"We advocate democracy, human rights and freedom, and even those countries that are not sharing those specific values…of course we're not trying to exclude them…”

-President Yoon Suk-yeol

"We are not yet trying to win the 'cold war'... A war of ideas will not be decided by a war of arms, and as long as there is a worldwide war of ideas there will be a continuing worldwide threat of war of arms." 

– The Administrator of the International Information Administration, (originally 1953 but can also be 2022)

"A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its original dimensions." 

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

• Russian forces may have made marginal gains to the north, west, and south of Popasna in order to continue their offensive on Severodonetsk from the south.
• Russian sources may be overstating the number of Ukrainian defenders who have been evacuated from Azovstal to either maximize the number of Russian prisoners of war who may be exchanged for Ukrainian soldiers or to avoid the embarrassment of admitting they have been locked into a months-long siege against only “hundreds” of Ukrainian soldiers.
• Russian troops reportedly regained certain positions taken by the Ukrainian counteroffensive north of Kharkiv City.
• Russian forces are likely preparing for a major Ukrainian counteroffensive and protracted conflict on the Southern Axis.

• Main effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts);
• Subordinate main effort- Encirclement of Ukrainian troops in the cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
• Supporting effort 1—Mariupol;
• Supporting effort 2—Kharkiv City;
• Supporting effort 3—Southern axis.

• Russian forces will likely complete their withdrawal from the vicinity of Kharkiv City but attempt to hold a line west of Vovchansk to defend their GLOCs from Belgorod to Izyum. It is unclear if they will succeed.
• The Russians will continue efforts to encircle Severodonetsk and Lysychansk at least from the south, possibly by focusing on cutting off the last highway connecting Severodonetsk-Lysychansk with the rest of Ukraine.
• Russian forces are likely preparing for Ukrainian counteroffensives and settling in for protracted operations in Southern Ukraine.

• Mikhail Khodaryonok, a former air defence commander, made a startling U-turn
• He boasted of Russia's superior weaponry, military and economic capabilities 
• But directly contradicted comments he made less than a week ago on state TV
• He had previously given a damning assessment of the invasion of Ukraine
• The former commander said Russia was totally 'geopolitically isolated' and warned the invasion had turned 'the whole world against us'
• Meanwhile, experts have said that elites in Russia's security services could likely mount a coup on the Kremlin 

• By Dominique Soguel Special correspondent
• @dsoguel

• APT28 has an extensive history of involvement in information operations, ranging from hack-and-leak operations to disruptive activity. Prominent operations involving APT28 have included compromises of the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) and U.S. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in 2016, documents from which were subsequently leaked by the false hacktivist persona Guccifer 2.0, and the 2014 compromise, defacement, data leak, and data destruction of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission’s network and website.

• In the weeks leading up to the invasion and subsequent weeks thereafter, we observed multiple campaigns conducted by Belarusian espionage group UNC1151 targeting European countries, including a recent spear-phishing campaign targeting Lithuania. Observed targeting associated with UNC1151 threat activity is notable, given the group’s technical support to information operations attributed to Ghostwriter.

• An information operation in March disseminated an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated “deepfake” video of Zelenskyy stating that Ukraine had surrendered to Russia, and defaced the Ukraine 24 website and news ticker in a Ukraine 24 TV broadcast with an identical message or screenshot from the deepfake video (Figure 4). Since the start of the war, other Ukrainian websites have also been defaced with messages alleging Ukraine’s surrender.
• A Secondary Infektion operation in March falsely claimed that Zelenskyy had committed suicide in the military bunker in Kyiv where he had been leading the fight against the invasion, alleging that he had been contemplating suicide due to Ukraine’s military failures.
• Another Secondary Infektion operation from April alleged that the Azov “gang” sought vengeance against Zelenskyy for abandoning their fighters to die in Mariupol, and claimed that Azov commanders had attempted to escape the city by pretending to be civilians. (The narrative here specifically refers to Ukraine's Azov Regiment, a special operations detachment within the Ukrainian National Guard, which is itself part of a broader ultranationalist movement—segments of which have been known to espouse white nationalist rhetoric; Azov has frequently appeared in pro-Russia narratives seeking to cast the Ukrainian government, and Ukrainians more broadly, as Nazis.)
• Telegram channels attributed by Ukraine to the GRU highlighted alleged corruption and incompetence on the part of the Ukrainian government, such as claims that Ukraine was unprepared for the conflict, and that Ukrainian oligarchs had “paid Zelenskyy for the right to leave the country.”

• A recent Ghostwriter operation, which we are making our attribution of public for the first time, leveraged compromised assets to publish fabricated content promoting the narrative that a Polish criminal ring was harvesting organs from Ukrainian refugees to illegally traffic in the European Union, and that Poland’s Internal Security Agency was investigating the criminal enterprise, which was said to involve “high-ranking Polish officials.”
• Opinion articles published by suspected inauthentic personas associated with NDP promoted narratives seemingly intended to damage Polish-Ukrainian relations by creating fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) surrounding Poland’s acceptance of Ukrainian refugees. These narratives included falsehoods that sought to portray the refugees as overly burdening Poland’s economy and healthcare system and to stoke fears among Polish citizens that “neo-Nazis”, or other undesirable immigrants, would begin exploiting mass border crossings to carry out attacks on Polish soil.
• The Jan. 14 and Feb. 23 defacements of Ukrainian government websites referenced war crimes committed by the "Ukrainian Insurgent Army" (UPA) against ethnic Poles during World War II, a theme previously observed in Russian and Belarusian information operations. For example, a November 2021 Ghostwriter operation featured a fabricated account from a retired Polish general, stating that the alleged presence of Ukrainian volunteers with far-right political leanings in Poland was “an insult” to the victims of the same war crimes.
• Recent Ukrainian- and Russian-language Secondary Infektion operations claimed that the Ukrainian and Polish governments sought to enable Polish troops to deploy in western Ukraine, a move they portrayed as anathema to the Ukrainian people. One operation in early April claimed that Poland attempted to use an alleged “provocation,” staged by Ukraine, showing Russian troops committing atrocities in Bucha to justify stationing troops in the country, while an operation in early February involved the dissemination of a map showing specific locations where Polish troops would be located, with the suggestion that those troops would occupy large swaths of Ukraine for years (Figure 5).
• Observed narratives from Telegram channels Ukraine attributed to the GRU included suggestions that the West would soon forget about and abandon Ukraine, due in part to the diversion of its attention to impending conflicts elsewhere, such as a potential war launched by the U.S. against Iran.

• Cyber Front Z, in its coordinated promotion of pro-Russia commentary, called on social media users to claim that Ukrainian “Nazis” forced civilians into a theater in Mariupol, which they then detonated.
• We identified a coordinated and inauthentic network of social media accounts that promoted Russian-language messaging, including assertions that Ukrainian forces had used chemical weapons.
• These accounts also denied the effects of the West’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, such as sanctions on Russia, and claimed that such measures had negative consequences for the West.

• On March 6, Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov claimed that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine had uncovered evidence of Pentagon-linked laboratories in Ukraine conducting bioweapons research. DRAGONBRIDGE accounts subsequently amplified this claim, including allegations that U.S.-funded biolabs existed not only in Ukraine, but also around the world.
• DRAGONBRIDGE accounts also insinuated that the alleged biolabs in Ukraine were responsible for “mysterious outbreaks,” the nature of which went unexplained, and that biolabs elsewhere in the world were likewise harming local populations (Figure 6).

• Messaging directed at Arabic-language audiences asserted that the U.S. fled from Afghanistan in 2021, and had now abandoned Ukraine, which deserved its fate due to its alliance with the “American axis of evil.” Similarly, English-language content averred that NATO had sacrificed Ukraine to avoid engaging in a war with Russia.
• Pro-Iran information operations assets also declared that Ukraine should not have surrendered its nuclear weapons, implying that such a concession had left it vulnerable to the subsequent invasion.
• Pro-Iran information operations have also leveraged the conflict to accuse the West of hypocrisy in its dealings with Saudi Arabia compared to Russia, by juxtaposing the war in Ukraine against the war in Yemen. Tangentially, assets leveled accusations of racism on the part of the West against Arabs and Muslims, noting alleged differences in its response to the conflict in Ukraine in comparison to conflicts in the Middle East.

Like Duterte, Bongbong will be limited in what moves he can make to meaningfully distance the Philippines from the United States. His country’s competition with China over territorial claims will make it difficult to refuse the powerful deterrent that U.S. military cooperation provides. He has said Filipinos “will not cede any one square inch to any country, particularly China, but will continue to engage and work on our national interest.” If China keeps up its aggression in the South China Sea, Bongbong may come to the same decision that bound his father and the United States together through the Cold War: the brutal politics of self-preservation trump all.

Arms Controllers

Nuclear Traditionalists

Future-of War (Fow) Strategists

Nuclear Primacists

Atmospheric Nuclear Test

Ally Near-Proliferation

Limited War Gone Wrong

Russia’s leadership entered the conflict almost entirely unprepared for the capabilities and uses of the 21st century intelligence that would be deployed against them

With a leadership deeply invested in an outdated special services paradigm, there was little incentive or opportunity for Russian intelligence to keep up with the wider world