Quotes of the Day:
“How can my pursuit of happiness work if yours is in the way? What am I willing to give up for you too to be free?—WYNTON MARSALIS
"Many a man thinks he is making something when he’s only changing things around."—ZORA NEALE HURSTON
-both of the above from The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War by Louis Menand
https://a.co/8YQHNDf
"To forbear is indeed an act of courage and not a symbol of cowardice. It takes great effort and resolution to endure pain and hardship. It requires tremendous confidence to bear insult and disgrace without a hint of retaliation or self-doubt."
- Master Hsing Yun
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 2 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. UKRAINE INVASION UPDATE 21
3. Ukraine War Update - April 1, 2022 | SOF News
4. Russians Likely to Encounter Growing Guerrilla Warfare in Ukraine
5. Ukraine War Is Being Watched From the Sky
6. ‘Tectonic shifts’: How Putin’s war will change the world
7. Evidence of War Crimes in Ukraine Mounts as Russians Retreat From Kyiv Area
8. Before the Ukrainians, It Was the Finns Who Kicked Russia’s Ass
9. Xi Jinping’s ‘Common Prosperity’ Was Everywhere, but China Backed Off
10. TikTok Brain Explained: Why Some Kids Seem Hooked on Social Video Feeds
11. Opinion | Ukraine Is the First Real World War
12. Opinion | Putin Is Losing in Ukraine. But He’s Winning in Russia.
13. The overstated danger of a peaking China
14. Chinese officials restrict the number of Uyghurs who can observe Ramadan
15. China 'launched huge cyber-attack' on Ukraine's military and nuclear infrastructure days before Russia invaded, Kyiv intelligence claims
16. War in real time: TikTok and Twitter stars document Russia's war in Ukraine
17. Pledge trap: How Duterte fell for China’s bait and switch
18. Peace in Ukraine will be elusive until one side makes a military breakthrough
19. ‘This Is True Barbarity’: Life and Death Under Russian Occupation
20. Palantir taps former Pentagon officials for new advisory board
21. Announcing the Establishment of SST’s Inaugural Advisory Board
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 2 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 2 (PUTIN'S WAR)
Mason Clark, George Barros, and Karolina Hird
April 2, 5:00 pm ET
Continuing Russian operations along their new main effort in eastern Ukraine made little progress on April 2, and Russian forces likely require some time to redeploy and integrate reinforcements from other axes. Ukrainian forces repelled likely large-scale Russian assaults in Donbas on April 2 and inflicted heavy casualties. Russian forces continued to capture territory in central Mariupol and will likely capture the city in the coming days. Russian units around Kyiv and in northeastern Ukraine continued to successfully withdraw into Belarus and Russia, and heavy mining in previously Russian-occupied areas is forcing Ukrainian forces to conduct slow clearing operations.
However, the Russian units withdrawn from northeastern Ukraine for redeployment to eastern Ukraine are heavily damaged. Russian forces likely require an extensive operational pause to refit existing units in Donbas, refit and redeploy reinforcements from other axes, and integrate these forces—pulled from several military districts that have not yet operated on a single axis—into a cohesive fighting force. We have observed no indicators of Russian plans to carry out such a pause, and Russian forces will likely fail to break through Ukrainian defenses if they continue to steadily funnel already damaged units into fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to capture territory in central Mariupol on April 2 and will likely capture the city within days.
- Ukrainian forces repelled several possibly large-scale Russian assaults in Donbas, claiming to destroy almost 70 Russian vehicles.
- Russian forces will likely require a lengthy operational pause to integrate reinforcements into existing force structures in eastern Ukraine and enable successful operations but appear unlikely to do so and will continue to bleed their forces in ineffective daily attacks.
- Russian forces in Izyum conducted an operational pause after successfully capturing the city on April 1 and will likely resume offensive operations to link up with Russian forces in Donbas in the coming days.
- Russia continued to withdraw forces from the Kyiv axis into Belarus and Russia. Ukrainian forces primarily conducted operations to sweep and clear previously Russian-occupied territory.
- Ukrainian forces likely repelled limited Russian attacks in Kherson Oblast.
- The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces have rendered two-thirds of the 75 Russian Battalion Tactical Groups it assesses have fought in Ukraine either temporarily or permanently combat ineffective.
The Ukrainian General Staff reported on April 2 that out of the 75 Russian Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) it assesses have participated in operations in Ukraine, 16 BTGs have been “completely destroyed” and 34 more are currently combat ineffective and recovering.[1] ISW cannot independently confirm these numbers, but Russian forces will be unlikely to be able to resume major operations if two-thirds of the BTGs committed to fighting to date have been rendered temporarily or permanently combat ineffective.
The Ukrainian General Staff stated on April 2 that Belarusian forces are increasing the pace of ongoing training, but that Ukraine does not observe any indicators of preparations for a Belarusian offensive.[2] Belarusian social media users observed Belarusian air defenses redeploying towards Luninets and Slutsk (in central Belarus) on April 2, but no Belarusian forces were observed moving near the Ukrainian border.[3] ISW assesses Belarusian President Lukashenko will continue to resist Russian efforts to involve Belarus in the war in Ukraine.
We do not report in detail on the deliberate Russian targeting of civilian infrastructure and attacks on unarmed civilians, which are 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—Kyiv and northeastern Ukraine; and
- Supporting effort 3—Southern axis.
Main effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate main effort – Mariupol (Russian objective: Capturing Mariupol and reducing Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued to capture territory in central Mariupol on April 2 and will likely capture the city within days.[4] ISW geolocated a video released by Russian forces inside the Ukrainian SBU headquarters in central Mariupol on April 2.[5] Russian forces have likely bisected or trisected Ukrainian defenders in the city.
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)
Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian assaults in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts on April 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported at 6:00 am local time on April 2 that Ukrainian forces repelled nine enemy attacks in the past 24 hours, destroying eight tanks, 44 armored vehicles, 16 unarmored vehicles, and 10 artillery systems.[6] These numbers are far higher than the daily totals of destroyed Russian vehicles claimed by Ukrainian forces, which are typically less than ten per day. Ukrainian forces may have repelled significant Russian assaults in the last 24 hours and inflicted heavy casualties, but ISW cannot independently confirm these claims. Russian offensive operations in Luhansk Oblast are centered on Popasna and Rubizhne, and operations in Donetsk Oblast are concentrated on Marinka, though Russian forces reportedly launched unsuccessful attacks all along the line of contact in the past 24 hours.[7]
Ukrainian forces continue to successfully repel Russian assaults in Donbas. Russian forces will likely require an operational pause to reconstitute their existing forces in the region and integrate reinforcements currently redeploying from northern Ukraine to mount an effective offensive. However, we have seen no indication of a Russian operational pause on the Donbas axis, and they appear likely to further bleed their forces with ineffective daily attacks.
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)
Russian forces in Izyum conducted an operational pause on April 2 after successfully capturing the city on April 1. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces regrouped and established a pontoon crossing in the past 24 hours in preparation for further offensive operations.[8] The General Staff additionally reported that elements of the 4th Tank Division (likely withdrawn from the Sumy axis in the past week) were observed in Belgorod, Russia, and elements of the 106th Guards Airborne Division deployed to Pisky, northeast of Izyum.[9] Russian forces will likely leverage these and other reinforcements to conduct offensive operations southeast from Izyum to link up with Russian forces in Donbas in the coming days.
Russian forces continued to shell Kharkiv and its outskirts but did not conduct any ground attacks. Local Kharkiv and Ukrainian military authorities reported that Russian forces shelled Saltivka, Pyatykhaty, Derhachi, and Oleksyivka in the past 24 hours and conducted an Iskander-M missile strike on an unspecified Ukrainian position in Kharkiv Oblast on April 1.[10]
Supporting Effort #2—Kyiv and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
Russia continued to withdraw combat elements from the northwestern Kyiv axis on April 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported at midnight local time on April 1 that elements of the 5th, 29th, and 35th Combined Arms Armies and the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade withdrew from positions northwest of Kyiv into Belarus for further redeployment.[11] Elements of the 39th Motor Rifle Brigade (of the 35th Combined Arms Army) and the 5th Tank Brigade (of the 36th Combined Arms Army) are screening the withdrawal of other Russian units to Belarus.[12]
Ukrainian forces likely made significant territorial gains on April 2 and undertook operations to secure previously Russian occupied territory. While Russian forces abandoned large amounts of military equipment in the withdrawal from Kyiv, they appear to have withdrawn a substantial portion of their (damaged) units on this front successfully.[13] Russian forces withdrew in good enough order to mine abandoned positions and infrastructure to slow Ukrainian units, which conducted operations to clear settlements in the Bucha, Vyshhorod, and Brovary districts on April 2.[14] Deputy Ukrainian Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated at 10:15 pm local time on April 2 that Ukrainian citizens should refrain from returning to their homes and that Ukrainian forces sought to ”identify and destroy” remaining Russian forces in Kyiv Oblast throughout the day.[15]
Russian forces east of Kyiv similarly withdrew into Belarus and Kursk Oblast, Russia, on April 2. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that elements of the 41st CAA continued to hold positions around Chernihiv city and screen withdrawing Russian forces.[16] Ukrainian forces continued to pursue Russian forces in Chernihiv Oblast on April 2, capturing Horodnia, Sloboda, Shestovytsya, and Novyi Bykiv in the past 24 hours.[17] Sumy regional authorities stated on April 2 that Russian forces in Konotop Rayon are maintaining a corridor through which equipment from Kyiv and Chernihiv is withdrawing to Russia, specifying that Russian forces are active in Bilopillya, Buryn, Putyvl, and Novoslobidske.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff stated at noon local time on April 2 that elements of Russia’s 2nd CAA withdrew from Brovary to Russia’s Kursk Oblast, likely through this corridor.[19]
Supporting Effort #3—Southern axis: (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
The Ukrainian General Staff reported at noon local time on April 2 that Russian forces conducted limited attacks “to reach the administrative borders of Kherson Oblast,” though ISW cannot independently confirm the extent and focus of these attacks.[20] Russian forces north of Kherson continued to shell Kryvyi Rih but did not conduct offensive operations toward the city.[21] Ukraine’s National Resistance Center and local social media users additionally reported that Russian forces in Enenhodar forcefully dispersed a protest on April 2.[22] Ukrainian protests and partisan actions in southern Ukraine continue to tie down Russian forces.
The Ukrainian General Staff additionally reported on April 2 that Russian forces in Transnistria, the illegally Russian-occupied strip of Moldova bordering Ukraine, began preparations for a demonstration of combat readiness and possible combat in Ukraine.[23] ISW cannot independently confirm this report, and Russian forces in Transnistria are highly unlikely to launch unsupported operations against Odesa. Russian forces may seek to fix Ukrainian forces in Odesa in place through the threat of an operation from Transnistria, but this remains a low risk.[24]
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces will likely capture Mariupol or force the city to capitulate within the coming days;
- Russian forces conducted an operational pause after capturing Izyum on April 1 and will likely leverage reinforcements redeployed from northern Ukraine to renew an offensive through Slovyansk to link up with Russian forces in Luhansk Oblast in the coming days;
- Russian forces withdrawn from the Kyiv axis are unlikely to provide meaningful combat power in eastern Ukraine in the coming days.
- Sustained Ukrainian counteroffensives northwest of Kyiv will likely push Russian forces out of Kyiv Oblast in the next 48 hours.
2. UKRAINE INVASION UPDATE 21
UKRAINE INVASION UPDATE 21
Ukraine Invasion Update
Institute for the Study of War, Russia Team
with the Critical Threats Project, AEI
April 2
The Ukraine Invasion Update is a semi-weekly synthetic product covering key political and rhetorical events related to renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine. This update covers events from March 30-April 1. 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 March 30-April 1
- Ongoing peace talks will likely protract, and the Kremlin is unlikely to withdraw its main demands in the near future.
- Russia and Ukraine may have reached initial agreements on Ukrainian “neutrality” in ongoing negotiations, but remain stalled on the Kremlin’s refusal to discuss Crimea and the Donbas.
- The Kremlin set additional conditions on March 30-April 1 for a chemical or biochemical false-flag attack in eastern Ukraine or Russia.
- Ongoing European efforts to find alternatives to Russian energy likely successfully undercut a Kremlin attempt to buttress the Russian economy by coercing Europe into buying Russian gas in rubles.
- Sustained Western military aid to Ukraine will help enable further Ukrainian counterattacks in the coming weeks.
Key Events March 30-April 1
Negotiations:
Ongoing peace talks will likely protract, though Russia and Ukraine may have reached initial agreements on Ukrainian “neutrality.” However, the Kremlin is unlikely to drop its maximalist demands—which are inadmissible to Kyiv—in the near term. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated on March 30 that the March 29 negotiations in Istanbul on March 30 did not result in "anything too promising or any breakthroughs.”[1] Lead Russian negotiator Vladimir Medinsky claimed on March 30 that Ukraine has stated its willingness to meet core Russian demands to end what the Kremlin claims is “the threat of creating a NATO bridgehead on Ukrainian territory” but clarified that only the “essence” of agreements was agreed on.[2] Smaller Russian and Ukrainian delegations arrived in Jerusalem, Israel, on March 30 for further negotiations.[3] Ukrainian and Russian negotiators resumed peace talks virtually on April 1 and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that Russia has not yet provided responses to Ukraine’s March 30 proposals.[4] Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the Kremlin is preparing a response to Ukraine’s March 30 proposals but did not provide a timeline for delivery.[5]
The Ukrainian government flatly denied Kremlin claims that Kyiv has agreed to Russian control over Crimea and Donbas. Lavrov falsely claimed on March 30 that "the issues of Crimea and Donbas have been finally resolved,” likely to maintain domestic support for the continued Russian military operation in Ukraine and to frame the operation as achieving its objectives.[6] Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko refuted Lavrov’s claims on March 30, asserting that Lavrov has an “erroneous understanding of the negotiation process” and that “the issues of Crimea and Donbas will finally be resolved after the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereignty over them.”[7] The Kremlin is unlikely to drop its territorial demands and Kyiv is unlikely to meet them.
Kyiv received initial positive rhetoric from several states on its demanded security guarantees in exchange for dropping its NATO aspiration, but the Kremlin is unlikely to accept any Western involvement in a possible peace deal. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey separately stated their willingness to act as security guarantors for Ukraine in principle on March 30 and 31, though all three states declined to comment on specifics.[8] Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova claimed on March 31 that the United States directly refused to give Ukraine security guarantees, citing US President Joe Biden’s assertion that the United States will not provide aid to Ukraine that would lead to direct US-Russia military conflict.[9]
Russian Domestic Opposition and Censorship:
N/A
Kremlin Narratives:
The Kremlin set additional conditions on March 30-April 1 for a chemical or biochemical false-flag attack in eastern Ukraine or Russia.
- Russian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Igor Konashenkov claimed on March 30 that Ukrainian forces “considered the possibility of using biological weapons against the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR)” with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).[10]
- Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces Head Igor Kirillov claimed on March 31 that Ukraine asked Bayraktar (the Turkish manufacturer of many of Ukraine’s UAVs) to equip Ukraine’s drones with an aerosol spraying mechanism for biological weapons in December 2021.[11]
- Russian State Duma officials convened a committee on March 31 to “investigate” Russia’s repeated and false allegations that US biolabs are participating in “the development of biological weapons components in the immediate vicinity of the territory of Russia.”[12]
- Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky told Russian state media on April 1 that Ukrainian forces “plan to blow up railway containers containing up to 800 tons of chlorine” in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and claimed that Russia is providing additional evidence of alleged Ukrainian biological weapons programs to the United Nations.[13]
ISW warned on March 9 that the Kremlin may conduct a chemical or radiological false-flag attack and blame Ukraine, the United States, or NATO.[14] Russian media would leverage a potential false flag attack to stoke domestic outrage and establish a pretext for further escalation in Ukraine or against NATO.
Russian Reactions to Sanctions:
Ongoing European efforts to find alternatives to Russian energy likely successfully undercut a Kremlin attempt to buttress the Russian economy by coercing Europe into only buying Russian gas in rubles. Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitri Medvedev stated on March 30 that sanctions against Russia may leave EU countries without gas, an implicit threat to cut off Russian energy exports to Europe.[15] Russian President Vladimir Putin decreed on March 31 that “unfriendly countries” purchasing Russian gas must have Russian bank accounts and pay in rubles.[16] The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Japan separately announced on March 31 and April 1 that they would not meet the Kremlin's demand to pay for gas in rubles, in effect calling the Kremlin's bluff.[17] Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov backtracked on April 1 that Russia will indefinitely delay implementing Putin‘s decree, claiming the procedure would be “a long and time-consuming process.”[18] Ongoing efforts by European and other states to reduce their reliance on Russian energy and preparations to ration existing energy reserves likely enabled them to refuse the Kremlin’s demand.[19]
Belarus:
N/A
Russian Occupation:
N/A
Drivers of Russian Threat Perceptions:
Sustained Western military aid to Ukraine will help enable further Ukrainian counterattacks in the coming weeks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reiterated claims on March 31 that the United States and NATO are responsible for the Ukraine crisis for “pumping Ukraine full of weapons” that threatened Russia and violated Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) decisions.[20] The United States and its allies continued to provide monetary and military supply assistance to Ukraine since ISW’s previous Invasion Update on March 29.[21]
- US Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby stated on March 29 that the United States is deploying six US Navy Growler electronic warfare aircraft, along with 240 US military personnel, to Germany to bolster electronic warfare capabilities on NATO’s eastern flank. Kirby noted that the aircraft will not be used in Ukraine.[22]
- US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved a deployment extension for the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier on March 31. The carrier’s aircraft have been flying in support of NATO security operations in Eastern Europe.[23]
- US President Joe Biden pledged $500 million in direct budgetary aid to Ukraine in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 30.[24]
- British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace reported on March 31 that the United Kingdom and its partners will send more lethal aid to Ukraine in the form of anti-aircraft assets, armored vehicles, and long-range artillery.[25]
- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on April 1 that Australia will send additional armored vehicles to Ukraine.[26]
Foreign Involvement:
N/A
[1] https://tass dot com/politics/1429697; https://nv dot ua/ukraine/politics/dmitriy-peskov-proryva-na-mirnyh-peregovorah-s-ukrainoy-poka-net-novosti-ukrainy-50229623.html; https://riafan dot ru/22594223-peskov_zayavil_chto_rossiya_ne_sobiraetsya_obsuzhdat_status_krima_na_peregovorah_s_ukrainoi
[7] https://nv dot ua/ukraine/politics/peregovory-s-rossiey-ukraina-namerena-vosstanovit-suverenitet-zayavili-v-mid-50229746.html; https://www.radiosvoboda dot org/a/news-mzs-slova-lavrova-pro-krym-i-donbas/31778250.html.
[9] https://iz dot ru/1313319/2022-03-31/zakharova-otcenila-otkaz-ssha-dat-garantii-bezopasnosti-ukraine.
[20] https://tass dot ru/politika/14235885; https://iz dot ru/1313342/2022-03-31/lavrov-nazval-politiku-ssha-i-nato-prichinoi-krizisa-na-ukraine
3. Ukraine War Update - April 1, 2022 | SOF News
Ukraine War Update - April 1, 2022 | SOF News
Curated news, analysis, and commentary about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, tactical situation on the ground, Ukrainian defense, and NATO. Additional topics include refugees, internally displaced personnel, humanitarian efforts, cyber, and information operations.
Map: Donbas Region of Ukraine, US Department of Defense, March 29, 2022. According to a recent Russian military press conference Russia has attained its immediate operational goals and will now focus on the ‘liberation’ of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. Read more on the Donbas region below.
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Russian Campaign Update
Donbas Region. The Russians have stated that it will now concentrate on the Donbas region of Ukraine as the main effort. This area is a historical, cultural, and economic region in southeastern Ukraine. Parts of Donbas are controlled by separatist groups who call themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Prior to the February 2022 invasion 2/3’s of the Donbas region was held by the Ukrainian government and 1/3 by the separatists.
Ground War. The Russians conducted offensive attacks in the Donbas region and in the seaside city of Mariupol. The Russians are withdrawing some of their units from their positions northwest of Kyiv and positioning in Belarus for refit and resupply. These units will likely cross the Belarus / Russia border and circle around through Russia to be inserted into the Donbas area of operations. There are new reports (early April 1) on social media that there was a large pullout of Russian troops from the north and west of Kyiv (unconfirmed).
Maritime Activities. Very little Russian naval activity has taken place for the last few days. The Black Sea has become a danger zone for shipping due to Russian warships firing on merchant ships and the presence of mines. Navigational warnings are out on the northwest, west, and southwest parts of the Black Sea.
Fight for the Skies. As of Thursday (Mar 31) the Russians have launched over 1,400 missiles into Ukraine. Neither Ukraine nor Russia have air superiority of the airspace above Ukraine. Both nations field sufficient anti-aircraft systems to make flights over Ukraine dangerous for pilots.
Where Not to Dig in Your Defensive Position. Russian troops in the vicinity of Chernobyl (think nuclear radiation contamination) have been moved from that area and are heading north into Belarus. Apparently they dug in defensive perimeters, disturbing radioactive soil, and now hundreds of Russian soldiers are sick.
Manning Shortage. National security experts often cite the vast resources of Russian manpower versus the finite numbers of the Ukrainian military. They then draw the conclusion that in a prolonged struggle, Russia will simply grind away at the Ukrainian army. After 2007, Russia made a stab at modernizing its military – buying equipment, but maintaining a much smaller army. Now it appears that Russia does not have enough soldiers – and that the differences between a conscript and contract soldier is very important within the context of the Ukraine conflict. “Is the Russian Military Running Out of Soldiers?”, National Interest, March 28, 2022.
Russian Conscripts to be Drafted. A decree was published by the Russian government on Monday (Mar 28) that stated Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 will be drafted from April 1 to July 15. The Russian Defense Ministry says conscripts won’t be sent to any ‘hot spots’. “Putin ordering draft of 135,000 amid difficulties in Ukraine war”, The Hill, March 31, 2022.
A Clueless Putin? Some news reports say that U.S. intelligence sources believe that President Putin has been misinformed about the invasion by his aides who are fearful of his reaction to the real situation on the ground in Ukraine. He apparently was unaware that ‘conscripts’ were deployed to and fighting in Ukraine. His aides have been giving him ‘good news’ instead of ‘bad news’ and during the weeks prior to the invasion provided an optimistic outcome to the invasion. He has responded with the firing of several intelligence and senior military officers.
Ukrainian Defense
The Ukrainian military conducted some local counterattacks in the Kyiv vicinity, in parts of northeastern Ukraine, and in the south. They seem to have the Russians on their back foot. Weapons from NATO and other countries continue to flow into Ukraine. The Ukrainians are holding onto the cities and key terrain in southern Ukraine along the coast of the Black Sea. The cities in this region face a ground force threat from the direction of Crimea as well as shelling and possible amphibious landings by Russian naval forces afloat in the Black Sea. Some social media accounts are reporting that Ukrainian helicopters crossed the Russian border and blew up a Russian fuel depot.
Tactical Situation
Kyiv. Russian forces were pushed north of the E-40 highway that runs east-west from Kyiv to western Ukraine. Some news reports say that the Hostomel airport northwest of the city is now in Ukrainian hands. About 20 per cent (and perhaps much more) of the Russian forces to the north and northwest of Kyiv are repositioning to Belarus. The capital city of Ukraine was considered the primary objective of the Russians and would have would allowed Russia to put in place its puppet government.
Mariupol. Located on the Sea of Azov, the coastal city of Mariupol is situated along the road network that would provide Russia with a land bridge between Russia and the Crimea. It has been a long slog for the Ukrainian defenders and horrific for its civilian residents. Most observers have been predicting the capture of Mariupol ‘in the next few days’ for the last few weeks. Over 100,000 residents await evacuation. There are accusations that the Russians are illegally deporting Mariupol residents to the Russian-occupied territories of Donetsk Oblast. Read more in “Voices from the siege of Mariupol”, The Washington Post, March 30, 2022.
Mykolayiv and Odessa. The Ukrainians are holding fast in Mykolayiv. Located on the west bank of the Dnieper River close to the coast of the Black Sea, Mykolayiv is a strategic objective for the Russians that is on the road to Odessa located further west along the coast of the Black Sea. Odessa is safe for the time being although it is getting shelled, especially in the neighborhoods along the shoreline. This is key terrain for the Russians. The capture of Mykolayiv and Odessa would pave the way for the Russians to control the entire shoreline of the Sea of Azov from the Donbas region all along the northern coastline of the Black Sea to the breakaway (Russian-held) Moldovan region of Transnistria. This would greatly enhance Russia’s strategic position in the Black Sea and reduce the economic power of Ukraine.
General Information
Negotiations. The talks continue. Various news and social media accounts say the two sides are getting closer to an agreement. Some observers say that this is just a ploy for Russia to look good in the international press while at the same time repositioning and refitting its troops for the next phase of the war.
A Possible Peace Deal? Conflict resolution isn’t just for wooly-headed idealists. Although the defeat of the Russian army, withdrawal of the Russian forces from all of Ukraine (including Crimea), and the replacement of Putin as the leader of Russia are all desired outcomes . . . it isn’t going to happen. Most all wars end via negotiations. And compromises must be made. “The Realist Case for a Ukraine Peace Deal”, Belfer Center Harvard University, March 29, 2022.
Video – Negotiating With Putin. A video compilation delivers highly relevant insights from Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Rex Tillerson on chatting with Putin. These former U.S. Secretaries of States provide some excellent advice on future negotiations with the Russians. Belfer Center, Harvard University, March 26, 2022, 55 minutes.
Russia and Nuclear Power Plants. Since the invasion on February 24 the Russians have seized two of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. The Chernobyl nuclear plant (closed 2000) was seized on the first day of the invasion. On March 4, the Russians attacked and captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. A recent report by the Congressional Research Service provides more details on the four nuclear power plants currently operating in Ukraine, reactor safety systems, reactor safety risks from Russian attacks, and the international response. Russian Military Actions at Ukraine’s Nuclear Power Plants, CRS IN11883, March 31, 2022, PDF, 4 pages.
Wheat and Ukraine. The ‘breadbasket of Europe’ will soon be trying to sow the soil at the same time it is fighting for its national survival. Planting season has arrived. But most of the country’s men are at war. Not only will this affect the supply of food over the next year for Ukrainians, but it will have a drastic effect in Africa and other parts of the world. “Ukraine’s other fight: Growing food for itself and the world”, AP News, March 29, 2022.
Military Trainers and Weapons
U.S. Vet Trains Ukrainians. For two weeks in March, Matt Gallagher – a U.S. war veteran and book author – trained Ukrainian civilians in the basics of urban combat in the city of Lviv, Ukraine. Here is his story. It is a good read. “Notes from Lviv”, Esquire, March 31, 2022.
California NG and Ukraine. The California National Guard has had a close working relationship with the Ukraine military and the Ukraine National Guard since 1993. Over the past 29 years the CA NG, as part of the State Partnership Program, has been paired with Ukraine – forming close partnerships between units and individuals that have lasted for decades. “Ukraine-California Ties Show Worth of National Guard Program”, The Sentinel, March 18, 2022.
US Not Training Ukrainians in Poland? The Department of Defense and Biden administration are taking extreme pains to ‘deny’ that the US is training Ukrainian troops in Poland. President Biden, during his visit to Poland last week, managed to confuse everyone when he indicated that American troops were training Ukrainian soldiers on Polish territory. Defense reporters are ‘digging into’ the story; perhaps wondering, if as these various weapons systems are handed off to the Ukrainians in various locations in southeast Poland that maybe ‘a little training’ might be taking place. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, has been insisting that any conversations or discussions about the weapons and material being handed to Ukrainians are not “training in the classic sense”. “US Says It’s Just Hanging Out with Ukrainian Soldiers While Giving Them Weapons, Not Training Them”, Vice News, March 30, 2022.
Javelin Missiles. One of the many factors for the ability of the Ukrainians to hold off a larger invading army with lots of tanks are the use of the Javelin anti-tank missiles. The U.S. has been providing the Javelins for several years. Read about the capabilities of this anti-tank weapon and how the Ukrainians are employing it on the battlefield. “DEEP DIVE: The U.S. Military Program to Arm Ukraine with Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles”, The Sentinel, March 2, 2022.
Bushmaster Troop Carriers. It appears that Australia will soon be helping out Ukraine with some armored vehicles. The Australian designed and built Bushmaster will likely be transported by C-17s in a matter of weeks. The vehicles are highly mobile and will safeguard its occupants against mines, IEDs, small arms, artillery blasts, and fragmentation. The Australians have about 1,000 Bushmasters in their inventory. some are in service with the UK Special Air Service, The Netherlands, New Zealand, and other nations. Could Australia’s Abrams tanks be next? “Australia to send Bushmaster armoured vehicles to Ukraine”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, April 1, 2022.
Cyber and Information Operations
Ukraine’s Internet – Still Working. Constant attention by telecom workers and exaggerated assumptions about Russia’s cyber capabilities has proved some cyber experts wrong. Many thought that Russia would interrupt Ukraine’s use of the internet, but it hasn’t happened. Although a decline in traffic has taken place, messages on social media and other means are getting out to the rest of the world. That is helping Ukraine drive the narrative about Putin’s War. In addition, essential services are still up and running as well as the cellular phone service. Read more in “How Ukraine’s Internet is still working despite Russian bombs and cyberattacks“, The Washington Post, March 29, 2022.
World Response
Spies Sent Home. A number of European countries have sent Russian ‘diplomats’ home. Many of them are probably up to no good – conducting intelligence gathering missions. Several nations expelled Russians on Monday (Mar 28) and Tuesday (Mar 29). In previous days, other nations have done the same. “Europeans expel dozens of Russian envoys to combat espionage”, AP News, March 29, 2022.
U.S. Forces to Remain – For a While. The 82nd Airborne Division elements (about a brigade), air units, and others (totaling about 20,000) sent in February and March will likely remain there for a while. Most are now in the frontline NATO states of the Baltic republics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. The USS Harry S. Truman carrier Strike Group will remain in the Mediterranean Sea for an indefinite period as well. The United States continues to provide Ukraine with a mixture of weapons systems, body armor, food, helmets, small arms, ammunition, and medical supplies. The 100 Switchblade drones that has captured the world’s attention have yet to reach Ukraine.
Commentary
Podcast – Russia’s New Line. Polina Ivanova, Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, talks about the recent Russian military press conference (Mar 25) that seemed to walk back Russia’s war aims in the Ukraine conflict. Lawfare Podcast, March 28, 2022, 35 minutes.
UK’s Integrated Review. For the past few years, the United Kingdom has embarked on a doctrinal shift and transition from Europe and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific region. It has reorganized its forces and taken on new equipment requirements to make this new adjustment. This major endeavor was called the Integrated Review or IR. In fact, it prompted a restructuring of British special forces as well. Now the problem of Russia once again emerges as a primary concern for Europe. “What is to be done? Ukraine and the IR”, Wavell Room, March 23, 2022.
Ukraine War – Winners and Losers. Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, looks at the big picture and predicts who the winners and losers are in the war thus far. Ukraine and NATO look like winners, Russia and the United Nations look like losers. Germany has stepped up and China is caught in the middle. “The early winners and losers in Putin’s War”, The Strategist, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, April 1, 2022.
Full Force Russian Invasion and NATO Half Measures. History may very well judge the West harshly for being over cautious and not intervening earlier and more decisively in the Ukraine conflict. At the same time that we withhold equipment vital to Ukraine’s defense (aircraft, tanks, etc.) and refrain from more effective actions (no-fly zone and boots on the ground), we encourage the Ukrainian’s to fight on against overwhelming odds. Two former intelligence officials share their thoughts with us in “The Cruelty of Half Measures in Ukraine”, The Cipher Brief, March 28, 2022.
SOF News welcomes the submission of articles for publication. If it is related to special operations, current conflicts, national security, defense, or the current conflict in Ukraine then we are interested.
Maps and Other Resources
UNCN. The Ukraine NGO Coordination Network is an organization that ties together U.S.-based 501c3 organizations and non-profit humanitarian organizations that are working to evacuate and support those in need affected by the Ukraine crisis. https://uncn.one
Maps of Ukraine
Ukraine Conflict Info. The Ukrainians have launched a new website that will provide information about the war. It is entitled Russia Invaded Ukraine and can be found at https://war.ukraine.ua/.
UNHCR Operational Data Portal – Ukraine Refugee Situation
Ukrainian Think Tanks – Brussels. Consolidated information on how to help Ukraine from abroad and stay up to date on events.
Janes Equipment Profile – Ukraine Conflict. An 81-page PDF provides information on the military equipment of the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces. Covers naval, air, electronic warfare, C4ISR, communications, night vision, radar, and armored fighting vehicles, Ukraine Conflict Equipment Profile, February 28, 2022.
Arms Transfers to Ukraine. Forum on the Arms Trade.
4. Russians Likely to Encounter Growing Guerrilla Warfare in Ukraine
I recommend going to this site, The Centre National Resistance" It was created by the Ukraine Special Operations forces: https://sprotyv.mod.gov.ua/
It is in Ukrainian but Google Translate does a good job translating the site. It is one of the most comprehensive guides to resistance and unconventional warfare available in the public domain. It has a wealth of material for download.
This is modern unconventional warfare; e.g., "activities to enable a resistance or insurgency to coerce, disrupt, or overthrow a government or occupying power [or a power trying to occupy] through and with an underground, auxiliary, or guerrilla force in a denied area."
CENTRE
NATIONAL RESISTANCE
Each of us in his place can resist the enemy and contribute to victory. Together we will turn the lives of the occupiers into hell. Join!
In order to become an invisible avenger that the occupiers will be afraid of, you need to know tactics, medicine, Internet security, know about homemade weapons and non-violent actions.
We have prepared a guide for you called "Civil Resistance in the Occupied Territories", in the form of a pdf-file. Be careful: delete it as soon as you read it, or save it to a folder with lots of other files.
We are the Ukrainian resistance. This site was created by the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to support and coordinate all those who want to fight for the liberation of our land from the Russian occupiers. Together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, we will quietly destroy any enemy who came to our country.
We will do it where he does not expect it, where he feels safe. We will teach you to conduct reconnaissance and transmit information about the enemy. We will tell you how to effectively carry out nonviolent resistance, because sometimes there are situations when there are no weapons in hand. You will learn how not to leave traces on the Internet, so as not to have problems with the occupation police. Now you will know how to provide first aid to the wounded.
Yes, we are at war with a strong enemy, he outnumbers us, he can temporarily capture a city. But he will never be able to keep him, because we will be waiting for him in every house. And we will release every meter of our land, step by step.
Together we will turn the lives of the occupiers into hell!
Join!
Russians Likely to Encounter Growing Guerrilla Warfare in Ukraine
Kyiv says it plans to launch a coordinated campaign.
Once their country was occupied and a puppet regime established, the Ukrainians were then supposed to turn to partisan warfare that would transform the war into a long and bitter quagmire for Russia. Yet again, the Ukrainians didn’t listen. Instead of waiting for their defeat, they say they’re planning to launch a coordinated guerrilla campaign within the next few weeks—parallel to the regular war and just as spring turns forests green to provide cover. “The season of a total Ukrainian guerrilla safari will soon begin,” the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, announced in late March. “Then there will be one relevant scenario left for the Russians: how to survive.”
Judging from reports, irregular civilian resistance has already taken place, so the guerrilla campaign announced by Budanov will not be starting from scratch. In the northern part of Poltava province, according to a March 18 report, wild game hunters captured over 10 tanks and other vehicles and pursued retreating Russian troops. Earlier in March, guerrillas reportedly destroyed a convoy of trucks near Kharkiv. Elsewhere, on March 11, villagers reportedly helped police take 29 Russian soldiers prisoner.
Civilians are also playing a role in confiscating weapons, equipment, and supplies from the enemy and handing them over to the Ukrainian forces. On March 23, the Ukrainian General Staff released video footage of a supply truck captured at an undisclosed location by what looked like Ukrainian civilians. In another incident, a group of civilians apparently seized a Russian T-80 tank abandoned in a muddy field. According to one of the civilians in the video, he was learning to drive the T-80 with instructions found via Google.
In addition, peaceful resistance in the form of demonstrations and marches is taking place almost every day in Russian-controlled cities such as Kherson, Melitopol, and Enerhodar. Residents of Kyiv and other unoccupied cities, in turn, have gotten busy preparing Molotov cocktails in case invading Russians come their way.
We know from history—including Russia’s wars in Chechnya—that reprisals against partisans can be especially gruesome.
So far, the most important civilian participation in the fighting has been in the Territorial Defense Forces, a tightly structured volunteer militia subordinated to Ukrainian Armed Forces command. Ukrainian civilians began preparing for irregular warfare in the weeks before the invasion, but additional Territorial Defense Forces units are reportedly being raised to increase Ukrainian fighting power as the war goes on. The tasks of this civilian militia include defending critical infrastructure, supporting the regular armed forces, and combating saboteurs and spies. In the runup to and first few days of the war, some 100,000 volunteers and 37,000 reservists had already signed up.
Civilians who only recently joined the militia already appear to be active as snipers defending the outskirts of Kyiv. A Canadian Ukrainian resident outside Kyiv described one of the activities his unit was involved in: “We’ve organized nightly patrols after several lost Russian soldiers were arrested last week in the area. Their [armored personnel carrier] was blown up by the Ukrainian forces, and after three to four days hiding in the woods, the Russians came out begging for food and water.”
The Territorial Defense Forces are formally separate from a partisan or guerrilla resistance movement, which may still be nascent and in the process of formation. Details are murky, but Ukrainian military doctrine sees the country’s Special Operations Forces, whose members are highly trained in irregular warfare, playing a “leading role in organizing, preparing, supporting and conducting the resistance movement.” They have established a virtual Center of National Resistance, which provides detailed instructions for partisan actions, including how to set up ambushes, respond to chemical attacks, and organize peaceful resistance. According to the center’s website: “In order to become an invisible avenger whom the occupiers will fear, it is necessary to know tactics, medicine, internet security, homemade weapons, and nonviolent actions.”
The center has also published a civil resistance handbook with advice on lowering the occupiers’ morale and other forms of passive resistance, as well as active resistance involving various forms of sabotage. The handbook also gives tips on how regular citizens can help the resistance movement by providing food, shelter, and medicine. A video warns potential saboteurs they will need to live double lives among friends and relatives, pretending to be loyal to the Russians while simultaneously undermining their rule. While the internet is no substitute for hands-on training, this is little different from historical examples of partisan warfare, where goals and methods were passed on by leaflets, pamphlets, and word of mouth. Today, websites can easily and more effectively do the trick.
Guerrillas and partisans the world over have consisted overwhelmingly of peasants and other villagers who know the terrain intimately, can engage in hit-and-run tactics, and can keep an invader off balance at unexpected locations. That will be similar in Ukraine—especially as the Russians have proved unable to take any major Ukrainian cities, where urban guerrillas would play a role. Ukrainian hunters may form an especially large component, as hunting is a popular sport in Ukraine’s west and north, where the terrain is a mix of forest, steppe, and mountains. Although there are a comparably low 9.9 civilian firearms per 100 citizens in Ukraine, those guns are mainly owned in rural regions. At this point, the number of weapons has clearly risen: Immediately after the invasion, nearly 20,000 guns were distributed to reservists in Kyiv in preparation for a possible assault on the capital, and weapons have been distributed in other regions as well.
Most elements of an effective guerrilla struggle are thus in place. The only missing piece is friendly terrain, but once the forests and hedges turn green, as they will in April, they will provide guerrillas with better cover. At that point, the fighters will be able to systematically infiltrate Russian-occupied territory—especially in the forested north—and strike the Russian military from the rear while regular Ukrainian forces attack from the front.
Ukraine’s east and south, however, consist largely of flat, treeless steppe, which are ill-suited for traditional rural guerrilla warfare. But Russian-occupied towns and villages could be infiltrated by saboteurs and urban guerrillas from the Territorial Defense Forces to target soldiers, Rosgvardia occupation police, and local collaborators.
The center has also published a civil resistance handbook with advice on lowering the occupiers’ morale and various forms of sabotage.
It’s the forested north where Russian soldiers, supply trucks, weaponry, and logistics are likely to make especially attractive targets. There, Russian forces and supplies move along the main roads, avoiding unmarked, hard-to-navigate rural terrain, and are often poorly guarded and overstretched. Such tactics are an open invitation to guerrilla attacks, as the history of partisan warfare shows well. Many Ukrainians will remember their country’s history in World War II, when nationalists and Soviet Ukrainian partisans controlled the forests, swamps, and mountains of western and northern Ukraine, while urban guerrillas harassed the occupying German forces in the cities. Even after the Soviets displaced the Germans as masters of Ukraine in 1944, nationalist partisans managed to continue their struggle for another decade, killing more than 30,000 Soviet functionaries and secret police, according to the Ukrainian historian Ivan Patryliak.
This history matters, because western Ukrainians have lionized the nationalist guerrillas and their struggle for independence. Similarly, eastern Ukrainians venerated the anti-German partisans, thanks to the Soviet cult of World War II. Joining the guerrillas today is thus a time-honored undertaking, allowing participants to consciously step into a long tradition of resistance to totalitarianism. Guerrillas take enormous risks, so they need to be absolutely dedicated to the cause they’re fighting for. Being able to place one’s own sacrifices within a longer historical or even family tradition can therefore sustain the motivation and courage that has proved so effective thus far against largely unmotivated Russian troops.
Russia will, of course, take brutal countermeasures. We know from history—including Russia’s wars in Chechnya—that reprisals against partisans can be especially gruesome, affecting local populations far beyond any real or suspected insurgents. Between 1945 and 1955 in Ukraine, the Soviets killed more than 150,000 alleged guerrillas and sympathizers, according to Patryliak. Hundreds of thousands of western Ukrainians were deported to Siberia or Central Asia, and almost 90,000 were jailed. Today, however, guerrillas won’t be alone in the woods but acting in conjunction with Ukraine’s armed forces, which have proved to be highly effective in withstanding the Russians and which enjoy material support from a number of countries. They won’t be fighting for an idealistic cause but defending an existing country.
So even as the regular war goes on, Ukrainian guerrillas could very well help turn the tide. Many of the Russian replacement troops being rushed to the Ukrainian front are poorly trained recruits with no combat experience. Facing a battle-hardened Ukrainian army will be hard enough for them. Resisting guerrilla attacks in their rear may be, as Budanov promises, “real hell.”
5. Ukraine War Is Being Watched From the Sky
Conclusion:
Ukraine has proven that small drones are a massively useful tool for all actors in modern war zones: They will be with us for a long time to come. Pilots can take some measures to protect themselves (like making sure the mobile devices that connect to the drone are always in airplane mode) but they need to know that these measures exist. It now falls to the international community to ensure that the people who use them in times of war—civilians and combatants—fully understand the risks that they take on with their use.
Ukraine War Is Being Watched From the Sky
Widespread use of civilian drones brings serious risks with it.
By Faine Greenwood, an expert on unmanned aerial vehicles, technology in humanitarian aid, remote sensing, spatial data, and data policy and ethics.
As a Ukrainian soldier’s consumer drone watches from above, Russian soldiers appear to shoot a civilian point-blank after he emerges from his car with his hands in the air, and he slumps down to the ground. A drone flown by a BBC reporter hovers over the bombed-out Irpin bridge on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, as it films refugees navigate tangled metal and cement over rushing water. Just hours before, Ukrainian forces were filmed shooting at a similar consumer drone in the same area, which they feared Russia was using to direct artillery fire toward civilians.
Later, in Ukraine’s stricken city of Mariupol, a consumer drone flown by Ukrainian forces captures a high-definition aerial perspective of a direct hit on a Russian tank. After the initial flash, the smoke clears to reveal a dead man and another crawling away from the wreckage, and then a second later, the body of yet another Russian soldier blasts into the frame from the right, apparently propelled by another hit on a tank just off screen. This drone footage—just one of many similar drone-collected clips coming out of the war—is raw, harrowing, and unforgettable. It’s an angle on war the world has barely seen before.
Although Ukraine isn’t the first social media war or the first conflict where small, cheap consumer drones have come into play, it’s the first conflict to be so comprehensively documented by small drones—aircraft piloted by everyone from soldiers on both sides (albeit, more so by Ukrainians) to reporters and curious civilians.
As a Ukrainian soldier’s consumer drone watches from above, Russian soldiers appear to shoot a civilian point-blank after he emerges from his car with his hands in the air, and he slumps down to the ground. A drone flown by a BBC reporter hovers over the bombed-out Irpin bridge on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, as it films refugees navigate tangled metal and cement over rushing water. Just hours before, Ukrainian forces were filmed shooting at a similar consumer drone in the same area, which they feared Russia was using to direct artillery fire toward civilians.
Later, in Ukraine’s stricken city of Mariupol, a consumer drone flown by Ukrainian forces captures a high-definition aerial perspective of a direct hit on a Russian tank. After the initial flash, the smoke clears to reveal a dead man and another crawling away from the wreckage, and then a second later, the body of yet another Russian soldier blasts into the frame from the right, apparently propelled by another hit on a tank just off screen. This drone footage—just one of many similar drone-collected clips coming out of the war—is raw, harrowing, and unforgettable. It’s an angle on war the world has barely seen before.
Although Ukraine isn’t the first social media war or the first conflict where small, cheap consumer drones have come into play, it’s the first conflict to be so comprehensively documented by small drones—aircraft piloted by everyone from soldiers on both sides (albeit, more so by Ukrainians) to reporters and curious civilians.
I’ve been watching drone videos from the war in Ukraine ever since the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24, tracking and mapping each use in an ever-growing spreadsheet and map. These drone pilots’ creativity, skill, and bravery is fascinating. It also makes me worried for their safety. The legal status of drone pilots, even civilians, in a war zone is deeply uncertain—and attempting to bear witness remotely may mean risking their own lives.
Small consumer and homemade hobby drones began to pop up in battlefields around the world soon after the introduction of the inexpensive Chinese-made DJI Phantom drone in 2013. The Islamic State famously used them both for surveillance and to drop small explosives on their enemies. Ukraine also got into the small-drone game early. After Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbass region in 2014, Ukrainian drone specialists (many of whom started as hobby model-builders) began to work closely with the country’s armed forces—building their own drones and constantly experimenting with military, home-built, and inexpensive consumer drones in border skirmishes.
Today, while armed Turkish-made Bayraktar systems have attracted much of the world’s attention (and even a theme song), much of the high-resolution aerial footage coming out of Ukraine appears to be shot by relatively inexpensive and much smaller consumer-grade drones, mostly those made by China’s DJI company.
But there are also direct offensive uses. The Aerorozvidka unit recently took credit for using small drones to arrest the progress of Russia’s infamous 40-mile long mechanized column outside of Kyiv: they flew the thermal-sensor equipped drones at night and dropped lightweight bombs on the convoy. Ukrainian soldiers regularly post drone videos on official military Facebook, Telegram, and Twitter pages, demonstrating to the world how they use small consumer drones to better position their artillery strikes. Famously, a woman in Kyiv took out one small drone, possibly flown by looters, with a jar of pickled vegetables. People from outside of Ukraine have been getting involved too: They’ve donated hundreds of consumer drones to Ukrainian troops, ensuring they have a steady supply of eyes in the sky.
As I’ve watched this sea of footage from Ukraine, one thing has become apparent to me as a long-time observer of civilian drones in conflict and disaster: We haven’t talked nearly enough about the risk that people potentially put themselves and others in by flying small drones on or near the battlefield.
The biggest problem facing combat zone consumer drone pilots is that of distinction, one of the fundamental principles in international humanitarian law. Per the International Committee of the Red Cross, it provides that parties to an armed conflict must “at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.” Doing this with aircraft is pretty well established under the rules of warfare or international humanitarian law. You can mark aircraft with symbols, pilots can identify themselves via radio, and aircraft can be equipped with electronic IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) systems, among other strategies.
These approaches largely don’t translate to small consumer drones, as I’ve written about in the past, both in Foreign Policy and with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Small consumer drones are largely identical on the ground, and they’re even harder to tell apart in the air. Consider the video I mentioned above, where Ukrainian soldiers were shooting at a drone hovering above the Irpin bridge. Although it’s entirely possible that it was being flown by Russians, there was really no way the Ukrainians could know for sure from their vantage point, short of taking out either the drone or the pilot. Nor would it be easy to tell that drone apart from the drone that BBC journalists flew in the exact same location just a couple days later—which, as far as I know, didn’t get shot at. It’s a situation that’s ripe for mistaken identity and can be deadly, considering that shooting at a drone (or any other small object in the air) represents considerable risk to people on the ground, including the pilot and other bystanders.
While drone pilots on the ground can identify themselves via radio, the drone itself can’t respond to similar demands if someone spots it. Although some companies do produce IFF and ADS-B transponders for small drones (including China’s DJI drones), they’re still relatively rarely used. Some nations explicitly prohibit small drones from using ADS-B Out—a technology that broadcasts information about an aircraft’s GPS location, altitude, ground speed, and other information to compatible receivers once every second—to broadcast where they are to other aircraft and avoid excessive signal traffic. And although various remote identification standards and technologies are being developed around the world to help integrate small drones into regular air traffic control systems, they’re still very much under development.
These technical difficulties mean that consumer drones have a distinctly uncertain status under international humanitarian law. Civilian drone users, like journalists and curious citizens, also may not be aware of the implications of their actions. In one recent video from Ukraine, an international correspondent filmed himself flying a drone to observe the location of Russian forces while letting Ukrainian soldiers crowd around the viewscreen. Would that action cause him to—at least, in the moment—lose his civilian status and become a valid target for attack under international humanitarian law, as he arguably is sharing useful intelligence with one side? Ukraine has proven that the world needs clear standards and guidelines for using consumer drones in compliance with international humanitarian law.
Some people assume that because small drone pilots are at a distance (usually a maximum of 6 miles) from active fighting, they’re largely safe. That’s wrong.
After the Islamic State and others began to weaponize consumer drones in the years following 2013, governments, militaries, and private industries launched a feverish global rush of research and investment into counter-drone technologies—a rush that Russia, in large part due to its involvement in Syria, has been very much part of. Consumer drones like DJI products aren’t explicitly designed for military use, as the company hastens to remind users: They also aren’t particularly secure.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s monitoring drones, many of which were small consumer models, were regularly signal-jammed (and shot at) during their flights over the Donbass region before this year’s war.
Hackers have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to take control of small drones and access the information they collect and send back to their often smartphone-enabled controllers—including one bizarre 2018 incident where staff on Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s yacht attempted to use an anti-drone device to confiscate a curious tourist’s DJI Phantom.
Drones communicate with their controllers on the ground using relatively easy-to-detect radio signals, which some modern counter-drone technologies use to locate both the drone and the pilot. In an unauthenticated video posted to Facebook by Ukrainian drone seller Taras Troiak, a DJI drone pilot appears to be attacked by a grenade after landing his drone, which strikes the exact area where the drone hit the ground with suspicious accuracy. Although there’s no confirmation of what actually happened, many observers suspected that the radio signal from the pilot’s drone led his attackers straight to him. While most countries outlaw detecting drones by decoding this data, it’s probably safe to assume that Russians have access to electronic warfare devices that can find drone pilots’ locations.
Since 2017, DJI has been getting around this decoding restriction by selling its own drone-finding and signal-decoding technology called AeroScope, which is compatible only with their own products. It’s effective because all modern DJI drones broadcast signals with information on the location of both the pilot and the aircraft that Aeroscope devices (which come in both stationary long- and portable short-range models) can interpret—a functionality that, importantly, DJI says it can’t turn off (though it’s possible for technically savvy drone users to hack or spoof it). Widely used by law enforcement and sports arenas, it has considerable utility on the battlefield.
After the start of the war in February, Troiak accused DJI of intentionally disabling AeroScope on Ukrainian territory. DJI has thoroughly denied the claims, saying their staff are working with Ukrainian users to resolve the problem, which they believe may be due to connectivity challenges. The company also denies that it has the ability to view global drone activity or to submit the location information that Fedorov asked for, although there are indications it may have, at least, had the ability to track where its drones were globally in the past, and users can voluntarily choose to submit their flight logs to the company. If such data did exist, it would be an exceptionally attractive prize for combatants on either side of the conflict.
The AeroScope dust-up brings us to another big problem: Most inexpensive consumer drones are made by Chinese companies. And the war in Ukraine has placed China—which shares goals and viewpoints with Russia—in a deeply delicate, awkward political position.
Modern drone companies, like most tech companies, wield considerable control over their products even after they’ve been sold to the customer. All DJI drones are shipped to the customer with geofencing technology, which means that the drone won’t work in certain sensitive areas around the world, including much of Washington and Tiananmen Square. During the height of the conflict with the Islamic State in Syria in 2015 and 2016, DJI quietly placed a geofence on its products in that region.
For now, DJI appears to be maintaining a neutral position, as evidenced by DJI’s reply on March 17 to a direct request by Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov that the company block all products purchased in Russia. The company reminded him that their products are “designed for civilian use” and that the visibility built into them “is one more reason why using them for military missions is inappropriate.”
Now, many observers are wondering, understandably, if DJI will geofence their products in Russia or Ukraine. While DJI told Fedorov that it would be willing to arrange a blanket geofence over Ukraine upon formal request, the company emphasized that it would “apply to all DJI drones in Ukraine,” not just those flown by Russian forces. My prediction: Don’t hold your breath. Although DJI has publicly claimed that the Chinese government doesn’t have input into its decisions, there’s evidence that this isn’t the case. However, both DJI and China likely have little interest in or appetite for being accused of favoring either Ukraine or Russia in the current conflict. Nor does the company wish to make any moves that imply it endorses its products being used on the battlefield: In its reply to Fedorov, it emphasized that its products are “designed for civilian use” and that the visibility built into them “is one more reason why using them for military missions is inappropriate.”
As DJI would doubtlessly argue, introducing a geofence would create political problems for China without necessarily making much of a difference on the battlefield. Geofences aren’t infallible: They’re intended largely to deter people who are technically incompetent or who are simply ignorant about drone regulations in their area. Plenty of companies offer hacks and means to get around them. One such company is even offering its services for free to people who can prove they’re in Ukraine or Russia.
Ukraine has proven that small drones are a massively useful tool for all actors in modern war zones: They will be with us for a long time to come. Pilots can take some measures to protect themselves (like making sure the mobile devices that connect to the drone are always in airplane mode) but they need to know that these measures exist. It now falls to the international community to ensure that the people who use them in times of war—civilians and combatants—fully understand the risks that they take on with their use.
6. ‘Tectonic shifts’: How Putin’s war will change the world
Conclusion:
Allowing for all the uncertainties, it seems fair to say the coming year will be one in which power alignments shift dramatically — tectonically, one might say. Russia will have forfeited its opportunities to integrate productively into the world; the U.S., whatever stresses it experiences, will have gained access to new opportunities to lead and exert influence; NATO will be a revitalized alliance. And for China, it will be a year of decisions — not about the fundamentals of its system — but about how it wants to represent those fundamentals to the world, in its ongoing competition with the United States for global preeminence.
History has taught us that on rare occasions, an individual’s actions can change the course of world events — for better or worse. In Europe alone, in just a little more than a century, Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo started one world war; Hitler’s grand ambitions another; and the brave dissent of Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa and Václav Havel were sparks that fired the revolutions across Eastern Europe and ultimately brought down the Soviet Union. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has joined the ranks of events that change the world — and change the ways we think about how nations deal with one another.
‘Tectonic shifts’: How Putin’s war will change the world
A former CIA leader imagines Russia, NATO and China in 2023 — and how the war in Ukraine will change them all.
Special Contributor
April 1, 2022
Making predictions just as the Ukraine war delivers a series of huge surprises feels like a fool’s errand. But let’s try to peer a bit through the fog of war.
What got me thinking about this was the memory of a conversation with military historian Tom Ricks in the mountains of central Sicily a few years ago. We were there with Johns Hopkins University graduate students who were studying the 1943 Allied campaign against Germany. The fighting in Sicily had marked the beginning of the push to remove Adolf Hitler’s armies from the Italian peninsula.
Ricks asked me: “Do you think we’ll ever see anything like this again?” — meaning big battles between European countries over large swathes of territory. As I recall, we both guessed no. World War II had been so calamitous and unusual that the West — indeed the entire world — had surely moved past all of that.
This is one of the many reasons Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is so vividly horrific; the imagery seems borrowed from another time. Charred tanks, soldiers freezing while they wait to attack, civilians taking shelter or sifting through rubble, and the long columns of refugees — it all reminds us of that terrible past. It is also so at odds with modern expectations and standards that many are now remarking that the world will not be the same when this war is over.
Will that be the case? And if so, what will that new world look like — from NATO to Russia to China and points beyond — one year from now?
Let’s start with Russia
The most durable changes will involve President Vladimir Putin and Russia itself. A year ago, Russia was the hungry, insecure bully that kept the world on edge with its demands and periodic land grabs. The U.S. and Europe tolerated those aggressions, assuming that even Putin had limits. He had seized Crimea and poisoned opponents, but he wouldn’t launch an all-out invasion of a European country. But Russia has now revealed itself as a terrorist state and Putin as a war criminal. One year from now, these facts will stick, assuming that Putin is still in the Kremlin.
Putin’s underlings seem not to realize, or care, that they will never again be treated as legitimate by the international community. They do not grasp the exceptional nature of what they are doing — or are afraid to challenge the man giving the orders. The reaction of Soviet émigrés in Los Angeles — suddenly ashamed to be called Russian — and the growing exodus of Russians since the war began are harbingers of change that may reach deeply inside the Russian Federation if Putin remains, the war drags on and real information about the war seeps into the country.
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Putin has of course done his best to guard against such penetration, tightening the lid on free expression to Cold War levels. But in today’s world, it’s harder to keep the truth completely from a literate population spread across 11 time zones, especially as more and more Russian soldiers are killed or wounded for a cause that has been poorly articulated to the Russian people. Truth will come to the families of those soldiers; later it will come via others fortunate enough to return home and tell their stories.
To be sure, it is impossible to know how the Russian people will absorb the reality. Russians were shocked in the 1950s when Nikita Khrushchev revealed the horrors of Joseph Stalin’s rule, and when Mikhail Gorbachev shed more light in the 1980s, but as late as 2019, surveys showed 51 percent of the public continued to admire Stalin. But that sentiment was based largely on Stalin’s leadership during World War II; Putin’s support has rested heavily on Russian nationalism, law and order, and economic strength. The latter may soon be in tatters.
Putin’s inescapable dilemma is that Russia cannot “win” this war — even if his forces destroy enough of Ukraine and its people to own new chunks of its territory. He will likely face continuing global condemnation, war crimes charges and — absent a peace deal — a ferocious insurgency as well.
As a former CIA officer, I see all the classic ingredients in place for a Ukrainian insurgency: a willing populace, broad public support outside Ukraine, and — with four NATO countries bordering Ukraine — ample safe haven for insurgents, resupply efforts and training. Some of these assets are already being utilized. Meanwhile, Putin’s war has left a continent bristling with fear and anger and ready to facilitate such an effort. In short, even “winning” with the methods he’s using will make Putin a loser.
It is also likely that one year from now, when Ukraine is to be rebuilt, the logical way to finance reconstruction will involve Russian hard currency reserves. These are now out of his reach, for the most part, due to sanctions. There will be no reason for the rest of the world to pay for what Putin has broken when we have effective control of his checkbook.
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Having watched Putin closely for 20 years, I can say this is the first time that I doubt his ability to survive politically. None of the available exit ramps look promising; about the only face-saver will be some weak deal that Putin and his propaganda machine can redefine as “mission accomplished.” If he gets bogged down in an insurgency while Russia continues to suffer from unprecedented sanctions and isolation, powerful forces in Russia — the military and the security services — will begin to question the wisdom of continued support for him. Public antipathy will only exacerbate things.
If Putin manages to hang on, the bottom line a year from now is that Russia will carry almost no weight in the world. He will have forfeited much of the considerable influence he built for himself and his country over two decades, all in pursuit of a dream that, even if realized, will bring Putin and his country no effective power.
The U.S. and Europe
The consequences of the war are also potentially game-changing for the U.S. and its allies in Europe. In some ways, the game has already changed.
After years of growing doubt about Washington’s ability to lead internationally, it has in this instance shown it is still capable of mustering a strong and diverse coalition for a common purpose. The Ukraine experience may ease doubts about the competence of U.S. diplomacy and leadership, particularly coming after the painful and disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan. This augurs well for the future of democracy globally at a time when it faces fresh competition with authoritarianism, and when leadership in that competition demands that others trust the U.S. to deliver on what it promises.
Meanwhile, one year from now, Europe’s twin pillars of alliance — NATO and the European Union — will be institutions altered by Putin’s war. They will have changed in precisely the ways Putin wanted desperately to avoid.
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Europe’s renewed understanding of its vulnerability will change profoundly the priority its members give to defense. It is also highly likely that at least Finland and Sweden will favor a more overt relationship with NATO. That alone would represent a sea change; these countries have preferred to coordinate their defense policies with NATO informally, and at a distance.
Putin’s example will also give the EU new pressure points to discipline Poland and Hungary for backsliding on democratic standards that EU membership requires. And thanks to Putin, the EU and U.S. have already embarked on a joint project to decrease European reliance on Russian energy, including a U.S. commitment to increase exports to Europe of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
So a year from now, Putin will end up with the exact opposite of what he sought: not a weaker, more fractured NATO, but an alliance that is better armed, more united and hugging more of Russia’s borders than before his attack on Ukraine.
Rethinking the threats
Putin’s war has given new definition and clarity to the nature of threat in our era — in the way that the 9/11 attacks crystallized the notions of threat 20 years ago. We are all accustomed to the laundry list of dangers that appears every year in the annual public congressional testimony by the director of national intelligence — ranging from Iran and North Korea to cybersecurity and climate change.
Russia is always on that list, but I don’t believe that any of us who have delivered that assessment ever conjured up the reality that Putin has given us over the last five weeks. At some level, we understood that something like this could happen; now we all know it can. Theory has been replaced by reality, and this is certain to affect threat perceptions and sway defense and political priorities toward greater vigilance in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
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One year from now, that altered threat perception will give democratic countries yet another basis for cooperation. And it will facilitate U.S. efforts to strengthen its alliances globally — the most important “force multiplier” in the United States’ competition with China.
Nuclear questions
Putin’s brandishing of his nuclear capability has thrust these weapons back into the public and political consciousness after years of diminished attention to their dangers and their impact on strategic decisions. However the war in Ukraine ends, this much is clear: NATO has been restrained by the fact of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
Although Putin and President Joe Biden extended the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty by re-signing it in January 2021, this was simply a stopgap to prevent its scheduled expiration as Biden took office. (President Donald Trump had let the issue drift.)
Such arms control measures are badly in need of revision to take into account not just the implications of Putin’s war, but also new technologies such as hypersonic weapons and the growing arsenal in China (which so far shows no interest in negotiating). In the past, it has been through negotiations on nuclear weapons use and the prevention of their spread (via the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT) that the U.S., the Russians and others came to understandings about how to avoid recklessness with these most dangerous of weapons. These understandings have been frayed, and while it will be hard to do the repair work while Putin is on his rampage, the U.S. and other major nuclear powers will have new incentive to get back to the arms control table.
It is always hard to sustain enthusiasm for this work outside a narrow group of specialists. We can at least hope that a year from now, Putin’s rattling of his warheads will remain a vivid memory — enough so to reanimate international efforts to reduce chances of nuclear disaster. The NPT Review Conference, scheduled for August, will provide an early measure of whether any progress is likely.
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China
Finally, Putin’s recklessness will have lasting effect on how China deals with the world. China spent the early part of the war helping Russia magnify its propaganda and lies. To some extent, it is still doing so. Chinese President Xi Jinping, however, was probably as surprised as Putin by Russia’s inability to score a quick win, its creation of a humanitarian disaster and Ukraine’s effective counterattacks.
This probably explains Beijing’s more recent efforts to find a middle ground — reaching out diplomatically to Europe, promising humanitarian aid to Ukraine and seemingly abiding by sanctions — while avoiding criticism of Russia, abstaining when it comes to U.N. condemnations and placing blame on NATO.
In recent examples of this balancing act, China’s ambassador to the U.S. published a somewhat defensive op-ed asserting that Beijing had no advance knowledge of the invasion, and Beijing’s ambassador to Ukraine assured his hosts that China will “respect your nation.”
But the middle ground for Beijing will narrow as Russia’s dilemma deepens, the world’s condemnation endures and Putin’s lies are further exposed. One must wonder if Xi’s intelligence service warned him of this catastrophe and, if not, what he must make of that failure. The cracks in the Sino-Russian relationship are minimal thus far, but if present trends continue, Xi will have to weigh the pros and cons of embracing a loser in the Kremlin.
A year from now, when it comes to the war’s impact on China, we are likely to see one of two outcomes. On the one hand, Xi may decide to exploit the advantages of still more influence with a weaker Russia, in a relationship that already favored China. But if he is the only global leader left in Putin’s corner, while other countries important to China are shunning the Russian leader, the Chinese president just might cut relations to bare bones.
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Tectonic shifts
Allowing for all the uncertainties, it seems fair to say the coming year will be one in which power alignments shift dramatically — tectonically, one might say. Russia will have forfeited its opportunities to integrate productively into the world; the U.S., whatever stresses it experiences, will have gained access to new opportunities to lead and exert influence; NATO will be a revitalized alliance. And for China, it will be a year of decisions — not about the fundamentals of its system — but about how it wants to represent those fundamentals to the world, in its ongoing competition with the United States for global preeminence.
History has taught us that on rare occasions, an individual’s actions can change the course of world events — for better or worse. In Europe alone, in just a little more than a century, Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo started one world war; Hitler’s grand ambitions another; and the brave dissent of Andrei Sakharov, Lech Walesa and Václav Havel were sparks that fired the revolutions across Eastern Europe and ultimately brought down the Soviet Union. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has joined the ranks of events that change the world — and change the ways we think about how nations deal with one another.
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
7. Evidence of War Crimes in Ukraine Mounts as Russians Retreat From Kyiv Area
Putin's brutality. Putin is responsible.
Photos at the link below.
Evidence of War Crimes in Ukraine Mounts as Russians Retreat From Kyiv Area
Findings by rights groups and Ukrainian authorities could alter global response
By Brett ForrestFollow | Photographs by Christopher Occhicone for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Apr. 3, 2022 7:53 am ET
BUCHA, Ukraine—Nearly 300 civilians have been buried in mass graves by local authorities in this small suburb of Kyiv after Russian troops withdrew last week, one of several regions where Ukrainian officials and independent rights watchdogs say they are uncovering evidence of war crimes perpetrated by occupation forces.
On Saturday, Ukrainian soldiers raised the country’s flag once again atop Bucha’s city hall, weary yet reveling in Russia’s withdrawal. “The city is completely ours,” said Andrei Verlaty, a deputy commander of Bucha’s territorial defense brigade. “But it’s still not completely safe.” Retreating Russian troops had booby-trapped the building with trip-wired grenades.
Shattered Russian tanks and armored vehicles, their metal rusted and orange from exposure and heat, littered the southwesterly approach to the Bucha. Evidence of fighting spilled onto Bucha’s every street and block. Bullets had sprayed a Red Renault that carried the white flag of truce on its antenna. A bomb had caved in a large warehouse, its walls warped like melted plastic. Cars were flattened like soda cans, run over by tanks. The Garden Center mall was a charred hulk, the dancing school blackened.
On Bucha’s west side, a civilian waved down a group of Ukrainian troops in a minivan who followed him to a metal garage that was burned and smoldering. Inside among piles of ash lay half of a woman’s body, its torso burnt. The man said the woman had taken refuge in her garage during the Russian occupation.
The remains of the body of a woman who, according to local residents, had taken refuge in her garage during the Russian assault on the Kyiv suburb.
Vasily Shcherbakov, a Ukrainian commander in Bucha, said some 20 bodies of local civilians had been left near a glass factory in town. Russian troops had forbidden townspeople from laying these bodies to rest, he said. “Then they mined the corpses,” he said. “This is a new one.” He said that he had lost count of the dead.
A truck towing a wagon stacked with bodies drove past a leg lying on the grass by the road, its foot wearing a black leather boot. A matching leg and boot lay 20 yards away. Further on was a torso and head. “The dogs have been eating them,” said a Ukrainian soldier.
Locals gathered in the street to tell what they had seen and heard during Bucha’s occupation. “Valentina Ivanovna was shot near that house,” said an elderly woman, indicating an apartment stack. Neighbors pushed close and said they had heard Russians shooting, mostly at night when they hid in their homes.
Onto a rise past a grassy basketball court, a row of bodies was visible in a hole in the ground through a slit in a concrete carapace, eight or nine torsos wrapped in plastic, faces newly lifeless, yet to gray in decay.
A man looking on said that he and others had found a woman dead behind her bullet-riddled apartment door.
Bucha residents without gas cooked outside their apartment building on Saturday.
A shopping mall in Bucha was destroyed by Russian forces.
Down the road from city hall, behind St. Andrew’s Church where the sand was slippery like clay in the rain, there was a slit in the earth. The hole held a pile of bodies, thrown any which way. From the dirt tossed upon them appeared an elbow, a knee, the sole of a running shoe. One body was wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, white with red roses.
The extensive devastation in Bucha and other newly retaken areas has led Ukrainian authorities to institute a curfew in the region until Tuesday morning.
In one recently retaken village near Kyiv, authorities found the body of a Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing while working there nearly three weeks ago. Maksym Levin died after being shot twice by Russian forces, according to a statement from Ukraine’s prosecutor general. Another photographer who was with him remains unaccounted for.
In another village near Kyiv, Motyzhyn, Ukrainian authorities said they found the bodies of the village head, Olha Sukhenko, her husband and her son, who were detained by Russian troops on March 23.
The incident is one of 2,500 cases Ukraine’s prosecutor general is building against Russian authorities for possible war crimes. The prosecutor has already identified 205 suspects, including members of the Russian military and political leadership.
An area used to store dry goods held the bodies of an elderly couple. Bucha residents said they were killed by Russian soldiers.
The couple were killed at short range, local residents said.
Human Rights Watch said in a report released Sunday it had documented several other instances of war crimes by the Russian military in occupied areas of the Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions between Feb. 27 and March 14. These included evidence of repeated rape and the summary execution of six men, as well as looting of civilian property, including food, clothing and firewood, the group said.
“The cases we documented amount to unspeakable, deliberate cruelty and violence against Ukrainian civilians,” said Hugh Williamson, the group’s Europe and Central Asia director, adding that these should be investigated as war crimes.
The killings in Bucha and other areas that were or are under Russian occupation have sparked calls for an international war-crimes investigation of the Russian military’s behavior. “Reports of Russian forces targeting innocent civilians are abhorrent,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss tweeted after images from Bucha emerged. “Those responsible will be held to account.”
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, which represents European Union governments in Brussels, said the EU would assist Ukraine and nongovernmental organizations in gathering evidence to pursue Russia in international courts. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Germany would reinforce sanctions on Russia and increase its military support for Ukraine.
Kira Yarmysh, the press secretary of jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, posted images of executed civilians in Bucha on social media. “Putin cannot be forgiven for this.”
Ukrainian officials say it would take at least 10 days of demining work to restore access to the areas from which Russia withdrew in the Kyiv and Chernihiv areas.
Bucha residents received humanitarian aid Saturday after their town was liberated earlier in the day.
Oleksandr Bursuk, the head of a linen factory in Dymer, north of Kyiv, said workers’ clothing and personal effects had been looted, as well as a delivery truck, which he said he tracked to Belarus.
“There is no occupation army in Dymer anymore,” said Mr. Bursuk. “As a farewell, our ‘liberators’ were looting everything they could.”
A man returning to the village of Velyka Dymerka filmed the damage he said Russian forces had inflicted on his house. A flat-screen TV had been stabbed with a saber. In a kennel outside, his dog lay dead, apparently shot. “Why would you kill it?” he asked in the video.
Elsewhere in the country, Russia extended its recent pattern of targeting infrastructure far behind the front line. Ukrainian officials said Russia fired missiles at the southern port city of Odessa early on Sunday, igniting fires in some districts, officials said.
Several missiles were shot down by Ukrainian air defenses, according to the city council.
Ukrainian officials didn’t disclose the target of the attack, but Russia’s Defense Ministry said it had used high-precision sea- and air-based missiles to destroy an oil refinery and three storage facilities for fuel and lubricants in the Odessa region, from which fuel was supplied to a group of Ukrainian troops in the direction of Mykolayiv. Photos shared on social media showed thick plumes of black smoke rising above the city.
Mauro Orru and Isabel Coles contributed to this article.
8. Before the Ukrainians, It Was the Finns Who Kicked Russia’s Ass
Excerpts:
Had the Soviet Union racked up a few more “victories” of the sort it won in Finland, it would have expired. Russia’s leadership knew it, too, even if it dared not say so in public for decades. Here’s Khrushchev again in 1970:
All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies’ conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay. . . .
Even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew [in 1940] that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. Quite the contrary. When the Finnish war ended our country was told, “Let the trumpets of victory sound!” But the seeds of doubt had been sown.
Russia’s defeat in Afghanistan in 1989 led to fall of the Berlin Wall during the same year and later to the end of the Soviet Union. Its defeat of sorts in Finland could have produced a similar result, and it nearly did. Tiny Finland battered Russia so severely that Adolf Hitler convinced himself that the entire Soviet Union was a Potemkin contraption, a shadow on the wall that could be blitzkrieged from the map. It’s what inspired him to betray Stalin and mount Operation Barbarossa, his invasion of the Soviet Union and his attempt to incorporate it into his Reich.
The Russians have largely memory-holed the Finnish debacle in their history. Hardly anyone is old enough to remember it, and almost nobody talks about it. And as Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine seems to be hurtling toward a similarly ambiguous outcome and a meager pyrrhic victory at best, it shows.
Before the Ukrainians, It Was the Finns Who Kicked Russia’s Ass
The largely forgotten Winter War of 1939-40.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, it seemed apt to compare it to the Soviet Union’s invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, when those states sought to throw off Moscow’s yoke and go their own way. The Soviet army needed barely a week to extinguish the last breaths of the Hungarian resistance, and it took only a day to put down Czechoslovakia’s.
But Ukraine is not Hungary, and it is not Czechoslovakia. Five weeks in, the Ukrainians have killed thousands of Russian soldiers, destroyed entire enemy columns, downed planes, sunk at least one ship, captured more than a thousand prisoners, towed abandoned tanks off the road, pushed Russian forces away from Kyiv, and liberated the occupied cities of Makariv, Irpin, and parts of the larger city of Kherson. Russia, clearly humiliated, now declares that its military objective is limited to the “liberation” of the eastern Donbas region rather than regime change, nationwide occupation, or state death.
The apt comparison then is to Russia’s botched invasion of Finland in 1939. Before the Ukrainians established themselves as Europe’s fuck-around-and-find-out crew, that honor went to the Finns.
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Not two months into World War II, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union made the fateful decision to declare war against Finland. The Russians had some of the usual reasons for invading one of its neighbors. Finland had been a tsarist possession that stalked off in a huff after the Bolshevik Revolution. And Stalin, paranoid as always about land borders unbuffered by vassal states, feared that Finland could be used as the launch pad for an invasion that would immediately endanger Russia’s cultural capital, Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg. It is immediately adjacent to the Karelian Isthmus, half of which belonged to Finland in 1939, placing the center of Russia’s second-largest city barely twenty miles from the Finnish frontier.
Securing Russia’s border south of Saint Petersburg had been easy enough. Stalin cajoled the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to agree to “mutual assistance” treaties with Moscow, thus gobbling them up into the empire. He attempted to do the same thing to Finland, but Finland told Russia to pound sand.
Stalin then asked for territorial concessions near Saint Petersburg in exchange for less strategic (uninhabited) land elsewhere. Finland told Russia to pound sand again.
Stalin then demanded a territorial swap, but Finland kept saying no, knowing it could lead to war but not entirely believing it would. But it did, and the Soviet Union, with its two-million-strong Red Army, invaded on November 26, 1939, using a false-flag operation as a pretext.
Baron Gustaf Mannerheim led Finland’s war effort as commander-in-chief of its defense forces. And what an effort it was. Finland’s army was barely a tenth the size of Russia’s. The Finns had no antitank guns, barely a dozen fighter planes, and unspeakable communications equipment that weighed hundreds of pounds and exploded in frigid temperatures.
Pretty much everyone on the Russian side assured themselves that the war would be over in a flash, that Finland had but a toy army, that a nine-hundred-pound gorilla can sit wherever it wants, and that the Finnish working class would rise up and greet Red Army soldier as liberators from its bourgeois oppressors. “All we had to do was raise our voices a little bit,” former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev told Life magazine in 1970, “and the Finns would obey. If that didn’t work, we could fire one shot and the Finns would put up their hands and surrender. Or so we thought.”
The Russians thought wrong.
Finland’s armed forces outmaneuvered, out-thought, and outfought the Russians with guerrilla tactics powered by blistering morale and the total dedication that free people nearly always have when defending their families, their homes, and their land.
The Finns abandoned their own villages near the border, set houses ablaze so the enemy couldn’t find shelter in them, booby-trapped the ruins, and poisoned the wells. They didn’t have sophisticated weapons, so they invented some of their own, including an undetectable wooden mine capable of disabling tanks, water mines to shatter frozen lakes as enemy troops attempted to cross them, and Molotov cocktails (tauntingly named after Russia’s foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov), which were better than their Spanish precursors for including not only gasoline but also kerosene, tar, potassium chloride, and sulfuric acid.
The opposing Russian force was a bumbling, idiot slave army. While some Russian units consisted of competent, professional soldiers, others comprised conscripts who didn’t even know which country they were invading, let alone why, and whose officers routinely threatened to shoot them. The top of the chain was in no better shape. Stalin had recently purged 75 percent of his military leadership, either by shooting them or sending them to gulags in Kolyma and Siberia, and he’d replaced them with loyalist hacks.
Mannerheim, writes historian William R. Trotter in A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939–1940, “had nothing but contempt for the kind of officers who had been moved up the promotion ladder to replace those killed or imprisoned during the purges, regarding them as working-class thugs in uniform, no matter what their rank. . . . [They were] groveling flunkies whose every battlefield decision had to be seconded by a political commissar before orders could go to the troops.”
The Russians had no idea back then how to fight with combined arms (and today they’re proving in Ukraine that they still don’t). Infantry and tanks usually proceeded in the same general direction but with little or no coordination between them, leaving foot soldiers exposed to machine gun fire from Finnish strongpoints. Invading Finland with tanks should have been easy. The Finns had no tanks to speak of. But the Russians brought antitank guns anyway—which the Finns promptly captured and turned against the Red Army’s columns.
Hoping to win hearts and minds in the only way he knew how, Stalin staged a political freakshow in the tiny and easily conquered town of Terijoki by imposing a totalitarian police state called “The People’s Republic of Finland.” An old Communist who had fled Finland after the Russian Revolution named Otto Wille Kuusinen was the “president.”
The world laughed, including Finnish Communists. “Even to the more radical factions of the Finnish proletariat,” Trotter writes, “the Kuusinen government looked exactly like what it was: a pathetic farce and a propaganda ploy of insulting crudeness.”
The winter of 1939–1940 was one of the coldest on record in Finland, with temperatures dropping to 25 degrees below zero, and the Russians weren’t outfitted for such conditions. Contrary to what those who live in perpetually warm climes sometimes believe, there’s no “getting used to” 25 degrees below zero if you don’t have warm clothes, a heat source, and heavy calories. While the Finns prepared hot protein-rich meals using tiny portable stoves, the Russians mostly subsisted on bread and tea, neither of which sustain men camping outside in a polar vortex.
Here’s Trotter in A Frozen Hell:
The Russians’ style of bivouac was hopeless. They lugged with them huge, cumbersome field kitchens, instead of the small multi-purpose stoves the Finns used for frontline units. These highly visible Russian devices were the invaders’ only source of hot food, and in arctic conditions, a hot meal could literally mean the difference between life and death. The high-hat stovepipe chimneys of these kitchens were hard to disguise. They gave off telltale plumes of smoke and were high-priority targets for Finnish snipers and mortar crews. Aside from the field kitchens, the invaders’ only source of warmth was campfires. The Russians were addicted to great roaring tree-trunk blazes around which they habitually gathered, even though the soaring flames outlined them like rifle-range targets and never failed to attract the attention of every Finnish sniper within range. . . . Finns lived and worked in shellproof dugouts roofed over with layers of logs and earth and completely camouflaged. Inside these dugouts the walls were lined with furs and skins. Men could rest in snug comfort when they returned from patrol duty or a period of combat.
In a famous incident informally known as the Sausage War, half-starved Russian soldiers mounted a surprise attack against a lightly defended Finnish camp only to abruptly stop in their tracks and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when they smelled the Finns’ sausage soup in the field kitchen.
Passing between roads through the dense Finnish forest buried in snowdrifts deep enough to swallow a house was impossible. Impossible, that is, for the Russians. Finnish soldiers on whisper-quiet skis moved like ghosts through the forests they’d known their whole lives while Russian armored columns were trapped on the roads, easy pickings for ambushes and what the Finns called “motti” attacks.
In the Finnish language, a motti is a stack of logs that’s ready to be chopped into firewood. The Finnish army treated those Russian columns like wood to be chopped. Finnish soldiers emerged from the howling wilderness, hurled themselves at weak points in a column, took out the whole segment, then vanished again into the trees on the far side. They did this repeatedly, carving the columns into pieces small enough to be easily dispatched.
The Battle of Taipale was truly a charnel house—for the Russians. Here’s Trotter again:
The land surrounding the promontory was either flat or lightly rolling, with few trees. The last half kilometer of any approach to Finnish lines had to be made across wide sheets of open ice. The Russian attacks formed in the open, approached in the open, and were pressed home in the open, against an entrenched defender well supplied with machine guns. Moreover, at this stage of the war, the Russians had no snowsuit camouflage for their men and no whitewash for their tanks. The tanks moved in ungainly clumps, and the infantry attacked in dense, human wave formations. It was the Somme in miniature. To the Finns who witnessed these attacks, it seemed beyond belief that any army, no matter how fatalistic its ideology or inexhaustible its supply of manpower, would continue to mount attack after attack across such billiard-table terrain.
In some battles the Finnish machine gunners held their fire until the range was down to fifty meters; the butchery was dreadful. In a number of cases Finnish machine gunners had to be evacuated due to stress. They had become emotionally unstable from having to perform such mindless slaughter, day after day.
In three short months, the Russians lost 250,000 soldiers, twice as many as the United States lost in all of World War I. The Finns lost a tenth that number, just 25,000.
But the Russians, after getting their ass served up on a plate, finally got serious and managed to overwhelm the Finns with an effectively infinite source of fighting men and a contemptible disregard for their lives. Finland cried uncle and sued for peace. Stalin’s requirements for peace were even more severe than his prewar demands. The Finns had to cede the entire Karelian Isthmus to Russia. Finland also had to give up the (generally useless) Rybachy Peninsula in the Arctic, some territory in Salla, and some minor islands in the Baltic. Roughly a tenth of Finland’s population lost their homes.
But it was nevertheless a victory of sorts for Finland. Russia managed to consume all other Baltic states without mobilizing so much as one soldier. Finland alone managed to remain sovereign during the time of the Soviet Union, though Russia compelled it to pledge neutrality and stay out of NATO. And what of the land Russia had captured? Trotter quotes a Soviet general: “We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead.”
Some nations are indigestible, and Finland is one of them. After tasting two decades of freedom from the Russian Empire, it was not going back—especially not to Stalin’s totalitarian knockoff.
Had the Soviet Union racked up a few more “victories” of the sort it won in Finland, it would have expired. Russia’s leadership knew it, too, even if it dared not say so in public for decades. Here’s Khrushchev again in 1970:
All of us—and Stalin first and foremost—sensed in our victory a defeat by the Finns. It was a dangerous defeat because it encouraged our enemies’ conviction that the Soviet Union was a colossus with feet of clay. . . .
Even in these most favorable conditions it was only after great difficulty and enormous losses that we were finally able to win. A victory at such a cost was actually a moral defeat. Our people never knew [in 1940] that we had suffered a moral defeat, of course, because they were never told the truth. Quite the contrary. When the Finnish war ended our country was told, “Let the trumpets of victory sound!” But the seeds of doubt had been sown.
Russia’s defeat in Afghanistan in 1989 led to fall of the Berlin Wall during the same year and later to the end of the Soviet Union. Its defeat of sorts in Finland could have produced a similar result, and it nearly did. Tiny Finland battered Russia so severely that Adolf Hitler convinced himself that the entire Soviet Union was a Potemkin contraption, a shadow on the wall that could be blitzkrieged from the map. It’s what inspired him to betray Stalin and mount Operation Barbarossa, his invasion of the Soviet Union and his attempt to incorporate it into his Reich.
The Russians have largely memory-holed the Finnish debacle in their history. Hardly anyone is old enough to remember it, and almost nobody talks about it. And as Russia’s botched invasion of Ukraine seems to be hurtling toward a similarly ambiguous outcome and a meager pyrrhic victory at best, it shows.
9. Xi Jinping’s ‘Common Prosperity’ Was Everywhere, but China Backed Off
Excerpts:
Some economists say China could revive common prosperity after the party congress this fall, if growth rebounds strongly.
But it is unclear whether Mr. Xi ever had any intention of taking more radical steps to help Chinese people reap a bigger share of growth. One of the simplest ways to do that would be by diverting more income—and control—from the government to the private sector, but that runs counter to Mr. Xi’s impulses, said Mr. Magnus at Oxford and other economists.
Gan Li, a professor of economics at Texas A&M University, said another approach might be to introduce inheritance or capital-gains taxes on individuals, which would redirect more wealth from richer families, but that would also likely face opposition.
Other economists say China needs to change the way local governments are funded—yet another tough task in China’s political climate, as it could reduce Beijing’s authority.
Right now, local governments are charged with providing many social benefits, but they are typically heavily indebted and limited in their ability to raise funds on their own. So they have little incentive to underwrite large-scale welfare programs.
Instead, local officials tend to favor investing in projects that deliver quicker results, like infrastructure, or ones deemed strategically important to Chinese leaders, such as achieving semiconductor independence or achieving more military strength, said Mr. Shih at the University of California, San Diego.
Xi Jinping’s ‘Common Prosperity’ Was Everywhere, but China Backed Off
The signature economic policy, aimed at reducing inequality, rattled businesses last year but has faded as Beijing refocuses on shoring up growth
Apr. 3, 2022 5:33 am ET
HONG KONG—China’s apparent retreat from one of its most important policy initiatives is showing how hard it is to remake the country’s economy and reduce inequality nearly a decade into Xi Jinping’s rule.
For most of last year, Mr. Xi trumpeted a signature program known as “common prosperity” aimed at redistributing more of China’s wealth, amid concerns that elites had benefited disproportionately from the country’s economic boom. The program underpinned many of Mr. Xi’s policy drives, including a clampdown on technology companies that were seen as exploiting their market power to boost profits.
But while some aspects of the tech crackdown continue, other parts of the program have fizzled, as China shifts its priorities toward shoring up slowing growth.
Last year, the phrase “common prosperity” seemed to be everywhere, in state media, schools, and speeches by Mr. Xi and others. A historic resolution passed during Communist Party meetings in the fall, which puts him on equal footing withMao Zedong, used the phrase eight times.
This year, it turned up just once in a 17,000-word government work report on the economy delivered by Premier Li Keqiang in March.
The Finance Ministry’s latest budget report didn’t spell out specific targets for the central government to allocate resources to the campaign. In Zhejiang province, which was designated as the primary testing ground for the program, new economic plans make little mention of policies that could put more money in the pockets of less affluent households.
Beijing has walked back some measures related to the common-prosperity campaign.
PHOTO: KEVIN FRAYER/GETTY IMAGES
Beijing has walked back some measures related to the campaign. The government last month shelved plans to expand a new property tax that could have funded social-welfare programs but faced opposition from elites and policy makers who worried it would push property values lower. Trial runs of the tax currently apply only to Shanghai and Chongqing.
The Finance Ministry cited “unripe” conditions for expanding it, without elaborating.
Part of the reason common prosperity is fading is that the policies enacted spooked business owners and slowed growth when Mr. Xi needs China’s economy to stay robust. He is preparing for political meetings expected to return him for a third term in power later this year.
But economists and scholars say it is also becoming clearer that common-prosperity goals can’t be met without more drastic—and potentially painful—changes that Mr. Xi doesn’t appear willing to countenance.
That includes overhauls in China’s taxation and social-welfare systems. China’s tax system is less progressive than developed countries’, with burdens falling mostly on lower-income workers. Raising tax rates on the upper class, who tend to be more politically connected, has faced resistance.
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More fundamentally, economists say, China’s tax system doesn’t raise enough money to fund education, health and other services at levels implied by Mr. Xi’s common-prosperity agenda—a problem that has led it to pressure private companies and tycoons to redistribute money.
A warehouse for online retailer JD.com in Beijing. A clampdown on tech companies was underpinned by the common-prosperity campaign.
PHOTO: ANDY WONG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Personal income taxes in China add up to 1.2% of gross domestic product, compared with about 10% in the U.S. and U.K. Revenue from social-security contributions, at about 6.5% of GDP, is lower than the 9% average among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“All those changes involve a lot of political initiatives,” said George Magnus, an economist and associate at the China center at Oxford University. “I don’t think the government is willing to take them.”
The State Council, which is China’s top government body, and the Zhejiang government didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The phrase “common prosperity” dates back decades. It was used by both Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to describe the socialist ideals of reducing inequality and polarization in society.
Yet data show that wealth inequality has widened and social mobility has stalled since China’s economy began opening to the outside world—trends Mr. Xi views as threats to the party’s continued rule. In 2021, the wealthiest 10% of people in China owned 68% of total household wealth, according to the World Inequality Lab.
Signaling his attention to the problem, Mr. Xi told officials in January last year that carrying out a common-prosperity initiative couldn’t wait. With China’s economy rebounding strongly after the first wave of Covid-19, policy makers saw an opportunity to push changes they hoped would satisfy the leader’s aims.
The regulations that followed mainly involved crackdowns on industries seen as making too much money or running too much financial risk, without deeper change to motivate innovation or enhance opportunity for lower- and middle-class Chinese, economists say.
Tighter regulations on property developers reduced some of their risk-taking but helped trigger a real-estate slump. Clampdowns on tech companies and for-profit tutoring firms discouraged monopolistic behavior but led to mass layoffs in those industries, while billions of dollars in market value among listed Chinese companies got wiped out.
Shanghai is one of two cities where trial runs of a new property tax apply.
PHOTO: QILAI SHEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Overall growth slowed sharply, and many economists now say China will struggle to hit a government target of around 5.5% growth this year.
Although tech companies and entrepreneurs pledged to donate billions of dollars to common-prosperity initiatives, economists say such one-off gifts don’t amount to a sustainable strategy for long-term social changes, while damage from the crackdowns, which suggested that private entrepreneurship was out of fashion, could last for years.
The common-prosperity slogan “almost became a rallying cry among some enterprises who use the term sarcastically to infer a whole set of policies aimed at controlling or even destroying private entrepreneurship in China,” said Victor Shih, an associate professor of political economy at the University of California, San Diego. “I don’t think that’s the message the Chinese government would like to send.”
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With growth slowing more than expected, Vice Premier Liu He pledged in March that further regulations would be more “transparent and predictable.”
Some economists say China could revive common prosperity after the party congress this fall, if growth rebounds strongly.
But it is unclear whether Mr. Xi ever had any intention of taking more radical steps to help Chinese people reap a bigger share of growth. One of the simplest ways to do that would be by diverting more income—and control—from the government to the private sector, but that runs counter to Mr. Xi’s impulses, said Mr. Magnus at Oxford and other economists.
President Xi Jinping needs China’s economy to stay robust.
PHOTO: NG HAN GUAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gan Li, a professor of economics at Texas A&M University, said another approach might be to introduce inheritance or capital-gains taxes on individuals, which would redirect more wealth from richer families, but that would also likely face opposition.
Other economists say China needs to change the way local governments are funded—yet another tough task in China’s political climate, as it could reduce Beijing’s authority.
Right now, local governments are charged with providing many social benefits, but they are typically heavily indebted and limited in their ability to raise funds on their own. So they have little incentive to underwrite large-scale welfare programs.
Instead, local officials tend to favor investing in projects that deliver quicker results, like infrastructure, or ones deemed strategically important to Chinese leaders, such as achieving semiconductor independence or achieving more military strength, said Mr. Shih at the University of California, San Diego.
Lingling Wei contributed to this article.
10. TikTok Brain Explained: Why Some Kids Seem Hooked on Social Video Feeds
This must be studied by all influence/PSYOP professionals.
Excerpts:
Researchers are just beginning to conduct long-term studies on digital media’s effects on kids’ brains. The National Institutes of Health is funding a study of nearly 12,000 adolescents as they grow into adulthood to examine the impact that many childhood experiences—from social media to smoking—have on cognitive development.
The study’s investigators are focusing now on the impact specific apps have on children’s brain development.
The results aren’t in yet. Bonnie Nagel, one of the study’s investigators and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University, said she predicts they will find that when brains repeatedly process rapid, rewarding content, their ability to process less-rapid, less-rewarding things “may change or be harmed.”
As media gets faster and more stimulating, it’s bumping up against the realities of the nondigital world, and parental expectations.
“It’s like we’ve made kids live in a candy store and then we tell them to ignore all that candy and eat a plate of vegetables,” said James Williams, a tech ethicist and author of “Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.” “We have an endless flow of immediate pleasures that’s unprecedented in human history.”
TikTok Brain Explained: Why Some Kids Seem Hooked on Social Video Feeds
The dopamine rush of endless short videos makes it hard for young viewers to switch their focus to slower-moving activities. ‘We’ve made kids live in a candy store.’
By Julie Jargon
Apr. 2, 2022 9:00 am ET
Remember the good old days when kids just watched YouTube all day? Now that they binge on 15-second TikToks, those YouTube clips seem like PBS documentaries.
Many parents tell me their kids can’t sit through feature-length films anymore because to them the movies feel painfully slow. Others have observed their kids struggling to focus on homework. And reading a book? Forget about it.
What is happening to kids’ brains?
“It is hard to look at increasing trends in media consumption of all types, media multitasking and rates of ADHD in young people and not conclude that there is a decrease in their attention span,” said Carl Marci, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Links between attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnoses and screen time are subject to debate, since many factors could account for a steady rise in cases. Yet even parents whose children don’t qualify for that medical diagnosis say their kids are more distracted. Emerging research suggests that watching short, fast-paced videos makes it harder for kids to sustain activities that don’t offer instant—and constant—gratification.
One of the few studies specifically examining TikTok-related effects on the brain focused on Douyin, the TikTok equivalent in China, made by the same Chinese parent company, ByteDance Ltd. It found that the personalized videos the app’s recommendation engine shows users activate the reward centers of the brain, as compared with the general-interest videos shown to new users.
Brain scans of Chinese college students showed that areas involved in addiction were highly activated in those who watched personalized videos. It also found some people have trouble controlling when to stop watching.
“We speculate that individuals with lower self-control ability have more difficulty shifting attention away from favorite video stimulation,” the researchers at China’s Zhejiang University wrote.
Investigation: How TikTok's Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires
Investigation: How TikTok's Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires
Play video: Investigation: How TikTok's Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires
A Wall Street Journal investigation found that TikTok only needs one important piece of information to figure out what you want: the amount of time you linger over a piece of content. Every second you hesitate or rewatch, the app is tracking you. Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann/The Wall Street Journal
A Wall Street Journal investigation last year found that TikTok’s algorithm figures out what users like based on the amount of time they watch each video, and then serves up more of the same. TikTok said it is now developing ways to diversify the videos its algorithm recommends to viewers.
A TikTok spokeswoman said the company wants younger teens to develop positive digital habits early on, and that it recently made some changes aimed at curbing extensive app usage. For example, TikTok won’t allow users ages 13 to 15 to receive push notifications after 9 p.m. TikTok also periodically reminds users to take a break to go outside or grab a snack.
Kids have a hard time pulling away from videos on YouTube, too, and Google has made several changes to help limit its use, including turning off autoplay by default on accounts of people under 18.
Brain science
When kids do things that require prolonged focus, such as reading or solving math problems, they’re using directed attention. This function starts in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for decision making and impulse control.
“Directed attention is the ability to inhibit distractions and sustain attention and to shift attention appropriately. It requires higher-order skills like planning and prioritizing,” said Michael Manos, the clinical director of the Center for Attention and Learning at Cleveland Clinic Children’s.
Dr. Manos said the ever-changing environment of TikTok doesn’t require sustained attention. “If kids’ brains become accustomed to constant changes, the brain finds it difficult to adapt to a nondigital activity where things don’t move quite as fast,” he said.
TikTok is now allowing users to make videos as long as 10 minutes, up from the previous maximum of 3 minutes and from its initial 60-second maximum.
“In the short-form snackable world, you’re getting quick hit after quick hit, and as soon as it’s over, you have to make a choice,” said Mass General’s Dr. Marci, who wrote the new book “Rewired: Protecting Your Brain in the Digital Age.” The more developed the prefrontal cortex, the better the choices.
The infinite candy store
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that gets released in the brain when it’s expecting a reward. A flood of dopamine reinforces cravings for something enjoyable, whether it’s a tasty meal, a drug or a funny TikTok video.
“TikTok is a dopamine machine,” said John Hutton, a pediatrician and director of the Reading & Literacy Discovery Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. “If you want kids to pay attention, they need to practice paying attention.”
Researchers are just beginning to conduct long-term studies on digital media’s effects on kids’ brains. The National Institutes of Health is funding a study of nearly 12,000 adolescents as they grow into adulthood to examine the impact that many childhood experiences—from social media to smoking—have on cognitive development.
The study’s investigators are focusing now on the impact specific apps have on children’s brain development.
The results aren’t in yet. Bonnie Nagel, one of the study’s investigators and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University, said she predicts they will find that when brains repeatedly process rapid, rewarding content, their ability to process less-rapid, less-rewarding things “may change or be harmed.”
As media gets faster and more stimulating, it’s bumping up against the realities of the nondigital world, and parental expectations.
“It’s like we’ve made kids live in a candy store and then we tell them to ignore all that candy and eat a plate of vegetables,” said James Williams, a tech ethicist and author of “Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.” “We have an endless flow of immediate pleasures that’s unprecedented in human history.”
What you can do
Parents and kids can take steps to boost attention, but it takes effort, the experts say.
Swap screen time for real time. Exercise and free play are among the best ways to build attention during childhood, says Johann Hari, author of “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again.” Dedicating after-school and weekend time for sports, play dates, family hikes or trips to the park can help focus the brain.
“Depriving kids of tech doesn’t work, but simultaneously reducing it and building up other things, like playing outside, does,” Mr. Hari said.
Practice restraint. Your child’s brain won’t inherently want to set aside a device that’s delivering entertainment, Dr. Nagel said. “When you practice stopping, it strengthens those connections in the brain to allow you to stop again next time.”
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There are various ways to do that, such as scheduling regular times each day when tech isn’t used—such as at the dinner table—and by setting time limits on screen sessions.
Use tech’s own tools. TikTok has a screen-time management setting that allows users to cap their app usage. Parents can also establish screen-time limits for their kids with Family Pairing, which requires parents to create a TikTok account and link it to their teen’s.
YouTube allows parents to set time limits for younger kids. For kids using the regular YouTube app, parents can create supervised accounts using Google Family Link to manage screen time, provide take-a-break reminders and choose age-appropriate content.
Parents can also set time limits on specific apps directly from Apple and Android devices.
Ensure good sleep. Teens are suffering from a sleep deficit. Proper sleep is essential for focus and attention, which is why phones and other devices should be kept out of the bedroom at night.
11. Opinion | Ukraine Is the First Real World War
Excerpts:
These regimes have become adept at using new surveillance technologies to control political opponents and information flows and to manipulate their politics and state financial resources to keep themselves ensconced in power. We are talking about Turkey, Myanmar, China, North Korea, Peru, Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary and several Arab states. Putin was surely hoping that a second Trump term might transform America into a version of this kind of strongman kleptocracy and tip the whole global balance his way.
Then came this war. To be sure, Ukraine’s democracy is frail and the country has had its own serious issues with oligarchs and corruption. Kyiv’s burning aspiration, though, was not to join NATO but to join the European Union, and it was in the process of cleaning itself up to do just that.
That’s what really triggered this war. Putin was never going to let a Slavic Ukraine become a successful free-market democracy in the E.U. next door to his stagnating Slavic Russian kleptocracy. The contrast would have been intolerable for him, and that is why he is trying to erase Ukraine.
But Putin, it turns out, had no clue what world he was living in, no clue about the frailties of his own system, no clue how much the whole free, democratic world could and would join the fight against him in Ukraine, and no clue, most of all, about how many people would be watching.
Opinion | Ukraine Is the First Real World War
Thomas L. Friedman
Ukraine Is the First Real World War
April 3, 2022, 6:00 a.m. ET
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Almost six weeks into the war between Russia and Ukraine, I’m beginning to wonder if this conflict isn’t our first true world war — much more than World War I or World War II ever were. In this war, which I think of as “World War Wired,” virtually everyone on the planet can either observe the fighting at a granular level, participate in some way or be affected economically — no matter where they live.
While the battle on the ground that triggered World War Wired is ostensibly over who should control Ukraine, do not be fooled. This has quickly turned into “the big battle” between the two most dominant political systems in the world today: free-market, “rule-of-law democracy versus authoritarian kleptocracy,” the Swedish expert on the Russian economy, Anders Aslund, remarked to me.
Though this war is far from over, and Vladimir Putin may still find a way to prevail and come out stronger, if he doesn’t, it could be a watershed in the conflict between democratic and undemocratic systems. It is worth recalling that World War II put an end to fascism, and the Cold War put an end to orthodox communism, eventually even in China. So, what happens on the streets of Kyiv, Mariupol and the Donbas region could influence political systems far beyond Ukraine and far into the future.
Indeed, other autocratic leaders, like China’s, are watching Russia carefully. They see its economy being weakened by Western sanctions, thousands of its young technologists fleeing to escape a government denying them access to the internet and credible news and its inept army seemingly unable to gather, share and funnel accurate information to the top. Those leaders have to be asking themselves: “Holy cow — am I that vulnerable? Am I presiding over a similar house of cards?”
Everyone is watching.
In World War I and World War II, no one had a smartphone or access to social networks through which to observe and participate in the war in nonkinetic ways. Indeed, a large chunk of the world’s population was still colonized and did not have the full freedom to express independent views, even if they had the technology. Many of those residing outside the war zones were also extremely poor subsistence farmers who were not so heavily affected by those first two world wars. There weren’t the giant connected globalized and urbanized lower and middle classes of today’s wired world.
Now, anyone with a smartphone can view what is happening in Ukraine — live and in color — and express opinions globally through social media. In our post-colonial world, governments from virtually every country around the globe can vote to condemn or excuse one side or another in Ukraine through the U.N. General Assembly.
While estimates vary, it appears that between three billion and four billion people on the planet — almost half — have a smartphone today, and although internet censorship remains a real problem, particularly in China, there are just so many more people able to peer deeply into so many more places. And that’s not all.
Anyone with a smartphone and a credit card can aid strangers in Ukraine, through Airbnb, by just reserving a night at their home and not using it. Teenagers anywhere can create apps on Twitter to track Russian oligarchs and their yachts. And the encrypted instant messaging app Telegram — which was invented by two Russian-born techie brothers as a tool to communicate outside the Kremlin’s earshot — “has emerged as the go-to place for unfiltered live war updates for both Ukrainian refugees and increasingly isolated Russians alike,” NPR reported. And it’s run out of Dubai!
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s government has been able to tap a whole new source of funding — raising more than $70 million worth of cryptocurrency from individuals around the world after appealing on social media for donations. And the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk activated his SpaceX company’s satellite broadband service in Ukraine to provide high-speed internet after a Ukrainian official tweeted at him for help from Russian efforts to disconnect Ukraine from the world.
Commercial U.S.-based satellite companies, like Maxar Technologies, have enabled anyone to view from space hundreds of desperate people lining up for food outside a supermarket in Mariupol — even though the Russians have the town surrounded on the ground and have banned any journalists from entering.
Then there are the cyberwarriors who can jump into the fight from anywhere — and have. CNBC reported that “a popular Twitter account named ‘Anonymous’ declared that the shadowy activist group was waging a ‘cyber war’ against Russia.” The account, which has more than 7.9 million global followers — almost eight times larger than Russia’s whole army (including some 500,000 new Anonymous followers since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) — “has claimed responsibility for disabling prominent Russian government, news and corporate websites and leaking data from entities such as Roskomnadzor, the federal agency responsible for censoring Russian media.”
But just as so many more people can affect this war, so, too, can more be affected by it. Russia and Ukraine are key suppliers of wheat and fertilizer to the agricultural supply chains that now feed the world and that this war has disrupted. A war between just two countries in Europe has spiked the price of food for Egyptians, Brazilians, Indians and Africans.
And because Russia is one of the world’s biggest exporters of natural gas, crude oil and the diesel fuel used by farmers in their tractors, the sanctions on Russia’s energy infrastructure are curbing its exports, causing gasoline pump prices to rise from Minneapolis to Mexico to Mumbai, and forcing farmers as far away as Argentina to ration their diesel-powered tractor usage or cut fossil-fuel-rich fertilizer usage, jeopardizing Argentina’s agriculture exports and adding further to soaring world food prices.
There’s another unexpected financial globalization angle on this war that you really need to keep your eye on: Putin saved up over $600 billion in gold, foreign government bonds and foreign currency, earned from all of Russia’s energy and mineral exports, precisely so he would have a cushion if he were sanctioned by the West. But Putin apparently forgot that in today’s wired world, as is standard practice, his government had deposited most of it in the banks of Western countries and China.
According to the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center, the top six nations where Russian central bank foreign currency assets are stowed by percentage are: China, 17.7 percent; France, 15.6 percent; Japan, 12.8 percent; Germany, 12.2 percent; U.S., 8.5 percent; and Britain, 5.8 percent. Also, the Bank of International Settlement and the International Monetary Fund have 6.4 percent.
Each of these countries, except China, has now frozen the Russian reserves it is holding — so around $330 billion is inaccessible to Putin, according to the Atlantic Council’s tracker. But not only can the Russian state not touch those reserves to prop up its crumbling economy, there will be a huge global push to tap this money to pay reparations to rebuild the Ukrainian homes, apartment buildings, roads and government structures the Russian Army destroyed in Putin’s war of choice.
Message to Putin: “Thanks for banking with us. It will be legally difficult to seize your savings for reparations, but you’d better get your lawyers ready.”
For all these reasons, all of those leaders around the world who have drifted toward some version or another of Putin-inspired authoritarian capitalism or kleptocracy have to be worried, though they will not be easily dislodged no matter what happens in Russia.
These regimes have become adept at using new surveillance technologies to control political opponents and information flows and to manipulate their politics and state financial resources to keep themselves ensconced in power. We are talking about Turkey, Myanmar, China, North Korea, Peru, Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary and several Arab states. Putin was surely hoping that a second Trump term might transform America into a version of this kind of strongman kleptocracy and tip the whole global balance his way.
Then came this war. To be sure, Ukraine’s democracy is frail and the country has had its own serious issues with oligarchs and corruption. Kyiv’s burning aspiration, though, was not to join NATO but to join the European Union, and it was in the process of cleaning itself up to do just that.
That’s what really triggered this war. Putin was never going to let a Slavic Ukraine become a successful free-market democracy in the E.U. next door to his stagnating Slavic Russian kleptocracy. The contrast would have been intolerable for him, and that is why he is trying to erase Ukraine.
But Putin, it turns out, had no clue what world he was living in, no clue about the frailties of his own system, no clue how much the whole free, democratic world could and would join the fight against him in Ukraine, and no clue, most of all, about how many people would be watching.
12.
Excerpts:
This assumption has two implications. The first is for the war itself: In the near term, whatever Ukraine regains, it will regain on the battlefield, not through some deus ex Moscow delivering a friendlier Russian government to the negotiating table. This does not imply the United States should suddenly escalate militarily, dancing closer to a nuclear conflict. But it does imply that sustaining support for the Ukrainian military is our most important policy, with sanctions playing only a supporting role.
The second implication is for the long term, once peace in some form is established. Especially if that peace is a frozen conflict, in which Putin claims victory by holding onto some Ukrainian territory, there will be pressure to leave the sanctions in place, to continue the war indefinitely by other means.
There will be an argument for doing exactly that, but we should be clear on the nature of the case: Namely, that even absent open war, Russia will remain a generational enemy to peace in Europe and a generational threat to American interests — making policies that diminish Russian wealth and power a justified form of self-defense, both for Europe’s eastern borders and for the wider Pax Americana.
The argument will not be that sanctions are likely to deliver the Russian people from Putin’s rule, or that collective economic punishment is likely to be somehow worth it for the Russians themselves, come some hypothetical future revolution.
No, if we intend to make economic war on Russia for a generation, we should be cleareyed about the calculus. In the hopes of making a dangerous great power as weak as possible, we will make it more likely that Putinism rules for decades, and that Russia remains our deadly enemy for as long as anyone can reasonably foresee.
Opinion | Putin Is Losing in Ukraine. But He’s Winning in Russia.
Ross Douthat
April 2, 2022, 3:00 p.m. ET
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Right now Vladimir Putin is losing the battle for Ukraine. His maximal goals have been abandoned (for now), his troops around Kyiv are in retreat, his imperial dreams are being disavowed. He has more modest goals to fall back on, resources and territories that he may be able to hold — but a month of Ukrainian valor and Western support have dealt his ambitions a devastating blow.
Putin is not losing, however, in the battle for Russia. From the start of hostilities, the Western answer to his maximalist ambitions — not an official goal, but a hope that informs policy and punditry and slips out of Joe Biden’s lips in excited moments — has been regime change in the Kremlin, a failed war toppling Putin and bringing a more reasonable government to power.
This was always a thin hope, but despite military quagmire and unprecedented economic sanctions, it appears even thinner now. In polling and anecdote alike, Putin appears to be consolidating support from the Russian public, rallying a nation that feels itself to be as he portrays it — unjustly surrounded and besieged.
His approval ratings, according to Russia’s main independent pollster, look like George W. Bush’s after 9/11. His inner circle has always been unlikely to break with him, for reasons sketched by Anatol Lieven in The Financial Times a few weeks ago: Its members mostly come from the same background, share the same geopolitical assumptions, and are far more likely “to fight on ruthlessly for a long time” than to suddenly turn against their leader. But even in the wider circle of Russian elites, the war so far has reportedly generated more anti-Western solidarity than division.
“Putin’s dream of a consolidation among the Russian elite has come true,” the journalist Farida Rustamova reported from her recent conversations. “These people understand that their lives are now tied only to Russia, and that that’s where they’ll need to build them.”
It is, of course, reasonable to question both anecdote and data from a system that punishes dissent. But these kind of patterns should not be surprising. Yes, failed wars sometimes bring down authoritarian regimes — like the Argentine junta after its misadventure in the Falkland Islands. But externally imposed sanctions, economic warfare, often end up strengthening the internal power of the targeted regime. In the short run, they supply an external scapegoat, an obvious enemy to blame for hardship instead of your own leaders. In the long run, the academic literature suggests, they may make states more repressive, less likely to democratize.
Just consider the list of bad-actor countries that the United States has used sanctions against for long periods of time. From Cuba to North Korea, Iran to Venezuela — not to mention Iraq before our 2003 invasion — the pattern is predictable: The people suffer, the regime endures.
It should be our assumption — not a certainty, but a guiding premise — that the same will be true of a sanctioned and isolated Russia. Even if the rally to Putin fades as the economic pain increases, the forces empowered by Russian suffering will not be liberal ones. And any leadership change is more likely to resemble Nicolás Maduro succeeding Hugo Chávez than it is the revolutions of 1989.
This assumption has two implications. The first is for the war itself: In the near term, whatever Ukraine regains, it will regain on the battlefield, not through some deus ex Moscow delivering a friendlier Russian government to the negotiating table. This does not imply the United States should suddenly escalate militarily, dancing closer to a nuclear conflict. But it does imply that sustaining support for the Ukrainian military is our most important policy, with sanctions playing only a supporting role.
The second implication is for the long term, once peace in some form is established. Especially if that peace is a frozen conflict, in which Putin claims victory by holding onto some Ukrainian territory, there will be pressure to leave the sanctions in place, to continue the war indefinitely by other means.
There will be an argument for doing exactly that, but we should be clear on the nature of the case: Namely, that even absent open war, Russia will remain a generational enemy to peace in Europe and a generational threat to American interests — making policies that diminish Russian wealth and power a justified form of self-defense, both for Europe’s eastern borders and for the wider Pax Americana.
The argument will not be that sanctions are likely to deliver the Russian people from Putin’s rule, or that collective economic punishment is likely to be somehow worth it for the Russians themselves, come some hypothetical future revolution.
No, if we intend to make economic war on Russia for a generation, we should be cleareyed about the calculus. In the hopes of making a dangerous great power as weak as possible, we will make it more likely that Putinism rules for decades, and that Russia remains our deadly enemy for as long as anyone can reasonably foresee.
13. The overstated danger of a peaking China
Excerpts:
The most worrisome scenario is a PRC attempt to annex Taiwan by military force. The view that a peaking China is dangerous holds that Beijing’s chances of prevailing in a Taiwan Strait war are highest in the late 2020s and will recede thereafter.
This is largely based on a comparison of US and PRC naval capabilities, an important consideration because the war would mostly be fought at sea. The Chinese navy already has more ships than the US navy, and that gap is expected to widen through the year 2027.
But it might widen further after 2027 if the two countries’ current naval shipbuilding trends continue. China’s advantage in order of battle might be greater in 2037 than in 2027. It’s not clear there is only a brief and closing window of opportunity for a Chinese victory. Thus the rationale for China preferring an earlier war is weakened.
Beijing has amply disproved its own claim that a strong China “will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence.” A weakening China would promise not an intensification of this problem, but rather relief from it.
The overstated danger of a peaking China
Some foresee an era of aggression as China’s power peaks but return to non-threatening foreign policy’s more likely
Several respected foreign affairs analysts have recently argued that China’s relative power is peaking and will soon go into decline, prompting Beijing to behave more aggressively between now and the end of the decade.
This view is well-argued and consequential, but – fortunately – questionable.
Proponents of this view first point out the well-known obstacles to China achieving superpower status. China is running out of resources, its productivity is decreasing, its economic growth is permanently slowing and its population is rapidly aging.
The government under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping is implementing policies that stifle innovative forces and privilege inefficient state-owned industries. Countries in the developed world are less welcoming of economic partnership with China.
These analysts argue that Xi’s government realizes China is now reaching an apogee that will soon give way to a gradual shrinkage of its relative power and international influence. They predict Beijing will seek to grasp what strategic gains it can before this brief window of opportunity closes.
This, they say, will make the decade of the 2020s extraordinarily dangerous as China rushes to exploit its last chance to settle scores in the Asia-Pacific region. There are, however, several problems with this analysis.
Chinese elites do not consider China to be on the verge of decline. The dominant sentiment in China – from the top leadership down through lower officials, the education system, public intellectuals, journalists and social media – is hubris: it is the United States that is purportedly in decline, along with the ideology it champions, while China is ascendant and is now reshaping the world to suit Chinese preferences.
One might argue that despite the triumphalist posture, behind closed doors Xi and the other Politburo Standing Committee members have secretly concluded that China’s fortunes are about to reverse.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is poised to take a third five-year term. Image: Agencies / Pool
If that were true, we could expect to see policies and rhetoric from the top leadership that prepares the Chinese people psychologically for slower economic growth and a less ambitious projected role for China in regional and global affairs.
The CCP elders know that allowing the public to harbor unrealistic expectations for China’s continued rise in wealth and international clout, and then failing to meet those expectations, would endanger the Party’s mandate to rule.
Whether it is “Wolf Warrior diplomacy,” public humiliation of US government officials to demonstrate that China is the boss, or picking fights with multiple adversaries simultaneously, Xi’s government seems supremely confident to the point of cavalierly burning bridges of goodwill.
Rather than Zhongnanhai secretly believing China has peaked, a more convincing explanation is that, as Jude Blanchette argues, Xi believes China can overcome the domestic economic, demographic and environmental obstacles to continued high rates of economic growth by quickly gaining global dominance in the high-value technologies of the future (biotechnology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics and so on) while the United States is mired in political dysfunction and social decay.
The notion that China would choose to start a war, not because present circumstances demand war but out of belief in a closing window of opportunity, assumes that Beijing is extraordinarily aggressive. Beijing, however, is relatively cautious in its use of force.
Observers who have characterized several recent Chinese foreign policy moves as “aggressive” typically mention increased PLA patrols and military exercises near Taiwan and the disputed Senkaku Islands, the building of military bases on artificial islands in the South China Sea, the Galwan Valley skirmish with India, encroachment into the territory of Nepal and Bhutan, and disregard for the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong.
But most of these PRC policies are at least partly Chinese reactions to moves by other countries. More importantly, all of these policies involve no or very low risk of significant military conflict with an adversary. They are more opportunistic than aggressive.
If it anticipated an impending period of waning relative power, demonstrably risk-averse Beijing would be inclined to avoid entering that period under the disadvantage of having recently antagonized strong regional states through aggressive military action.
Throughout history, Chinese governments have presented themselves as cooperative rather than confrontational when they assessed that the configuration of international forces was not favorable to prevailing through the use of force.
Chinese PLA Navy soldiers on a naval vessel in a file photo. Photo: Twitter
Most recently, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin suppressed their own nationalist impulses because they believed a clash with the US was counter-productive while China was in catch-up mode. A return to a lower-profile, non-threatening foreign policy is the more likely Chinese response to perceived self-decline.
While making their case that Beijing feels pressured to rush into war this decade, Hal Brands and Michael Beckley observe that “other countries are pushing back against Beijing’s assertiveness.” As they note: “An array of actors is gradually joining forces to check Beijing’s power and put it in a strategic box.”
This observation is correct, but it actually undermines their larger argument. The pushback, which includes consolidation of the Quad joint security alliance (Australia, Japan, US and India) and the increased likelihood that Japan would help defend Taiwan, is already so formidable as to probably deter China from embarking on a campaign of military aggression even in the 2020s.
The closing window argument is only persuasive if we postulate that the Xi regime concludes it could win a war of expansion today but could not win the same war 10 years from now. The argument doesn’t work if the Chinese think they would lose the war today but would lose even worse in a decade.
The most worrisome scenario is a PRC attempt to annex Taiwan by military force. The view that a peaking China is dangerous holds that Beijing’s chances of prevailing in a Taiwan Strait war are highest in the late 2020s and will recede thereafter.
This is largely based on a comparison of US and PRC naval capabilities, an important consideration because the war would mostly be fought at sea. The Chinese navy already has more ships than the US navy, and that gap is expected to widen through the year 2027.
But it might widen further after 2027 if the two countries’ current naval shipbuilding trends continue. China’s advantage in order of battle might be greater in 2037 than in 2027. It’s not clear there is only a brief and closing window of opportunity for a Chinese victory. Thus the rationale for China preferring an earlier war is weakened.
Beijing has amply disproved its own claim that a strong China “will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence.” A weakening China would promise not an intensification of this problem, but rather relief from it.
Denny Roy (RoyD@EastWestCenter.org) is a senior fellow at the East-West Center, Honolulu. He specializes in strategic and international security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. Follow him on Twitter: @Denny_Roy808.
14. Chinese officials restrict the number of Uyghurs who can observe Ramadan
Chinese officials restrict the number of Uyghurs who can observe Ramadan
China’s quota for those who can fast is ‘pathetic and tragic,’ says a Uyghur rights advocate.
By Shohret Hoshur
2022.04.01
Chinese authorities in Xinjiang are restricting the number of Muslims allowed to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, drawing heavy criticism from rights groups that see the government directive as the latest effort to diminish Uyghur culture in the region.
For years, officials in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have prohibited Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims from fully observing Ramadan including by banning civil servants, students and teachers from fasting.
Some neighborhood committees in Urumqi (in Chinese, Wulumuqi) and some village officials in Kashgar (Kashi) and Hotan (Hetian) prefectures have received notices that only 10-50 Muslims will be allowed to fast during Ramadan, which runs from April 1 to May 1, and that those who do so must register with authorities, according local administrators and police in Xinjiang.
“Ramadan measures are being taken,” said a village policeman in Kashgar’s Tokkuzak (Toukezhake) township. “The purpose is to allay the fears of [Uyghurs] who are afraid to fast, in addition to security, because there should not be any misconception about the [Chinese Communist] Party’s religious policy. The party never said to abolish religion, but to Sinicize it.”
A village administrator who oversees 10 families in Ghulja (Yining) county in Ili Kazakh (Yili Hasake) Autonomous Prefecture, said registration was already under way in his community and that the elderly and adults with no school-age children are allowed to fast.
“This system is designed to avoid religion to have negative effects on children’s minds,” he said. “There is a lot of propaganda about it right now. A cadre from the village is registering people who meet the criteria for fasting.”
Another administrator who oversees 10 families in the city of Atush (Atushi) in Kizilsu Kirghiz Autonomous Prefecture said he received a notice about the fasting restriction from local authorities.
“Of the 10 families that I am in charge, two — Tahir and Ahmet — were identified as ones that can fast,” he said. “Both are elderly and have no children at home.”
A Uyghur employee at a hotel contacted by RFA on Wednesday said he could not say anything about Ramadan and hung up the phone.
Tursunjan Mamat sets down a copy of the Quran during a government organized visit for foreign journalists to his home in Aksu prefecture, northwestern China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, April 20, 2021. Credit: Associated Press
Painting 'a sham picture'
In past years, authorities have warned Uyghur residents that they could be punished for fasting, including by being sent to one of the XUAR’s vast network of internment camps, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities since April 2017. Authorities also have forced retirees to pledge ahead of Ramadan that they won’t fast or pray to set an example for the wider community and to assume responsibility for ensuring others also refrain.
“It is pathetic and tragic to see China’s notice that only certain people can fast,” said Turghunjan Alawudun, director of the Committee for Religious Affairs at the World Uyghur Congress (WUC) in Germany. “The Muslim world would laugh at China’s actions and be astonished by the setting of a quota for those who can fast.”
The Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project issued a statement on Thursday showing solidarity with Uyghurs in Xinjiang who cannot hold iftar, the meal eaten by Muslims at sundown to break the daily fast during Ramadan, or pray “without risking being labeled a religious extremist.”
“There will be no Ramadan for Uyghurs in the homeland this year — or any year — until China’s campaign of genocide is brought to an end,” the statement said.
The Campaign for Uyghurs, also based in Washington, also noted that Uyghurs in Xinjiang are once again being forbidden to worship and celebrate religious holidays.
“To add insult to this injustice, the CCP selectively deploys Islam to paint a sham picture,” the group said in a statement issued Thursday.
WUC president Dolkun Isa said China has turned Ramadan into “a month of hellish suffering of genocide for the Uyghur people” and called on Muslim leaders worldwide to condemn the rights abuses occurring in Xinjiang.
“It’s your religious and moral duty to call on China to stop this ongoing genocide,” he said. “History will not treat you kindly if you continue to allow this genocide to continue under your watch.”
The U.S. and parliaments in some Western countries have declared China’s actions against the Uyghurs and other Turkic people a genocide and crimes against humanity, though China has denied accusations of abuse.
Translated by Mamatjan Juma and Alim Seytoff of RFA’s Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
15. China 'launched huge cyber-attack' on Ukraine's military and nuclear infrastructure days before Russia invaded, Kyiv intelligence claims
Excerpts:
'It may also raise questions about what other support Beijing will provide Russia's operation in Ukraine, and the potential for this to prolong the conflict.
'At the capability level, it is interesting that the Russian security apparatus involved Chinese actors in this operation; they are typically quite capable and committed considerable resources to the intelligence operation in Ukraine in the lead-up to the conflict. The FSB for instance, had a staff of 200 personnel focused on gathering human intelligence in Ukraine, which included cyberattacks to gather information on the population.'
As invasion fears mounted in October 2021, the US sent private contracts to bolster the Ukrainian cyber defences, a move which has led to successful defences of the country's digital infrastructure since the war began.
Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, principal threat researcher at SentinelOne, told the Times: 'Credit to the Ukrainian government, I don't know what they've done with [their] computer emergency response team, but they are killing it.
'It's very plausible that the US government is helping or that they have other companies on the ground — no one we know has owned up to that yet. There's something going on there.'
China 'launched huge cyber-attack' on Ukraine's military and nuclear infrastructure days before Russia invaded, Kyiv intelligence claims
- Ukraine's intelligence agency confirmed Chinese cyber attacks before the war
- The Chinese reconnaissance attacks peaked the day before Russia's invasion
- Experts say the moves contradict Xi Jinping's claims to have not known about Vladimir Putin's invasion plans in advance
- If proven, the attacks could be seen as support for the Russian war effort and lead to sanctions on China
PUBLISHED: 05:08 EDT, 2 April 2022 | UPDATED: 08:32 EDT, 2 April 2022
Daily Mail · by Chay Quinn For MailOnline · April 2, 2022
China have been accused of launching a flurry of cyber attacks on Ukraine's military and nuclear infrastructure days before Russia's invasion - indicating initial support for Putin's war.
Intelligence memos from the SBU, Ukraine's spy agency, claim that more than 600 websites belonging to Ukraine's ministry of defence were attacked by the Chinese government, according to The Times.
Despite the Chinese government's lukewarm public reaction to the invasion of Ukraine, the move indicates prior knowledge of the invasion plans on the part of Xi Jinping's government before troops entered on February 24.
The cyber attacks indicates prior knowledge of the invasion plans on the part of Xi Jinping's government before Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24
The SBU said they had identified the source of the attack because the tools and methods used were consistent with the common tactics of the cyber warfare wing of the Chinese armed forces.
Speaking to the Times, the SBU said that border defence, banking and railway infrastructure was targeted with a computer network exploitation (CNE) intended to gather information about Ukrainian weaknesses.
The SBU said there was an 'increase in activity against our country's networks in mid-February' from both Russian and Chinese hackers which peaked on February 23.
The agency added: 'Intrusions that are of particular concern include the CNE campaigns directed at the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate, and the Ukrainian Investigation Website focused on Hazardous Waste.
'This particular CNE attack by the Chinese cyberprogram included the launch of thousands of exploits with attempts pointed to at least 20 distinct vulnerabilities.'
US intelligence sources confirmed that the Ukrainian sources were accurate to the Times but British sources would only confirm they were investigating the attack.
The attacks contradict President Xi's denial that China had prior knowledge of the invasion plans and had asked Vladimir Putin to delay the war until the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
At a meeting at the start of the Beijing Olympics, Xi and Putin signed a declaration of friendship - adding that there were 'no limits' on the scope of cooperation between the two dictatorships.
Tom Hegel, a threat researcher at US-based cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, told the Times: 'It sounds like [the Chinese] didn't care that they were seen — they had an objective to get in and get what they needed as quickly as possible.
'It's abnormal for a CNE-type effort, it stresses the importance of what they knew was coming.'
Beijing has been careful to not outright support or condemn the invasion, fearing potential sanctions from the West if they are seen to be supporting the invasion of Ukraine.
Steve Tsang, director of the Soas China Institute, told the Times: 'The number of people China has engaged in cyberoperations is enormous. A lot of them are part of the People's Liberation Army, which is part of the [Chinese Communist] party.
'We all believe that they have a cyberforce that attacks states.
'They have been more engaged in getting information rather than shutting people down.
President Volodymyr Zelensky's government were provided with cyber defence support from US private contractors between October and January
'If they're working in Ukraine they're working in support of Russians. The implications of this would be they are potentially subjected to sanctions.'
Sam Cranny-Evans, an intelligence and surveillance expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank, said: 'The attacks suggest a certain level of collusion between Russia and China, which may prompt revised assessments of the nature of the relations between Russia and China, and the willingness of the two nations to support each other in military operations.
'It may also raise questions about what other support Beijing will provide Russia's operation in Ukraine, and the potential for this to prolong the conflict.
'At the capability level, it is interesting that the Russian security apparatus involved Chinese actors in this operation; they are typically quite capable and committed considerable resources to the intelligence operation in Ukraine in the lead-up to the conflict. The FSB for instance, had a staff of 200 personnel focused on gathering human intelligence in Ukraine, which included cyberattacks to gather information on the population.'
As invasion fears mounted in October 2021, the US sent private contracts to bolster the Ukrainian cyber defences, a move which has led to successful defences of the country's digital infrastructure since the war began.
Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade, principal threat researcher at SentinelOne, told the Times: 'Credit to the Ukrainian government, I don't know what they've done with [their] computer emergency response team, but they are killing it.
'It's very plausible that the US government is helping or that they have other companies on the ground — no one we know has owned up to that yet. There's something going on there.'
Daily Mail · by Chay Quinn For MailOnline · April 2, 2022
16. War in real time: TikTok and Twitter stars document Russia's war in Ukraine
Excerpts:
In the war’s early days, Facebook Gaming featured videos presented as live footage of attacks on Ukraine that turned out to be from a military video game. On TikTok, many accounts featured an audio clip of Ukrainian soldiers cursing at a Russian warship that has asked them to surrender — with text saying the soldiers had died. They lived.
“It is difficult — even for seasoned journalists and researchers — to discern truth from rumor, parody and fabrication,” according to a report from Harvard researchers who studied TikTok’s impact on the war.
Aware of such manipulation, the Biden administration recently invited several prominent TikTok producers to a briefing on the war, in hopes that they would help push accurate information. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest, so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source,” one official said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the Washington Post.
But disinformation continues to spread.
A few weeks ago, a manipulated video circulated in which Zelenskyy appeared to ask his soldiers to lay down their arms. Zelenskyy quickly took to Telegram to denounce it. A few days later, a different fake video popped up, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced peace with Ukraine.
The war, of course, carried on, both on the battlefield and online.
War in real time: TikTok and Twitter stars document Russia's war in Ukraine
A snowy sidewalk strewn with bloodied bodies. A beleaguered president roaming the streets of a country under attack. Missiles streaming. Sirens wailing. Teens making homemade bombs. And dead soldiers, so many of them, lying crumpled in fields and slumped in smoldering tanks.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spawned a constant stream of online content, a deluge of audio-visuals that has countered Moscow’s disinformation campaign, spurred global leaders to action and helped, as they have in other recent conflicts in Syria and Ethiopia, change the way we see and understand war.
The bombings and violence in cities like Mariupol, Kharkiv and Kyiv feature a cast of newly minted stars — social media standouts who rely on satire, grit and an insider’s sensibilities to document the horrors for a global audience.
Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has become the most famous and tireless online presence with his riveting daily updates via the instant-messaging platform Telegram. But there are many others, including Illia Ponomarenko, a journalist who has garnered more than 1 million Twitter followers for his play-by-plays of military operations, and Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and a former heavyweight champion boxer who delivers dispatches from the aftermath of bombings.
They offer a quick-pulse stream of consciousness in a morality play where ancient brutality meets raw, digitized immediacy. They are influencers amid the ruins, defiant voices echoing from battlefields and bunkers.
Zelenskyy’s recent description of the relentless Russian siege of Mariupol as “a crime against humanity … happening in front of the eyes of the whole planet in real-time” seized upon what has separated the Ukraine conflict from many past wars: instantaneous documentation.
In February, even as Russia denied it was planning an attack, hints of the coming siege were registered on TikTok, where users posted hundreds of videos showing Russian military vehicles massing along the Ukrainian border.
On Telegram, Twitter and Instagram, Ukrainians have raised money for refugees, organized the exit of civilians from hard-hit regions and chronicled horrors, such as the March 10 bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol, where bleeding pregnant women were evacuated on stretchers.
The war in Vietnam was often referred to as the “first television war,” a technological advance from two World Wars decades earlier that had been recorded mostly through printed words and photographs. At the beginning of this century, the conflict in Iraq was still largely filtered to the outside world through journalists and documentary film crews.
The Arab Spring in 2011 was widely seen as the first revolutionary movement launched on social media. But the apps used then to spread uprisings — namely Twitter and Facebook — have evolved significantly in the years since, while new platforms more geared to sharing video have flourished. At the same time, the capabilities of the typical cellphone have expanded to the point where anyone can become an auteur.
Jane Lytvynenko, a senior research fellow at Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, said social media have played a critical role in shaping the world’s reaction to Russia’s attack.
Instant communication “is having a direct effect on how Western countries are responding to the Feb. 24 invasion, and the reason why it’s having that effect is because regular people en masse are seeing what’s happening,” she said.
She compared the Ukraine war to the Soviet-era artificial famine imposed by Moscow on Ukraine in the 1930s, which killed more than 4 million people. “The facts of the genocidal famine did not get to Western audiences,” she said. “And so Ukraine was left to fend for itself.”
That is not the case today. While separating fact from fiction on social media isn’t always easy, there’s no question that the power and moral clarity of the many voices coming out of a once-peaceful nation of 44 million have made the crisis impossible to avoid. Some critics have argued that the social media feeds of white Europeans trapped in conflict have gained more attention than similar documentation of atrocities coming from Syria or African countries.
The drama of those in turmoil — as it has been since Homer’s “Iliad” — is compelling. Consider Klitschko, the boxer-turned-mayor, and the videos of him touring the sites of deadly strikes. Pacing around a rubble-filled Kyiv street in March, he pointed his cellphone camera at a destroyed apartment building, a bombed-out city bus and the crater where the munition hit. “These images (are) the truth,” he said in English. “That’s what Putin’s war looks like.”
Ponomarenko, a journalist with the Kyiv Independent who has been embedded with Ukrainian forces, has reported on the fighting with a mix of pain and awe. “One, two, three, four Russian tanks taken out,” he said in a recent clip as he panned across the smoking wreckage of militarized vehicles. “I call that a good day.”
On TikTok, young people have amassed huge followings for their simple explanations of what is happening in the war and their documentation of daily life in underground bomb shelters. One recent viral video showed a civilian carefully moving a land mine off a highway, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
And then there is Zelenskyy, a former comedic actor elected president in 2019 who is equal parts Jon Stewart and Winston Churchill. He seems to embody the spirit of the nation: exhausted, but still standing, and unrelenting in his demands that the West to do more to help Ukraine in what he has framed as a clear choice between good and evil.
His selfie-style videos lend a “social media authenticity that is pretty unimpeachable,” said Eugene Kotlyarenko, a filmmaker who was born in Ukraine.
“We live in an extremely media-sensitive moment where people are very tuned into cues of authenticity,” Kotlyarenko said. “Zelenskyy seems really earnest and kind of vulnerable but simultaneously strong.”
The president’s dispatches, which he posts every few hours on Telegram, are part of a larger world of Ukrainian content that has helped counter Russia’s widespread disinformation campaign, experts say.
Just like it did in the United States to try to influence the 2016 presidential election, Russia has pushed fake news about its war on Ukraine in an effort to sow confusion.
It has circulated claims that Ukraine is ruled by neo-Nazis and that the U.S. is developing chemical and biological weapons in Ukraine to use against Russian troops. It has charged that the pregnant women bombed at the maternity ward in Mariupol were actually crisis actors. “Very realistic make-up,” the Russian Embassy to the U.K. wrote in a Twitter post that was later deleted.
“They’re creating a few different narratives, and they don’t particularly care which one sticks,” said Lytvynenko. “The goal is to cloud people’s thinking about the war, to make it seem like it’s too complicated for them to understand so that they tune out or change the conversation.”
At home, Russia hasn’t even acknowledged a war is taking place, deeming its military assault on Ukraine a “special operation,” and threatening anybody who says otherwise with prison.
The adage that truth is the first casualty of war is also playing out on many platforms across cyberspace.
In the war’s early days, Facebook Gaming featured videos presented as live footage of attacks on Ukraine that turned out to be from a military video game. On TikTok, many accounts featured an audio clip of Ukrainian soldiers cursing at a Russian warship that has asked them to surrender — with text saying the soldiers had died. They lived.
“It is difficult — even for seasoned journalists and researchers — to discern truth from rumor, parody and fabrication,” according to a report from Harvard researchers who studied TikTok’s impact on the war.
Aware of such manipulation, the Biden administration recently invited several prominent TikTok producers to a briefing on the war, in hopes that they would help push accurate information. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest, so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source,” one official said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by the Washington Post.
But disinformation continues to spread.
A few weeks ago, a manipulated video circulated in which Zelenskyy appeared to ask his soldiers to lay down their arms. Zelenskyy quickly took to Telegram to denounce it. A few days later, a different fake video popped up, in which Russian President Vladimir Putin announced peace with Ukraine.
The war, of course, carried on, both on the battlefield and online.
___
© 2022 Los Angeles Times
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
17. Pledge trap: How Duterte fell for China’s bait and switch
Excerpts:
“So that’s the threat that exists, that’s why it’s so concerning for the militarization of these islands,” the US admiral added, warning “[t]hey threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.”
Meanwhile, the Philippines filed a diplomatic protest following reports by the Philippine Coast Guard of several near-collisions with aggressively maneuvering Chinese coast guard vessels.
“We are fully aware of dangerous situations at sea, but these will not stop our deployment of assets and personnel [to protect our fishermen in the area].” Philippine coast guard chief Admiral Artemio Abu said in a statement, remaining defiant in face of China. “As long as they [Filipino fishermen] feel safe seeing us during their fishing operations, we know that we are doing our job well.”
Aware of growing anti-China sentiments among ordinary Filipinos, even Beijing-friendly presidential candidates such as Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who is currently leading in all pre-election surveys, have had to take a tougher stance on the South China Sea disputes.
While openly backing Duterte’s friendly diplomacy with China in the past, the ex-dictator’s son has recently and notably adopted a more patriotic stance vis-a-vis China. In a recent presidential debate, Duterte’s most likely successor went so far as to underscore the need for “putting military presence” across disputed areas in the South China Sea to “show China that we are defending what we consider [as] our territorial waters.
Pledge trap: How Duterte fell for China’s bait and switch
Legacy of Philippine leader’s Beijing embrace comes into view as promised investments for South China Sea concessions go undelivered
MANILA – “We have to talk and what I need from China is not anger,” said Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte just over a month before winning the 2016 elections during an interview with Chinese state broadcaster CGTN. “What I need from China is help to develop my country,” the then-presidential candidate clarified in one of his most illuminating pre-election interviews.
At home, however, he captivated the electorate with his characteristic chutzpah, jokingly vowing to “ride a jet ski” to challenge China’s occupation of Philippine-claimed land features in the South China Sea. But only a few local journalists managed to expose Duterte’s early pro-Beijing leanings.
Upon securing the presidency in 2016, the Filipino populist actively courted China as a national development partner and went so far as “set[ting] aside” the Philippines’ historic arbitration award victory against Beijing in the South China Sea.
Duterte became the first Filipino president to choose Beijing as his first major foreign trip, a distinction that historically belonged to either Washington or Tokyo. During his October 2016 visit, China offered Duterte $24 billion in investments, including big-ticket infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Shortly after, the two sides even discussed joint patrols in the heavily disputed Scarborough Shoal, as well as potential joint ecological preservation schemes in the fisheries-rich area.
As Duterte enters his twilight months in office, however, the two neighbors have failed to finalize even a single big-ticket infrastructure project. Nor have the Philippines and China clinched any cooperative agreement in the disputed waters or a major defense agreement. If anything, the South China Sea disputes have festered, with China now having fully militarized a whole host of Philippine-claimed land features in the area.
Recent years have also seen an uptick in maritime tensions, including the Reed Bank incident (2019), which saw a suspected Chinese maritime militia sinking a Filipino fishing vessel, and the 2021 Whitsun Reef incident (2021), when an armada of Chinese paramilitary forces surrounded a Philippine-claimed area in the Spratlys.
Most recently, the Philippine Coast Guard also revealed constant harassment, including near-collisions on at least four occasions with Chinese forces patrolling the Scarborough Shoal. The Philippines has formally protested China’s alleged harassment of its coast guard patrols amid an uptick in anti-Beijing sentiments in the Southeast Asian country.
By and large, Duterte’s strategic flirtation with China has not only failed to produce any major breakthrough, but it may have even emboldened the Asian powerhouse to press its claims across Philippine waters.
Instead of “debt trap” diplomacy, Duterte, a geopolitical neophyte, fell into China’s “pledge trap” by forward-deploying strategic concessions in exchange for broadly illusory investment pledges.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) gestures as Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte (R) looks on during a state banquet at the Malacanang Presidential Palace in Manila on November 20, 2018. Photo: AFP / Mark R Cristino / Pool
Contrary to common opinion, Duterte’s pivot to China was initially popular. While it’s true that a majority of Filipinos have held favorable views towards Washington, a large plurality of respondents in a 2017 poll expressed doubts about America’s reliability amid the South China Sea disputes. Meanwhile, the same poll, conducted by Pulse Asia, a local pollster, revealed that close to half of Filipinos (47%) welcomed warmer defense and strategic ties with China and Russia.
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of Filipinos preferring engagement over confrontation with Beijing dramatically increased from 43% in 2015 to a steady majority of 67% in 2017. In the same survey, a majority of Filipinos also expressed confidence in China’s leadership. By cleverly couching acquiescence as strategic pragmatism, Duterte prevented any major backlash following his call for a “soft landing” with Beijing in the South China Sea.
Eager to be in China’s good graces, Duterte initially suspended massive war games with America, nixed plans for joint Philippine-US patrols in the South China Sea, blocked the full implementation of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), and even threatened to terminate his country’s century-old alliance with Washington. Amid disagreements over human rights issues, Duterte went so far as to unilaterally nix, at least temporarily, the Philippine-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) in 2020.
Emboldened by Duterte’s overtures, China pressed its luck by dangling joint development agreements with the Philippines in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Beijing continued its militarization of disputed land features in the Spratly group of islands, conducted large-scale naval drills in the area and deployed an ever-larger armada of para-military and coast guard forces to intimidate Philippine vessels in the area.
Almost halfway into Duterte’s presidency, however, it also became clear that China’s promises of large-scale investments were largely illusory. Top economic managers and technocrats openly complained about delays in Chinese projects, while Beijing kept on pressing for more concessions from the Philippines, including a proposed joint development agreement well within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.
During his late-2018 visit to Manila, Chinese President Xi Jinping was left broadly disappointed when the two sides failed to finalize any concrete resource-sharing agreement in the South China Sea. The Chinese leader was reportedly led on by his Philippine-based envoy, who underappreciated growing domestic opposition to Duterte’s pivot to Beijing.
While senior Filipino diplomats resisted any potentially compromising resource-sharing deal with China, which could violate both the Philippine constitution as well as the 2016 arbitral tribunal award, the US-trained Philippine military at the same time shunned any major defense deal with the Asian powerhouse.
Soon, Beijing even began to criticize Duterte’s promotion of notorious Chinese online casinos, which had allegedly served as dens of criminal activity and, accordingly, were banned in the mainland. Bilateral tensions, however, reached new heights when a suspected Chinese militia vessel rammed into a Filipino fishing boat in the Reed Bank, a resource-rich area that is also claimed by Beijing.
This photo taken by the Philippine Coast Guard shows Chinese vessels anchored at the Whitsun Reef 175 nautical miles west of Bataraza in Palawan in the South China Sea. Photo: AFP
Eager to prevent a breakdown in bilateral relations, however, Duterte chose to downplay the incident and instead echo China’s dismissive stance on the crisis, which enraged much of the Filipino public. Confident of Duterte’s acquiescence, China further expanded its footprint in the disputed areas during the Covid-19 pandemic, most notably deploying an armada of paramilitary vessels to the Philippine-claimed Whitsun Reef.
Cognizant of the Philippines’ vulnerability and eager to dampen doubts on American reliability, the Trump and Biden administration upped the ante by publicly clarifying that the Philippine-US Mutual Defense Treaty can be activated against any hostile third party in the South China Sea.
Peeved by China’s constant harassment of Filipino fishermen and the absence of any major infrastructure investment by the Asian powerhouse, a vast majority of the Philippine public called on their government to take a tougher stance in the South China Sea. In recent years, China’s net trust rating among Filipinos fell to a nadir of -33%.
Under growing domestic pressure, Duterte publicly chastized China’s aggressive actions during the 2021 China-ASEAN Summit. The Filipino president went so far as to state how he “abhors” the alleged harassment of Philippine warships and fishermen in the South China Sea, warning China that “[t]his does not speak well of the relations between our nations and our partnership.”
The leader made it clear that his country will “fully utilize…legal tools to ensure that the South China Sea remains a sea of peace, stability and prosperity.”
Duterte’s 11th-hour rhetorical turnabout, no doubt with his foreign policy legacy in mind, has been too little, too late. According to US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral. John Aquilino, China has recently effectively finalized the militarization of numerous disputed land features in the South China Sea.
“The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of [China] beyond their continental shores,” he said, referring to China’s construction of military facilities such as radar systems, aircraft hangars and missile arsenals across Subi Reef, Fiery Cross, and Mischief Reef.
“They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems,” he added, referring to China’s massive artificial islands and sprawling network of military bases at the heart of the South China Sea.
“So that’s the threat that exists, that’s why it’s so concerning for the militarization of these islands,” the US admiral added, warning “[t]hey threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.”
Meanwhile, the Philippines filed a diplomatic protest following reports by the Philippine Coast Guard of several near-collisions with aggressively maneuvering Chinese coast guard vessels.
Filipino activists march towards the Chinese consulate for a protest in Manila on February 10, 2018, against Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea. Photo: AFP / Ted Aljibe
“We are fully aware of dangerous situations at sea, but these will not stop our deployment of assets and personnel [to protect our fishermen in the area].” Philippine coast guard chief Admiral Artemio Abu said in a statement, remaining defiant in face of China. “As long as they [Filipino fishermen] feel safe seeing us during their fishing operations, we know that we are doing our job well.”
Aware of growing anti-China sentiments among ordinary Filipinos, even Beijing-friendly presidential candidates such as Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who is currently leading in all pre-election surveys, have had to take a tougher stance on the South China Sea disputes.
While openly backing Duterte’s friendly diplomacy with China in the past, the ex-dictator’s son has recently and notably adopted a more patriotic stance vis-a-vis China. In a recent presidential debate, Duterte’s most likely successor went so far as to underscore the need for “putting military presence” across disputed areas in the South China Sea to “show China that we are defending what we consider [as] our territorial waters.”
18. Peace in Ukraine will be elusive until one side makes a military breakthrough
From Sir Lawrence Freedom author of the book, Strategy.
Conclusion:
It seems doubtful that this shattered territory, with its hostile population and vast reconstruction costs, requiring defence for the indefinite future, will appear now as such an attractive prize. But without it Putin has absolutely nothing to show for all this effort. This war should end with Russian forces out of the Donbas. That would also be the most stable outcome. Without an agreement on this core issue, whatever else has been settled in negotiations, the conflict will not be concluded. That is why the search for a durable peace cannot be separated from the search for military success.
Peace in Ukraine will be elusive until one side makes a military breakthrough
The writer is emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London
From almost the moment the war in Ukraine began, diplomats have been at work trying to end it. The UN Security Council has deliberated. Vladimir Putin has had regular telephone discussions with western leaders in which they urge him to stop his aggression or at least facilitate humanitarian relief for those suffering under the weight of Russian bombardments. He then in turn explains how they fail to understand Ukraine’s responsibility for these tragic events.
Israel’s prime minister Naftali Bennett visited Moscow to explore a peace initiative some weeks ago, but that now seems to be in abeyance. The only talks that hold any real promise are those that take place regularly between Ukrainian and Russian teams. The most recent of these was in Istanbul. But here too there has been little tangible progress.
For now neither side has an incentive to commit to a long-term settlement. They are waiting for military breakthroughs and a clearer view on the likely course of the war. Should the prospect be one of a long stalemate, then both might feel obliged to compromise. As they wait for news from the front, all they can do is to urge each other to be more “realistic” in their expectations.
Russia has had most reason to scale down its ambitions. It launched this war presuming an early victory, an assessment that was shared in a number of western capitals. The resulting mindset, which assumed that it would be Ukraine who was compelled to make the big concessions, has still not gone away, even though Russia has had to relinquish some of its earlier territorial gains. Its forces are suffering heavy losses and struggle with logistical and morale issues. And on Friday, authorities in the city of Belgorod claimed that Ukrainian helicopters had made the first strike on Russian soil since the war began.
Russia’s original demands, however, are still on the table. So far it has only acknowledged implicitly that it will be unable to achieve regime change in Kyiv or impose demilitarisation.
What will happen if Ukraine sustains this military pressure, and Russian efforts to reinforce its forces and mount new offensives continue to falter? Moscow’s best option in those circumstances will be to call for an imminent ceasefire. This would enable Russia to consolidate its gains.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will see the trap and be obliged to refuse the offer. He can note a record of Russia failing to honour many of the localised ceasefires, intended to allow civilians from besieged towns and cities to escape and for relief supplies to enter. He could also point to the problems with the implementation of the February 2015 Minsk agreement. Russian-sponsored separatists stayed in control of the territory they had occupied the previous year.
While Putin might be happy to start with a ceasefire without an accompanying peace deal, giving him an opportunity to confirm his gains while using a period of quiet to encourage his armed forces to sort themselves out, Zelensky will want a peace deal that only leads to a ceasefire as it is being implemented. His core demand is that Russian forces must leave Ukrainian territory. The war cannot truly end while any remain.
To sweeten the pill for Russia, the Ukrainian leader has come up with ideas to deal with the most contentious issues. The proposal that captured the most attention was one to abandon efforts to join Nato and turn Ukraine into a neutral state.
At first glance this looks like an important step. But Zelensky is after an armed neutrality backed by security guarantees. As he wants these guarantees to be stronger than those Ukraine had before, notably the ones in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which were provided in return for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal. Weeks before the war began foreign minister Sergei Lavrov explained that Russia was no longer bound by any promises because of the “state coup in Ukraine”.
This experience explains why Ukraine was so keen to join Nato and why it now will want guarantees from the US, UK and others that are more or less the same as those as it would get as a member of Nato. However, as always with guarantees, there is small print. Whatever formula is found, Ukraine will carry on being dependent upon its own defences, fortified by more equipment coming in from the west. It might hope that Moscow’s experience of military failure will encourage caution in the future, though it will hardly feel secure if Russia ends this war still holding a chunk of Ukrainian territory.
Kyiv has all but accepted that while it will never agree in principle to Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, in practice this is a fait accompli. But it will not agree to Russian control over the Donbas, the area for which Putin went to war.
It seems doubtful that this shattered territory, with its hostile population and vast reconstruction costs, requiring defence for the indefinite future, will appear now as such an attractive prize. But without it Putin has absolutely nothing to show for all this effort. This war should end with Russian forces out of the Donbas. That would also be the most stable outcome. Without an agreement on this core issue, whatever else has been settled in negotiations, the conflict will not be concluded. That is why the search for a durable peace cannot be separated from the search for military success.
19. ‘This Is True Barbarity’: Life and Death Under Russian Occupation
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is one of our very best war reporters.
Excerpts:
A monthlong Russian occupation reduced much of the town to rubble.
The Trostyanets hospital was refurbished in the fall of 2021 and was damaged at the end of March.
“I can’t wrap my head around how this war with tanks and missiles is possible,” said Olena Volkova, 57, the head doctor at the hospital and the deputy head of the town council. “Against who? The peaceful civilians?”
“This is true barbarity,” she said.
The war began in Trostyanets on Feb. 24, the day the Russians launched their invasion of Ukraine. The town quickly became a thoroughfare for advancing Russian tank columns as they punched farther west, part of their northeastern offensive toward Kyiv, the capital. Thousands of armored vehicles rolled through, breaking highway guard rails and chewing up roads.
“As the Russians drove in, for the first two days, our guys fought back well, so long as they had heavy weapons,” said Mr. Panov, 37. “After they ran out of those, they were left only with rifles.”
‘This Is True Barbarity’: Life and Death Under Russian Occupation
The town of Trostyanets was occupied by Russian forces for a month before the Ukrainian military liberated it. Residents described weeks of hunger and horror.
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia YermakPhotographs by Tyler Hicks
April 3, 2022
Updated 9:59 a.m. ET
Trostyanets, Ukraine, was held by the Russian military for roughly 30 days before the Ukrainian military retook it on March 26.
The town of Trostyanets was occupied by Russian forces for a month before the Ukrainian military liberated it. Residents described weeks of hunger and horror.
Trostyanets, Ukraine, was held by the Russian military for roughly 30 days before the Ukrainian military retook it on March 26.Credit...
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- April 3, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
TROSTYANETS, Ukraine — The last three Russian soldiers in this Ukrainian town are in the morgue, their uniforms bloodied and torn. The first one’s face is frozen in pain. The second has his wooden pipe in his lap. The third is stuffed in his sleeping bag.
These dead are not all that was left behind in Trostyanets, a strategically located town in the country’s northeast, where Russian forces fled several days ago in the face of an orchestrated Ukrainian assault. A monthlong Russian occupation reduced much of the town to rubble, a decimated landscape of mangled tank hulks, snapped trees and rattled but resilient survivors.
There are also stories, impossible to verify, highlighting the kind of hate left in an occupations wake and sharing a common thread of brutality: children held at knife point; an old woman forced to drink alcohol as her occupiers watched and laughed; whispers of rape and forced disappearances; and an old man found toothless, beaten in a ditch and defecated on.
“Oh, God, how I wanted to spit on them or hit them,” said Yevdokiya Koneva, 57, her voice steely as she pushed her aging bicycle toward the center of town on Friday.
Ukrainian forces are now gaining ground, as more than a month into the war Russian forces are pulling back from their positions north of Kyiv, even as Ukrainian soldiers are making progress here in the northeast. This area was supposed to be little more than a speed bump for a sprawling military campaign that would quickly take the country’s capital and leave the east in Russian hands.
The bodies of three Russian soldiers at the hospital’s morgue.
Clearing away an unexploded shell.
Instead, a combination of logistics issues, low morale and poor planning among Russian forces allowed an emboldened Ukrainian military to go on the offensive along multiple axes, grinding down the occupying forces and splintering their front lines.
The Ukrainian victory in Trostyanets came on March 26 — what residents call “Liberation Day” — and is an example of how disadvantaged and smaller Ukrainian units have launched successful counterattacks.
It also shows how the Russian military’s inability to win a quick victory — in which they would “liberate” a friendly population — left their soldiers in a position that they were vastly unprepared for: holding an occupied town with an unwelcoming local populace.
“We didn’t want this dreadful ‘liberation,’” said Nina Ivanivna Panchenko, 64, who was walking in the rain after collecting a package of humanitarian aid. “Just let them never come here again.”
Interviews with more than a dozen residents of Trostyanets, a modest town of about 19,000 situated in a bowl of rolling hills roughly 20 miles from the Russian border, paint a stark picture of struggle and fear during the Russian occupation. The unrelenting violence from both Ukrainian and Russian forces fighting to retake and hold the town raged for weeks and drove people into basements or anywhere they could find shelter.
On Friday, dazed residents walked through the destroyed town, sorting through the debris as some power was restored for the first time in weeks. Viktor Panov, a railway worker, was helping to clear the shrapnel-shattered train station of unexploded shells, grenades and other scattered explosives. Other men cannibalized destroyed Russian armored vehicles for parts or working machinery.
A monthlong Russian occupation reduced much of the town to rubble.
The Trostyanets hospital was refurbished in the fall of 2021 and was damaged at the end of March.
“I can’t wrap my head around how this war with tanks and missiles is possible,” said Olena Volkova, 57, the head doctor at the hospital and the deputy head of the town council. “Against who? The peaceful civilians?”
“This is true barbarity,” she said.
The war began in Trostyanets on Feb. 24, the day the Russians launched their invasion of Ukraine. The town quickly became a thoroughfare for advancing Russian tank columns as they punched farther west, part of their northeastern offensive toward Kyiv, the capital. Thousands of armored vehicles rolled through, breaking highway guard rails and chewing up roads.
“As the Russians drove in, for the first two days, our guys fought back well, so long as they had heavy weapons,” said Mr. Panov, 37. “After they ran out of those, they were left only with rifles.”
Farther west, the offensive blitz toward Kyiv soon encountered fierce Ukrainian resistance, stopping the Russians short of the capital, meaning that soldiers would have to occupy Trostyanets rather than just move through it. Roughly 800 troops fanned out, constructing a dozen or so checkpoints that cut the town into a grid of isolated neighborhoods.
Residents say they rarely tried to move through the Russian positions, though they described the occupying soldiers as amiable enough in the first days of the occupation, and more confused than anything.
The war began in Trostyanets on Feb. 24, the day the Russians launched their invasion of Ukraine. The town quickly became a thoroughfare for advancing Russian tank columns as they punched farther west.
Charred stuffed toys in a child’s bedroom in a building that was destroyed in a bombing.
“The first brigade of Russian forces that came in were more or less tolerable,” Dr. Volkova said. “They said, ‘OK, we will help you.’”
That help, Dr. Volkova explained, was just allowing them to pull the corpses of the dead off the streets. She added that roughly 20 people had been killed during the occupation and the ensuing fighting — 10 had suffered gunshot wounds.
On a few occasions, the Russian troops opened “green corridors” for civilians to leave the town, though that was when some people — mostly younger, military-age men — were abducted.
Early in the occupation, Trostyanets’s police officers took off their uniforms and blended into the populace. Those who were in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense, the equivalent of the National Guard, slipped out to the town’s periphery and worked as partisans — documenting Russian troop movement and reporting it to the Ukrainian military.
Others remained in the town, quietly moving to help residents where they could, even as Russian soldiers hunted them. “We were here during the whole time of occupation, working to the best of our abilities,” explained the police chief, Volodymyr Bogachyov, 53.
As the days and weeks went by, food became scarce and any good will from the soldiers vanished, too. Residents boiled snow for water and lived off what they had stored from their small gardens. Russian soldiers, without a proper logistics pipeline, began looting people’s homes, shops and even the local chocolate factory. One butcher spray painted “ALREADY LOOTED” on his shop so the soldiers would not break in. On another store, another deterrence: “EVERYTHING IS TAKEN, NOTHING LEFT.”
The Ukrainian Army recovering a disabled T-72 Russian tank.
Svitlana Grebinyk’s home was left in dissaray after being inhabited by Russian soldiers during the occupation of Trostyanets.
By mid-March, the Russian soldiers were rotated out of the town and replaced by separatist fighters who were brought in from the southeast.
It was then, residents said, that atrocities began to mount.
“They were brash and angry,” Dr. Volkova said. “We could not negotiate with them about anything. They would not give us any green corridors, they searched the apartments, took away the phones, abducted people — they took them away, mostly young men, and we still don’t know where these people are.”
As of Friday, the town’s police had received 15 reports of missing people.
In the morgue, beside the three dead Russian soldiers, Dr. Volkova pointed to a body bag in the corner of the room. “This person was tortured to death,” she said. “His hands and legs are tied up with sticky tape, his teeth are missing and almost all of his face is gone. It’s unknown what they wanted from him.”
Outside the town, Ukraine’s 93rd Mechanized Brigade, a unit of experienced veterans who had seen combat off and on in the country’s separatist regions for the past seven years, slowly moved into position. Then, on March 23, they attacked with a bombardment of artillery fire.
The next day, the town’s hospital was shelled. It is not entirely clear who hit the building, but local residents accuse the Russians of firing into the structure. The hospital had been operational for the duration of the occupation, treating everyone, including Russian soldiers. During the shelling, only one doctor and one nurse were still working there, and they moved into the basement with patients.
An operating room at the Trostyanets hospital.
The hospital had been operational for the duration of the occupation, treating everyone, including Russian soldiers.
“In the morning, we went away on foot with the last two women still remaining in the maternity ward, one pregnant and one that had just given birth,” said Xenia Gritsayenko, 45, a midwife who had returned to work on Friday to clean up the ward. Tank shells had gone through the walls, shredding baby posters and lighting at least one room on fire. “It was the cry from the bottom of the soul.”
The Russian forces fled on the night of the 25th. Their demolished artillery position in the train station square showed signs of an undersupplied and ad hoc force. Fortifications included ammo-crates loaded with sand and thick candy bar wrappers bundled in rolls and used to shore up shattered windows instead of sandbags. Uniforms lay in soaked puddles. Russian supply documents blew aimlessly in the wind.
A nearby monument that commemorates the World War II victory to retake the town, affixed with an aging Soviet tank, was damaged, but not destroyed. It had survived one more battle.
Men in the town have cannibalized destroyed Russian armored vehicles for parts or working machinery.
The train station and cars were heavily damaged.
By Friday afternoon, Mr. Bogachyov, the police chief, was sorting through reports of townspeople who had corroborated with the former occupiers, as well as trying to address continued looting. Yet no one had issues siphoning fuel from the abandoned Russian tanks dotting the roads.
“The info is such as, ‘This person was talking or drinking vodka with the Russians,’ and, ‘This person pointed to them where is the home of the person they were looking for,’” he said.
“There is no information on collaborations such as our citizens taking arms along with the occupants or treating their own citizens with violence,” Mr. Bogachyov said, acknowledging that it was hard to tell if he was contending with Russian spies or just neighborly grudges.
The morning rain had burned off by the afternoon. The long lines around humanitarian aid distribution points dissipated. A garbage truck meandered by, loaded to the brim with war detritus and Russian army rations. A few people took selfies in front of the last Russian piece of self-propelled artillery that was still recognizable.
Galyna Mitsaii, 65, an employee of the local seed and gardening supplies shop near the train station, slowly restocked her shelves, pleased at how the day’s weather had turned out.
“We will sow, we will grow, we will live,” she said, crying.
The Russian forces fled on the night of the 25th.
20. Palantir taps former Pentagon officials for new advisory board
Palantir taps former Pentagon officials for new advisory board
WASHINGTON — Palantir Technologies, a software and data integration firm that specializes in defense, intelligence and homeland security matters, has named several prominent former defense officials to its first federal advisory board.
Former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and former U.S. Special Operations Command chief retired Adm. William McRaven are among the defense leaders named to the Palantir Federal Advisory Board to offer their perspectives to company officials, the company said in a release Wednesday.
Former acting deputy secretary of defense Christine Fox, former U.S. Africa Command head retired Gen. Carter Ham, and former Coast Guard vice commandant retired Vice Adm. Peter Neffenger, who also previously headed the Transportation Security Administration, are also on the board. Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, now a counselor to Palantir, will also take part in the board’s meetings.
“We invited these national security leaders to join our first government advisory board because of the exceptional contributions they have made to this country in their years of public service, as well as the expertise and unwavering integrity they have brought to addressing the most significant national security challenges we collectively face,” Palantir co-founder and chief executive Alexander Karp said in the release.
Deborah Lee James, shown in 2016 when she was secretary of the Air Force, is also a member of Palantir's advisory board.
Palantir senior vice president Wendy Anderson, herself a former DoD official, said in a Tuesday interview the board’s members will help the company better understand how the military services and the Defense Department work.
“We do have 20 years, almost, of our own mostly direct engagement with the department,” Anderson said. “But we still have a lot to learn, and we’re excited about learning it. [The board’s members] understand the cultures of the services, they understand priorities.”
The board members, who are paid, also understand the nation’s defense needs are changing, and the rapidly evolving pace of technology is driving that change, Anderson said.
They will also assist Palantir in thinking strategically about its goals in the federal market and help find business opportunities in the armed services that might be right for its technology, she said.
In the release, James and McRaven stressed how important it is for the military to take advantage of technology and engineering like Palantir’s.
“Throughout my time in the Navy and in particular with the special operations community, having superior technology was instrumental in achieving success on the battlefield,” McRaven said.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter at Defense News. He previously reported for Military.com, covering the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare. Before that, he covered U.S. Air Force leadership, personnel and operations for Air Force Times.
21. Announcing the Establishment of SST’s Inaugural Advisory Board
Announcing the Establishment of SST’s Inaugural Advisory Board
ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Special Support Technologies (SST), a Go Forth and Conquer Holdings company, is delighted to announce the new additions to our advisory board. Lieutenant General (Ret) Ken Tovo – former commander of the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), Major General (Ret) Buck Elton - former Deputy Commanding General of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and former J3 of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), Colonel (Ret) Mark Mitchell – former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations/Low-Intensity Conflict (ASD SO/LIC), SES Johnny Sawyer – former chief of staff at Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Major General (Ret) Todd McCaffrey – former chief of staff at Africa Command.
We are honored and humbled to join hands with our senior advisory board as they help guide us on our path of providing mission-critical technologies to our nation’s warfighters.
Every member of our team has over three decades of government agency or military experience and possesses an unparalleled understanding of the current and future defense, national and homeland security challenges we face and will continue to face in the future.
About
Special Support Technologies is a combat veteran created enterprise purpose built by former military, intelligence and cyber experts to provide our customers "Decision Dominance” over malevolent actors to protect our country from harm. Our solutions are purpose built by operators for operators, specifically designed to create synergy between the intelligence community and joint forces operating across all domains. SST was founded in early 2019, but its roots date back to the early 2000s. SST was formed with one goal - provide capabilities that allow decision makers at all echelons to visualize, assess and predict threats in real time – reduce decision cycle by reducing time between sensor to shooter – mitigate operational risk – and optimize the deployment of finite resources to defeat threats on all fronts. For more information, visit https://sst-corporation.com/.
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.
