Atlantic what Ukraine needs to survive—and describes the price it has paid.
The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum, Jeffrey Goldberg · April 15, 2022
Kyiv is halfway normal now. Burnt-out Russian tanks have been removed from the roads leading into the city, traffic lights work, the subway runs, oranges are available for purchase. A cheerful balalaika orchestra was performing for returning refugees at the main rail station earlier this week, on the day we arrived to meet Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine.
The normality is deceiving. Although the Russians botched their opening campaign, they continue to bombard the capital and are now gathering in the east for a renewed attack on Ukraine. Zelensky has to prepare his country, and the world, for battles that could be deadlier than anything seen so far. The general in charge of the defense of Kyiv, Alexander Gruzevich, told us during a tour of the ravaged northwestern suburbs that he expects the Russians to try to return to the capital using intensified “scorched earth” tactics along the way: total destruction by ground artillery and air strikes, followed by the arrival of troops.
When we met Zelensky in Kyiv on Tuesday night, he told us the same thing: The optimism that many Americans and Europeans—and even some Ukrainians—are currently expressing is unjustified. If the Russians are not expelled from Ukraine’s eastern provinces, Zelensky said, “they can return to the center of Ukraine and even to Kyiv. It is possible. Now is not yet the time of victory.” Ukraine can win—and by “win,” he means continue to exist as a sovereign, if permanently besieged, state—only if its allies in Washington and across Europe move with alacrity to sufficiently arm the country. “We have a very small window of opportunity,” he said.
It was late in the evening when we met Zelensky at his compound. The surrounding streets were barricaded and empty, the building itself almost entirely blacked out. Soldiers with flashlights led us through a maze of sandbagged corridors to a harshly lit, windowless room adorned only with Ukrainian flags. There was no formal protocol, no long wait, and we were not told to sit at the far end of an elongated table. Zelensky, the comedian who has become a global icon of freedom and bravery, entered the room without fanfare.
“Hi!” he said, brightly, and then proceeded to complain about his back. (“I have a back, and that’s why I have some problems, but it’s okay!”) He thanked us for not filming the interview: Even though he’s been a professional television performer for all of his adult life, it’s a relief to occasionally go unfilmed.
On or off camera, Zelensky conducts himself with a deliberate lack of pretense. In a part of the world where leadership usually implies stiff posture and a pompous manner—and where signaling military authority requires, at a minimum, highly visible epaulets—he instead evokes sympathy and feelings of trust precisely because he sounds, in the words of a Ukrainian acquaintance, “like one of us.” He is a kind of anti-Putin: Rather than telegraphing a cold-eyed, murderous superiority, he wants people to understand him as an Everyman, a middle-aged dad with a bad back.
Volodymyr Zelensky sits down for an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg and Anne Applebaum. Kyiv, Ukraine. Tuesday, April 12, 2022. (Christopher Occhicone for The Atlantic)
We started the interview by reminding Zelensky, the Jewish president of a mostly Orthodox Christian and Catholic country, that his words were going to appear on Good Friday on the Western calendar and just before the first seder of Passover, a holiday that marks the liberation of an enslaved nation from an evil dictator.
“We have pharaohs in neighboring countries,” Zelensky said, smiling. (The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, is, in the minds of many Ukrainians, a sort of deputy pharaoh to Putin.) But although Ukrainians face a formidable enemy, they are not longing for an exodus: “We’re not going anywhere.” Nor does Zelensky plan to spend 40 years wandering in the desert. “We already have 30 years of our independence. I would not want us to fight for our independence for another 10 years.”
Russia’s invasion has caused him to doubt whether it is still possible to associate religion with morality. “I do not understand when religious representatives of Russia”—here he meant the pro-Putin patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church—“say they are faithfully empowering soldiers to kill Ukrainians.” Worse, “I cannot understand how a Christian country, the Russian Federation, with the largest Orthodox community in the world, will be killing people on these very days.” During the Easter season, the Russians are planning “a great battle in Donbas,” the Russian-occupied region in Ukraine’s far east. “This is not Christian behavior at all, as I understand it. On Easter they will kill, and they will be killed.”
As a result, many Ukrainians are going to spend the holy season under siege, hiding in basements. Others will not live to see the holiday at all. Just a few hours ago, early Friday morning, Russian bombs struck Kyiv again. “Ukraine is definitely not in the mood for celebration,” Zelensky said. “People usually pray for the future of their families and their children. I think that today they will pray for the present, just to save everyone.”
Much of Zelensky’s time is spent on the telephone, on Zoom, on Skype, answering the questions of presidents and prime ministers—often the same questions, repeated to a maddening degree. “I like new questions,” he said. “It’s not interesting to answer the questions you already heard.” He is frustrated, for instance, by repeated requests for his wish list of weapons systems. “When some leaders ask me what weapons I need, I need a moment to calm myself, because I already told them the week before. It’s Groundhog Day. I feel like Bill Murray.”
He says he has no choice but to keep trying. “I come and say that I need this particular weapon. You have it and here it is; we know where it is stored. Can you give it to us? We can even fly our own cargo planes and pick it up; we can even send three planes per day. We need armored vehicles, for example. And not one per day. We need 200 to 300 per day. These aren’t personal taxis, just for me; our soldiers need transport. Flights are available, the whole thing can be organized, we can do all the logistics.”
Later that night, one of Zelensky’s advisers texted us with a list of what, exactly, Ukraine needs to repel the invasion from the east:
Artillery, 155 millimeters
Artillery shells, 152 millimeters as many as possible
Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (“Grad”, “Smerch”, “Tornado” or M142 HIMARS)
Armored vehicles (armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, others)
Tanks (T-72 tanks or similar tanks from the USA or Germany)
Air defense systems (S-300, “BUK” or western equivalents)
Military aircraft—MUST HAVE—to deblock our cities and save millions of Ukrainians as well as millions of Europeans)
It’s not that the various presidents and prime ministers who profess sympathy for the Ukrainian cause don’t want to help, Zelensky said: “They are not against us. They just live in a different situation. As long as they have not lost their parents and children, they do not feel the way we feel.” He makes the comparison to the conversations he has with the extraordinary defenders of Mariupol, the besieged Black Sea port city where 21,000 civilians may have been killed so far. “For example, they say, ‘We need help; we have four hours.’ And even in Kyiv we don’t understand what four hours are. In Washington for sure they can’t understand. However, we are grateful to the U.S., because the planes with weapons are still coming.”
Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, spoke with us later that evening, and also expressed his confusion about the pace at which the Biden administration moves. Washington is providing new weapons every day, and President Joe Biden just made an additional $800 million commitment to the defense of Ukraine. Yermak told us that he and Zelensky have strong relationships with many key American players—a break from the previous administration, which withdrew its ambassador just before Donald Trump’s “perfect phone call” with Zelensky (the call that triggered the first impeachment) and never replaced her. Biden, Yermak said, is “a man who can be trusted, not just a politician.” He had compliments for the secretaries of state and defense, and for leaders of Congress. And he praised Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan: “There is not a single minute when we did not speak specifically or in substance,” he said.
So everybody is great, but the weapons don’t come fast enough?
“Please tell me with whom else I should speak,” Yermak said.
Zelensky understands that his task is not merely to issue weapons requests and express urgency, but also to overcome old stereotypes of Ukraine as corrupt and incompetent, as well as the Russian propaganda that denies Ukraine the right to statehood. He wants to present an image of Ukraine as a modern and liberal state, one unified by a civic, as opposed to a purely ethnic, nationalism.
“The U.S., Britain, the EU, and European countries have always been skeptical of our development, of our ‘Europeanness,’” he said. But now “many of them have changed their view of Ukraine and see us as equals.” He has no time at all for international institutions. When he is asked about the role of the United Nations in defending Ukraine, one of its member states, from Russia, a member of the UN Security Council, he rolls his eyes and grimaces tragicomically. “Good thing we don’t have a video,” he says. “Just describe with words what you see on my face.” Both Zelensky and Yermak have been thinking and talking about what alternative international institutions might look like. Perhaps there should be a list of human-rights violations or war crimes that trigger automatic responses, Yermak suggested to us. Right now, the process of issuing statements, announcing sanctions, providing responses of any kind is too complex, too bureaucratic, and above all too slow.
But if Western leaders can frustrate Zelensky, Russians send him careering toward despair. He has, from time to time since the war began, spoken in Russian and addressed Russian audiences, something he is accustomed to doing: It’s what he once did for a living. His film and television production company was one of the biggest in the region, with an office in Moscow and viewers across the former Soviet Union.
His productive relationship with Russia and Russians came to an end in 2014, when people he had known for years stopped talking to him: “I just did not expect that people, a lot of partners, acquaintances—I thought they were friends, but they were not—just stopped picking up the phone.” Since then, many people he knows have changed, “become more brutal.” As Russia has shut down alternatives to state media—closing independent newspapers, television channels, and radio stations—Zelensky has found that his old acquaintances retreated further. “Even that small share of intelligent people, which was there, began to live in this informational bubble,” and he finds it very difficult to break through. “It’s the North Korean virus. People are getting absolutely vertical integrated messages. People don’t have any other way; they live in it.” He is clear about the author of the messages: “Putin has invited people into this information bunker, so to speak, without their knowledge, and they live there. It is, as the Beatles sang, a yellow submarine.”
Now, as Russian propaganda grows more baroque, he sometimes has trouble knowing how to process it. Perhaps that’s why he often leans on pop-cultural analogies: “The way they say that we’re eating people here, that we have killer pigeons, special biological weapons … They make videos, create content, and show Ukrainian birds supposedly attacking their planes. Putin and Lukashenko—they make it sound like some kind of political Monty Python.”
If Ukraine is to have a secure future, he says, the Russian information barrier will have to be broken. Russians don’t just need access to facts; they need help understanding their own history, what they have done to their neighbors. At the moment, Zelensky says, “they are afraid to admit guilt.” He compares them to “alcoholics [who] don’t admit that they are alcoholic.” If they want to recover, “they have to learn to accept the truth.” Russians need leaders they choose, leaders they trust, “leaders who can then come in and say, ‘Yes, we did that.’ That’s how it worked in Germany.”
Throughout the conversation, Zelensky displayed his gifts for spontaneity, irony, and sarcasm. He didn’t tell jokes, exactly, but he said that he cannot part with humor altogether. “I think that any normal person cannot survive without it. Without a sense of humor, as surgeons say, they would not be able to perform surgeries—to save lives and to lose people as well. They would simply lose their minds without humor.”
The same is true now for Ukrainians: “We can see what a tragedy we have, and it’s hard to live with it. But you have to live with it … You can’t be serious about what Russian politicians and Lukashenko say every day. If you take it seriously, you might as well go and hang yourself.”
Is Putin afraid of humor?
“Very much so,” Zelensky said. Humor, he explained, reveals deeper truths. The famous television series in which Zelensky starred, Servant of the People, mocked the pomposity of Ukrainian politicians, attacked corruption, and presented the little guy as a hero; many of his sketches were clever satires of political leaders and their attitudes. “Jesters were allowed to tell the truth in ancient kingdoms,” he said, but Russia “fears the truth.” Comedy remains “a powerful weapon” because it is accessible. “Complex mechanisms and political formulations are difficult for humans to grasp. But through humor, it’s easy; it’s a shortcut.”
Humor in Ukraine is now mainly of the darkest kind. At certain moments, Zelensky appeared stunned by the cruelty of it all. He tried to explain why he cannot feel—why most Ukrainians cannot feel—much sense of satisfaction in their underdog battlefield victories. Yes, they expelled the mighty Russian army from the northern part of the country. Yes, they killed, by their count, more than 19,000 Russian soldiers. Yes, they claim to have captured, destroyed, or damaged more than 600 tanks. Yes, they say they’ve sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Yes, they changed the image of their country, and their understanding of themselves. But the price has been colossal.
Too many Ukrainians, Zelensky told us, died not in battle, but “in the act of torture.” Children got frostbite hiding in cellars; women were raped; elderly people died of starvation; pedestrians were shot down in the street. “How will these people be able to enjoy the victory?” he asked. “They will not be able to do to the Russian soldiers what [the Russians] did to their children or daughters … so they do not feel this victory.” Real victory, he said, will come only when the perpetrators are tried, convicted, and sentenced.
But when will that be? “How long do we have to wait? It’s a long process, these courts, tribunals, international courts.”
Abruptly, he made it personal. He has two children, he reminded us. “My daughter is almost 18. I don’t want to imagine, but if something had happened to my daughter, I would not have been satisfied if the attack had been repelled and the soldiers had run away,” he said. “I would have looked for these people and I would have found them. And then I would feel victory.”
What would he have done when he found them?
“I don’t know. Everything.”
Then, as if remembering the role history has given him, as an avatar of democratic civilization confronting the cruelty of a lawless regime, he became reflective. “You realize that you want to be a member of a civilized society, you have to calm down, because the law decides everything.”
But he feels, viscerally, what so many Ukrainians feel. “There will be no complete victory for people who lost their children, relatives, husbands, wives, parents. That’s what I mean,” he said. “They will not feel the victory, even when our territories are liberated.”
Peter Pomerantsev contributed additional reporting.
The Atlantic · by Anne Applebaum, Jeffrey Goldberg · April 15, 2022
13. The Lessons of Ukraine for Taiwan—and the U.S.
What is often left out of these discussions and hopefully something that will be a lesson from Ukraine, is the importance of the potential for unconventional deterrence (keeping in mind "deterrence works until it doesn't," Sir Lawrence Freedman) and the development of resistance and resilience among the population. This should be one of the recommendations made to the Taiwan leaders for effective employment of its own Special Forces.
The Lessons of Ukraine for Taiwan—and the U.S.
The policy of “strategic ambiguity” with respect to the defense of Taiwan is played out.
thebulwark.com · by Eric S. Edelman and Franklin C. Miller · April 15, 2022
Although Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO has been discussed for more than a decade and half, it is not a member—and so the alliance is not committed to defend it, nor to attempt to deter attacks against it. (Indeed, a vote over whether to deter an attack against Ukraine would likely have splintered the alliance.) Vladimir Putin took full advantage of Ukraine’s living in this gray zone where its frequently voiced aspirations for NATO membership are not matched by a security guarantee. Still, after Russia’s invasion began, NATO’s guilty conscience prompted decisions to funnel arms and equipment into the beleaguered country; the Western anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems reinforced and enhanced the ability of Ukrainian defenders to wreak enormous damage on the Russian aggressor, rendering combat ineffective some 15 to 20 percent, if not more, of the Russian battalion tactical groups devoted to the operation.
Today, despite the Ukrainians’ various successes against the invaders and despite Russia’s apparent withdrawal from the environs of Kyiv and northwestern Ukraine, the country’s situation remains parlous.
Podcast · April 15 2022
There’s a secret cabal that’s trying to control us — they’re lying to you, and…
There are many lessons for Americans to draw from all this. And there are lessons, too, for Xi Jinping and his colleagues among China’s top leadership. For starters, the United States does not have a formal treaty commitment to Taiwan’s defense, à la NATO’s famous Article 5. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this presents the Biden administration, as well as other Republican and Democratic leaders who profess to care about security in Northeast Asia, with a clear choice: If the United States is prepared to see Taiwan conquered by the People’s Liberation Army, the United States should retain its current policy. If, however, we are not prepared to see a thriving, prosperous democratic society swallowed up by a brutal autocratic regime led by messianic zealot, there are a series of steps the United States must take—and soon.
First, the Biden administration must recognize that the policy of “strategic ambiguity” with respect to the defense of Taiwan is played out. The Taiwan Relations Act (passed in 1979, with then-Senator Joe Biden voting affirmatively) contains four key provisions:
- “It is the policy of the United States . . . to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”
- “It is the policy of the United States . . . to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.”
- “It is the policy of the United States . . . to maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
- “The United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.”
In accordance with this act, the United States could declare that it will assist Taiwan to defend itself until such time as the government of Taiwan, in a free and fair and supervised election, decides on peaceful reunification with the PRC.
To support this, and to avoid the eleventh-hour supply of arms and equipment that characterized the desperate efforts to sustain the Ukrainian armed forces, the United States should begin immediately to send advanced anti-air, anti-missile, anti-armor, and anti-ship equipment to Taiwan, accompanied by American trainers and advisers.
Further, the United States should deploy contingents of air, ground, and naval forces to Taiwan and invite its Pacific allies to do the same, such deployments to remain until the issue of reunification with the PRC is peacefully resolved. The mission of those forces would be to contribute to deterring attack on the island as well as training Taiwan’s forces to become better able to defend their homeland.
A clearly stated U.S. commitment to vigorously defend Taiwan against efforts to forcibly incorporate it into the PRC against the will of the inhabitants and backed up by arms supplies and deployments of allied forces before the fact would serve to complicate any effort by Beijing to rattle the nuclear saber, establish an early blockade, and decapitate Taiwan’s leadership—all to reap the benefits of lessons learned from Russia’s recent experience in Ukraine.
Deterrence ahead of time could very well be the stitch that saves nine. Waiting until the crisis is at hand will be more expensive and infinitely more dangerous for Taiwan, for regional security in the Indo-Pacific, and for U.S. national interests.
thebulwark.com · by Eric S. Edelman and Franklin C. Miller · April 15, 2022
14. Ukraine braces for a ‘knife fight’ in the Donbas
Also in this article NATO response, Russian attitudes, and war crimes.
Excerpts:
It will be a “knife fight”, writes Frank Ledwidge, an expert in military strategy, conducted around salients, or geographic and strategic “bulges” in which Ukrainian forces risk being caught and cut off. Ledwidge predicts the next phase will be bloody and protracted, more like the maneuver battles of the second world war than the fighting that has taken place up until now.
Fighting in the Donbas since 2014 has – on the Russian side at least – involved pro-Moscow separatist militias. Militia fighters – not part of a country’s official armed forces, but often state-funded and trained – are becoming increasingly common in modern warfare. Both sides are using militias in Ukraine to boost their military capacity.
Dale Pankhurst, whose research takes in the use of non-government armed groups, is concerned that away from major cities such as Kiev and Kharkiv, central control of these militias may become more tenuous. He points to human rights abuses already committed in the Donbas region over the past eight years and fears this aspect of the war may intensify.
Ukraine braces for a ‘knife fight’ in the Donbas
Battle for the Donbas region will be different than the urban warfare seen so far in the Ukraine war
As forecast, the focus of hostilities in Ukraine has shifted away from Kiev and the north towards the south and east of the country where Russia is expected to launch an offensive any day now.
In addition to the siege of the port city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian marines are reported to have surrendered in large numbers this week, people in the eastern region of Donbas are bracing for a major attack.
The battle for the Donbas region will be different in character from the urban warfare seen so far in the war in Ukraine. The area has seen fighting on and off since 2014 with more than 13,000 people killed, despite efforts to reach a negotiated settlement. Now the fighting is forecast to be fiercer than ever.
It will be a “knife fight”, writes Frank Ledwidge, an expert in military strategy, conducted around salients, or geographic and strategic “bulges” in which Ukrainian forces risk being caught and cut off. Ledwidge predicts the next phase will be bloody and protracted, more like the maneuver battles of the second world war than the fighting that has taken place up until now.
Fighting in the Donbas since 2014 has – on the Russian side at least – involved pro-Moscow separatist militias. Militia fighters – not part of a country’s official armed forces, but often state-funded and trained – are becoming increasingly common in modern warfare. Both sides are using militias in Ukraine to boost their military capacity.
Dale Pankhurst, whose research takes in the use of non-government armed groups, is concerned that away from major cities such as Kiev and Kharkiv, central control of these militias may become more tenuous. He points to human rights abuses already committed in the Donbas region over the past eight years and fears this aspect of the war may intensify.
NATO prepares
Next month, meanwhile, NATO will hold the Defender Europe 22 exercises across eastern Europe and the Baltic States. This is designed to test the US military’s ability to rapidly deploy a large, combat-credible force of soldiers and equipment from the US to Europe.
If this sounds as if it was tailor-made to respond to the situation in Ukraine and the threat of escalation, it isn’t, writes Kenton White, a lecturer in strategic studies and Nato expert. Nato holds regular exercises and these have been planned for some time. The thing to watch, writes White, is whether – and how many – US troops remain in Europe afterwards.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg gives a press conference during a NATO summit at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels on June 14, 2021. Photo: AFP / Olivier Hoslet
NATO looks set to become bigger in the coming months. Sweden and Finland are both reportedly discussing how to fast-track applications to join the alliance as a result of the conflict in Ukraine and what they see as a growing threat to security in their region.
But Caroline Kennedy-Pipe and Afzal Ashraf believe that this move could add risk to an already perilous security situation in Europe. If Ukraine’s pivot to the west is partly behind Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, they write, the prospect of an ever-larger NATO on Russia’s doorstep could make for a more dangerous situation than ever.
Putin’s Russia
Much has been written about the narrative available to ordinary Russians watching the “military operation” in the state-managed news bulletins or reading about it in the country’s no-longer independent press.
Many have little choice but to accept at face value the misinformation coming out of the Kremlin about their military’s conduct of the war – after all, the penalty for even calling the conflict a “war” is harsh.
But to Western ears these excuses ring hollow. Few believe the Kremlin’s insistence that the Ukraine military has been shelling its own hospitals and residential neighborhoods or staging atrocities such as the ones discovered at Bucha and elsewhere over the past fortnight as Russian troops have retreated.
The Russian language has a word for such apparently lame excuses: “Vranyo.” As linguist Neil Bermel explains, this is when someone tells a barefaced lie that they don’t expect anyone to believe. As one wag puts it:
You know I’m lying, and I know that you know, and you know that I know that you know, but I go ahead with a straight face, and you nod seriously and take notes.
And, just maybe, Putin and his propagandists are telling an increasing number of Russians what they want to believe. Since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, indulging in a blaze of nationalism as it did so, growing numbers of Russians have said they identify more with the Soviet Union than with Russia.
Neil Whitehead and Paul Chaisty, both experts in Russian politics and society, have been tracking attitudes towards Russian national identity and have found that this is mainly about cultural nostalgia and a hankering after the old Soviet welfare state, rather than a reflection of a dream about a renewed Soviet empire.
War crimes
And with the discovery of what appear to be war crimes in areas that the Russian military has been forced to relinquish, as well as a growing body of testimony describing atrocities committed by Russian troops, the clamor for the culprits – and the people who command them – to face justice becomes ever louder.
The US president, Joe Biden, has gone as far as to call what has taken place in parts of Ukraine a “genocide”, which is considered to be the most serious crime investigated by the International Criminal Court.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky – who also refers to what has taken place in his country as genocide, has announced he will set up a “special mechanism of justice in Ukraine” to try war crimes. International legal experts Kathryn Allinson and Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne consider what this special mechanism might look like.
15. Understanding global disinformation and information operations
Excerpt:
The Understanding Global Disinformation and Information Operations website provides a visual breakdown of the publicly available data from state-linked information operations on social media. ASPI’s information operations and disinformation team has analysed each of the datasets in Twitter’s information operations archive to provide a longitudinal analysis of how each country’s willingness, capability and intent has evolved over time.
On a side note when the new Joint Doctrine JP JP-3-04 information operations will be replaced with operations in the information environment.
Information Operations JP 3-04: “Upon approval of this publication, this term and its definition will be removed from the DOD Dictionary.”
Operations in the Information Environment: JP 3-04: “Upon approval of this publication, this term and its definition will be added to the DOD Dictionary.”
Understanding global disinformation and information operations | The Strategist
A new website launched by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre is designed to identify nations using deception operations to manipulate potential adversaries, and their own populations.
The Understanding Global Disinformation and Information Operations website provides a visual breakdown of the publicly available data from state-linked information operations on social media. ASPI’s information operations and disinformation team has analysed each of the datasets in Twitter’s information operations archive to provide a longitudinal analysis of how each country’s willingness, capability and intent has evolved over time.
Our analysis demonstrates that there’s a proliferation of state actors willing to deploy information operations targeting their own populations, as well as those of their adversaries. Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China and Venezuela are the most prolific perpetrators. By making these complex datasets available in accessible form, ASPI is broadening meaningful engagement on the challenge of state actor information operations and disinformation campaigns for policymakers, civil society and the international research community.
Since October 2018, Twitter has released the tweets, media and details of associated accounts that the social network believes were part of state-linked information operations. The datasets originated from 17 countries, including the usual suspects Russia, China and Iran, but also Armenia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Honduras, Indonesia, Serbia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Analysis of information operations that exploit social media as a vector has tended towards the examination of individual sets of takedown data, particularly those relating to high-profile significant state actors, such as Russia, China and Iran.
As a taste, between October 2018 and March 2021, Twitter removed eight networks it believed originated in Russia and were attributed to the Internet Research Agency and other Russian state actors. ASPI’s analysis of all Russia-linked operations found that mentions of the US dwarfed those of all other countries and that the most used hashtags were heavily focused on hot-button US political issues, including President Donald Trump’s ‘MAGA’ slogan, QAnon and anti-Islam sentiment.
US domestic politics wasn’t the only focus. Other narratives included efforts to undermine NATO to European audiences, slander Ukrainian leaders, promote Russian foreign and military policy in Syria, and discredit candidates in US and European democratic elections.
Between November 2019 and March 2021, Twitter removed seven networks it believed originated in Iran and were backed by or associated with the Iranian government. Given that Twitter is banned in Iran, the campaigns sought to influence international perceptions of Iran while stirring up political division and encouraging unrest in adversary states. These networks also amplified content relating to social divisions in the US, such as the Black Lives Matter movement.
Unlike Russia-linked messaging—which was overwhelmingly focused on the US—Iran-linked messaging referenced countries in Iran’s region, including Pakistan, Palestine, Israel and Syria.
The network’s fake personas were sometimes convincing, well-rounded characters, giving the appearance of locals concerned with particular political issues. Other assets may have been part of an influence-for-hire network. Some of those networks benefited from Iran’s sophisticated fake-news and state-media apparatus.
Between September 2019 and July 2020, as the pro-democracy movement erupted on the streets of Hong Kong, Twitter removed three networks of accounts that originated within China, which is notable, given that the platform is blocked to most of the population there. In terms of geographical mentions, Hong Kong dominated the data compared with mentions of China itself and the US.
The networks disclosed in these datasets generally sought to influence the attitudes of Chinese diaspora communities and citizens overseas on domestic and foreign policy issues that were of concern to the Chinese Communist Party. Tweets contained text in both simplified Chinese characters, which are used by Chinese citizens originating from the Chinese mainland, and traditional Chinese characters, which are used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Notably, the posting pattern for the China-origin tweets almost perfectly mapped to Chinese working hours, with a peak of posting at 10 am and a lunch break around noon.
Few research entities—internationally, let alone in the Indo-Pacific—have the technical and analytical capability to investigate more complex takedown datasets, hindering the international community’s capacity to understand the tactics and tradecraft of actors willing to mobilise strategic deception as a tool of statecraft. Yet traits within this data help us determine who was responsible, who the targets were, the narratives propagated and the patterns of coordination and inauthentic behaviour.
Twitter’s information operations archive now has sufficient longitudinal data for us to learn more about how actors behave over time. To that end, ASPI has built this unique website to analyse and compare all the data from the archive at the same time. Policymakers and researchers can now consistently compare the activity, techniques and narratives across each operation, and compare what states do differently from each other and how their activities change over time.
Twitter has been perhaps the most forward-leaning entity in the social media industry in terms of its public engagement on information operations. No other company has consistently provided complete state-actor-linked information operations datasets for public scrutiny. Twitter’s recent signalling that it will discontinue the information operations archive makes ASPI’s longitudinal analysis of these datasets all the more pertinent.
16. The PsyOps war comes to west Ukraine
Ukraine and Hungary.
Excerpts:
“The problem is,” he added, “I think that both sides, Kyiv and Budapest, have no real capacity or expertise to manage this tension. Moreover, many from both sides are interested in maintaining this tension.” For Orbán, it was a useful card to use while conferring with Trump on applying pressure on Ukraine, he told me, and for Zelenskyy’s predecessor Poroshenko, Right-wing populism on the language question was also a useful political tool. “This is very irresponsible because when you use ethnicity, in the sense of political manipulation, it is like Pandora’s box. It can be very, very dangerous.”
At a time of existential threat for Ukraine, both capitals will need to work carefully together to defuse such points of tension. The Russian propaganda about secessionist sentiment in Zakarpattia may have little basis in reality — but for both Hungary and Ukraine, the escalating rhetoric may have very real consequences.
The PsyOps war comes to west Ukraine
Propaganda networks want to split Transcarpathia
Zakarpattia, Ukraine
Far from the war, in Ukraine’s sleepy, western city of Uzhhorod, whose crumbling pastel-coloured Habsburg-era buildings straddle the river Uzh, government officials are concerned about the growing tension with Hungary. Despite Hungary’s voting in favour of EU sanctions against Russia, its supply of major humanitarian support to western Ukraine, and its hosting of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees, the country’s refusal to supply weapons or use its territory as a transit point for them has won the enmity of the Zelenskyy administration, which has singled it out for allegedly “helping Putin”.
At his recent Budapest victory speech, the re-elected Viktor Orbán drew one of the biggest laughs from the jubilant crowd when, along with Brussels, George Soros and the international NGO lobby, he listed Zelenskyy as one of his defeated foes. But that wasn’t his only reference to Ukraine: Orbán also had a message for the country’s ethnic Hungarian minority. He offered “a special greeting to the Hungarians of Transcarpathia: I tell them not to grieve, to hold on — the Mother country is with them”.
The timing, while the world was watching the uncovering of Russian war crimes in Bucha, was not opportune. But the delicate situation of the roughly 150,000 ethnic Hungarians of Ukraine’s western Zakarpattia province — Transcarpathia, to Hungarians — has long been a source of tension between the two countries. Now the current war has heightened Ukrainian anxieties of potential Hungarian irredentism, to the delight of Russian propagandists.
In a controversial Facebook post on 24 March, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereschuk accused Orbán of being reluctant to deepen sanctions because Putin had secretly promised him to “hand back Transcarpathia” in the event of a Ukrainian defeat, a claim immediately denounced by Hungary’s official spokesman Zoltan Kovacs as “not only groundless but also insane”.
In his office in Budapest’s Matthias Corvinus Collegium, surrounded by plaques and photographs gifted by Ukrainian military units he had met on research trips, Attila Demko, former head of planning for Hungary’s Ministry of Defence, gave me his opinion on Vereschuk’s comments. “I think it’s very unwise,” he said, “I think she believes Russian propaganda. Russian propaganda wants to split Nato. They want to have the Ukrainians and Hungarians debating… so maybe she made a huge mistake with repeating Russian propaganda.”
Russian propaganda networks in both Ukraine and Hungary have long stressed the purported desire of Ukraine’s ethnic Hungarians to be reunited with their kin over the western border, and Russian intelligence networks have tried to use the Hungarian question to destabilise Ukraine. A recent campaign of sending threatening SMS messages to ethnic Hungarians was undoubtedly a Russian intelligence effort, Demko assured me, just as the much-publicised 2018 petrol bomb attack on a Hungarian cultural centre in Uzhhorod (Ungvár to Hungarians) turned out to be the work of Polish ultranationalists in the employ of a Russian agent, who died “of a heart attack, aged 45” shortly after his escape to Moscow.
But in reality, there’s no desire “beyond some very narrow nationalist circles” for territorial reconquest, Demko told me, “and anyway, it’s impossible in today’s Europe”. The Hungarian portion of Zakarpattia’s population has dwindled over the decades so that they now make up only 12% of the region’s population. That said, the region’s Hungarian minority are an “important historic community”, he added, reminding me that “this land, part of Ukraine, was part of Hungary until 1945 for 1000 years,” when it was annexed by first Czechoslovakia and then the Soviet Union after a brief wartime interlude of Hungarian rule, “against the will of the local population”.
“There was no vote,” he emphasised, “There was no self-determination. It was war, and it was taken in war, so the local Hungarians still watch Hungarian TV, still use the Hungarian timezone, still speak much better Hungarian than Ukrainian, still feel themselves Hungarian. Ukrainians cannot change it without forcing them.”
Whether or not Ukrainian-Hungarians are being forced to change their sense of national identity is one of the main issues of contention between the two countries: in the eyes of many Hungarians, including the current government, the rise of Ukrainian nation-building efforts since the war with Russia began in 2014 has had the unfortunate effect of placing undue pressure on them to speak Ukrainian in place of their native Hungarian.
Was this an unintended consequence of attempting to reinforce a sense of Ukrainian-ness under Russian threat, I asked Balász Orbán, Viktor Orbán’s strategic advisor? “Probably unintended,” he replied, “I understand that their intention wasn’t to violate the rights of the Hungarians. Rather, they wanted to focus on Russia.” But Ukraine’s adoption under Zelenskyy’s predecessor, the Right-wing populist former president Petro Poroshenko, of new educational and language laws promoting the use of Ukrainian in daily life affected the right of ethnic Hungarians “to be educated in their mother language and to use their mother language in public life,” he told me. “That’s a serious violation.”
***
In the Zakarpattia Oblast administration building, bored soldiers standing behind sandbag gun emplacements guard the cavernous marble staircases. Seated at a wide table, Igor Shynkriuk, Deputy Chief of the Zakarpattia administration greeted me. A former Lieutenant-colonel of Special Forces fighting Russian-backed separatists in Donbass, the muscular, buzzcutted Shynkriuk is a commanding presence in his black jacket, a holstered pistol at his waist. As of two years ago, he corrected me, Ukraine no longer refers to a Hungarian minority, only Ukrainian-Hungarians, to prevent Russian attempts at destabilisation, “because firstly, they are Ukrainian, secondly Hungarian”.
“For Ukrainians, they’re Ukrainian citizens, our friends. But for the Russian Federation, [they’re] the main thing of destabilisation here,” he told me. Groups of Russian saboteurs aiming to destabilise the ethnically mixed region had already been rounded up by local counterintelligence agents, he told me, as well as the Russian botnets in Odessa who sent the intimidating SMS messages to ethnic Hungarians. Furthermore, cooperation with Hungary on humanitarian aid was good: “perfect for now: that’s why we are actually very thankful.”
When I asked Shynkriuk about the 2017 language law, he replied “Shit”, before leaning back in his chair and exhaling slowly. The issue, he emphasised, was that ethnic Hungarians in Ukraine were going through the school system in Hungarian and coming out at the end entirely unable to speak Ukrainian. “I’m the person responsible for education in the region,” he told me, and in the end of year-ranking tables, “Transcarpathia is always in the last place, and I’ll tell you why: it’s the language… If they don’t understand the exams, how can they can pass them?”
What about the laws promoting the use of Ukrainian in public spaces, which Hungarian officials claimed caused ethnic Hungarians to feel wary of using their native language in everyday life? “No, that’s absolutely not true. That’s ridiculous,” he laughed. We were speaking in English now, he observed, “Do you see someone just running through the door and just kicking me out? That’s bullshit. Those claims about the language are the same useful [propaganda] for the Russians. Ukrainian-Hungarians know very well what exactly is happening, but I think it’s for after we win this war, when we’ve killed all those Russian orcs.”
The war beyond the mountains is yet to directly touch Zakarpattia — the nighttime air raid sirens are invariably false alarms, and it is the only region of Ukraine where volunteer checkpoints have not been set up along the roads. But a sense of emergency still lingers. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from deeper inside Ukraine have passed through on the way to Hungary and Slovakia, and thousands more have swelled Uzhhorod’s population, dependent on aid from local volunteers working from a converted wine cellar in the city centre.
Asking local ethnic Hungarian officials for their opinion was not an easy task. In the impoverished ethnic Hungarian village of Velyka Dobron, or Nagydobrony in Hungarian, the village mayor, seated in front of the Hungarian and Ukrainian flags inside a town hall, refused an interview, telling me that “that there’s a war on, I don’t want to cause problems”. Another village official, who had caused local controversy by playing both national anthems at official events, also turned down an interview, citing orders not to speak — he did not elaborate from whom. Local Hungarian teachers, cultural officials and political figures all declined, as did the Hungarian consulate in Uzhhorod, whose “security attaché” brushed away my questions with firmly polite refusals.
Talking to ordinary ethnic Hungarians — in Russian, because none could speak Ukrainian — in Velyka Dobron’s muddy marketplace, where a trader’s horse and cart was tethered near the statue of a peasant woman braiding paprika, their complaint was not that they were forced to learn Ukrainian, but rather that it was taught as a native rather than a foreign language, making it harder to grasp. “Education was better in Soviet times,” Diana, a middle-aged market trader complained. “The Ministry of Education doesn’t care about our problems.” In broken Russian, a young waiter in a hotel decked out in folksy Magyar kitsch told me that young ethnic Hungarian males with dual nationality weren’t permitted to leave the country, but neither did they want to join the army because they couldn’t understand orders in Ukrainian.
Certainly, local expressions of Hungarian identity were not being suppressed in Zakarpattia: in Velyka Dobron, a war memorial to the Hungarian Honvéd army of the First World War was bedecked in red-white-and-green wreaths to the glorious dead. In the largely Hungarian town of Berehove — Beregszász in Hungarian — where Hungarian was an official language, the public spaces seemed more intensely Hungarian than anywhere in Hungary, with bronze statues to national saints, kings and poets on every corner, and the Magyar tricolour flying from every official building, even as electronic billboards blasted out patriotic Ukrainian techno music over footage from the front.
Driving into the wooded foothills of the Carpathians, I left behind the main roads studded with billboards of the Virgin Mary protecting Ukraine and exhortations to join the Territorial Defence Forces and entered a tucked-away region of single-storey cottages protected by honking geese, where road signs announce ethnic Hungarian villages in ancient Magyar runes. Interrupting his lunch, I spoke to the 74-year-old farmer and winemaker Sándor Nagy, who gave me homemade cheese and samples of his latest vintage while unfurling a map of Greater Hungary. “Look at this map. It is Greater Hungary, former Hungary, and now it’s like this. It is our land, it is not just my own idea,” he told me. “We were born here, we want to speak Hungarian, say hello to each other, those who don’t want it can go to Hell, I don’t care!”
Like other ethnic Hungarians, Nagy was not impressed with the recent educational reforms, telling me: “They want everybody to speak Ukrainian, but they are so stupid they cannot teach Ukrainian in a proper way. They give literature to the first three years, but not phrases like “Give me, please, bread”, “give me, please, a glass of wine” — but instead texts from writers from 300 years ago. It’s not education, it’s stupidity.” As for the mood in the village: “We don’t care. Leave us alone. Even if Tartars come, French or even Putin, we don’t care. Let us live our peaceful life, here where we were born.”
***
In so far as a conflict between the Ukrainian and Hungarian states exists in Transcarpathia, the dividing line seems to be more age and class than solely ethnicity, with older, Hungarian-speaking rural populations looking towards Hungary and middle-class urbanites content with their dual identity. In a hipster bar in a converted Soviet bomb shelter in Uzhhorod, the local ethnic Hungarian writer Bandy Sholtes unzipped his rollneck cardigan to show me his “Russian Warship: Go Fuck Yourself” t-shirt, ignoring the air raid siren going off around us in favour of his beer — it was just another false alarm.
A bohemian, cosmopolitan figure, faintly scented with the fruit moonshine he was transporting to friends in Odessa, Sholtes told me such ethnic questions were an irrelevance in this preserved corner of Habsburg Mitteleuropa: “My grandmother’s grandfathers were born in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Then they were citizens of Czechoslovakia and then Hungary and they died Ukrainian citizens. And, you know, this region was like this, changing citizenships and never moving anywhere and never emigrating anywhere. It’s quite unique in Europe.” A fierce Ukrainian patriot, who had taken part in the Maidan revolution, Sholtes was not happy to see his dwindling community utilised in heated interstate rhetoric: “I think the situation is very hard because after our victory, I think we will have much to talk about with Hungary.”
If, as it seems, the issue is more the question of how Ukrainian is taught to Zakarpattia’s Hungarian minority, rather than it being taught at all, the dispute ought to be easily resolved. Yet in the current circumstances, with Ukraine struggling against an existential threat and wary of what it sees as an unduly close relationship between Hungary and Russia, small problems can easily spiral into a broader crisis. On the diplomatic level, relations are already deteriorating: last Wednesday, Hungary summoned the Ukrainian ambassador to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a dressing down over what Fidesz viewed as Ukrainian interference in Hungary’s election, telling him “it is time for the Ukrainian leaders to stop insulting Hungary and to take note of the will of the Hungarian people”. The risk is that in such a tense climate, minor disagreements between the two capitals which could otherwise be easily resolved may be inflated out of all proportion.
“I can’t say that this legislation is perfect,” the Ukrainian political analyst Dmytro Tuzhanskyi, director of the Institute for Central European Strategy told me at a cafe underneath Budapest’s towering Basilica. “So many gaps and shortcomings are in this legislation, especially regarding national minorities, where it’s always a sensitive question.” But the Hungarian rhetoric was overblown, he assured me: “they are talking about this law like it means closing of Hungarian schools, being forbidden to speak in Hungarian, forbidden to pray in Hungarian? And this is, you know, insane.”
“The problem is,” he added, “I think that both sides, Kyiv and Budapest, have no real capacity or expertise to manage this tension. Moreover, many from both sides are interested in maintaining this tension.” For Orbán, it was a useful card to use while conferring with Trump on applying pressure on Ukraine, he told me, and for Zelenskyy’s predecessor Poroshenko, Right-wing populism on the language question was also a useful political tool. “This is very irresponsible because when you use ethnicity, in the sense of political manipulation, it is like Pandora’s box. It can be very, very dangerous.”
At a time of existential threat for Ukraine, both capitals will need to work carefully together to defuse such points of tension. The Russian propaganda about secessionist sentiment in Zakarpattia may have little basis in reality — but for both Hungary and Ukraine, the escalating rhetoric may have very real consequences.
17. ‘Neptune’ missile strike shows strength of Ukraine’s homegrown weapons
Ukraine is far from a helpless country in the face of the Russian onslaught. And this is all the more reason to provide them all the support they need to help themselves decisively defeat the Russians. They are making the sacrifices and using their own indigenous weapons to defend themselves. But they need more. And we should do what is necessary for them to be victorious. Let's reinforce success.
‘Neptune’ missile strike shows strength of Ukraine’s homegrown weapons
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/15/neptune-ukraine-moskva/?utm
Soon after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a Ukrainian defense firm used an arms show in Kyiv to unveil its latest project: an anti-ship cruise missile it called “Neptune.”
The new missile drew little attention at the time. But now it is in the spotlight after a U.S. defense official said Ukrainian forces used Neptune missiles to strike and sink Russia’s flagship Moskva war vessel in the Black Sea.
The strike on Wednesday marked a major boost for Ukraine — not only for its war effort but also for the homegrown arms industry, even as it relies on weapons donated by Western allies.
“For the Ukrainians, if they were able to sink this ship or damage it with their own Neptune missiles, that’s a point of pride, first, and a useful military capability in that they will be able to keep the Russian fleet at bay,” said Mark Cancian, senior adviser for the international security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, foreign-made weapons have poured into Ukraine. Among them are anti-armor weapons produced in the United States, small arms manufactured in Europe and even Russian-designed antiaircraft systems.
But Ukraine is a significant arms exporter itself, with a legacy of building missiles and rockets that goes back deep into the Soviet era.
Russia was once a key export market for those weapons: Between 2016 and 2020, 1 in 5 Ukrainian arms exports went to Ukraine’s larger neighbor, according to tracking from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
But in recent years, Ukrainian weapons have also been developed to fight against Russian forces.
Ukraine’s military said its forces had fired Neptune anti-ship missiles at the Moskva, damaging it and causing it to sink Thursday. A senior U.S. defense official said Friday that two Neptune missiles had struck the ship.
Moscow said only that a fire onboard caused ammunition stocks to detonate, prompting an evacuation of the crew. The ship later sank because of poor weather while being towed to port, Russia said.
On Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it struck the Vizar factory on the edge of the Ukrainian capital. Ukraine’s state weapons manufacturer, Ukroboronprom, said in a statement on its website that the Vizar factory was involved in the production of both Neptune missiles and Alder precision-guided rockets.
“For the first time, a warship was destroyed by an anti-ship missile made entirely in Ukraine,” Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Ukraine, wrote on Twitter.
Kaleniuk, a prominent activist on social media, said the reported success of the strike showed Ukraine could handle more technologically advanced weapons supplied by NATO countries.
The Neptune was in development before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but the territory’s capture helped spur the missile’s production. The peninsula houses Ukraine’s main navy base and the Soviet-era coastal defense systems that had once protected the country from attack along the Black Sea.
The R-360 Neptune is itself based on an old Soviet cruise missile called the Kh-35, which had been produced in the Ukrainian town of Kharkiv. The company that developed Neptune, Luch Design Bureau, was founded in 1965 and had a long history of designing Soviet missiles.
If Neptune missiles were fired at the Moskva, it would mark the first time that the weapon was used in practice, military experts say. The incident also suggests that the cruise missile, which has a stated range of about 200 miles, can evade missile defense systems such as those onboard the Russian ship.
The ship was fitted with long-range radar and an S-300 air-defense system, designed to provide protection not only for itself but the rest of the Russian fleet. Accounts from Ukrainian officials suggest that an aerial drone was used to distract the defense systems during the attack.
Ukrainian officials said last year that four countries had expressed interest in importing Neptune missile systems for their own use, with Indonesia among those who may receive the first shipment.
But there are also worries that Ukraine doesn’t have enough weapons at home.
In an interview last year, Luch Design Bureau director Oleg Korostelov said that “due to lack of funding,” his company would only be able to supply up to 800 of the roughly 2,000 missiles requested by the Ukrainian military.
“Unfortunately, our level of security is low,” he said when asked if Ukraine was prepared to defend itself against a full-scale invasion.
18. Removing Russia from the U.N. Security Council is a punishment that would matter | Column
A radical change to the world order.
Robert Bruce Adolph
Removing Russia from the U.N. Security Council is a punishment that would matter | Column
This would be a well-deserved punishment that will sting longer than current sanctions ever could.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin [ EVGENY BIYATOV | AP ]
Published Earlier today
The United Nations just voted Russia off the Human Rights Council. Embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants much more from the international body, and who can blame him? Serious war crimes have been committed by the Moscow regime.
Robert Bruce Adolph is a former US Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel and United Nations Chief Security Advisor, who holds graduate degrees in both international affairs and national security studies and strategy. His previously published works have appeared in nearly every US military publication of note. Most recently, he penned the commentary series “Dispatch from Rome” for the Military Times. Adolph also recently published the book entitled “Surviving the United Nations: The Unexpected Challenge.” [ Courtesy of Robert Adolph ]
The U.S. and E.U. have decided to add more layers of increasingly harsh economic and financial sanctions against Russia and its leadership — official and unofficial — following the brutal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Previous sanctions have not worked. New sanctions will probably not work either, at least not in the near term. Short of combat, how can the international community further punish the regime in Moscow in ways that will have genuine impact? It can remove Russia from its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
Why does Vladimir Putin enjoy a seat? There is only one answer: The late Soviet Union possessed a huge arsenal of atomic weapons. Although Russia contains a significant natural resource base, the nation is not a global leader in technology, innovation, finance, manufacture or any other commercial or financial enterprise. Russia is by most accounts a massively under-developed kleptocracy.
Reckless dictators like Putin, no matter how many nuclear missiles they possess, should be excluded from the globe’s most exclusive nation-state club. Permanent Security Council members that violate international law and norms of conduct by invading another member state without just cause should be expelled from what today is called “The Big Five” — the U.S., U.K., France, China and Russia.
Vladimir Putin is all about symbolism and ego. He demands attention, while hoping to command respect. His photo-shopped chauvinism and machismo serve as proof of his fears. Removing Russia from the U.N. Security Council will send a powerful symbolic message to a world tired of a steady diet of political-diplomatic deadlock within the U.N.’s headquarters in Manhattan. Putin has repetitively wielded veto power in Security Council meetings in his own self-interest — an absurd travesty that must cease.
This is a well-deserved punishment that will sting longer than current sanctions ever could. Russia’s ejection would be no easy task within the U.N.’s often-fractious General Assembly. But the effort would, in my estimation, be well worth the diplomatic heavy lift required. Even if the attempt failed, it would still be meaningful to a globe hungry for something resembling justice for the Ukrainian people.
The U.N. is supposed to stand for something good and noble. Removing Putin’s Russia from its permanent seat on the Security Council would go a long way toward making that mean something.
Robert Bruce Adolph, who served nearly two decades with the United Nations, is a retired senior Army Special Forces soldier, who holds graduate degrees in both National Security Studies and International Affairs. He is the author of his publisher’s number one best-selling book, “Surviving the United Nations: The Unexpected Challenge.”
V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
