Quotes of the Day:
"Wars of necessity are essentially unavoidable. They involve the most important national interests, a lack of promising alternatives to the use of force, and a certain and considerable price to be paid if the status quo is allowed to stand. Examples include World War II and the Korean War."
- Richard N. Haass
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature."
- Marcus Aurelius
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 29 (PUTIN'S WAR)
2. The hybrid war in Ukraine - Microsoft On the Issues
3. Ukrainian Officer's Defiant Dispatch From Inside Mariupol's Besieged Steel Plant
4. Europe's special operators are watching Ukraine closely for lessons learned
5. Brutal Sect of Putin’s Army Accused of Murdering Their Own Comrades
6. Putin may declare war against "world's Nazis" on "Victory Day:' UK official
7. Cracks emerge in Russian elite as tycoons start to bemoan invasion
8. Opinion | The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized
9. Inside the Trevor Reed deal: From Oval Office to Moscow trip
10. A chilling Russian cyber aim in Ukraine: Digital dossiers
11. Disinformation Governance Board to tackle spread of misinformation in U.S., focusing on Russia and U.S.-Mexico border
12. The Backlash to DHS's Anti-Disinformation Board Shows How US Law Is Falling Behind the Problem
13. Pentagon: Russian assault on Donbas "behind schedule"
14. Ukraine Has Asia Thinking About War
15. US National Guard’s aging battle taxis find new use in Ukraine fight
16. Army Futures Command learning from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
17. F-35 Pilot: NATO Could ‘Completely Destroy the Russian Forces’
18. U.S. Restarts National Guard Training Mission for Ukrainian Soldiers
19. Could Insurgency Offer Ukraine a Decisive Edge?
20. Russia Has Already Lost the Ukraine War
21. Ukraine admits 'serious losses' in eastern battles, but says Russia's are 'colossal'
22. Bedlam at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport after family packs unexploded shell
23. The Navy's First Medical Ship In 35 Years Will Be Unlike Any Before It
24. Remember the Real: Cyberspace, Misinformation, and Human Action
25. Redesigning Army Special Operations Forces Talent Management for the 21st Century
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 29 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, APRIL 29
Karolina Hird, Mason Clark, and George Barros
April 29, 6:15pm ET
Russian forces made limited advances west of Severodonetsk on April 29 but remain stalled south of Izyum. Ukrainian forces in eastern Ukraine are likely successfully conducting a maneuver defense rather than holding static positions, redeploying mechanized reserves to resist attempted Russian advances. Concentrated Russian artillery is enabling minor Russian advances, but Ukrainian positions remain strong. Limited Ukrainian counterattacks around Kharkiv city may additionally force Russian forces to redeploy units intended for the Izyum axis to hold these positions.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces likely intend to leave a minimal force in Mariupol necessary to block Ukrainian positions in Azovstal and prevent partisan actions and are deploying as much combat power as possible to support offensive operations elsewhere.
- Ukrainian forces are successfully slowing Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine, which secured only minor advances west of Severodonetsk and did not advance on the Izyum front in the last 24 hours.
- Ukrainian counterattacks in Kharkiv are unlikely to develop into a major counteroffensive in the coming days but may force Russia to redeploy forces intended for the Izyum axis to hold their defensive positions around the city.
- Ukrainian intelligence continued to warn that Russian false flag attacks in Transnistria are intended to draw Transnistria into the war in some capacity and coerce Moldova to abandon pro-European policies.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
ISW has updated its assessment of the four primary efforts Russian forces are engaged in at this time:
- Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate supporting efforts);
- Supporting effort 1—Kharkiv and Izyum;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Supporting effort 3—Sumy and northeastern Ukraine.
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Mariupol (Russian objective: Capture Mariupol and reduce the Ukrainian defenders)
Russian forces continued to redeploy from Mariupol on April 29 to participate in offensive operations northward to support Russia’s main effort to capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff stated on April 29 that certain units from Mariupol are deploying to participate in offensive operations toward Kurakhiv (western Donetsk Oblast, about 50 km west of Donetsk City), and an anonymous senior Pentagon official reported that a “significant” number of Russian units have redeployed toward Zaporizhia Oblast since April 20, though ISW cannot independently confirm these redeployments.[2] Russian forces likely intend to leave the minimum force necessary in Mariupol to block Ukrainian positions in Azovstal and prevent partisan actions and are deploying as much combat power as possible to support offensive operations elsewhere.
Russian airstrikes continued to bombard the Azovstal plant on April 29 and Russian forces did not conduct any major ground attacks.[3] Advisor to the Mayor of Mariupol Petro Andryushchenko reported that Russian forces are consolidating occupational control of the city and intensifying an information campaign claiming they are taking measures to ”improve life in Mariupol,” though they are reportedly failing to provide enough food for the city.[4] Andrushchenko additionally stated that Russian forces are taking inventory of residences in Mariupol to begin nationalizing Ukrainian property.[5] Russian forces likely intend to both consolidate their control of Mariupol and advance false Kremlin rhetoric of “liberation,” rather than a military occupation.
Subordinate Main Effort—Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian troops continued to shell the entire frontline in Donetsk and Luhansk and secured several tactical advances on April 29.[6] Russian forces reportedly captured Yampil (directly west of Severodonetsk) on April 28 and are likely preparing to conduct further attacks east in the direction of Lyman.[7] Pro-Russian sources posted social media footage of Russian forces using thermobaric munitions against Ukrainian positions in Avdiivka, and the Ukrainian Head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration Serhiy Haidai claimed that Russian troops employed phosphorus bombs in Ocheretyne on April 29.[8] Haidai additionally stated that Ukrainian forces repelled an attempted Russian advance on the villages of Orikhove and Svitlychne on April 29.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that intensified Russian fire against Ukrainian positions is intended to prevent Ukrainian troops from regrouping and that Ukrainian troops are conducting ”an active maneuver defense”—moving mechanized reinforcements in response to Russian attacks as needed rather than conducting a strict positional defense.[10]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv and Izyum: (Russian objective: Advance southeast to support Russian operations in Luhansk Oblast; defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to the Izyum axis)
Ukrainian forces continued to repel Russian attacks southwest and south of Izyum on April 29.[11] Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration Oleg Synegubov reported that Russian forces attempted to advance toward Slovyansk and Barvinkove through attacks on Brazkhivka (25 km southwest of Izyum), Dovhenke (25 km south of Izyum), and Velyka Komyshuvakha (about 30 km southwest of Izyum) but suffered losses and retreated on April 29.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff claimed that elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army, the 35th Combined Arms Army, the 68th Army Corps, and unspecified Airborne (VDV) units remain active on the Izyum axis.[13] A Pro-Russian military source additionally claimed that Russian forces are surrounding and pinning Ukrainian troops against the Oskol Reservoir, east of Izyum, but ISW cannot independently confirm this claim.[14]
Ukrainian forces continued limited counterattacks directly northeast of Kharkiv city and recaptured Ruska Lozova (10km north of the city) on April 29.[15] Russian forces of the 6th Combined Arms Army and naval infantry elements of the Baltic and Northern fleets continued to hold position around Kharkiv City and fire on settlements throughout the oblast.[16] Ukrainian counterattacks in Kharkiv are unlikely to develop into a major counteroffensive in the coming days but may force Russia to redeploy forces intended for the Izyum axis to hold their defensive positions around the city.
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces did not make any confirmed attacks in Kherson Oblast on April 29 and prioritized improving their tactical positions.[17] Russian forces shelled several towns in Kherson, Zaporizhia, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.[18]
Ukrainian government officials continued to warn that Russian forces are disseminating pro-Kremlin disinformation in Transnistria and may be preparing to use Transnistria as a “springboard for aggression” against Ukraine and Moldova.[19] The Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) claimed that previous Russian false flag attacks in Tiraspol, Percani, and Maiac are aimed at coercing Transnistrian leadership to allow for additional Russian troop deployments to Transnistria and threaten the Moldovan government to ”abandon pro-European policies.“[20] Canada, the United States, Israel, and Germany have notably urged citizens not to visit Transnistria due to the risk of escalation and armed conflict in the area.[21] ISW cannot independently confirm the GUR report that Russian false-flag attempts are intended to convince Transnistria to acquiesce to Kremlin demands, which would indicate a lower degree of Kremlin control over its proxy in Moldova than previously assessed.
Supporting Effort #3—Sumy and Northeastern Ukraine: (Russian objective: Withdraw combat power in good order for redeployment to eastern Ukraine)
There were no significant activities on this axis in the past 24 hours.
Immediate items to watch
- Russian forces attacking southeast from Izyum, west from Kreminna and Popasna, and north from Donetsk City will likely make steady but tactical gains against Ukrainian defenders.
- Russian forces will likely attempt to starve out the remaining defenders of the Azovstal Steel Plant in Mariupol and will not allow trapped civilians to evacuate but may conduct costly assaults on the remaining Ukrainian defenders to claim a propaganda victory.
- Russian forces are likely preparing to conduct renewed offensive operations to capture the entirety of Kherson Oblast in the coming days.
- Russia may continue false-flag attacks in and around Transnistria or move to generate a more serious crisis in Transnistria and Moldova more generally.
[4] https://t dot me/andriyshTime/554
[5] https://t dot me/andriyshTime/553
[9] https://t dot me/luhanskaVTSA/2103
[11] https://t dot me/synegubov/3015
[12] https://t dot me/synegubov/3015
[14] https://t dot me/epoddubny/10209
[20] https://gur.gov dot ua/content/rosiia-vykorystovuie-sklady-boieprypasiv-v-prydnistrovi-dlia-kontrabandy-zbroi.html
2. The hybrid war in Ukraine - Microsoft On the Issues
Excerpt:
Given Russian threat actors have been mirroring and augmenting military actions, we believe cyberattacks will continue to escalate as the conflict rages. Russian nation-state threat actors may be tasked to expand their destructive actions outside of Ukraine to retaliate against those countries that decide to provide more military assistance to Ukraine and take more punitive measures against the Russian government in response to the continued aggression. We’ve observed Russian-aligned actors active in Ukraine show interest in or conduct operations against organizations in the Baltics and Turkey – all NATO member states actively providing political, humanitarian or military support to Ukraine. The alerts published by CISA and other U.S. government agencies, and cyber-officials in other countries, should be taken seriously and the recommended defensive and resilience measures should be taken – especially by government agencies and critical infrastructure enterprises. Our report includes specific recommendations for organizations that may be targeted by Russian actors as well as technical information for the cybersecurity community. We will continue to provide updates as we observe activity and believe we can safely disclose new developments.
The hybrid war in Ukraine - Microsoft On the Issues
Today, we released a report detailing the relentless and destructive Russian cyberattacks we’ve observed in a hybrid war against Ukraine, and what we’ve done to help protect Ukrainian people and organizations. We believe it’s important to share this information so that policymakers and the public around the world know what’s occurring, and so others in the security community can continue to identify and defend against this activity. All of this work is ultimately focused on protecting civilians from attacks that can directly impact their lives and their access to critical services.
Starting just before the invasion, we have seen at least six separate Russia-aligned nation-state actors launch more than 237 operations against Ukraine – including destructive attacks that are ongoing and threaten civilian welfare. The destructive attacks have also been accompanied by broad espionage and intelligence activities. The attacks have not only degraded the systems of institutions in Ukraine but have also sought to disrupt people’s access to reliable information and critical life services on which civilians depend, and have attempted to shake confidence in the country’s leadership. We have also observed limited espionage attack activity involving NATO member states, and some disinformation activity.
As today’s report details, Russia’s use of cyberattacks appears to be strongly correlated and sometimes directly timed with its kinetic military operations targeting services and institutions crucial for civilians. For example, a Russian actor launched cyberattacks against a major broadcasting company on March 1st, the same day the Russian military announced its intention to destroy Ukrainian “disinformation” targets and directed a missile strike against a TV tower in Kyiv. On March 13th, during the third week of the invasion, a separate Russian actor stole data from a nuclear safety organization weeks after Russian military units began capturing nuclear power plants sparking concerns about radiation exposure and catastrophic accidents. While Russian forces besieged the city of Mariupol, Ukrainians began receiving an email from a Russian actor masquerading as a Mariupol resident, falsely accusing Ukraine’s government of “abandoning” Ukrainian citizens.
The destructive attacks we’ve observed – numbering close to 40, targeting hundreds of systems – have been especially concerning: 32% of destructive attacks directly targeted Ukrainian government organizations at the national, regional and city levels. More than 40% of destructive attacks were aimed at organizations in critical infrastructure sectors that could have negative second-order effects on the Ukrainian government, military, economy and civilians. Actors engaging in these attacks are using a variety of techniques to gain initial access to their targets including phishing, use of unpatched vulnerabilities and compromising upstream IT service providers. These actors often modify their malware with each deployment to evade detection. Notably, our report attributes wiper malware attacks we previously disclosed to a Russian nation-state actor we call Iridium.
Today’s report also includes a detailed timeline of the Russian cyber-operations we’ve observed. Russia-aligned actors began pre-positioning for conflict as early as March 2021, escalating actions against organizations inside or allied with Ukraine to gain a larger foothold into Ukrainian systems. When Russian troops first started to move toward the border with Ukraine, we saw efforts to gain initial access to targets that could provide intelligence on Ukraine’s military and foreign partnerships. By mid-2021, Russian actors were targeting supply chain vendors in Ukraine and abroad to secure further access not only to systems in Ukraine but also NATO member states. In early 2022, when diplomatic efforts failed to de-escalate mounting tensions around Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s borders, Russian actors launched destructive wiper malware attacks against Ukrainian organizations with increasing intensity. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Russian cyberattacks have been deployed to support the military’s strategic and tactical objectives. It’s likely the attacks we’ve observed are only a fraction of activity targeting Ukraine.
Microsoft security teams have worked closely with Ukrainian government officials and cybersecurity staff at government organizations and private enterprises to identify and remediate threat activity against Ukrainian networks. In January of this year, when the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) discovered wiper malware in more than a dozen networks in Ukraine, we alerted the Ukrainian government and published our findings. Following that incident, we established a secure line of communication with key cyber officials in Ukraine to be sure that we could act rapidly with trusted partners to help Ukrainian government agencies, enterprises and organizations defend against attacks. This has included 24/7 sharing of threat intelligence and deployment of technical countermeasures to defeat the observed malware.
Given Russian threat actors have been mirroring and augmenting military actions, we believe cyberattacks will continue to escalate as the conflict rages. Russian nation-state threat actors may be tasked to expand their destructive actions outside of Ukraine to retaliate against those countries that decide to provide more military assistance to Ukraine and take more punitive measures against the Russian government in response to the continued aggression. We’ve observed Russian-aligned actors active in Ukraine show interest in or conduct operations against organizations in the Baltics and Turkey – all NATO member states actively providing political, humanitarian or military support to Ukraine. The alerts published by CISA and other U.S. government agencies, and cyber-officials in other countries, should be taken seriously and the recommended defensive and resilience measures should be taken – especially by government agencies and critical infrastructure enterprises. Our report includes specific recommendations for organizations that may be targeted by Russian actors as well as technical information for the cybersecurity community. We will continue to provide updates as we observe activity and believe we can safely disclose new developments.
3. Ukrainian Officer's Defiant Dispatch From Inside Mariupol's Besieged Steel Plant
Ukrainian Officer's Defiant Dispatch From Inside Mariupol's Besieged Steel Plant
Ukrainians holed up at the Azovstal Steel Plant are running low on food and ammunition, but they say they will fight to the very end.
BY
APR 29, 2022 8:15 PM
After 60 days of unceasing attack by Russian invaders, the defenders of Mariupol are tired. They are hungry. They are vastly outnumbered, under constant bombardment and the dozens of children among them live in constant fear.
“We will never surrender, anytime,” Bohdan Krotevych, a major in the National Guard of Ukraine and chief of staff of the Azov Regiment, told The War Zone in an exclusive interview from inside the steel plant conducted over social media messaging apps.
Friday morning, Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky announced, without details, that there were plans to get the civilians out of the plant. But by 10 p.m. Mariupol time, nothing had materialized, Krotevych said.
“So far, no green corridor from Mariupol has existed at all,” said Krotevych, first deputy to Lt. Col. Denis Prokopenko, the commander of the Azov Regiment who leads all the forces defending the city. “I don't know what will happen next.”
LEFT: Ukraine National Guard Maj. Bohdan Krotevych with Lt. Kharkov Andriy. Andriy was killed by Russian special forces, when they assaulted the house fire position he was commanding. He died covering his friends, Krotevych said. RIGHT: Kortevych during combat operations. (Photos courtesy Bohdan Kortevych).
In addition to providing shelter for about 2,000 fighters of the Azov Regiment, Azovstal's complex warren of underground bunkers also houses about 300 civilians. Among them are some 60 children, ranging in age from four months to 15 years, Krotevych said.
“The civilians cannot even go outside due to constant shelling,” he said. “For example, yesterday an air bomb overturned one such bunker, because we had to dismantle the debris under fire” to find out if there were any survivors.
The Russians, he said, are not only constantly bombing and shelling the plant, but they are firing artillery and armor from as close as 200 meters in some places.
“But they have not yet entered the perimeter of the plant,” he said.
Despite Russian claims, the city of Mariupol, while greatly devastated, has not yet fallen, Krotevych said.
The Russians have “a complete advantage in the sky, and artillery, especially naval artillery, at the moment when all Ukrainian forces are defending the Azovstal plant,” Krotevych said. But it is “important to understand that even in these circumstances, the enemy is lying when he [talks] about full control of the city.”
The Azovstal plant, located in the heart of Mariupol, “is larger than some major European cities,” he said. “From here, we have fire control over the enemy to a depth of 6-8 km. The enemy is still trying to storm, but suffers losses and retreats.”
Meanwhile, “the morale of our fighters is quite high,” said Krotevych. “We know what we are fighting for.”
Krotevych ticks off a list of Russian forces and military equipment he said his forces have destroyed.
They include about 1,200 troops killed, scores of tanks and other armored vehicles destroyed, and even an Su-25 damaged.
But with the chances of relief from the outside virtually impossible due to Russia’s encirclement of the city, and food, water, and ammunition running out, Krotevych realizes the difficulty of the situation. All hope, however, is not lost.
“The lack of logistics in general and the lack of rest for more than two months is too big a problem,” he said. “And although the enemy's aircraft and artillery are constantly striking, I can firmly assure you that with a serious attempt to assault Azovstal, the enemy will suffer enormous losses in manpower and equipment and will not be able to complete the task. Azovstal is like a fortress with many underground communications and bunkers.”
The defenders of Mariupol, who are holding out at the Azovstal steel plant, say they will never surrender. (Photo by Leon Klein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The situation inside the plant “is extremely difficult and tense,” Krotevych said. “Sixty days ago in Mariupol, the enemy cut off electricity, water, gas, Internet and mobile communications completely. We are currently using the military internet.”
The constant Russian bombardment “is an immoral phenomenon that carries no logic from a military point of view,” he said.
The Russians, he said, “always destroy residential neighborhoods. There are many documented facts where they work with aircraft and rocket launchers that volley fire on residential buildings with civilians where our forces are not close.”
Mariupol, once a thriving port city and cultural hub for southern Ukraine, is now a smoking ruin.
“I personally believe that Russian pilots and artillerymen are the scum who killed the largest number of civilians,” Krotevych said. “In general, their tactic is to destroy the entire city to zero, 98 percent of all houses in Mariupol were damaged, 70 percent are destroyed.”
Russia has been indiscriminately hitting civilian targets in Mariupol, the chief of staff of the Azov Regiment says. (Photo by Leon Klein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
With the enemy so close to the plant, the Azov Regiment has come in contact with Russians, said Krotevych.
“So, of course, we interrogated the prisoners and conducted operations directly on the first positions,” he said. “I will note that it is not necessary to use any ‘violent’ methods for a Russian to hand over all the information - just pour him tea and chocolate - and he will tell everything."
Krotevych declines to offer specifics about how much longer supplies can hold out.
“Not enough, but we have been fighting for two months in the absence of logistics," he states.
Nor will he offer many details about how many wounded there are, or the difficulty of treating them.
“I can't disclose the number,” said Krotevych, “but there are many of them, there are not enough medicines, and it is extremely difficult for the medics and the wounded.”
The defense of Mariupol has been more than just symbolic. The Pentagon has said that as many as 12 Russian battalion tactical groups were tied up trying to wrest control of the city, forces that could be used in their push to take Donbas.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a halt to the assault on the Azovstal steel plant, calling for a blockade instead, but the fighting continued. Thursday, a senior U.S. defense official said that the Pentagon has observed Russian troops moving out of Mariupol, heading northwest toward Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
"That doesn't mean that we assess that they have Mariupol," the official said. "As I've said earlier, they are continuing to pound Mariupol with strikes, both airstrikes and missile strikes. You don't do that if you think it belongs to you."
MARIUPOL, UKRAINE Humanitarian aid center continues to operate actively in Mariupol, where the Russian Army has taken a large part of, on April 22, 2022. (Photo by Leon Klein/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The situation faced by the defenders of Mariupol has few historic precedents, said Krotevych.
“If you give a military example of defense in the environment that is appropriate to compare with our situation, I will be very grateful,” he said. “I thought to compare it with Sevastopol in World War II, but there was a logistical sea corridor to the last. Stalingrad was not surrounded at all, Odesa also had a logistics naval corridor and support for naval artillery. In our case, the Sea of Azov is completely under Russian control. That's why I say everything depends only on the spirit of our soldiers.”
Krotevych said "the next step is the same as the previous one, to destroy the maximum number of the enemy, to defend. This is the military doctrine of Azov, so to speak."
As he readies for another dangerous night inside the Azovstal plant, Krotevych waxes philosophical about how much longer the Azov Regiment can hold out.
“Sometimes we are surprised by our endurance,” he said. “This is a very philosophical question, which depends only on the spirit of our soldiers.”
However, he said, “the Azov fighters are ‘gods of war’ and these words are not exaggerated. If you've seen videos of fights, you realize that most fierce fights are not documented. However, even what is there is beyond higher professionalism.”
With the eyes of the world watching the defense of Mariupol, Krotevych said he has a message.
“The world must be more determined,” he said.
“A timely decision is always more effective, but a successful decision is made late,” Krotevych mused. “Once too many countries decided for a long time whether to go to war with Nazi Germany, and it cost many lives of all nations."
“Unfortunately, we see history repeating itself," he said. “Naivety kills.”
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com
4. Europe's special operators are watching Ukraine closely for lessons learned
The article closes with a section on resistance.
Europe's special operators are watching Ukraine closely for lessons learned - Breaking Defense
Ukraine's special operations forces have been conducting efforts against Russia since day one, and among the close-knit SOF community there are clear lessons being learned.
Ukrainian Special Operations Forces and U.S. Army Special Forces Soldiers move across an objective during exercise Combined Resolve XI at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany, December 10, 2018. (U.S. Army/Benjamin Haulenbeek)
LONDON: The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war represents the first time in recent history in which a well-equipped special operations force (SOF) has had to conduct ongoing, high intensity combat operations against a “peer” adversary. And SOF communities all around the world are taking note of both tactics and technology that are being employed.
Since the start of the war, Ukrainian Armed Forces Special Operations Forces (UASOF) have been responsible for a variety of mission sets, including special reconnaissance and direct-action operations targeting Russian personnel, materiel and infrastructure at the tactical edge and behind enemy lines.
Getting a clear sense of what Ukraine’s SOF efforts have been is, naturally a difficult task. But the SOF community in Europe is a close-knit one, and word gets around. According to members of that community, who spoke to Breaking Defense on the condition of anonymity, UASOF have proven important to Ukraine’s war effort even while mostly employed for direct action tasks.
“They played a key role in dislodging Russian forces from Hostomel airport in the first days of the war, as well as in signature defensive actions against Russian conventional forces, much of which was filmed for informational purposes,” one source said.
“I suspect that they have been used for critical missions that are not necessarily ‘special’, but merely require elite light infantry that can be trusted to fight with determination and skill,” the source added.
Other European SOF sources suggested Russia’s lack of operational planning and poor military performance had allowed UASOF to operate with comparative freedom without having to significantly adjust their tactics, techniques and procedures to mitigate against emerging threats.
That challenge could change, however, should the lines of control solidify around the country, with Russia moving to dig in and claim territory in the Donbas region. In that case, the SOF sources agreed, expect UASOF to play a key role in leading resistance and sabotage efforts inside those areas in the future.
Ukraine’s success with special operations against Russia’s invading force has consequently provided European and NATO SOF units — particularly in neighboring states like Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Poland — with critical lessons learned as they consider how to respond to a similar type of invasion.
The results from UASOF doesn’t come as a surprise to officials at NATO Special Operations Headquarters (NSHQ) which is charged with influencing and shaping the policy, doctrine, capabilities, standards, training, education and coordination of 26 NATO and four NATO-partner SOF organizations.
Speaking to Breaking Defense, an NSHQ spokesperson confirmed “allied and partner SOF” continue to maintain a close relationship with UASOF and that “NSHQ is identifying lessons learned that can be used to increase the readiness of allied and partner SOF.”
NSHQ has been responsible for the development of UASOF in recent years through the Multinational Special Operations Advisory Team which serves as a platform to “coordinate bi-lateral SOF activity and create a unified, coherent approach to partner SOF development.”
This means UASOF have benefited from training by NATO SOF units, allowing it to develop “measurable, relevant and sustainable SOF capabilities,” the NSHQ spokesperson explained.
According to NSHQ, “several” Ukrainian SOF Special Operations Land Task Groups (SOLTGs) had successfully completed the NATO SOF evaluation process, prior to Russia’s latest invasion of the country. Defense sources confirmed to Breaking Defense that certified SOLTGs could be drawn from the Ukrainian Navy’s 140th Special Purpose Center and Ukrainian Army’s 3rd Special Forces Group.
Tactics And Technologies
So, what has been learned so far? The NSHQ spokesperson pointed to three areas of interest.
First, that the establishment of legal frameworks and organizational structures by political and military leadership to implement “whole-of-society” defense is something that needs to include SOF as part of the planning. No matter how effective, SOF units need to be part of the broader national defense planning.
Second, NSHQ has highlighted the effectiveness of “synchronized” information operations, with the spokesperson saying “UASOF have been particularly successful in synchronizing its information operations with various audiences. Ukraine’s political and military leadership have been transparent in their communication with their society.”
Finally, NSHQ pointed to how UASOF had “limited” the disclosure of military casualty numbers: “Ukraine’s leadership has decided to limit this operational information. This is true of UASOF as well as conventional and security services. This decision has made it more challenging for Russia’s government to determine the effectiveness of their military campaign.”
Asked what else can be taken away from the action so far, another European SOF source suggested that special operations units must be “adaptable, quick to respond and capable of achieving high levels of precision against peer adversaries.”
Capable of operating in small but highly mobile teams, SOF must benefit from optimal levels in connectivity to ensure efficient command and control, situational awareness and therefore, streamlining of decision-making processes, sources highlighted. Only such a networked force would enable SOF small unit teams to conduct special reconnaissance tasks to identify deep fires capability and execute direct action missions to destroy or disable them.
Ukrainian Special Forces officer staff listen during a pre-mission briefing for Exercise Combined Resolve 16 in Hohenfels, Germany, December 8, 2021. (U.S. Army/Sgt. Patrik Orcutt.)
In terms of materiel required to successfully execute these types of mission sets, SOF must be equipped with lightweight, highly mobile yet effective precision guided munitions, sources suggested.
These include anti-tank guided munitions (similar to the Javelins and NLAWs provided to UASOF from the UK and US over the course of the current conflict) through to loitering munitions such as Aerovironment’s Switchblade 300 and 600 systems, donated by the US government in recent weeks.
Despite still being viewed as an emerging technology, loitering munitions are quickly gathering pace as a turnkey solution which allows SOF teams to not only conduct beyond line of sight surveillance and reconnaissance of potential targets but also engage at very short notice with an organic, indirect fire capability.
Polish SOF already operate WB Group’s Warmate family of LMs, but it appears only a matter of time before European SOF units adopt similar LM capabilities from the likes of AeroVironment, IAI, Rafael, UVision and other providers.
A final lesson learned, which may be the most important one of all, is this: that the tactics being taught at NSHQ actually work, meaning other European SOF units can have confidence that they know what they are doing should operations in their home countries be required.
“In developing UASOF, the Ukrainian senior political and military leaders understood the importance of working with allies and partners to build the foundation for their special operations and actively participate in Alliance training and exercises,” the NSHQ spokesperson said.
Role In Resistance
As Russia shifts its attention to the East of Ukraine, the outcome of the war remains difficult to predict. However, should Russia end up occupying an area of the country in the long term, Ukrainian SOF will likely spearhead some kind of resistance campaign- another concept of operation which has been developed by NSHQ and its NATO partners over the past several years.
In January, Ukraine’s government ratified the National Resistance Strategy which, tasked UASOF with leading a resistance movement should it become necessary, NSHQ confirmed to Breaking Defense.
According to James Dobbins, RAND’s senior fellow and distinguished chair in diplomacy and security, resistance or “insurgency” has become the world’s “most common form of warfare” although he said it “rarely offers a path to early victory in a conflict”.
In an online report published Apr. 6, Dobbins suggested resistance campaigns often become “endurance contests that take decades to resolve.”
However, he did concede insurgency could be “an effective tool in Ukraine’s fight against Russian occupiers if it is used as a complement to conventional battle.”
“When employed in this manner, insurgency can yield much quicker results by threatening an enemy’s lines of communication and drawing off its forces from the main battle. Insurgency alone offers, at best, the prospect of distant success at tremendous cost. When combined with a stalemated but still active conventional battle, however, it may provide the defender the decisive edge,” Dobbins wrote.
However, European SOF sources highlighted concerns regarding the penetration of Russian intelligence assets in Ukraine’s government, and how that could impact a resistance effort inside territory controlled more concretely by Russia.
“Even if those networks proved ineffective, it is unclear to what degree they were destroyed or to what degree they were forced underground but still provide potential conduits for information gathering and future activity. Even just the human terrain mapping and thus the ability to conduct targeting against resistance networks if the Russian ground forces are able to militarily control areas in the longer term, creates an immense obstacle to successful resistance,” the source warned.
Whatever the outcome of the war, discussions regarding the employment of UASOF in the conflict will feature heavily in NSHQ’s bi-annual Commanders’ Conference which brings SOF leadership together from across the Alliance to discuss SOF contributions to NATO deterrence and defense objectives. The next NATO SOF Commanders’ Conference is scheduled to take place in the fall of 2022.
“The schedule is currently being discussed but will look at the outcomes from the NATO Summit and what that means for SOF, training and exercises, and an update on the recently created Maritime SOF Development Program, to name just a few,” NSHQ’s spokesperson concluded.
5. Brutal Sect of Putin’s Army Accused of Murdering Their Own Comrades
Evil, evil, evil.
Excerpts:
Ultimately, none of that happened, and the Kadyrovtsy, together with other Russian units, were left to their own devices and given carte blanche to allegedly abuse and massacre the population of Bucha for weeks, as people like Yuschenko saw firsthand. Yuschenko said all his years of military service paled in comparison to his experiences in the town.
“There, you know where the front line is, you know where threats may come from,” Yuschenko said about his time fighting in eastern Ukraine. “This was much more frightening than the Donbas. From lieutenant, to platoon commander, to deputy chief of staff, this situation was the biggest terror of my life.”
Brutal Sect of Putin’s Army Accused of Murdering Their Own Comrades
LAWLESS ARMY
Serving under “Putin’s soldier” Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechen troops have been linked to vile war crimes against civilians in Bucha—and their own severely injured brothers-in-arms.
Updated Apr. 30, 2022 3:03AM ET / Published Apr. 29, 2022 10:01PM ET
The Daily Beast · by Michal KranzUpdated Apr. 30, 2022 3:03AM ET / Published Apr. 29, 2022 10:01PM ET · April 30, 2022
exclusive
Photo by Narciso Contreras/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
BUCHA, Ukraine—Ihor Yuschenko, 61, a former colonel in the Ukrainian Armed Forces who once served as the deputy chief of staff of ground forces in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, watched in horror as a war crime took place right outside his window in broad daylight.
According to Yuschenko, a column of Russian troops advancing through the town stopped and opened fire on his street in central Bucha on Feb. 27, killing two pedestrians. This column had included Chechen fighters known as Kadyrovtsy, members of various military groupings who are loyal to Chechnya’s local strongman, Ramzan Kadyrov, known as “Putin’s soldier.” Yuschenko said he was able to identify them by their black garb, their use of Islamic slogans, and Kadyrov’s name on their body armor.
About an hour later, their column was decimated by the Ukrainian army in a different part of town—but the Kadyrovtsy returned. “Many Chechen soldiers penetrated this street to kill Ukrainian civilian people,” Yuschenko told The Daily Beast.
He described how Chechen fighters, also dressed in black, shot up a car that had been driving down the street with at least “thirty bullets,” according to Yuschenko, killing its occupants and causing it to come to a stop on the side of the road next to the apartment building he was staying in. The Kadyrovtsy then allegedly dragged the two dead people whom they had shot out of the car, left them by the side of the road, and drove off in the car themselves.
Yuschenko’s mother, Zina Yehorovna, his friend Pavel Kondratyev, and his neighbor Bogdan each confirmed these events to The Daily Beast. According to Bogdan, however, the Chechens then hit a civilian who had been trying to flee the scene with the car, leaving him hanging off the hood of the car before he slid off onto the street.
“They just shot them.”
“It’s simply a war crime what they have done here,” Yuschenko said, standing next to the bench that the car had crashed into after the Kadyrovtsy allegedly attacked it. “This is not war.”
Artem Hurin, a member of the city council of the neighboring town of Irpin who also serves as a deputy commander in Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, was one of the first people to visit Bucha after the Russians retreated. There, he heard numerous accounts from residents about life in areas like Yablonska Street, where a group of Kadyrovtsy who were supposed to advance onto Kyiv were stationed.
According to Hurin, Ukrainian civilians were not the only people the Kadyrovtsy allegedly brutalized in the town. Hurin said that residents he spoke to in Borodyanka, which lies northwest of Bucha, recounted what the Kadyrovtsy did with injured Russian soldiers they brought there from Bucha. “They would bring heavily wounded Russian soldiers to a big hospital they had there, and those who were very heavily wounded, they would just shoot them,” he told The Daily Beast. “And no one other than the Kadyrovtsy did this.”
Locals mourn as a mass grave is exhumed. Local authorities attempted to identify the bodies of civilians who had died during the Russian occupation in Bucha, Ukraine.
Photo by Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
Eyewitnesses have alleged that Kadyrovtsy had executed people as early as March 5, and Bucha Mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk stated Chechen units had tied white bands around prisoners’ arms that were similar to the ones found on the bodies of executed civilians. Hurin said he saw evidence of executions and torture on bodies he found in the street, and spoke to a woman who endured four days of torture at the hands of one Kadyrovtsy fighter and one Belarusian soldier before they shot her husband in the head.
“They didn’t allow them to do anything. There they just killed people through binoculars for example,” Hurin said, describing what happened to people who tried to leave their homes to get food and water. “They just shot them.”
He also confirmed previous reports about a local base at a glass factory on Yablonska Street, which Ukraine’s ombudsman for human rights, Lyudmila Denisova, said served as a torture chamber operated by Russians and Chechens.
According to the Kyiv Oblast Police, the bodies of around 1,150 civilians have been found throughout the Kyiv region since Russian forces retreated in late March and early April. In Bucha alone, over 400 people have been found dead so far, most of whom were killed by the town’s Russian occupiers over the course of several weeks in March prior to their withdrawal from the town on April 1.
But accounts like Yuschenko’s provide evidence that indiscriminate violence toward civilians was part of the Russian army’s playbook in Bucha from almost the very beginning of the war itself, with Chechen Kadyrovtsy playing a key role in the brutality even early on—against local residents and their own fellow soldiers alike. A lot remains unknown about Chechen activity in Bucha, but new details and testimony from residents and local authorities are making it possible to form a clearer picture of Chechen forces’ brutal presence in the town and their participation in the weeks-long war crimes against Bucha’s residents.
Social media evidence, testimony from residents, and materials seized by Kyiv Oblast police suggest that the Kadyrovtsy regiments in Bucha most likely belonged to the Special Rapid Response Unit (SOBR) and (Special Purpose Mobile Unit) OMON, and that these units, along with other Russian troops, were likely responsible for a significant portion of the massacre that took place there.
According to independent security analyst Harold Chambers, who specializes in the north Caucasus, this sort of personal violence by Kadyrovtsy in Bucha comes as no surprise.
“What they do have experience in, in terms of military operations, is really these zachistki, these clean sweep operations,” Chambers said, speaking about a brutal style of house-to-house searches and killings that Russian forces perfected during the Chechen Wars in the 1990s and early 2000s. “It plays into their specialty of targeting civilian populations, and from the stories we’ve already heard out of Bucha, that’s very much what was going on.”
Despite their presence in Bucha in late February, Russian forces were not able to gain full control of the town until several days later on or after March 2. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has identified the 64th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade as one of the Russian military groups responsible for the massacre that ensued in Bucha throughout March, but evidence suggests they were not the only ones involved.
According to Andriy Halavin, the priest at the Church of the Holy Apostle St. Andrew the First-Called in Bucha, where a mass grave for around 280 people was dug during the Russian occupation, regiments that included SOBR and OMON units began to replace the original occupying forces later in March.
“At the beginning, even though they were, shall we say, strict, they were fair. At the very beginning they would just search my car and tell me to just continue with my work, and so on,” Halavin said. “But after that the others came.”
Andriy Nebytov, the head of the Kyiv Oblast Police which is responsible for Bucha, confirmed that SOBR and OMON units were present in the Kyiv region, citing documents seized by his police department that show lists of members of the regiments who had arrived in the area. Because the information will be used in future criminal cases against Russia, his office was unable to provide the list to The Daily Beast, but the documents are seen in a video Nebytov recently published.
On Feb. 27, Ukrainian forces destroyed a large column of vehicles that included Kadyrovtsy on Vokzal’na Street near Bucha’s train station, which lines up with Yuschenko’s account from that same day. The column had arrived in the town from Hostomel, which lies just to the northeast of Bucha, where Hussein Mezhidov, the Chechen commander of the “Yug” battalion of the 141st Special Motorized Regiment that forms the backbone of the Kadyrovtsy, was seen in a video on Feb. 26.
“This situation was the biggest terror of my life.”
According to Chambers, the most likely Chechen unit present in Bucha on Feb. 27 was the SOBR “Akhmat” group. Nevertheless, Chambers noted that the pattern of organization of Kadyrovtsy units around Kyiv makes identifying specific fighting groups who had fought on that front particularly difficult.
“The Kadyrovtsky do not seem to be fighting as much in delineated units, they seem to be working more in combined groups,” Chambers said. “You have a lot of commanders overlapping together, so it seems less clear how the units were actually being separated.”
Militarily and strategically, Kadyrovtsy deployed to Kyiv Oblast served several purposes—some groups were designed to be strike teams meant to assassinate Ukrainian President Zelensky and his family if they were able to make it into Kyiv, but according to Michael Kofman, the director of the Russia Studies Program at CNA, these units’ primary purpose was a broader one.
“The Chechens have a real purpose. The Russian military needs manpower,” Kofman said. He added that the Kadyrovtsy were meant to be deployed into the cities, especially into Kyiv, in order to support soldiers from the Eastern Military District, who were supposed to hold the blockade of the capital, and to fight alongside airborne units within the city limits.
“These Chechen units and these auxiliaries were therefore really important for the urban fight, because a lot of the other units they’d send were pretty low on manpower availability,” he said.
A Ukrainian serviceman looks on as workers exhume bodies from a mass grave in Bucha, north-west of Kyiv. Ukraine says it has discovered 1,222 bodies in Bucha and other towns.
AFP via Getty Images
Ultimately, none of that happened, and the Kadyrovtsy, together with other Russian units, were left to their own devices and given carte blanche to allegedly abuse and massacre the population of Bucha for weeks, as people like Yuschenko saw firsthand. Yuschenko said all his years of military service paled in comparison to his experiences in the town.
“There, you know where the front line is, you know where threats may come from,” Yuschenko said about his time fighting in eastern Ukraine. “This was much more frightening than the Donbas. From lieutenant, to platoon commander, to deputy chief of staff, this situation was the biggest terror of my life.”
The Daily Beast · by Michal KranzUpdated Apr. 30, 2022 3:03AM ET / Published Apr. 29, 2022 10:01PM ET · April 30, 2022
6. Putin may declare war against "world's Nazis" on "Victory Day:' UK official
Excerpts:
"We're what, nine, ten days away from what normally is their big parade day? What do you think they've got planned, how do you imagine they're going to reference the Ukraine war in ten days' time?"
"Well I think we've seen a number of statements from Putin recently about 'This is becoming a war, this is a proxy war which it isn't...Nazis are everywhere basically. They're not just in Ukraine, NATO is full of Nazis.
"And I think what he's going to do is he's going to move from his 'special operation'...and he's been laying the ground for being able to say 'Look this is now a war against Nazis' and what I need is more people, I need more Russian cannon fodder basically."
Wallace added that he doesn't "have any information about this," but he said Putin is "probably going to declare on this May Day that we're now at war with the world's Nazis and we need to mass mobilize the Russian people."
Putin may declare war against "world's Nazis" on "Victory Day:' UK official
Newsweek · by Xander Landen · April 29, 2022
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Thursday that Russia may declare war on the "world's Nazis" on Victory Day—an annual Russian commemoration of the end of World War II on May 9.
U.K. defense officials said earlier this month that Russia "likely desires to demonstrate significant" military success ahead of the holiday.
Wallace's comments came during an appearance on LBC radio Thursday. During the program, host Nick Ferrari asked about the upcoming holiday.
"We're what, nine, ten days away from what normally is their big parade day? What do you think they've got planned, how do you imagine they're going to reference the Ukraine war in ten days' time?"
"Well I think we've seen a number of statements from Putin recently about 'This is becoming a war, this is a proxy war which it isn't...Nazis are everywhere basically. They're not just in Ukraine, NATO is full of Nazis.
"And I think what he's going to do is he's going to move from his 'special operation'...and he's been laying the ground for being able to say 'Look this is now a war against Nazis' and what I need is more people, I need more Russian cannon fodder basically."
Wallace added that he doesn't "have any information about this," but he said Putin is "probably going to declare on this May Day that we're now at war with the world's Nazis and we need to mass mobilize the Russian people."
A British defense official said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin may declare war against the "world's Nazis" next month. Above, Putin speaks during the Council of Lawmakers at the Tauride Palace, on April 27, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Contributor
"Which is actually a pathetic attempt to cover for the fact that actually his generals have sent thousands of men to their death because of their incompetence and arrogance and his ego."
In the days leading up to this, Russia has made threatening statements to NATO. In a speech on Wednesday, Putin said that those who intervene in Russia's actions in Ukraine and create "unacceptable threats for us that are strategic in nature" would be met with a "lightning-fast" response.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday that "NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy."
"It's clear that the next few days and weeks could prove decisive, but the war would probably take longer," said NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoană said. "Could be weeks, could be months, could be even years—it depends on a lot of factors."
Newsweek has reached out to Russia's foreign ministry for comment.
Newsweek · by Xander Landen · April 29, 2022
7. Cracks emerge in Russian elite as tycoons start to bemoan invasion
Can this be exploited? Who is working on this to create further dilemmas for Putin?
Cracks emerge in Russian elite as tycoons start to bemoan invasion
Oligarchs and financial officials are alarmed over the economic toll it’s taking and feel powerless to influence Putin
By Catherine Belton and
Yesterday at 7:41 a.m. EDT
In the two months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the silence — and even acquiescence — of the Russian elite has started to fray.
Even as opinion polls report overwhelming public support for the military campaign, amid pervasive state propaganda and new laws outlawing criticism of the war, cracks are starting to show. The dividing lines among factions of the Russian economic elite are becoming more marked, and some of the tycoons — especially those who made their fortunes before President Vladimir Putin came to power — have begun, tentatively, to speak.
For many, the most immediate focus has been their own woes. Sweeping sanctions imposed by the West have brought down a new iron curtain on the Russian economy, freezing tens of billions of dollars of many of the tycoons’ assets along the way.
“In one day, they destroyed what was built over many years. It’s a catastrophe,” said one businessman who was summoned along with many of the country’s other richest men to meet Putin on the day of the invasion.
At least four oligarchs who made it big in the more liberal era of Putin’s predecessor, President Boris Yeltsin, have left Russia. At least four senior officials have resigned their posts and departed the country, the highest ranking among them being Anatoly Chubais, the Kremlin special envoy for sustainable development and Yeltsin-era privatization czar.
But those in top positions vital to the continued running of the country remain — some trapped, unable to leave even if they wanted to. Most notably, Russia’s mild-mannered and highly regarded central bank chief, Elvira Nabiullina, tendered her resignation after the imposition of Western sanctions, but Putin refused to let her step down, according to five people familiar with the situation.
In interviews, several Russian billionaires, senior bankers, a senior official and former officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, described how they and others had been blindsided by their increasingly isolated president and feel largely impotent to influence him because his inner circle is dominated by a handful of hard-line security officials.
The complaints aired in public so far are mostly muted and focused primarily on the government’s proposed economic response to the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West. No one has directly criticized Putin.
Vladimir Lisin, a steel magnate who made his fortune in the Yeltsin years, slammed a proposal in the Russian parliament to counter sanctions by forcing foreign buyers to pay in rubles for a list of commodities beyond gas. In an interview with a Moscow newspaper, he said the measure risked undermining export markets that Russia “fought for for decades,” warning that “a transfer to payments in rubles will just lead to us being thrown out of international markets.”
Vladimir Potanin, the owner of the Norilsk Nickel metals plant who was an architect of Russia’s privatizations in the 1990s, warned that proposals to confiscate the assets of foreign companies that exited Russia in the wake of the war would destroy investor confidence and throw the country back to the revolution of 1917.
Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum tycoon who also made his initial fortune during the Yeltsin era, has gone furthest, calling the war in Ukraine “insanity,” though he too has focused on the invasion’s economic toll. He has predicted that the economic crisis resulting from the sanctions would be three times worse than the 1998 financial crisis that rocked the Russian economy, and he has thrown down the gauntlet to the Putin regime, saying its state capitalism policies of the past 14 years have “led neither to economic growth nor to the growth of the population’s incomes.”
In a subsequent post on his Telegram channel, Deripaska wrote that the current “armed conflict” was “a madness for which we will long be ashamed of.” In the next sentence, however, he indicated the West was equally to blame for a “hellish ideological mobilization from all sides.”
‘We’ve lost everything’
When 37 of Russia’s wealthiest business executives were called to the Kremlin for the meeting with Putin hours after he launched the war on Feb. 24, many of them were depressed and shocked. “Everyone was in a terrible mood,” one participant said. “Everyone was sitting there crushed.”
“I’d never seen them as stunned as they were,” another participant said. “Some of them could not even speak.”
They’d been kept waiting, as usual, for more than two hours before the president appeared in the Kremlin’s ornate Ekaterininsky Hall — ample time to consider their fate. For some of the executives, as they quietly discussed the consequences of Putin’s war, it was the moment they realized that it was all over for the business empires they’d been building since Russia’s market transition began more than 30 years ago.
“Some of them said, ‘We’ve lost everything,’ ” one of the participants said.
When the president arrived, no one dared issue a whimper of protest. Stone-faced, they listened as Putin assured everyone Russia would remain part of global markets — a promise soon made hollow by the series of Western sanctions — and told them he’d had no other choice than to launch his “special military operation.”
Since then, Putin has ratcheted up threats against anyone criticizing the war, hastily issuing new laws that include a potential 15-year prison sentence for anyone saying anything the Kremlin deems false about the Russian military. His administration has proposed instituting a new system of deputies in Russia’s ministries to report back to the Kremlin on the “emotional climate and mood.” One tycoon said he expected the coming crackdown to be “cannibalistic” compared with the “vegetarian period” of previous years.
Putin’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion appears to have stunned not just the billionaires but the breadth of the Russian elite, including senior technocratic officials and some members of the security services, according to two of the Russian billionaires and a well-connected Moscow-based former state official.
“Apart from those directly involved in the preparations, [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu, [chief of the army’s general staff Valery] Gerasimov, and some from the FSB, no one knew,” said one of the billionaires.
Despite the escalating warnings by U.S. intelligence, many in the Moscow elite had believed Putin was limiting his aims to the separatist areas of eastern Ukraine. Economic and financial officials “thought it would be limited to action in Donetsk and Luhansk and this is what they had prepared for,” the senior official said. They had prepared for Western sanctions, including a suspension from Swift, the international financial messaging system, he said, “but they hadn’t prepared for this.”
With casualties mounting and Russian troops forced to turn back from Kyiv, the war is now being viewed with increasing dismay not just by billionaires sanctioned by the West but even by some members of the security establishment, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
One referred specifically to Shoigu, who took part in the war preparations. “They all want to have a normal life. They have homes, children, grandchildren. They don’t need war,” this person said. “They’re all not suicidal. They all want to have a good life. They want their children to have everything and be able to travel to the most beautiful places.”
The mounting pressure on their foreign bank accounts is a source of particular chagrin for the elite. Even officials who tried to protect themselves by moving their money into accounts belonging to business partners now find that these accounts are blocked, one of the Moscow executives said.
Trapped in Moscow
Western sanctions to freeze $300 billion — or nearly half — of the Central Bank of Russia’s hard currency reserves left Moscow reeling, including central bank governor Nabiullina, whose resignation attempt was rejected by Putin, according to the five people familiar with the situation. (Bloomberg News first reported her attempt to resign.)
Nabiullina “understands very well she can’t just leave. Otherwise, it will end very badly for her,” one of these people said.
“No one can say ‘That’s it’ and then slam the door,” said Vadim Belyaev, the exiled former main owner of Otkritie, Russia’s biggest private bank until its takeover by the state in 2017. “Everyone will continue working right up to the next Hague tribunal,” he said, referring to a possible war crimes trial. The central bank has denied that Nabiullina tried to resign.
Only those officials who are superfluous to the running of the state — and are relative outsiders — have been allowed to leave, economists said. “No minister is allowed to step down,” said Maxim Mironov, an associate professor at IE University in Spain. “It is like a mafia.”
If Nabiullina epitomizes Moscow’s senior technocratic officials, then Alexei Kudrin is the one closest to Putin. Kudrin — a former member of Putin’s inner circle from St. Petersburg who served as finance minister for the first two terms of his presidency — also appears to be among those unable to step down.
One person close to Kudrin said he met with Putin a month before the invasion. Although it was clear that preparations for war were underway, Kudrin had believed the plans would not be carried out, one person familiar with his thinking said. “He counted on things not reaching such a head,” the person said.
Kudrin — who now heads the Audit Chamber, Russia’s financial watchdog — has told allies it would be a betrayal by him to leave for good. He’d appeared in Tel Aviv the weekend of April 9 but took to social media to telegraph to all that he intended to return to Moscow to speak at Russia’s upper chamber the following week. He gave his address according to plan, warning that Western sanctions were confronting Russia with the worst economic downturn in 30 years.
Another former senior state official said he felt a responsibility to remain in Moscow, even though he was taken aback and horrified by the war. “If everyone leaves, then who is going to be here to pick up the pieces,” he said. “It’s like working at a nuclear power station. Who is going to run it if you leave? If you leave, then there is a chance it can explode.”
Yeltsin’s tycoons and Putin’s tycoons
Among the billionaires who left Russia in the immediate aftermath of the invasion are several who grew wealthy during the Yeltsin era, including Alexander Mamut and Alexander Nesis, who own the Russian gold company Polymetal, and Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven of Alfa Group.
But many other tycoons high-tailed it to Moscow as soon as they were hit with sanctions, which have barred them from travel in the West. Other business executives fear that if they leave Russia, their companies will be seized by the government, one of the Moscow business executives said.
Some of the billionaires now stuck in Moscow are seeking only to emerge unscathed. “You may not support the war but you have to keep quiet and be with your countrymen because some of your soldiers are dying,” said one person close to one of the billionaires present at the Feb. 24 Kremlin meeting. “If you are living in the country, you may not be happy — nobody is happy about what’s going on — but don’t voice your opinion.”
Those billionaires who have been willing to speak out publicly are those who remember a different era; they made their first fortunes in the Yeltsin years, before Putin became president.
Sergei Pugachev, a Kremlin insider until he left Russia in 2011, pointed out that these tycoons were still careful in their public comments not to directly criticize Putin for going to war. “What they say is subtle: The context is that the West, NATO is to blame. … They are talking about this as though it is a conspiracy against Russia,” he said.
By contrast, those closest to Putin — who are from St. Petersburg and became fabulously wealthy after his rise to the presidency — such as Gennady Timchenko, Yury Kovalchuk and Arkady Rotenburg, are resolutely silent. They “would never go against Putin. They started with Putin, and he made them gazillionaires. Why would you bite the hand that feeds you?” said a former senior western banker who worked with Russian oligarchs.
Apart from these tycoons, there is an army of officials and business executives in Moscow who are not troubled by Russia’s increasing economic isolation as a result of the invasion, Pugachev said, and many of the contacts he retains in Moscow have not faulted Putin for going to war. They had complained instead that the army should have been better prepared.
He said many members of the current elite are mid-level government ministers who have stashed millions of dollars in private accounts and maintain homes elsewhere in Europe. If sanctions prevent them from traveling to these countries, they’ll still be fine. “He’s still a minister in Russia, and instead of going to Austria, he’ll go to [the Russian resort] Sochi. They don’t suffer very much,” Pugachev said.
On the surface, moreover, the Russian economy has appeared to stabilize since the initial salvo of sanctions, buoyed by an estimated more than $800 million a day in revenue from the sale of oil and gas to Europe. The central bank’s policy to force exporters to sell 80 percent of their hard currency earnings has prevented a ruble implosion, while Putin has declared that the “economic blitzkrieg” against Russia has failed.
But earlier this month, Nabiullina warned the impact of sanctions was yet to be fully felt and said the worst was still to come. The manufacturing plants, where “practically every product” depended on imported components, were beginning to run out of supplies, while reserves of imported consumer goods were dwindling, too. “We are entering a difficult period of structural changes,” she told parliamentary deputies. “The period during which the economy can live on reserves is finite.”
In these conditions, Putin’s position is precarious, Pugachev said. The population has so far been lulled by the state propaganda machine, which has covered up the level of deaths in the Russian military, as well as by the sanctions’ lack of immediate bite. “But in three months, the shops and factories will run out of stocks, and the scale of deaths in the Russian military will become clear,” he said.
Despite the near-fatal blow to their interests, for now, the Russian business elite appears to be still frozen in fear. “I don’t know who has the balls to fight back,” said one of the business executives.
“But if the war is long, and they begin to lose, then the chances will be greater,” he said. “There will be a serious battle for Donbas and, if it is not successful, then there will be a big battle inside Russia” among elites.
8. Opinion | The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized
If you believe in any of these theories you might want to think about the definition of a useful idiot. (I may be one as I do like number 3 and wish we were doing that).
But these weaponized conspiracy theories are important in conducting political warfare. The US and the west (and the rest) should work to recognize Putin's strategy, understand it, expose it (inoculate target audiences), and attack the strategy (with a superior form of political warfare that includes as the foundation, strategic influence through information advantage.
Definition of useful idiot
: a naive or credulous person who can be manipulated or exploited to advance a cause or political agenda
It is one task of the KGB [in 1982] to apply its skills of secrecy and deception to projecting the Soviet party's influence. This it does through contacts with legal Communist Parties abroad, with groups sympathetic to Soviet goals, with do-gooders of the type that Lenin once described as "useful idiots" … .
— The Wall Street Journal
1. The West wants to carve up Russia’s territory
2. NATO has turned Ukraine into a military camp
3. The opposition wants to destroy Russia from within — and is backed by the West
4. The global L.G.B.T.Q. movement is a plot against Russia
5. Ukraine is preparing bioweapons to use against Russia
Opinion | The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized
Guest Essay
The Five Conspiracy Theories That Putin Has Weaponized
April 25, 2022
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By
Mr. Yablokov is a historian of Russian media and the author of “Fortress Russia: Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet World.”
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is driven by conspiracy theories.
For two decades, journalists and officials, in concert with the Kremlin, have merrily spread disinformation. However far-fetched or fantastical — that the C.I.A. was plotting to oust Mr. Putin from power, for example — these tales served an obvious purpose: to bolster the regime and guarantee public support for its actions. Whatever the personal views of members of the political establishment, it seemed clear that the theories played no role in political calculations. They were stories designed to make sense of what the regime, for its own purposes, was doing.
Not anymore. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two months ago, the gap between conspiracy theory and state policy has closed to a vanishing point. Conspiratorial thinking has taken complete hold of the country, from top to bottom, and now seems to be the motivating force behind the Kremlin’s decisions. And Mr. Putin — who previously kept his distance from conspiracy theories, leaving their circulation to state media and second-rank politicians — is their chief promoter.
It is impossible to know what is inside Mr. Putin’s head, of course. But to judge from his bellicose and impassioned speeches before the invasion and since then, he may believe the conspiracy theories he repeats. Here are five of the most prevalent theories that the president has endorsed, with increasing fervor, over the past decade. Together, they tell a story of a regime disintegrating into a morass of misinformation, paranoia and mendacity, at a terrible cost to Ukraine and the rest of the world.
Credit...Mark Henley/Panos Pictures, via Redux
The West wants to carve up Russia’s territory
In 2007, at his annual national news conference, Mr. Putin was asked a strange question. What did he think about the former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s comment that Russia’s natural riches should be redistributed and controlled by America? Mr. Putin replied that such ideas were shared by “certain politicians” but he didn’t know about the remark.
That’s because it was entirely made up. Journalists at Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a state-owned newspaper, had invented the quote on the grounds that Russian intelligence was able to read Ms. Albright’s mind. For years, there appeared to be no mention of it. Then in 2015, the secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, repeated it. He reported serenely that she had said Russia should not control Siberia or its Far East — and that’s why America was involved in Ukraine, where Russia was busy fomenting a conflict in the eastern part of the country. At the time it felt as though Mr. Putin’s colleague had lost the plot.
But in May 2021, Mr. Putin showed that the theory hadn’t been forgotten. Everyone, the president declared, “wants to bite us or bite off a piece of Russia” because “it is unjust for Russia alone to possess the riches of a region like Siberia.” An invented quote had become “fact,” legitimizing Mr. Putin’s ever more hostile approach to the West.
NATO has turned Ukraine into a military camp
NATO is Mr. Putin’s worst nightmare: Its military operations in Serbia, Iraq and Libya have planted the fear that Russia will be the military alliance’s next target. It’s also a convenient boogeyman that animates the anti-Western element of Mr. Putin’s electorate. In his rhetoric, NATO is synonymous with the United States, the military hand of “the collective West” that will suffocate Russia whenever it becomes weak.
So it makes sense that NATO is the subject of some of the regime’s most persistent conspiracy theories, which see the organization’s hand behind popular uprisings around the world. Since 2014, they have focused on Ukraine. Since Ukraine’s Maidan revolution that year, in which Ukrainians forced the ouster of the Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych, Mr. Putin and his subordinates propagated the notion that Ukraine was turning into a puppet state under the control of the United States. In a long essay published in July 2021, Mr. Putin gave fullest expression to this theory, claiming that Ukraine was fully controlled by the West and that NATO was militarizing the country.
His speech on Feb. 21, just days before the invasion, confirmed that NATO’s activities in Ukraine — dragging the country into the West’s orbit — were, for Mr. Putin, the chief reason for Russia’s aggression. Crucially, NATO was what divided Russians and Ukrainians, who otherwise, in his view, were one people. It was Western military activity that had turned Ukraine into an anti-Russia, harboring enemies aiming at Russian humiliation.
The opposition wants to destroy Russia from within — and is backed by the West
NATO and the West menace Russia not just externally. They also cause trouble within. Since at least 2004, Mr. Putin has been suspicious of domestic opposition, fearing a Ukrainian-style revolution. Fortress Russia, forever undermined by foreign enemies, became a feature of Kremlin propaganda. But it was the Maidan revolution that brought about a confluence in the Kremlin’s messaging: Not only were dissidents bringing discord to Russia, but they were also doing so under orders from the West. The aim was to turn Russia into a mess like Ukraine.
In this line of thinking, opposition forces were a fifth column infiltrating the otherwise pure motherland — and it led to the branding of activists, journalists and organizations as foreign agents. Though Mr. Putin could never bring himself to utter the name of his fiercest critic, Alexei Navalny, Mr. Putin stated that Mr. Navalny was a C.I.A. agent whose investigative work used “materials from the U.S. special services.” Even Mr. Navalny’s poisoning in August 2020 was, according to the president, a plot perpetrated to blacken Mr. Putin’s reputation.
The clearing away of domestic opposition — ruthlessly undertaken by the Kremlin in recent years — can now be seen as a prerequisite for the invasion of Ukraine. Since the war began, the last vestiges of independent media have been closed down, and hundreds of thousands of people have fled Russia. Any criticism of the war can land Russians in prison for 15 years and earn them the title of traitor, working nefariously in the service of Russia’s Western enemies. In a sign that the association of dissent with foreign enemies is now complete, Mr. Putin’s supporters have taken to marking the doors of opposition activists.
The global L.G.B.T.Q. movement is a plot against Russia
This claim — starkly captured by Mr. Putin’s statement that in the West, “children can play five or six gender roles,” threatening Russia’s “core population” — has been brewing for a decade. A criminal case in 2012 against Pussy Riot, an anarchic punk band critical of the regime, was the tipping point. The Kremlin sought to portray the band and its followers as a set of sexually subversive provocateurs whose aim was to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church and traditional values. The complaints spread to foreign nongovernmental organizations and L.G.B.T.Q. activists, accused of corrupting Russians from infancy. Soon, anti-L.G.B.T.Q. scaremongering became a major plank of Kremlin policy.
It was remarkably effective: By 2020, one-fifth of Russians surveyed said they wanted to “eliminate” lesbian and gay people from Russian society. They were responding to a propaganda campaign, undertaken by state media, claiming that L.G.B.T.Q. rights were an invention of the West, with the potential to shatter Russian social stability. Mr. Putin, unveiling his party’s manifesto ahead of 2021’s parliamentary elections, took things a step further — claiming that when people in the West weren’t trying to outright abolish the concept of gender, they were allowing teachers in schools to decide on a child’s gender, irrespective of parental wishes. It was, he said, a crime against humanity.
The West’s progressive attitudes to sexual diversity eventually played into the Ukrainian war effort. In March, Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, claimed the invasion was necessary to protect Russian speakers in Ukraine from a West that insists any entrant to its club of nations host a gay pride march. The supposed predations of L.G.B.T.Q. rights had to be met with righteous force.
Ukraine is preparing bioweapons to use against Russia
The newest of the Kremlin’s major hoaxes, this conspiracy theory has flourished since the start of the war — though it echoes Mr. Putin’s remarks in 2017, when he accused Western experts of collecting biological material from Russians for scientific experiments.
In the second week of the war, regime-friendly bloggers and then top-ranking politicians, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, claimed that Russian intelligence had obtained evidence that America and Ukraine were developing biological weapons — in the form of disease-ridden bats and birds — to spread viruses in Russia. The Ministry of Defense suggested it had unearthed documents that confirmed the collaboration.
To add ballast to the claim, state media repeated a remark made by Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host, that the White House was involved in biowarfare against Russia in Ukraine. There was, of course, no credible evidence for anything of the sort. But the story spread across Russia, and the Kremlin even convened a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss it. After all, Hunter Biden was probably financing it.
All five of these conspiracy theories, and many more, have found their place in wartime Russia. They are used to justify the war in Ukraine, both by ordinary citizens and by the Kremlin. What’s more, conspiracy theories have become a way to reject mounting evidence of Russian atrocities — which are recast instead as foreign skulduggery. The crimes at Bucha, for example, were immediately blamed on the Ukrainians, who apparently either staged the photos or killed innocent people to set up the Russian Army. Hollywood, meanwhile, is believed to be working hard to produce scenes of mass poisoning to further discredit Russia. The C.I.A. is spinning its web.
From battles of words on talk shows and online, conspiracy theories have effectively turned into a weapon that kills real people. That’s scary enough. But the most frightening thing is that Mr. Putin, waging war without restraint, seems to believe them.
Ilya Yablokov (@ilya_yablokov) is a lecturer in journalism and digital media at the University of Sheffield in England, the author of “Fortress Russia: Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet World” and a co-author of “Russia Today and Conspiracy Theories: People, Power, Politics on RT.”
9. Inside the Trevor Reed deal: From Oval Office to Moscow trip
Very interesting background on this transpired.
Inside the Trevor Reed deal: From Oval Office to Moscow trip
AP · by ERIC TUCKER · April 29, 2022
WASHINGTON (AP) — The worst possible moment for bringing Trevor Reed home turned out to be the best.
With U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point in decades, it seemed an improbable time to hope for the release of Reed, a former Marine detained in Russia for almost three years. Yet this week the Biden administration completed the type of transaction it had earlier seemed resistant to, exchanging Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and convicted drug trafficker serving a 20-year prison sentence in Connecticut.
A series of events and considerations in the last two months helped facilitate the swap, including escalating concerns over Reed’s health, a private Oval Office meeting between his parents and President Joe Biden and a secretive Moscow trip by a former diplomat on the cusp of Russia’s war with Ukraine.
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“All those three forced the White House to make a decision that they hadn’t made before,” said Mickey Bergman, vice president at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement.
How the war — and the breakdown in U.S.-Russian relations — affected the deal isn’t clear. U.S. officials stressed that the negotiations for Reed’s release were narrow in scope, focused squarely on the prisoners and not on Russia’s war and not reflective of any broader diplomatic engagement. But while the timing of the deal was startling, it’s also clear that the groundwork for it had been laid before the conflict had begun.
“I did it,” Biden told reporters Wednesday about the deal. “I raised it. I raised it three months ago.”
Just as the war was about to commence, Bergman and his colleague, Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ex-New Mexico governor, flew to Moscow on the plane of FedEx chief executive Fred Smith for a meeting with Russian government officials. It was a continuation of negotiations they’d been having for the release of Reed and another jailed American, corporate security executive Paul Whelan.
They left with the contours in place for the one-for-one swap that ultimately took place.
In Texas, Joey and Paula Reed were worrying that Russia’s war with Ukraine, and resulting tensions with the U.S., could close off communication channels and prevent any common ground for negotiations. During meetings with administration officials in the last year — including with the Justice Department, which prosecuted Yaroshenko — the couple expressed support for a swap but say they weren’t led to think that was a viable option.
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“They didn’t say: ‘Oh, we agree with you, that’s a great deal. That’s a good point,’” Paula Reed said in a February interview with The Associated Press. “They didn’t say anything like that. They just said: ‘We hear you. Thank you very much.’”
But weeks into the war, the couple did something that got the White House’s attention.
As Biden traveled to Texas to support veterans, the Reeds stood along the motorcade route in hopes of getting meaningful face-time with the president. That didn’t happen, though he did speak by phone with the couple. Later that month, they arrived in Washington and stood with signs near the White House, hoping again to meet with the president.
This time, they were invited into the Oval Office for a sit-down with Biden and other administration officials. The White House issued a statement that night reiterating its commitment to getting Reed and Whelan home, an issue that senior officials had raised in private meetings with Russian leaders.
The meeting was a rare bit of presidential access for the family of an American detainee, especially since Biden himself has been less public than his predecessor, Donald Trump, about efforts to get Americans home. Behind the scenes, though, Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were raising the cases with the Russians, and Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, was working on the issue too.
Hovering in the background was Reed’s health. In March, Reed told his parents he’d been coughing up blood several times a day, had pain in his lung and a broken rib. Last year, he contracted COVID-19. Even on Wednesday, his parents were taken aback by how thin their son looked during video footage of the transfer. They said they expected that he’d need medical care before resuming his daily life in Texas.
Paula Reed told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that Trevor was getting testing done, and his sister, Taylor, said that his “spirits are bright.”
“He’s telling stories,” she said. “He’s flirting with the nurse staff. It’s great. It’s great to see.”
His health issues also alarmed U.S. officials.
“That, I think, contributed to really ratcheting up the conversations on this issue, getting to a point where we were able to make this arrangement, getting to a point where we were able to turn to some of the logistics of simply getting it done,” a senior administration official told reporters in a background briefing this week.
Separately, a lawyer for Yaroshenko has said his client also suffered from multiple health problems and had earlier tried unsuccessfully to have him freed early from prison on compassionate release grounds because of the pandemic.
Left out of any deal were Whelan, who is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that his family says are fabricated, and Brittney Griner, a WNBA star detained in February after Russian authorities said a search of her bag revealed a cannabis derivative.
The Whelan family said in a statement that it was happy about Reed’s release but troubled that their loved one wasn’t part of it.
“Paul has already spent 3 and a quarter years as a Russian hostage,” the statement said. “Is President Biden’s failure to bring Paul home an admission that some cases are too hard to solve? Is the Administration’s piecemeal approach picking low-hanging fruit?”
Richardson, who has helped facilitate multiple releases of American detainees and hostages in recent years, said the Biden team deserves recognition for authorizing this particular swap at a time when U.S.-Russia relations were so low.
“It doesn’t matter who gets credit,” Richardson said, “as long as hostages like Trevor Reed are home.”
____
Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.etuckerAP
AP · by ERIC TUCKER · April 29, 2022
10. A chilling Russian cyber aim in Ukraine: Digital dossiers
This will not be (and already is not) confined to Ukraine. Think of the Chinese OPM hack. He who has access to and controls greater amounts of data (and can exploit it) may be victorious.
A chilling Russian cyber aim in Ukraine: Digital dossiers
AP · by FRANK BAJAK · April 28, 2022
BOSTON (AP) — Russia’s relentless digital assaults on Ukraine may have caused less damage than many anticipated. But most of its hacking is focused on a different goal that gets less attention but has chilling potential consequences: data collection.
Ukrainian agencies breached on the eve of the Feb. 24 invasion include the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversees the police, national guard and border patrol. A month earlier, a national database of automobile insurance policies was raided during a diversionary cyberattack that defaced Ukrainian websites.
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The hacks, paired with prewar data theft, likely armed Russia with extensive details on much of Ukraine’s population, cybersecurity and military intelligence analysts say. It’s information Russia can use to identify and locate Ukrainians most likely to resist an occupation, and potentially target them for internment or worse.
“Fantastically useful information if you’re planning an occupation,” Jack Watling, a military analyst at the U.K. think tank Royal United Services Institute, said of the auto insurance data, “knowing exactly which car everyone drives and where they live and all that.”
As the digital age evolves, information dominance is increasingly wielded for social control, as China has shown in its repression of the Uyghur minority. It was no surprise to Ukrainian officials that a prewar priority for Russia would be compiling information on committed patriots.
“The idea was to kill or imprison these people at the early stages of occupation,” Victor Zhora, a senior Ukrainian cyber defense official, alleged.
Aggressive data collection accelerated just ahead of the invasion, with hackers serving Russia’s military increasingly targeting individual Ukrainians, according to Zhora’s agency, the State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection.
Serhii Demediuk, deputy secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said via email that personal data continues to be a priority for Russian hackers as they attempt more government network breaches: “Cyberwarfare is really in the hot phase nowadays.”
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Demediuk was stingy with specifics but said Russian cyberattacks in mid-January and as the invasion commenced sought primarily to “destroy the information systems of government agencies and critical infrastructure” and included data theft.
The Ukrainian government says the Jan. 14 auto insurance hack resulted in the pilfering of up to 80% of Ukrainian policies registered with the Motor Transport Bureau.
Demediuk acknowledged that the Ministry of Internal Affairs was among government agencies breached Feb. 23. He said “a small part” of the ministry’s data was stolen “but so far no case of its use has been established.” He did not provide specifics. Security researchers from ESET and other cybersecurity firms that work with Ukraine said the networks were compromised months earlier, allowing ample time for stealthy theft.
The data collection by hacking is a work long in progress.
Since October it has tried to breach and maintain access to government, military, judiciary and law enforcement agencies as well as nonprofits, with a primary goal of “exfiltrating sensitive information,” Microsoft said in a Feb. 4 blog post. That included unnamed organizations “critical to emergency response and ensuring the security of Ukrainian territory,” plus humanitarian aid distribution.
Post-invasion, hackers have targeted European organizations that aid Ukrainian refugees, according to Zhora and the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint. Authorities have not specified which organizations or what may have been stolen.
Yet another attack, on April 1, crippled Ukraine’s National Call Center, which runs a hotline for complaints and inquiries on a wide array of matters: corruption, domestic abuse, people displaced by the invasion, war veteran benefits. Used by hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, it issues COVID-19 vaccine certificates and collects callers’ personal data including emails, addresses and phone numbers.
Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, believes the attack may, like many others, have a greater psychological than intelligence-gathering impact — aiming to degrade Ukrainians’ trust in their institutions.
“Make them scared that when the Russians take over, if they don’t cooperate, the Russians are going to know who they are, where they are and come after them,” Meyers said.
The attack knocked the center offline for at least three days, center director Marianna Vilshinska said: “We couldn’t work. Neither phones nor chatbots worked. They broke down all the system.”
Hackers calling themselves the Cyber Army of Russia claimed to steal personal data on 7 million people in the attack. However, Vilshinska denied they breached the database with users’ personal information. “They didn’t get any valuable information,” she said.
She confirmed that a contact list the hackers posted online of more than 300 center employees was genuine as well as a spreadsheet with employee passwords. But she said other files the hackers posted — listing 3 million names and phone numbers and 1 million addresses — were not from the center.
Spear-phishing attacks in recent weeks have focused on military, national and local officials, aimed at stealing credentials to open government data troves. Such activity relies heavily on Ukraine’s cellular networks, which Meyers of CrowdStrike said have been far too rich in intelligence for Russia to want to shut down.
On March 31, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency said it had seized a “bot farm” in the eastern region of Dnipropretrovsk that was controlled remotely from Russia and sent text messages to 5,000 Ukrainian soldiers, police and SBU members urging them to surrender or sabotage their units. Agency spokesman Artem Dekhtiarenko said authorities were investigating how the phone numbers were obtained.
Gene Yoo, CEO of the cybersecurity firm ReSecurity, said it likely was not difficult: Subscriber databases of major Ukrainian wireless companies have been available for sale by cybercriminals on the dark web for some time — as they are for many countries.
If Russia is successful at taking control of more of eastern Ukraine, stolen personal data will be an asset. Russian occupiers have already collected passport information, a top Ukrainian presidential adviser tweeted recently, that could help organize separatist referendums.
Ukraine, for its part, appears to have done significant data collection — quietly assisted by the U.S., the U.K., and other partners — targeting Russian soldiers, spies and police, including rich geolocation data.
Demediuk, the top security official, said the country knows “exactly where and when a particular serviceman crossed the border with Ukraine, in which occupied settlement he stopped, in which building he spent the night, stole and committed crimes on our land.”
“We know their cell phone numbers, the names of their parents, wives, children, their home addresses,” who their neighbors are, where they went to school and the names of their teachers, he said.
Analysts caution that some claims about data collection from both sides of the conflict may be exaggerated.
But in recordings posted online by Ukrainian Digital Transformation Minister Mikhailo Fedorov, callers are heard phoning the far-flung wives of Russian soldiers and posing as Russian state security officials to say parcels shipped to them from Belarus were looted from Ukrainian homes.
The caller tells her she shares criminal liability, that her husband “killed people in Ukraine and stole their stuff.”
She hangs up.
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AP data journalist Larry Fenn in New York and Inna Varenytsia in Kyiv, Ukraine, contributed to this report.
AP · by FRANK BAJAK · April 28, 2022
11. Disinformation Governance Board to tackle spread of misinformation in U.S., focusing on Russia and U.S.-Mexico border
This will not be well received. Tell me how this will not be politicized.
Some very smart expert on psychological warfare and public diplomacy wrote to me and said: "Tell me you don't understand disinformation without telling me you don't understand disinformation.... why not have a name like anti-disinformation advisory board"
Disinformation Governance Board to tackle spread of misinformation in U.S., focusing on Russia and U.S.-Mexico border
The Department of Homeland Security is setting up a Disinformation Governance Board to try to counter the spread of false information. The board will focus on disinformation coming from Russia as well as misleading messages about the U.S.-Mexico border, the Associated Press reports.
The immediate focus will be on misinformation from human smugglers, who spread false claims about U.S. border policy to migrants to help drum up business.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing Thursday that the board will tackle misinformation on a range of issues, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said part of its intention is to counter misinformation in Hispanic communities especially.
Disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz will lead the board. Jankowicz, who has researched Russian misinformation tactics and online harassment, is author of the book "How To Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict." She has also advised the Ukrainian government on strategic communications, according to the Wilson Center think-tank, where she served as a global fellow.
Asked about the initiative, Psaki said "it sounds like the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities," adding, "I'm not sure who opposes that effort."
But Republicans made it clear they have objections. Senator Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio who is the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, criticized DHS's creation of the board.
"As the author of the bipartisan law that established the Global Engagement Center to combat the constantly evolving threat of foreign propaganda and disinformation abroad, I do not believe that the United States government should turn the tools that we have used to assist our allies counter foreign adversaries onto the American people," he said in a statement on Thursday.
"Our focus should be on bad actors like Russia and China, not our own citizens," he said, adding that he looks forward to pressing Secretary Mayorkas for answers when he appears before the committee next week.
CBS News has reached out to Senator Gary C. Peters, the Democratic chairman of the committee, as well as DHS for more information and is awaiting response.
Earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray spoke to "60 Minutes" about disinformation and other threats from Russian as the war in Ukraine rages on.
"The Russians engage in… very active disinformation, misinformation, and in fact information warfare as a key part of their arsenal," Wray told CBS News' Scott Pelley.
Recent disinformation from Russia includes the false claim last month that American National Guard troops were killed fighting in Ukraine. In a statement, the Guard said not only was the report "false," but that the soldiers named in the report were not even in Ukraine.
Misinformation on a number of other issues — from COVID-19 to the election — quickly spreads on social media. The heads of several large tech companies, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, have testified before Congress about their efforts to try to address it.
Blasting the problem of COVID-19 misinformation last summer, President Biden said, "Anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It's killing people. It's bad information. My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I'm saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation. The outrageous misinformation about the vaccine."
Caitlin O'Kane is a digital content producer covering trending stories for CBS News and its good news brand, The Uplift.
12. The Backlash to DHS's Anti-Disinformation Board Shows How US Law Is Falling Behind the Problem
Rule of law.
The Backlash to DHS's Anti-Disinformation Board Shows How US Law Is Falling Behind the Problem
Legal ambiguity may have crippled DHS’s new board from the start.
The swift backlash to a new federal anti-disinformation board shows how quickly misconceptions can spread—and also how the slow evolution of federal law is hampering efforts to counter them.
Some were quick to complain. “Rather than protecting our border or the American homeland, you have chosen to make policing Americans’ speech your priority. This new board is almost certainly unconstitutional and should be dissolved immediately,” wrote Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, who last year encouraged rioters at the U.S. Capitol.
Of course, there’s nothing in any of the statements from DHS or other officials to suggest that the new board will suppress constitutionally protected speech.
But the question of what the board is allowed to say is somewhat more ambiguous. U.S. law broadly allows the federal government to inform the public about public safety, the law itself, etc. But other laws prohibit the government from engaging in anything that might be called influence operations aimed at the American people.
Such activities are governed by the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, which essentially allows the State Department to engage in influence operations aimed at foreign audiences but the act (and a later “modernization” of the act) expressly prohibit State from attempting anything similar aimed at domestic populations.
But does it prohibit DHS from doing so? To some extent, the question is open because the 20-year-old department hasn’t ever tried to.
“DOD does information-supported military objectives. Each of the departments can do public affairs—which is to inform the American public, not to influence—and then the State Department gets to do public diplomacy, which is about influencing foreign audiences. Where's DHS? Conspicuously absent.” said Michael Lumpkin, a former Navy SEAL and Defense Department official who stood up the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to combat disinformation operations abroad.
One interpretation of the law holds that since it’s illegal for the State Department to conduct domestic influence campaigns, it’s also illegal for DHS. Another is that because DHS is not explicitly named in the Smith-Mundt Act, which predates it by decades, it’s free to conduct influence operations.
That ambiguity could hurt the credibility of the new DHS board, and thereby cripple it from the start. If a new Administration takes over with radically different views from those of the current one, which may perceive different limits on government speech and even a different definition of basic facts.
The regulation of government messaging is of concern across the political spectrum. In 2019, the appointment of Michael Pack to head the U.S. Agency for Global Media at the State Department provoked a similar response from Trump critics. “We need to strengthen laws to impose disclosure requirements for government messaging to prevent the use of covert domestic propaganda to mold U.S. public opinion,” the Brennan Center’s Raya Koreh wrote in The Hill. “A healthy democracy depends on the public’s ability to hold the government accountable for its messages, and government news must be unmistakably recognizable for what it is.”
But while there may be a need for new legislation to better define the guardrails of government speech, it’s hard to imagine bipartisan consensus on how to draft such law.
“My sense is that the Hill [meaning Capitol Hill] is running away from this because it is a slippery slope,” Lumpkin said. “We just haven't seen a champion who says, ‘Okay, we need to modernize you know, things [like government speech] for social media for the world,’ because it's really complicated.”
13. Pentagon: Russian assault on Donbas "behind schedule"
Pentagon: Russian assault on Donbas "behind schedule"
Axios · by Julia Shapero · April 29, 2022
Russian forces appear to be "several days behind where they wanted to be" in their latest assault on Ukraine's Donbas region, a senior U.S. defense official said on Friday.
Driving the news: Russian troops pulled back from Kyiv and refocused their efforts on the Donbas region earlier this month after failing to seize the Ukrainian capital. The Pentagon believes Russian forces intended to be further along in their efforts to completely encircle Ukrainian troops in the east, the official said.
- Moscow's forces have not been able to link its units in the north with those in the south.
- "In fact, they're nowhere close to linking north with south as the Ukrainians continue to fight back," the official said.
What they're saying: Russian forces are using artillery and some airstrikes before moving in their ground forces, but these ground movements are making "plodding, uneven progress," the official said.
- "The artillery and airstrikes that they're launching against Ukrainian positions are not having the effect that they want them to have," the official said. "The Ukrainians are still able to resist ... So that's why we think this progress has been slow and uneven still over the last 24 hours."
- "We also assess that because of this slow and uneven progress — again without perfect knowledge of every aspect of the Russian plan — we do believe in a sense that they are behind schedule in what they were trying to accomplish in the Donbas," the official said.
Axios · by Julia Shapero · April 29, 2022
14. Ukraine Has Asia Thinking About War
I am reminded of these quotes:
"if you want peace, prepare for war." - Roman general Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus
"To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
- George Washington
FIRST ANNUAL ADDRESS, TO BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS | FRIDAY, JANUARY 08, 1790
"Never assume the enemy will not attack. Make yourself invincible."
- Sun Tzu
And on a serious note, will there be an arms race in Asia (more than there already is) and will it include nuclear weapons?
Ukraine Has Asia Thinking About War
The return of major conflict is leading Asian countries to boost their militaries.
By William Choong, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and the managing editor of Fulcrum.
South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol dines with Maj. Gen. David Lesperance, commander of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, and other soldiers at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, on April 7.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine—with its destruction of cities and atrocities against civilians—has forced much of the world to relearn the primacy of hard power. As Hal Brands recently wrote in Bloomberg, Russian President Vladmir Putin has shattered a tenet of the post-Cold War mindset: that major, violent conflict had become passe.
The war in Ukraine also upended the widespread perception that the Indo-Pacific—which American scholar Aaron Friedberg once called the “cockpit of great power conflict”—was most at risk of destabilizing armed conflict. Europe, with its thick web of institutions, was seen as a generally safer place, notwithstanding Russia’s occasional land grabs and fanning of conflicts, which did not much affect the balance of power before now. Compared with Europe, the Indo-Pacific is an even more dangerous place, with no peace- or security-enhancing institutions on the scale of the European Union or NATO; the convergence of seven of the world’s top militaries (those of the United States, China, India, Japan, Russia, and the two Koreas); and several unstable hot spots, including the South China Sea, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and the Senkaku (or Diaoyu) Islands.
Even before the Russia-Ukraine war, experts had already observed that the military instruments of statecraft, which had been diminished after the end of the Cold War, were making a comeback in Asia. While there has been much attention given to geoeconomics and the evolution of regional institutions, there has been a parallel tendency—much as there was in Europe—to underestimate the importance of the role played by military power in the region’s dynamics.
That is now changing. Already, the Russia-Ukraine war is causing many Asian countries to reappraise their defense requirements. Formal U.S. treaty allies such as Japan and South Korea have duly noted Washington’s refusal to antagonize Russia, despite the egregiousness of the invasion and Russia’s flagrant violation of the security assurances given to Ukraine by the United States, Britain, and Russia in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. As viewed from Seoul and Tokyo, it looks as if U.S. fears of escalation could supersede obligations to defend a treaty ally, such as a NATO member, Japan, or South Korea. If the driving fear in Western capitals is escalation, why should they be any less reluctant to defend a treaty ally?
Even before the Russia-Ukraine war, Japan had already raised defense spending 10 years in a row, driven by fears of China’s rapid military expansion and North Korea’s nuclear program. Now, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has resurrected an old debate by suggesting Japan consider hosting U.S. nuclear weapons on Japanese soil—similar to Germany’s nuclear-sharing arrangements with the United States. His argument: Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear weapons in 1994 left it vulnerable to a more powerful, revisionist neighbor.
Seoul’s reassessment of its defense posture reflects a growing appetite in South Korea for nuclear weapons.
Abe’s suggestion was rapidly shot down by his successor, Fumio Kishida, but has found some support in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Tatsuo Fukuda, chair of the LDP’s General Council, the party’s decision-making body, said the discussion “should not be avoided.” The LDP’s policy chief, Sanae Takaichi, said discussion about the country’s so far ironclad principle of not introducing nuclear weapons into Japan should “not be suppressed.” Outside of the LDP, some conservative opposition parties want to table the nuclear option as well.
In South Korea, too, policymakers are concerned about whether they can still depend on the United States’ nuclear shield. President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol has pledged to strengthen Seoul’s alliance with Washington and is seeking to develop capabilities for preemptive strikes. Defense Minister Suh Wook has said South Korea can “accurately and swiftly” conduct such strikes against North Korean missile launch pads. Yoon is reportedly poised to ask Washington to return U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea, which were withdrawn in 1991. Other options include asking Washington for the deployment of nuclear bombers and submarines to South Korea. Yoon has also called for additional anti-ballistic missile defense systems to be stationed in South Korea (a step that has provoked Chinese ire in the past) and the resumption of full-scale biannual U.S.-South Korean military exercises, including field training, which was suspended under former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Seoul’s reassessment reflects a growing appetite in South Korea for nuclear weapons. A February poll showed that 71 percent of South Koreans surveyed want Seoul to develop its own nukes, with 56 percent supporting the redeployment of U.S. nukes in the country. For Cho Kyong-hwan, a member of the Presidential Commission on Policy Planning, the Russia-Ukraine war is a reminder that when things get “really dicey … you only have your own power to defend yourself.”
In Taiwan, Ukraine’s dogged resistance to Russia’s invasion shed new light on scenarios of a potential amphibious invasion by China. The Ukrainians’ highly effective use of asymmetrical warfare—for example, the use of small, easily portable anti-tank Javelin and anti-air Stinger missiles—has led Taiwanese analysts to stress Taipei’s use of the same tactic, focused on the sea and air. According to one analyst, 16 out of 18 Taiwanese arms purchases from the United States since the beginning of the Trump administration have focused on strengthening these asymmetric capabilities rather than securing big-ticket items, such as advanced fighter jets and warships.
Other measures are in the offing. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said more U.S. arms deals will be announced. At home, Taiwan intends to more than double its annual production of missiles. The country is also planning to extend its universal four-month military conscription to one year.
Compared with Northeast Asia, Southeast Asian countries have been less prompt to buttress their military capabilities in light of the war in Ukraine. But even there, the idea that the region should rely more on self-help than external assistance in the event of conflict seems to be getting a boost from the war.
Singapore, for one, is acutely aware of the shifting strategic environment. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong held Ukraine up as an example for his country to follow. The will to defend one’s country “keeps the Ukrainians going and that Singaporeans must have, if we are going to keep ourselves safe in this world,” he told reporters. While the comment was not directed at any specific country, Singapore’s armed forces are widely presumed to deter attacks on the island republic or interference in the sea lanes on which it depends. Thanks to the highest per capita defense spending in Asia, Singapore’s military is already the best equipped in Southeast Asia.
In early March, Singaporean Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen said the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) would set up a new Digital and Intelligence Service, combining intelligence, cyber-capabilities, and psychological defense, and that the SAF would be reconfigured as a networked force. He did not attribute the decisions to events in Ukraine but said the SAF would be reconfigured to tackle hybrid warfare campaigns of the kind deployed by Russia in Ukraine.
Although outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte calls Putin a “personal friend,” in March Duterte made a break with his anti-U.S. past and offered the United States the use of Philippine military facilities should the Russia-Ukraine war spill over to Asia. On April 21, Duterte called on his country’s military and police forces to “be ready” for all eventualities.
Vietnam has refused to condemn Russia directly, given its good relations with Moscow. But depending on how Washington plays it, it could well place itself in Hanoi’s good books. Right now, Vietnam could be in line for U.S. sanctions because of its intent to buy Russian-made fighter aircraft—based on the same U.S. sanctions law that led the Philippines and Indonesia to roll back plans to purchase Russian arms. But Washington has an inherent interest in seeing Vietnam upgrade its military kit to counter China, particularly in the South China Sea, and cheaper Russian jets are all Vietnam can afford. A sanctions waiver, possibly connected with the reinstatement of joint U.S.-Vietnamese military exercises, could therefore be in the offing.
Asian governments don’t necessarily believe that war will erupt in the region anytime soon. But China could take a leaf from Russia’s playbook by using gray-zone and hybrid warfare tactics in the South China Sea, for example. There, China is already manufacturing historical narratives about its territorial claims that echo Russia’s about Ukraine. Beijing’s broadsides against Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy also parallel Moscow’s claims that NATO forced it to attack Ukraine. In March, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng endorsed Russia’s claims that NATO expansion triggered the war and said the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is “as dangerous as the NATO strategy of eastward expansion in Europe.” If left unchecked, this would push the region “over the edge of an abyss.” Given how Russia used this kind of rhetoric to justify its attack on Ukraine, the resolve in Asian capitals to strengthen their defenses will only grow.
Europe has had a brutal reintroduction to the reality of hard power. Asia needs no such introduction, having seen plenty of conflict since World War II. But even there, the Russian invasion has infused governments with a new seriousness about preparing for future conflict.
William Choong is a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute and the managing editor of Fulcrum, the institute’s commentary website focused on greater Southeast Asia. Twitter: @willschoong
15. US National Guard’s aging battle taxis find new use in Ukraine fight
US National Guard’s aging battle taxis find new use in Ukraine fight
As of Friday, the governors of Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and West Virginia announced that, at the request of the Defense Department, they’re turning M113s from their fleets over to Ukraine. The aid stems from President Joe Biden’s announcement April 13 of an $800 million package that included 200 M113s, among more than a dozen other capabilities.
“The governors are the commanders in chief of their respective national guards, and they’re proud to do this,” National Guard Association of the United States spokesman John Goheen said Friday.
The U.S. Army considers the M113, its Vietnam War battle taxi, obsolete and stopped buying them in 2006. As the fighting in the Donbas region of Ukraine faces a rainy, muddy spring, the M113 ― which has tracks and weighs far less than an Abrams tank ― could offer the country’s forces transportation and protection from small-arms fire and the effects of artillery.
“You need mobility on the battlefield, and protected mobility is even better,” Goheen said.
After the Indiana National Guard got the request, it had its technicians at Camp Atterbury inspect, repair and road test their M113s. From there, the vehicles were staged for transport and could be seen leaving atop flatbed trucks.
“We’ve been ordered to ship these out at the president’s directive, to provide military equipment to Ukraine,” the director of the Indiana National Guard’s joint staff, Brig. Gen. Justin Mann, said in a video. “So, we got short notice, the team did a complete technical inspection and we’re able to get all these things ready ahead of time, in less than five days. So a monumental, herculean effort by our maintainers, doing great work and getting this equipment ready.”
The latest announcement on M113s came from North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Thursday.
“The reports of war crimes perpetrated by Russian forces amid their ongoing attacks on Ukraine are heartbreaking and demand serious action,” Cooper said in a news release. “North Carolina stands with the people of Ukraine and is ready to support their fight for democracy and freedom.”
A North Carolina National Guard spokesman said the M113 is an all-around great, utilitarian vehicle that deployed to Iraq with the state’s guard units and is still used.
“They’re not just parked somewhere, they’re all operational,” Lt. Col. Matt Handley said of the vehicles. “The M113′s gone through upgrades over the the years, and they’re still functional.”
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine announced his state was not only donating M113s, but also that its law enforcement agencies were sending 75 ballistic and riot helmets as well as 840 pieces of body armor, including vests and plates, through the Fund to Aid Ukraine, a nonprofit.
Separately, the Pentagon acknowledged April 29 that a Florida National Guard unit that left Ukraine in February is continuing to train Ukrainian troops in Germany and another undisclosed country on radars and tactical vehicles.
“The National Guard is able to support equipment and training efforts expeditiously,” National Guard Bureau spokesman Wayne Hall said in an email. “The first shipment of equipment flowed two days after the president authorized support on April 13.”
Joe Gould is senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry.
16. Army Futures Command learning from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
Learn, adapt, anticipate (I know I am a broken record with a BFO - blinding flash of the obvious).
Army Futures Command learning from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
DENVER – U.S. Army officials say it’s too early to take definitive lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though they are learning from the conflict.
“We’re 61 days into a major ground combat operation in Europe. It gives us a really unique opportunity to see how ground combat could be fought in the future based on what we’re seeing today,” said Director of Intelligence and Security at Army Futures Command Ed Mornston at the GEOINT Symposium in Denver on April 25. “But it’s really early – in my mind – to say that we have learned anything that we are going to 100% export into future concepts or change the trajectory of our technology investments.”
“We’re learning a lot,” he said, “but I don’t think we’ve slapped the table on anything and say this is what we have ultimately learned.”
AFC, a public-private initiative that runs modernization projects for the Army, is taking notes on what it needs, what it’s doing right and how the service has to move forward to fight on the future battlefield.
Tactical imagery
The conflict in Ukraine is a showcase for what commercial satellite imagery and sensing can bring to the table. Commercial providers supply satellite imagery to the military and the public, documenting the invasion in real time. That’s as companies including Hawkeye 360 detected GPS interference in the region leading up to the conflict.
For Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology Willie Nelson, there’s still a ways to go to turn those commercial systems into an effective military capability for the U.S.
The Army needs more persistence from commercial providers, allowing them to revisit a specified area rapidly to take images of an evolving situation, he said, adding that those sensors also need to be better integrated with Army systems, to the point that satellite data can be downlinked directly to the battlefield.
“I’m your biggest fan, we need everything we can get,” Nelson said to commercial providers at the event. “But if you can’t get that down to a tactical user in the field in a format that they can rapidly use, then you’ve got a lot of persistence but no real warfighting capability.”
The Army is making progress toward that end through agreements with the National Reconnaissance Office and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to foster rapid prototyping, as well as a memorandum of understanding with the Space Force, he said.
Need for speed
The conflict has also shown the need for faster development of software and technologies, as well as flexible systems that can adapt and continue working in an adversarial environment.
“The situation is extremely dynamic. The intelligence demands are changing and evolving as we watch this conflict,” said Mark Kitz, chief engineer within the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare, and Sensors. “We have got to build our systems that can adapt in a dynamic way as the threat elapse[s], as our data demands adapt, as different sensors enter and exit the environment.”
The Army needs an infrastructure that can do those things in an open and adaptable way, so that troops on the ground aren’t waiting three months to a year for new software or a new antenna built for that environment, he said.
Russia’s shortcomings
There are also lessons to be learned from the ways Russia’s efforts have fallen short of the expectations of its government and of outside observers.
“You can really see where they are. Are they really ten feet tall? Sometimes we tend to paint our adversaries as 10 feet tall when maybe they aren’t,” said Major General John Rafferty, director of AFC’s Long-Range Precision Fires Cross-Functional Team.
For AFC officials, Russia’s failure to deliver in the conflict validates the U.S. Army’s entire approach to modernization and training, from doctrine to facilities to combined arms training to leader development.
“It’s a complete validation – at least, in my opinion – of the Army Futures Command and largely the Army’s approach to this, Rafferty said. “The second thing for me it validates is our approach to training and combined arms training. It’s hard. It’s expensive. But you can see what the shortcom[ings] are if you don’t invest in that.”
And for Brigadier General Stephanie Ahern, director of concepts at AFC, the conflict is also a validation that the Army needs to continue developing its multi-domain operations doctrine.
“It also reminds us that countries have very unique ways of approaching warfare, and that our future warfare must remain American to its core,” she said. “But those who we are fighting against probably won’t pursue the same approach and so the ability to have information that we can share very quickly across communities, across countries, across allies is absolutely essential.”
Nathan Strout is the staff editor at C4ISRNET where he covers the intelligence community.
17. F-35 Pilot: NATO Could ‘Completely Destroy the Russian Forces’
F-35 Pilot: NATO Could ‘Completely Destroy the Russian Forces’
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A former F-35 test pilot weighed in on the fighter jet’s performance in the Ukraine conflict and how it represents a massive leap forward from Cold War-era aircraft.
- Billie Flynn contends the F-35 is so different from Soviet Cold War fighters that pilots used to the latter would be unable to transition to the F-35.
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Flynn also thinks the F-35 is the most survivable aircraft for the dangerous skies over Ukraine.
One of the most noted authorities on the F-35 has some interesting things to say about the jet, including how it would fit in with European air forces, and how suitable the fighter is for the air war over Ukraine. Billie Flynn, a former Lockheed Martin test pilot, also talked about how the jet represents a massive leap forward from older, Soviet-designed fighter jets, noting that the pilots who train them would be unable to learn how to fly the F-35. Flynn also believes the F-35 is the only jet that can survive in the lethal air environment over Ukraine.
Billie Flynn is one of the most accomplished test pilots around. Flynn originally flew CF-18 Hornets for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and later flew as a test pilot for the Eurofighter Typhoon. He later went on to fly for Lockheed Martin for 17 years, from 2003 to 2020, in support of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Flynn is a big fan of the F-35, and if there’s anyone who knows the jet inside and out, it’s him.
A Bulgarian Air Force MiG-29 at Graf Ignatievo, Bulgaria, February 2022.
Hristo RusevGetty Images
In a wide-ranging interview with The Aviationist, Flynn touched upon a number of points about the F-35. One of the most interesting is his assertion that pilots in Eastern European countries that still fly Soviet-era fighters are just going to be unable to fly a fifth-generation jet like the F-35. Three NATO countries—Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland—still fly the Soviet MiG-29 fighter jet, classified by NATO in the 1980s as the “Fulcrum.” The MiG-29, designed in the late 1970s, is the equivalent of the American F-16 Fighting Falcon.
The collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 and the absorption of most countries into NATO means that some countries fly both MiG-29s and F-16s. And, as it continues to modernize, Poland will soon be in the unique position of flying MiG-29s, F-16s, and F-35s. Does this mean a Polish pilot could fly all three?
Must-Read
Not so fast, says Flynn. He contends that pilots that have flown Soviet-era fighters for the bulk of their careers would simply be unable to effectively fly the F-35. The MiG-29 is a completely different aircraft built with different design philosophies in mind. The MiG also lacks the technological sophistication of the F-35, from the stealthy design to the distributed aperture system that allows the pilot to “see” through the side of his aircraft.
A Polish Air Force F-16. Poland operates 36 F-16Cs with 32 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters on order.
Gallo ImagesGetty Images
A pilot unused to such advances, flying on muscle memory and learned instinct, might not properly take advantage of everything the F-35 has to offer. Flynn believes that Poland’s air force, which could soon fly all three jets, would likely push F-16 pilots into the F-35, leaving MiG pilots to close out their careers on the aging jets.
A Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile. The S-400 is widely considered one of the most effective air defense systems in the world, and the F-35 was built to operate within its range envelope.
DIMITAR DILKOFFGetty Images
Flynn also believes that the F-35 would dominate in the air war over Ukraine, because it is exactly the environment the jet was built to excel in. The war has already claimed more than three dozen fighters and attack jets from both sides. Ukrainian Air Force jets, for example, not only have to deal with Su-30M Flanker and Su-35 Flanker-E twin engine, multi-role fighters, but S-400 long-range air defense systems and short-range battlefield air defense systems. Russian fighters must contend with Ukrainian fighters, Ukraine’s original air defense network, and now an increasing number of surface-to-air missile systems donated by NATO.
The F-35 is only the second fighter jet in history developed with stealth technology from the ground up, and specifically with the S-400 missile system in mind. Furthermore, Flynn believes the jet’s network of sensors, and ability to share data with other aircraft and ground assets, would make it an efficient air-defense killer, identifying S-400s and similar platforms and then killing them with ruthless efficiency. Flynn asserts that while nobody wants NATO dragged into the war, if it was, it would “completely destroy the Russian forces.”
Writer on Defense and Security issues, lives in San Francisco.
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18. U.S. Restarts National Guard Training Mission for Ukrainian Soldiers
U.S. Restarts National Guard Training Mission for Ukrainian Soldiers
An ‘emotional’ reunion of Ukrainian soldiers and their Florida National Guard trainers represented a notable return to U.S. support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion forced a pause.
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April 29, 2022, at 4:38 p.m.
Members of the U.S. and Ukrainian armed forces shake hands during a training exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, in 2018.(JAMAR MARCEL PUGH/U.S. ARMY NATIONAL GUARD/DVIDS)
The Pentagon announced Friday that elements of the Florida National Guard had resumed their training mission with the Ukrainian military for the first time since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered their withdrawal in the days before the Russian invasion in February.
Based now in Germany and at two other locations the Pentagon on Friday refused to specify, the trainers will continue the 8-year-old mission that previously took place at a base outside the western Ukrainian city of Lviv by other deployed Guard units along with soldiers from the militaries of the U.K., Canada, Latvia and other allied countries.
Though not a dramatic policy shift in itself – U.S. trainers as of this month were already working with their Ukrainian counterparts at facilities outside Ukraine to teach them on new weaponry the Biden administration is sending into the conflict zone – the move represents a symbolic evolution in the resurging U.S. support for Ukraine despite the omnipresent risk of provoking Russia into expanding its war.
Indeed, the Guardsmen and Ukrainian soldiers had an “emotional” reunion after the mission restarted, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday afternoon.
“We should not forget the importance of this long-term training relationship,” Kirby said. The training, formed in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and occupation of eastern Ukraine in 2014, “really helped transform them off of Soviet-era doctrine and Soviet-era formation.”
The Guardsmen will continue training their Ukrainian counterparts on bases elsewhere in Europe for at least the immediate future in keeping with President Joe Biden’s policy of no direct U.S. military involvement inside Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.
The Pentagon and other elements of the U.S. government have repeatedly cited the training as among the reasons the Ukrainian military has presented a defense against the Russian invaders that appears to have surprised the Kremlin and Washington alike.
And it comes as the two-month war in Ukraine appears poised for a seismic shift. Western officials privately express concern about how Russia will proceed with its new focus on eastern Ukraine, a region known as the Donbas, which has proven to be more burdensome and deadly than expected for the troops loyal to President Vladimir Putin despite supposed geographic and logistical advantages.
Kirby said Friday that Russia appears to be behind in its plans to encircle the embattled Ukrainian forces there, which have proven much more effective at killing the invaders than Moscow expected.
“They tend to have high mrale going in,” Kirby said of the Russian troops. “First contact with the enemy, that morale is shattered.”
Analysts expect the war will soon settle into one of attrition as heavy artillery and shelling from Russian territory squares off against new equipment on the Ukrainian side, specifically new long-range howitzer cannons that the U.S. and other countries are supplying and on which Ukraine’s soldiers are now training with the Guard.
The U.S. also fears the growing ruthlessness of the Russian offensive in Ukraine which increasingly uses unguided “dumb” munitions to attack targets as its supplies dwindle. Kirby, known for his staid demeanor at the podium, grew emotional during Friday’s press conference when discussing the effect – the “depravity” – of how Putin has chosen to wage war.
“I don’t think we fully appreciate the degree to which he would visit that kind of violence and cruelty, and as I said, depravity on innocent people, on non-combatants, on civilians, with such utter disregard for the lives he was taking, the lives he was flinging into refuge,” Kirby said, pausing for long moments between his statements. “There’s not even an attempt by Russia to be precise in their targeting.”
19. Could Insurgency Offer Ukraine a Decisive Edge?
I would say it will only be an insurgency if Russia successfully occupies all or part of Ukraine. Otherwise the Ukrainian civilians and territorial forces are conducting a resistance operation while the Ukrainian army conducts defensive and offensive military operations. But since 2006 and FM 3-24, we seem to call every irregular warfare activity an insurgency.
Could Insurgency Offer Ukraine a Decisive Edge?
While insurgency rarely offers a path to early victory, a campaign of popular resistance that supports the continuing conventional battle could give overmatched Ukraine an edge in its fight against Russian occupiers.
The conflict in Ukraine looks likely to provide Europe's first large-scale insurgency since the end of Ukrainian resistance to the Soviet and Polish reoccupation of the Ukrainian populated areas formerly overrun by the Germans during World War II.
Ukraine's post–World War II resistance was led by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, a far-right group that had collaborated with the Germans and survived long enough to also receive support from the CIA. It is memories of this insurgency, which the CIA credited with having killed 35,000 Soviet soldiers, police, and Communist Party officials, that Putin is trying to revive when he labels the current Ukrainian leadership as Nazis.
Insurgency has since become the world's most common form of warfare, employed by national liberation movements to free themselves from European colonial rule, by Marxist revolutionaries and Islamist militants, and by the United States and the Soviet Union in proxy conflicts around the world.
A force as large as 800,000 soldiers and police might be required to fully pacify all of Ukraine. That is five times the number Russia has deployed at present.
Experience shows that insurgent campaigns can last decades, that external assistance and an adjacent sanctuary are often critical to insurgent success, and that counterinsurgency campaigns can be very long and manpower-intensive. U.S. military doctrine, for instance, cites a ratio of 50 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 inhabitants. This suggests that a force as large as 800,000 soldiers and police might be required to fully pacify all of Ukraine. That is five times the number Russia has deployed at present.
The Ukrainian leadership has already begun to form a resistance movement to fight behind enemy lines. They already have established the legal and organizational basis for such an activity. They've created a website with advice directed to ordinary citizens looking to engage in resistance activities.
And there seems little doubt that many will do so. But the ability to sustain a robust insurgency in the face of massive Russian repression will likely be heavily influenced by the results of the conventional battle. Will the Ukrainian government retain control of significant territory? Will the conventional battle continue? If the answer to these questions is no, will a neighboring state be willing to allow its territory to be used to mount and sustain an insurgency?
Should the Ukrainian government be forced into exile, its resistance movement would find itself in a position similar to that of the French resistants between the fall of France (June 1940) and D-Day (June 1944). Over those four years, clandestine networks were built that focused on intelligence, information operations, and small-scale sabotage, keeping the flame of nationalism burning and preparing for the arrival of Allied forces. Only once the conventional battle resumed, however, were the risks and costs of mounting a full-fledged insurgency deemed commensurate with the potential benefits. And in the Ukrainian case, an allied rescue force probably won't be coming.
NATO governments are likely to be willing to host a Ukrainian government in exile should that become necessary. Allowing that government to direct and sustain a large-scale insurgent campaign from NATO territory is another matter. Even if the Russians forbore from mounting an overt attack on such a sanctuary, one would have to expect them to take deniable steps to disrupt activity, including sabotage, assassinations, and cyberattacks.
The ability to sustain a robust insurgency in the face of massive Russian repression will likely be heavily influenced by the results of the conventional battle.
Consequently, the relevant border between NATO and occupied Ukraine could see infiltration by both sides, as insurgents and counterinsurgents traveled in both directions, in all likelihood in parallel with criminal networks engaged in sanctions evasion. The danger of escalation could be ever present.
How much latitude to afford a Ukrainian insurgency would be a decision for one or more of the potential host countries—Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and/or Romania—but also for the rest of the alliance, which would be committed to defend the host state in the event of a Russian attack. This could well result in restrictions being placed that would limit the scope of resistance.
A negotiated cease-fire would probably also require some restraint on resistance activities if it is to hold for any length of time.
Insurgency is commonly viewed as an alternative to conventional combat, the choice of the weaker party, which cannot prevail in a stand-up fight. Such conflicts become endurance contests that can take decades to resolve. But insurgency as a complement to conventional battle can yield much quicker results by threatening enemy lines of communication and drawing off his forces from the main battle.
Insurgency alone offers, at best, the prospect of distant success at tremendous cost. When combined with a stalemated but still active conventional battle, however, it may provide the defender the decisive edge.
This commentary originally appeared on The Hill on April 6, 2022. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
20. Russia Has Already Lost the Ukraine War
Perhaps wishful thinking. But I hope the prediction is true that PUTIN has already lost PUTIN'S WAR.
Russia Has Already Lost the Ukraine War
Russia Has Already Lost the War, even if it Wins in Donbas – The war in Ukraine grinds on. Now in its ninth week, the war has moved to Donbas, in Eastern Ukraine. We are hearing less out of that region than we heard from the fighting around Kyiv before. This is likely because the war is more kinetic and open than the ambush-style, shoot-and-scoot engagements of the early weeks.
It seems likely there will be more large collisions of massed formations. Ukrainian casualties are likely higher than before. Insofar as much of our war video footage on social media comes from the Ukrainians, we are probably seeing less because the war has become harder for them. The terrain of Donbas advantages the Russians.
Ukraine will Shortly Have One of the Best Armies in Europe
This is the richest irony of the invasion. Russian President Vladimir Putin pretty clearly expected a blitzkrieg. He would roll in, replace Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky quickly with a pro-Russian stooge, and roll out. The whole thing would be over before the West had time to mobilize. Putin, it seems, believed his own propaganda that Ukraine was a fake country.
Instead, he collided with a wall of patriotic Ukrainian troopers and civilians. They held out long enough for a Western pipeline to emerge to support the war effort. Now, Russia faces a military well-kitted, well-trained, battle-tested, well-led, with deep popular legitimacy, and supported by wealthy foreign patrons. Russia will never be able to steamroll Ukraine again. If the Russian army does not win the next few months, it will probably lose the whole war.
NATO will Expand
Ostensibly, NATO expansion was a major driver for Putin to invade. This is not true, but it is the argument Russian propaganda makes. In another rich irony, this has failed on its own terms.
It is indeed likely that Ukraine will give up NATO membership aspirations as a part of a peace deal. But Sweden and Finland look quite likely to apply and will almost certainly be accepted. Finland’s ascension is a particular loss. It shares a long border with Russia, and throughout the Cold War it maintained neutrality. It is a measure of just how dangerous Putin has become – even more than the USSR! – that Finland will give up its long-standing neutralism.
Russia will be Badly Isolated
Any peace deal will formally restore Russia’s relationship with the world. Sanctions will be rolled back. Travel bans on Russian elites will cease. We know from the interwar period and Germany’s turn toward fascism that harshly punishing a war-loser risks incentivizing its worst, revanchist elements.
But just because the formal restrictions fade, normal diplomatic and economic intercourse with Russia will almost certainly not return until after Putin is gone. Western businesses will be reticent to return to Russia. All those companies which have withdrawn – Apple, Netflix, Honda, and so on – will not easily return. Sanctions end cannot force them to go back. Similarly, the end of the travel bans do not mean that world leaders must meet Russian elites. Particularly as the stories of Russian war crimes accumulate, Russia will be informally isolated for years to come.
NATO’s New Sense of Purpose
For decades after the Cold War, NATO was an organization in search of a mission. After 9/11, it experimented with ‘out of area’ operations, most obviously in Afghanistan. But these were never popular, and everyone was exhausted and happy to leave Afghanistan last year. French President Macron said NATO was ‘brain-dead’; former US President Donald Trump wanted many times to seem to quit the alliance.
A Challenger 2 main battle tank (MBT) is pictured during a live firing exercise in Grafenwöhr, Germany. Exercise BAVARIAN CHARGER was the first of three large contingency operation exercises being undertaken by 20th Armoured Brigade between May – October 2013. Contingency Operations training is known as Hybrid Foundation Training or HFT.
Russian aggression has ended all this talk. It is now likely that the US will station forces further out in eastern Europe. Germany has committed to a major defense build-up. Brexit Britain is cooperating with the Continent again. What many consider Pro-Putin American critics like Tucker Carlson or Glenn Greenwald have been disgraced as American public opinion has swung behind Ukraine and the war.
All of these losses and setbacks vastly outweigh anything Putin might now win by conquest in Donbas. Ukraine will survive and become militarily capable of resisting Russia bullying. NATO will grow and deepen. Russia will drift into awkward isolation and dependence on China. That is quite an outcome for what was to be a quick little blitzkrieg.
Dr. Robert E. Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly; website) is a professor of international relations in the Department of Political Science at Pusan National University. Dr. Kelly is now a 1945 Contributing Editor as well.
21. Ukraine admits 'serious losses' in eastern battles, but says Russia's are 'colossal'
The biggest gap in information in Putin's War is the Ukrainian casualty figures.
Ukraine admits 'serious losses' in eastern battles, but says Russia's are 'colossal'
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Ukraine on Friday is admitting to have suffered "serious losses" in battles in the country’s east, but added that Russia’s are "colossal".
The admission comes as the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence tweeted that "due to strong Ukrainian resistance, Russian territorial gains have been limited and achieved at significant cost to Russian forces."
"We have serious losses but the Russians' losses are much, much bigger... They have colossal losses," Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said, according to Reuters.
Ukrainian servicemen ride on an armored personnel carrier on the outskirts of Kryvyi Rih on Thursday, April 28. (ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)
"It feels good to burn. This is how Ukrainian soldiers continue to destroy Russian occupants along with armor equipment," it said.
The U.K. says the battle over the Donbas region "remains Russia’s main strategic focus, in order to achieve its stated aim of securing control over the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts."
Ukraine’s military, on its Facebook page, said Russian forces are firing artillery, mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers at its positions in the Donetsk and Tavriya regions to prevent the regrouping of troops.
"Russian occupiers continue to blockade Ukrainian units in Mariupol, near the Azovstal [steel] plant," it added.
Ukrainian servicemen install a machine gun on a tank after fighting against Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, April 27. (AP/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukraine’s military also said Friday that Russian forces "continue to take measures to restrict the movement and detention of local residents and block humanitarian goods from the territory of Ukraine.
"In addition, Russian occupiers are robbing peasants," the military wrote on its Facebook page. "For example, more than 60 tons of wheat were stolen from an agricultural society in the town of Kamianka-Dniprovska together with a truck."
22. Bedlam at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport after family packs unexploded shell
They must not have received the safety brief from their supervisor before traveling. Do not bring back ordnance.
Bedlam at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport after family packs unexploded shell
Yesterday at 8:14 a.m. EDT|Updated yesterday at 12:30 p.m. EDT
JERUSALEM — A family of American tourists sparked pandemonium at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday when they tried to pass through security with an unexploded shell they had found while touring the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Video of the scene showed travelers sprinting for safety and ducking behind luggage and counters as parents called frantically for their children. Israel’s state of permanent readiness for attack was on display as dozens of people instantly assumed prone positions on the floor of the departure hall.
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) April 28, 2022
There was no explosion, but a 32-year-old man was hospitalized for injuries he received when he tried to run along a luggage conveyor belt, according to the Israel Airports Authority.
The incident reportedly started when security screeners found a suspicious object in the family’s luggage and identified it as unexploded ordnance. Officials immediately triggered evacuation procedures, creating panic throughout the terminal.
The family told agents that one of their children had found the object while they were sightseeing in the Golan Heights, a mountainous area 95 miles northeast of Jerusalem — and 50 miles from Damascus — that Israel captured from Syria in 1967. The family said they were taking it home as a souvenir — unaware of its hazardous nature, according to local media.
Security officials canceled evacuation orders after questioning the family. They were allowed to board their flight.
אמנם כבר לא התחום שלי, אבל אי אפשר להתעלם מהמראות ההזויים הערב בנתב"ג: משפחה אמריקאית שטיילה ברמת הגולן אספה נפל של פגז והגיעה איתו לטיסה במזוודה. לפני הכניסה לבידוק הם הציגו את הנפל לבודקים הביטחוניים שמיד הכריזו על פינוי קהל מאזור הנפל. חבלן חזלש את האירוע בהמשך
— איתי בלומנטל Itay Blumental (@ItayBlumental) April 28, 2022
The device, presumably a remnant of fighting with Syria in 1967 or 1973, is one of many incidents of unexploded ordnance discovered in a region where locals know to use caution whenever straying from known paths.
Mine clearing operations are ongoing at many places along the war-torn Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese borders. And in January, the Israeli military detonated hundreds of munitions from a Syrian arms bunker abandoned after the 1967 war and recently discovered in the Golan.
The clearing of explosives is part of Israel’s efforts to promote population growth and tourism in the area of rich valleys and open fields. The government last year announced plans to double the number of Israelis living in the Golan with a $300 million investment in housing and infrastructure.
Israel annexed the Golan in 1981 despite Syria’s continuing claims on the region. No country had honored Israel’s sovereignty over the area until President Donald Trump officially recognized the Golan Heights as part of Israel in 2019.
correction
An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to an abandoned Syrian arms bunker in the Golan Heights. The bunker is at least 55 years old, not 45 years old. The article has been corrected.
23. The Navy's First Medical Ship In 35 Years Will Be Unlike Any Before It
The Navy's First Medical Ship In 35 Years Will Be Unlike Any Before It
While not a one-to-one replacement for either of the Navy’s huge medical ships, the new vessels will go places they can’t.
BY
APR 29, 2022 11:56 AM
By February of 2028, the Navy hopes to have a catamaran-hulled medical ship that its manufacturer says will have a top speed of at least 30 knots and a range of 5,500 nautical miles at 24 knots.
In its Fiscal Year 2023 justification book released last week, the Navy said an Expeditionary Medical Ship (EMS) variant of the Spearhead class Expeditionary Fast Transport will serve that role.
The Navy is looking for faster, smaller vessels than the USNS Comfort to provide medical services in far-flung areas. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
It's not a one-to-one replacement for those ships - which the Navy tells The War Zone it will continue to sustain. But the sea service wants to be able to provide emergency medical care in locations that the Comfort and Mercy cannot reach because of their size and speed.
The two existing hospital ships are each nearly 900 feet long, with a displacement of nearly 70,000 tons and are capable of a top speed of 17 knots.
The Navy’s justification book has scant details on the specifications of the ship, currently referred to simply by its planned hull number EPF 17. However, from the description it does offer, as well as those of a medical variant of the EPF series provided by the shipbuilder, Austal, it seems likely that the resulting vessel will be about a third to almost half of the length of the Navy's existing hospital ships and nearly twice as fast.
The last of a series of ships the Navy expects to procure from the Austal shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, the service said the Flight II ships in the class will be 338 feet long with a displacement of 2,400 metric tons.
Austal officials declined to comment on EPF 17 since it is not yet under contract. The company's website highlights an Expeditionary Fast Transport-Medical Variant design that calls for a vessel to be 417 feet long and displace 3,100 metric tons, with a draft of just 13 feet.
Austal said its catamaran, which can reach 30 knots according to its website, “boasts several major advantages over the current hospital ships.”
That ship will be “faster to allow for quicker response time and its shallow draft hullform allows for direct access to shallow, austere ports,” Austal claims. “The flexible interior design is ideal for reconfiguring spaces for operating and recovery efforts and the flight deck is large enough to accommodate the V-22.”
Austal states its proposed medical variant will have room for 28 crew and 50 medical personnel: three operating rooms: six intensive care unit beds, 12 recovery beds, 20 intermediate care beds, 30 light care beds, and seating for 170. It will have one or two V-22 landing spots as well as platforms for transferring patients from watercraft, with the ability to launch and recover boast of up to 12.5 meters long.
EPF 17 will provide expanded Role 2 Enhanced Medical Transport capabilities, Jamie Koehler, a spokeswoman for the Naval Sea Systems Command, told The War Zone Thursday afternoon. "These expanded capabilities are currently being assessed."
Having Role 2 Enhanced Medical Transport capabilities means a ship will be able to provide diagnostic, specialist and hospital care “essential to stabilize and prepare patients for strategic evacuation,” according to NATO’s Allied Joint Doctrine for Medical Support. It also includes, but is not limited to, surgery, x-ray, laboratory, blood bank, pharmacy, and sterilization services.
The Navy expects to award a contract for the vessel in September. Construction is expected to begin in December 2026, with the ship anticipated to enter service 14 months later. The expected cost for engineering and construction is about $330 million, Koehler said.
The Navy said it needs this new class of ship to ensure that future joint forces “will be responsive, deployable, agile, versatile, lethal, survivable, and sustainable.”
Austal's shipyard in Mobile where the Spearhead and Independence classes are built.
It is part of a plan to provide naval lift assets that can “provide for assured access, decrease predictability and dwell time, and have the capacity to quickly deliver troops and equipment together in a manner that provides for unit integrity.”
Compared to the Comfort and Mercy, EPF 17 offers smaller afloat medical capabilities to support future expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations that the Marines and Navy are now developing.
Several years ago, the Navy established a formal team to see if smaller ships might be able to provide some of those medical services.
At the time, a number of proposals existed, including a conversion or purpose-built medical derivative of the San Antonio-class amphibious ship, a modular hospital package for the service’s new giant Expeditionary Sea Bases, or, what the Navy ultimately went with - a variant of Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport.
You can read more about that here.
The Spearhead class USNS Burlington Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF 10) successfully completed acceptance trials in August, 2018. (Austal photo).
The EPF series of ships, originally known as Joint High Speed Vessels, “will provide combatant commanders high-speed intra-theater sealift with inherent cargo handling capability and the agility to achieve positional advantage over operational distances,” the Navy said.
EPF 17 will not be the only vessel in this class able to provide medical services.
EPFs 14, 15 and 16 will have modifications enabling them to conduct a Role 2 Enhanced Medical Transport mission. Those ships will contain two operating rooms, 10 ICU beds and 23 acute ward beds, Koehler told The War Zone. But they are not meant as replacements for the Comfort and Mercy, Koehler said.
"The Navy continues to expand its afloat medical capability through construction of EPF Flight II and sustainment of the two Role 3 T-AH hospital ships," she said. "EPF Flight II is not a replacement of the hospital ships as the two platforms provide different levels of medical care and capacity."
Besides, providing medical services is not the primary function of those ships.
The modifications will allow those ships to provide “enhanced medical capabilities” to support embarked Medical Military Detachment teams while “retaining the ability to perform high-speed intra-theater sealift,” according to the Navy.
With the Marine Corps moving to a more distributed doctrine, the Navy needs medical ships capable of reaching far-flung places. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Brian Bolin Jr).
The new EPF Flight II modified ships EPF 14, EPF 15 and EPF 16 will cost about $260 million each for engineering and construction costs, Koehler said.
The keel for the future USNS Cody, the first of those and designated as EPF 14 in the Navy’s justification book, was laid at Austal on Jan. 26.
“The new capabilities of this variant of EPFs fulfills a critical need for the Navy and Marine Corps,” Tim Roberts, Strategic and Theater Sealift program manager, Program Executive Ships, said in a Navy media release at the time. “Ensuring that the fleet has fast access to the right medical care increases both the safety and readiness of our Sailors and Marines.”
EPF 14 will have a cruise speed of more than 35 knots.
The EPFs are operated by the Military Sealift Command and the USNS Cody is the first ship in naval service named after Cody, Wyoming.
Starting with USNS Cody, the Flight II configuration “will enhance current EPF capabilities by including a combined forward resuscitative care capability with a limited Intensive Care Unit and medical ward, while maintaining most of the original requirements of the ship,” the Navy said in its January media release. “Flight II EPFs will be able to stabilize postsurgical cases for evacuation without the requirement to first route them through a higher facility.”
EPF ships “provide high speed, shallow draft transportation capabilities to support the intra-theater maneuver of personnel, supplies and equipment for the Navy and Marine Corps,” the Navy said. “The design of the EPF allows flexibility to support the fleet in maintaining a variety of roles, including humanitarian assistance, maritime security, disaster relief and more.
Austal USA is also building the future USNS Point Loma, designated EPF 15 in the justification book.
USNS Cody is expected to go into service in August, 2024, according to the justification book. USNS Point Loma is expected to go into service in August, 2025.
The USNS Mercy Navy hospital ship is seen at dawn in the Port of Los Angeles after it arrived to assist with the coronavirus pandemic on March 28, 2020 in San Pedro, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images).
The Comfort and Mercy, huge white ships with large red crosses, have served well over the years. And with room for 1,000 patient beds, they offer a capability no other navy in the world enjoys.
But with the U.S. increasing its focus on countering China in the vast Pacific, and with the Marine Corps moving toward more a more distributed doctrine, the Navy needs more flexibility and agility than what these large ships can deliver.
Mercy and Comfort will be around for a while, according to the Navy's latest 30-year shipbuilding plan, which does not have the ships being retired until the mid to late 2030s. They will be replaced by similar vessels at around the same time.
But while in many cases bigger may be better, size doesn’t matter if the Navy can’t deliver the services across a more complex future battlefield. Which is why it opted to procure the EPF line of ships theoretically more capable of providing medical treatment anywhere and anytime it’s needed.
Contact the author: howard@thedrive.com
24. Remember the Real: Cyberspace, Misinformation, and Human Action
Remember the Real: Cyberspace, Misinformation, and Human Action
by Daniel Riggs
The Orange Man Cometh
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a jarring experience for many in the U.S. and across the world. Notable pollsters forecasted a dominant Hilary Clinton victory.[1] When she did not, experts searched for reasons she failed and coalesced around one: Russian disinformation on social media platforms. The later narrative was that the election was "hacked by Russia" due to cybersecurity lapses.[2][3] While it is true that Russia is an adversary, and they are undoubtedly involved in influence operations in the United States, it is not this cleanly Manichean. This theory did not understand cyberspace and human action and exaggerated the impact of influence products in the Cyber Domain.
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Cybersecurity is critical, and the military needs to orient towards cyberspace over the next few years. However, the current narrative overstates the role of misinformation and disinformation about national security, human action, and cybersecurity. Target audiences' prevailing and ongoing external and internal conditions affect attitudes and behavior far more significantly than enemy propaganda. The following will first define the Cyber Domain to understand its impact on influence, explain its connection to other domains, how external and internal conditions outside of the Cyber Domain influence human action, and proposals for future efforts.
Overview of the Cyber Domain and Its Role in Influence
Joint US Military Doctrine understands cyberspace as a global domain within the information environment, essential to joint operations. Interdependent networks of information technology infrastructure and resident data (e.g., internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and embedded processors and controllers) constitute this domain.[4] Three interdependent layers further break down and categorize cyberspace factors: (1) physical network, (2) logical network, and (3) cyber persona.[5]
The physical network layer consists of the information technology devices and infrastructure in the physical domains that provide information storage, transport, and processing within cyberspace.[6] This layer concerns all tangible elements, subject to measurement, including fuel to power the connections, submarine cables, and internet service providers' port servers.
Image 1. Example of Servers.
The logical network layer consists of the elements abstracted from the physical network based on the logic programming (code) that drives network components.[7] The binary code of ones and zeroes translates actions and intentions into representations on a screen, defining this logical network. Below is an example of code to operate in the Python Programming language:
Image 2: Example of Python Code.
The cyber-persona layer is the layer internet users see daily. The logical network layer abstracts data and rules from the logical network layer and develops descriptions of digital representations of an actor or entity identity in cyberspace.[8] After establishing the physical infrastructure and the programming language moving through that infrastructure, it translates into the products that constitute the cyber persona layer.
The three are interdependent, have unique operational attributes,[9] and require systemic understanding. Cyberspace operations often "traverse all three layers of cyberspace… [and] target effects at [multiple] layers."[10] One cannot disconnect one layer from the others without understanding its effects on them. As the doctrine states, "cyberspace ops require links and nodes in [the] physical domains to perform logical functions that create effects in cyberspace that then permeate throughout the physical domains."[11]
This interdependence and extension through domains include Land and Space.
The below image from Field Manual (FM) 3-12 Cyberspace Operations and Electromagnetic Warfare shows how "congested" (as the doctrine dubs it) multidomain operations are:
Image 3. Showcasing the multidomain fight in FM 3-12.
The visualization shows that nothing is in isolation. Actions are systemic and wide-reaching. While malign activities in cyberspace actions can affect actors in the Land Domain, it is the actions in the physical Land Domain that dictate the strength and reach of misinformation/disinformation. Improving cybersecurity to halt malign efforts in cyberspace is useless unless planners also bolster other domains.
Reconsidering the 2016 Presidential Election
The impetus to improve cybersecurity at all levels appears to have stemmed from the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and the perception that Russia swayed the voting population via social media.[12] They "hacked the election" by using targeted advertisements on social media and subsequently convinced voters toward Donald Trump instead of Hilary Clinton.
Quickly reconsider the efforts of the Russians. They spent $300,000 on a small amount of content, primarily unnoticed and slightly obtuse.[13] In addition, any effect of the Russian efforts is difficult to measure,[14] which means analysis is subjective and conjecture. Subsequently, when any hypothesis argues in the positive (i.e., that Russia's efforts influenced the election) illustrates an analyst mistaking performance measures for effectiveness measures. Timothy Summers, noted ethical hacker and academic, makes this error:[15]
"First, a billionaire Russian businessman and Putin associate allegedly
assembled a network of troll factories: private Russian companies engaging in a
massive disinformation campaign. Their employees posed as Americans, created
racially and politically divisive social media groups and pages, and developed fake
news articles and commentary to build political animosity within the American public.
Second, the Russian military intelligence agency, known by its Russian acronym
as the GRU allegedly used coordinated hacking to target more than 500 people and
institutions in the United States. The Russian hackers downloaded potentially
damaging information and released it to the public via WikiLeaks and under various
aliases, including "DCLeaks" and "Guccifer 2.0."
None of these are actual effects. However, they reinforce a cosmopolitan fear easily overturned by data and logic. Summers details planning and intention, but not necessarily effectiveness. Many of the memes and posts were just incidental atmospherics. Russian bots responsible, for instance, constituted 0.63% of election-related tweets.[16] An actual look at any of the Facebook posts or Twitter posts shows a series of products that lack cultural nuance and read as if they were spoken in a Russian voice. They targeted a vulnerability, but the delivery was a simulacrum of an effective product.
The more significant issue when looking at influence in the Cyber Domain is understanding that it is merely one realm existing in others. The target of this propaganda doesn't just live online. They still do breathe the air of the external world. Analysts must understand susceptible audiences beyond one input. The narrow aperture of viewing products as the sole behavioral influence ignores the internal and external conditions that explain a target audience's mindset and ultimate behavior. These internal conditions include values, attitudes, and beliefs.[17] External conditions consist of situations and events. Defense doctrine categorizes these as operational variables and further categorizes them into the following: Political, Military, Economy, Social, Information, Infrastructure, Physical, and Time (PMESII-PT).[18] These conditions must be considered as co-equal, if not more significant, factors in one's decisions, not just a few memes.
In the case of Trump voters, external and internal conditions motivated these disaffected voters,[19] just like any susceptible target audience. These included changing to an information economy from an industrial one, cultural changes (e.g., Critical Race Theory), wealth transfers through quantitative easing,[20] and seeing their close ones maimed and killed during the War on Terror. They felt they did not receive the promise of a better America, and they felt betrayed. Social media undoubtedly did affect voters, but it was a little bit of a straw on a camel's already loaded back. In hindsight, if the goal was to prevent the election of Donald Trump these external factors would have been accounted for and addressed.
To battle disinformation does not just require logical arguments and targeted social media products. It requires planners and decision-makers to reconsider the systemic tensions and consequences of the behavior. Instead, some elites responded with "learn how to code,"[21] which is the 21st-century version of "let them eat cake."
Osama Bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh: Terrorists with Agency
Internal and external conditions are everything when understanding and interpreting human behavior.[22] Army Psychological Operations (PSYOP) doctrine understands that PSYOP efforts need to "affect behavior change by creating conditions where military operation [lead to]…[a] sustainable peace."[23] Influence products on their own are meaningless. Long-standing vulnerabilities are the basis for influencing products that give the final nudge to their audience.[24] Reducing these vulnerabilities by altering external and internal conditions is key to improving cybersecurity and inoculating against propaganda.
First, consider Timothy McVeigh. Following the tragic 1996 Oklahoma City bombing, America searched for answers. One dominant narrative was McVeigh's reading of The Turner Diaries prompted his actions.[25] The book has a section where a character does bomb a government building, which suggests causality. The logic is the relationship between a hypnotist and an audience member who loses agency.
But hypnosis only works when the participant allows it to work. A text like The Turner Diaries complemented his mindset, but it did not alter it. The book was an advertisement in the playbill of his performance. It was not the director of his actions on stage.
According to McVeigh, the government was the director of his actions. In his words, federal government overreach, the perceived FBI militarization, and attacks on rural America (e.g., Waco) motivated him to action.[26][27] Misguided as he was, he perceived his actions as a reaction to terrorist attacks by the U.S. government. He was not a hypnotized zombie after reading one racist book.
Five years later, this explanation was recycled. After authorities identified Osama Bin Laden as the chief culprit for 9/11, the next step was understanding why he planned this attack. Like McVeigh, radical influence turned him from the path. In this case, it was Saudi Arabian madrassas.[28] Their zealous commitment to Islam forged a hatred of the West and its freedom in their students. It appears only logical that one would eventually be inspired to act on this. However, Osama bin Laden's reading and adherence to the Koran do not explain the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In his own words, the issue had to do with the deployment of US armaments in the Middle East, not Western decadence:
“First, for over seven years, the United States has been occupying the lands
of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches,
dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning
its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring
Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact that the
occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best
proof of this is the Americans' continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using
the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories
being used to that end, but they are helpless.
Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-
Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1
million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific
massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed
after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to
annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors.
Third, if the Americans' aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the
aim is also to serve the Jews' petty state and divert attention from its occupation of
Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to
destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment
all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper
statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel's survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.”[29]
One can correctly argue that the Koran influenced bin Laden's values, attitudes, and beliefs. However, activities by the United States in the Muslim world moved bin Laden to act. One knows this because he explained the factors in his 1996 Fatwa readily available online and cited above. He did not hate U.S. and Western freedom but its presence on the Arabian Peninsula.
The Necessity of Psychological Actions (PSYACTS) and Integration Moving Forward
The examples above might make some uncomfortable, but attacking misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda requires a nuanced and sober view that genuinely considers the motives of radicals and how we might counter their message. If the sky is blue, one cannot keep saying it is red and then scolding large target audiences that they are wrong if they think otherwise. Skepticism will emerge, and distrust will follow. The grade on this already uphill climb further increases.
Pre-existing internal and external conditions in the physical world play a far more significant role in amplifying misinformation/disinformation in cyberspace. To defeat malign efforts in cyberspace requires privileging PSYACTs to affect target audiences. PSYACTs influence the target audience's thoughts and perceptions by modifying conditions, exploiting identified vulnerabilities, and building rapport.[30] For instance, even though someone may want a given target audience to vote, planners need to ensure they reduce cognitive and physical behaviors. Do they have the means to get to the voting poll, know how to vote, and do they have the influential figures in their lives with the power, control, and authority that encourage them to do so?
Single messages will not change a behavior or counter disinformation. The breadth of the target audiences daily experience must be understood. Even if the behavior is beneficial for them the effort is on the influencers to work with other bodies to ensure this happens. This requires an expansive and integrated effort.
In the case of the US Military, robust integration between U.S. Army Cyber Command and the "three tribes" of 1st Special Forces Command (i.e., Civil Affairs, Special Forces, and Psychological Operations) is required. To secure the Cyber Domain, these units must together to battle misinformation and disinformation by developing and executing the PSYACTs needed to change conditions and subsequently behavior. On their own, these Army entities cannot create meaningful behavior change; they must work in synchronicity. Psychological Operations can identify the vulnerabilities and create the products, Special Forces and Civil Affairs can transform the physical conditions, and Cyber Command can provide product dissemination and protection. This unity of efforts is requisite for success in bolstering cyber-security.
Finally, there must be efforts to better understand the Cyber Domain across all of government. In the case of the military, there should be a "Star Course" for cyberspace. In the United States Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC), students must complete a land navigation crucible known as the "Star Course." If students do not understand land navigation principles and cannot physically move through the environment (i.e., the Land Domain), they will fail. The "Star Course" confirms graduates that can navigate the Land Domain. The Cyber Realm needs something similar that can test one's ability to understand the "terrain features" and common pitfalls of this domain to be navigated and understood effectively. Current efforts appear to mimic an old saying: he knows just enough to be dangerous.
Just like Your Parents Told You, Actions Speak Louder than Words
Today's cybersecurity is critical, but current narratives mistake the causes and roles of disinformation and information. The presentism resulting from the unexpected 2016 presidential election ignores the importance of the target audience's systemic internal and external conditions. Politicians, policymakers, and flag officers have the right instincts for improving cybersecurity, but they need to ensure that their orientation is correct. Further case studies are required throughout security and military publication to overturn the narratives that mere exposure to messages over a fleeting time is substantive for behavior change.
[1] Nate Silver, “Election Forecast,” FiveThirtyEight, November 8, 2016, https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/Silver.
[2] Abigail Abrams, "Here's What We Know So Far About Russia's 2016 Meddling," Time Magazine, April 18, 2019, https://time.com/5565991/russia-influence-2016-election/
[3] Catie Edmonson and David.E. Sanger, "Russia Targeted Election Systems in All 50 States, Report Finds," New York Times, July 15, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/us/politics/russian-hacking-elections.html.
[4] Army Techniques Publication 3-05.1, Cyberspace Operations and Electromagnetic Warfare. (2021). Department of the Army. https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/Details.aspx?PUB_ID=105348.
[12] Reuters Staff, "Factbox: U.S. Intel. report on Russian cyber-attacks in 2016 Election,” Reuters, January 16, 2017,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia-cyber-intel-factbox/factbox-u-s-intel-report-on-russian-cyber-attacks-in-2016-election-idUSKBN14Q2HHReuters.
[15] Timothy Summers, "How the Russian government used disinformation and cyber warfare in 2016 election." Salon. August 5, 2018.
https://www.salon.com/2018/08/05/how-the-russian-gov-used-disinformation-and-cyber-warfare-in-2016-election-ethical-hacker-explains_partner/
[17] Field Manual 3-53, Military Information Support Operations. (2013) Department of the Army, https://armypubs.army.mil/ProductMaps/PubForm/Details.aspx?PUB_ID=105348.
[19] Domenico Montanaro, "7 Reasons Donald Trump Won the Presidential Election," National Public Radio, November 12, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/11/12/501848636/7-reasons-donald-trump-won-the-presidential-election.
[22] Department of the Army, 2013.
[25] The Anti-Defamation League, "The Turner Diaries," https://www.adl.org/education/resources/backgrounders/turner-diaries.
[26] Timothy McVeigh, "The McVeigh Letters: Why I bombed Oklahoma," The Guardian, May 6, 2001, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/may/06/mcveigh.usa.
[27] Stanley, Alexander. "Timothy J. McVeigh in His Own Remorseless Words." The New York Times,
April 18, 2010.
[28] John Solomon, "The Relentless Pursuit of Osama bin Laden changed over 10 years." The Center for Public Integrity. September 13, 2011. The relentless pursuit of Osama bin Laden changed over 10 years – Center for Public Integrity
[29] Osama bin Laden, Declaration of War Against the Americans, 1996, https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/Bin-Laden-1996-declaration-of-war-against-the-americans.pdf.
[30] Department of the Army, 2013.
About the Author(s)
Daniel Riggs is a senior Non-Commissioned Officer in the US Army. He researches military design, psychological operations, strategy, narratives, and Italian Elite Theory independently and with the Archipelago of Design. This review essay reflects his views and not necessarily those of the U.S. government or the Department of Defense.
25. Redesigning Army Special Operations Forces Talent Management for the 21st Century
Redesigning Army Special Operations Forces Talent Management for the 21st Century
By Maj. Gen. Patrick B. Roberson, Maj. Stuart Gallagher, Maj. Kyle Martin, and Maj. Wes Dyson
If you have been in the Army for any length of time, you have heard one of the many adages touting the importance of people in the organization. Two that immediately come to mind are “Mission first, people always!” and “People first!” Similarly, in the special operations community there are a series of guiding principles entitled the Special Operations Forces (SOF) Truths - the first of which states “Humans are more important than hardware.” In Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF), we could take this a step further, “humans are most important.” As with any organization, it is one thing to acknowledge the importance of people, but the true measure of importance is evidenced through action. Both Army special operations and the Army writ large are on a quest to better focus on people and improve how talent management is conducted throughout the force.
Picture taken from DVIDS
Title: USAJFKSWCS Student Awarded Green Berets
Photo by: K. Kassens
United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School
The Army, by its very nature, is a people-centric organization. According to the fiscal year 2022 President’s Budget Highlights, the Army budget totals $173 billion. This number includes funding to recruit, train, employ and retain soldiers in support/defense of United States’ interest(s). As a testament to the importance of its people, the Army Chief of Staff, General James McConville, stated, “Winning matters, and People are my number one priority. People are our Soldiers – Regular Army, National Guard and Reserve – their Families, Civilians, and Soldiers for Life – Retirees and Veterans. We win through our people, and people will drive success in our Readiness, Modernization and Reform priorities. We must take care of our people…” This emphasis has yielded an official “People Strategy,” placing people as the number one priority. In support of this initiative, the Army stood up the Army Talent Management Task Force, which addresses a comprehensive reform of personnel management within the organization. Additionally, it has also instituted a series of programs such as the Army Interactive Module 2.0 (a tool that assists with officer talent management), flexible career options and leader assessment programs such as BCAP (Battalion Command Assessment Program) and CCAP (Colonels Command Assessment Program), used to determine an officer’s fitness for command and strategic leadership.
These are all solid initiatives that have already begun to benefit both the people and the Army overall. In this same vein, considering the large amount of time and money invested into ARSOF soldiers (Special Forces, Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs), the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School or SWCS has also begun to develop a talent management program approaching the Army people strategy from a slightly different angle. The official mission of SWCS is to “recruit, assess, select, train and educate the U.S. Army Civil Affairs, Psychological Operation and Special Forces by providing superior training and education, relevant doctrine effective career management and integrated force-development capability.” SWCS talent management began with the question, What if we could collect data on a soldier starting at assessment and selection, continuing as he/she moves through his/her respective training pipeline resulting in a report card that would not only assist the soldier in self-development, but also promote better placement and mentorship upon arrival to his/her gaining unit?
Interestingly enough, this concept is already being executed in other special operations organizations such as the Marine Special Operations Command (MARSOC). In fact, MARSOC shared their talent management concept with SWCS at a meeting approximately a year and a half ago encouraging further development. SWCS adopted the concept and set up a joint venture with special operations students studying at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California. Working in concert with SWCS over the course of the past year, Maj. Kyle Martin and Maj. Wes Dyson provided the academic rigor required for the initiative, developing what is now referred to as the ARSOF Talent Management Profile.
Using a custom designed data collection program that extends to every course in every training pipeline, performance data is collected on a soldier from the day he/she is recruited by the Special Operations Recruiting Battalion. As the soldier moves through the program, key data are collected from each of the courses attended, then aggregated into a final report. This report includes a series of categories assessed as critical to future success in ARSOF. The first category is behavioral, which includes mental ability, social intelligence, personality and attributes. Attributes are broken out further to include: initiative, teamwork, interpersonal skills, effective intelligence, physical, determination and dependability. The second section is interpersonal which includes a word cloud drawn from peer evaluations. It also includes a psychometric linguistic analysis of all peer review comments. The third section includes the peer rankings themselves, which show how the soldier ranked in relation to his/her peers throughout the program. The fourth section is physical performance, which measures the soldier’s physical fitness testing throughout training. The fifth section is cognitive, which is a compilation of all academic and tactical testing compared to the population average. The sixth and final section is a personal input section that allows the soldier to write a paragraph about himself/herself highlighting anything he/she wants the cadre/leadership to know – This can include, but is not limited to, personal experience, skills and education acquired outside of the Army.
The first pilot is scheduled to be conducted with Special Forces students spring/summer of 2022. Talent Management Profiles (TMP) will be developed throughout training and generated upon graduation. As the soldier prepares for permanent change of station, the TMP will be provided to each graduating soldier for his/her review. Feedback from the report will be gathered by SWCS from the students and changes made as required. Moving forward, the intent is to provide a version of the TMP to gaining command teams in the operational force. Again, feedback will be gathered to refine the TMP in order to meet operational needs. After the pilot is fully implemented in the Special Forces pipeline, it will be collectively reviewed by SWCS and operational leadership, and refined accordingly. Once updated, the TMP will be rolled out to both the Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs pipelines as well.
As helpful as this new talent management tool will be when fully implemented, it is only a first step. For the future, SWCS is also in the early stages of building a more longitudinal program that will capture a soldier’s performance from cradle to grave – from entrance to exit from ARSOF. This is a much more ambitious project that will require significant coordination with the operational force. However, when complete, the product will provide a more comprehensive tool for soldiers and leaders alike, while also better informing how the enterprise recruits, assesses, selects and trains it personnel. With this focus on talent management, SWCS will be better postured to make data-informed decisions regarding the future structure and composition of ARSOF training, ultimately providing the best product possible to the operational force and our nation’s defense.
As the largest producer of special operations personnel in the world, there is no resource more important to ARSOF than its people. As such, it is imperative that SWCS continue to develop and invest in the most modern-day systems, technologies and products that optimize the recruiting, assessment, selection and training of America’s best and brightest – elite soldiers that will ultimately be responsible for fighting and winning the nation’s future wars. The Talent Management Profile is just one more way that this charge will be met.
About the Author(s)
Major Wes Dyson is a Marine Special Operations (MARSOC) Officer with experience in operations and training with conventional and SOF forces. He recently completed his Master’s of Science degree in Applied Design for Innovation at the Naval Postgraduate School where he researched ways to use performance and psychological data in SOF Talent Management.
Major Kyle Martin is an Army Special Forces Officer assigned to 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). He recently completed his Master’s of Science degree in Applied Design for Innovation at the Naval Postgraduate School where he researched ways to use performance and psychological data in SOF Talent Management.
Maj. Stuart Gallagher currently serves as the Chief, G3/5 Plans and Analysis for the United States Army John F. Kennedy Special Operations Center and School His former assignments include: Senior PSYOP Observer Coach Trainer at the Joint Multinational Training Center, Hohenfels, Germany, Commander, Bravo Company, 6th PSYOP Battalion, Ft. Bragg, NC and Military Advisor to the US Department of State, Washington D.C. Major Gallagher is a graduate Marist College holding a degree in Russian Area Studies and National Defense University holding a Masters of Arts in Strategic Security Studies.
Maj. Gen. Patrick B. Roberson is the Commander and Commandant of the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. His former assignments include: Commander, Special Operations Joint Task Force-Operation Iraqi Resolve, Deputy Chief of Staff, United States Army Reserve Command, and Deputy Commanding General – Operations, 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne), where he also served as the Deputy Commanding General for the Special Operations Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve. Maj. Gen. Roberson is a graduate of Minnesota State University and Advanced Military Studies War College Fellowship.
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.
