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"Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen."
- John F. Kennedy
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom."
- Bob Dylan
"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
- Socrates
1. The Untold Story of the Battle for Kyiv
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 30 (PUTIN'S WAR)
3. Biden rules out sending weapons to Ukraine that can strike inside Russia
4. In major blow, EU bans imports of most Russian oil
5. Shanghai moves toward ending 2-month COVID-19 lockdown
6. Paper Trail of Terror - REVIEW: 'The Bin Laden Papers'
7. Putin’s Hard Choices - Why the Russian Despot Can Neither Mobilize Nor Retreat
8. Guided U.S. Rockets Could Double Ukraine’s Strike Range
9. In Joseph Conrad, a Lens on Russia’s Barbarism
10. Xi Jinping is Poised to Become “Leader for Life” in Exchange for Sharing Politburo Seats with Rivals
11. Why China Is Miles Ahead in a Pacific Race for Influence
12. Would We Do Better? Hubris and Validation in Ukraine
13. Repacking Pandora’s Box: Managing the Dangers of Weapons Proliferation in Postconflict Ukraine
14. Top Gun reinstates Taiwanese flag on Maverick's jacket after outcry
15. Ukraine troops hold out as Russia assaults Sievierodonetsk wasteland
16. Is America heading for civil war? (Reviews of Three Books)
17. Regime Change: Favorite Pastime Of United States – OpEd
18. ‘Real courage’: Remembering the OSS commandos who helped defeat the Nazis in Southern France
19. Italy's Youngest SOF: 17 Stormo Incursori | SOF News
20. Why Starlink Scares China: Researchers Pitch Plan To 'Destroy' SpaceX Satellites
21. He’s 31 and has one of the most important jobs in the war. Meet Ukraine’s top ‘digital general’
22. Putin Has a Problem: Russia Has Suffered 'Devastating Losses' of Junior Officers
23. Russia's army could COLLAPSE amid huge losses, UK report says
24. Math books outrage China with 'ugly, sexually suggestive, pro-American' images
25. Heroes of the resistance who are sabotaging Putin's war machine by blowing up trains, stealing weapons and assassinating Russian officers
26. Ex-U.S. Commandos Are Training Civilians to Crush Putin Army
27. The battle of Kyiv will be taught in military history for years
28. US congressional delegation makes surprise visit to Taiwan
1. The Untold Story of the Battle for Kyiv
The Untold Story of the Battle for Kyiv
By Dan Rice, MBA, MS, MSeD
The world expected the Russian Army to defeat the Ukrainian Army within days. Russian President Vladimir Putin, United States Senate expert testimony[1], and most of the west, all expected Kyiv to fall within a few days under the weight of the enormous and powerful Russian army. The Russians thought it was going to be quick, but the Russians forgot that the enemy has a vote. The Ukrainian army didn’t collapse. After nearly 100 days, the Ukrainian military continues to surprise the world. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zalensky inspired the world and displayed his resolve, and his nation’s resolve, to fight the much larger Russian Army.
Instead of collapsing in the face of a Russian invasion along multiple avenues of approach – the drive to Kyiv being a primary one – the Ukrainian Army traded space for time by fighting a withdrawing action against a far larger invading Russian army and fell all the way back to within the city limits of the national capital where it eventually repelled the Russian onslaught[2]. Had Putin’s army taken Kyiv, President Zelensky’s government could have collapsed, and the Ukraine may have lost the war. On the contrary, however, the Ukrainian soldiers and civilians successfully defended its capital in a battle that may likely be taught as a case study for military leaders for generations once it is fully understood.
Being able to tell this story from my vantage point was a story unto itself. At the time there were no US military or embassy in country, and I was traveling as a civilian. After a seven-hour public bus ride from Krakow, Poland into Lviv, Ukraine, I linked up with my contacts for the first time, the Ukraine Chief of Strategic Communications Ms. Liudmyla Dolhonovaka and Colonel Oleksii Noskov from Ukraine Psychological Operations[3]. Together, with my new friends, we drove by car another seven-hour car drive to Kyiv, a total distance from Krakow of 900 kilometers (550 miles) and was finally in the warzone. The drive in was beautiful, driving past enormous farms of beautiful yellow wheat fields from which the yellow and blue sky of the Ukraine flag are derived.
The yellow fields of wheat in Ukraine against the blue sky
On the route in, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Kyiv, we began to see battle damage. Burnt out bombed buildings, destroyed gas stations, 100% disabled Russian tanks facing eastward, and a destroyed Ukrainian highway bridge that had been dropped by the Ukrainians themselves to prevent the Russians from crossing a critical river crossing were just a few of the obstacles I encountered. Ultimately, the Russians never passed that point.
Two bridges in the west and northeast of Kyiv that were intentionally dropped by Ukrainian forces as Russians approached Kyiv and a fuel station near Moschun that was destroyed by Russian forces.
In order to better tell this story, I interviewed many of the commanders who were at decisive points in the Ukrainian War to date for my primary research, especially the battle for Kyiv, and I walked that battlefield with them in May 2022. I was originally in Ukraine to write about leadership, upon the invitation of Commander in Chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhnny. But after a two-hour discussion with him about the Battle for Kyiv - a battle that was eight years in the making - I felt the real story was in a first-hand perspective of the Battle of Kyiv[4]. A story that would provide valuable lessons for military leaders in the future. Few westerners had been in Ukraine during the battle and the Commander had not granted any interviews.
At the end of our meeting, the Commander ran into his office, grabbed an original portrait off the wall of a soldier on Snake Island “communicating with his middle finger” with the Russian flagship Moskva (which later was sunk by two Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles). General Zaluzhnny signed the back of the portrait for me and gifted it to me.
General Zaluzhnny gifting Dan Rice an original portrait of a Ukrainian soldier giving the Moskva the “finger”. Fire was later added to the original after Ukraine sunk the Russian flagship.
At its core, the defense of Kyiv was a turning point in this war that may well go down in the annals of military history as one of the greatest defenses against an overwhelming enemy invoking the likes of David versus Goliath; King Leonidas’s 300 Spartans facing the Persian hordes of Xerxes; or a small British outpost defending against the Zulu’s at Rorke’s Drift. The battle is still fresh in the mind of the leaders and soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and certainly the Commander-in-Chief thought documenting it was important enough for commanders to be pulled away from the front lines to meet with me.
The Ukrainians have been in continual combat since 24 Feb 2022. They were on heightened alert 48 hours prior to the war since they anticipated the invasion and with Russian knowledge of disposition of much of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. On 21 Feb 2022, General Zaluzhnny sent a message to the Russians on all Ukrainian websites and social media, in fluent Russian. “You will attack us in 10:1 and 15:1 ratios. We will not meet you with flowers. We will meet you with guns. Welcome to HELL!” Not exactly what the Russians were likely expecting. The message was sent out to all Ukrainian forces and helped rally them.
On all avenues of the planned attack the Ukrainians had spray painted overpasses and signs with “Welcome to hell![5]” A very effective psychological operations (PSYOPS) tactic against the Russian that would wear down the morale of the Russian forces as the Russians took horrible losses and were told to continue to attack. On 22 Feb 2022, under cover of darkness, the Ukrainians started to reposition their forces so that by the time the Russians invaded two days later, much of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were in different positions than the Russians expected, ready to ambush the Russians on the expected avenues of advance.
The Russians invaded using Ukraine’s major highways expecting a blitzkrieg-like attack that would leverage speed and overwhelming firepower to capture the capital city of Kyiv. They attacked on four major axes of advance from the west, north, east and south. The main effort, as expected, came from the north with Kyiv as the objective.
The Ukrainian Army had been preparing for this invasion since the 2014 invasion of Ukraine, when the Russians annexed Crimea and Donbas. The Russians had already taken 10% of Ukraine in 2014-2015. The Ukrainians knew the Russians would come back for the remaining 90%. So, for past eight years, the Ukrainians, as well as NATO and the US, prepared an operational-level defense in-depth to counter this anticipated invasion. They changed the leader development of the entire army, creating a leader-driven, learning organization that pushed down empowerment and decision-making to the soldiers who were closest to the decision. This cultural change needs an entire article on its own.
Briefly, General Zaluznny sought to change the culture from the old Soviet-style top-down hierarchical leadership to a much more western approach. This required pushing down decisions to the point where decisions needed to be made, creating leaders who took the initiative based on the ‘leaders’ intent” and create a learning environment by performing ‘Lessons Learned’ exercises (in the US we call these After Action Reviews) after all activities, large and small, across the entire army. When the Russians attacked, all dispersed units needed to be able to take the initiative on their own, knowing the Russians would be hitting them with Electronic Warfare (EW) and jamming all communications. US 10th Special Forces Group, US Army National Guard and NATO Special Operations helped train 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers to help with this culture change, helped create Special Operations Forces (SOF) and put 500 Ukrainians through US Army trained Special Forces Q-Course, created psychological operations (PSYOPS), information operations (I/O), Strategic Communications (STRATCOM), engaged the Ukrainian population with more stories of Heroes of Ukraine (similar to our Medal of Honor). The Army of 2022 was much more professional and prepared than the Army of 2014[6].
The Russian Air Force was expected to own the sky, and the Ukrainians couldn’t afford to allow that to happen. They needed to own the sky and were trained and armed with many different types of precision guided, highly lethal anti-aircraft systems (US made Stinger missiles being the most sophisticated.) They also leap-frogged into using drone technology as their eyes and ears. They prepared fighting positions along every major invasion route all the way back to Kyiv, they relied on many different types of anti-tank weapons (Javelin for long range up to 2,500 meters, NLAW for medium range up to 800 meters, and RPG up to 300 meters) to take out the front of each Russian column and stall its advance, and then used precise and high-intensity artillery strikes to destroy those columns as they fell back to Kyiv.
The Javelin anti-tank missiles were critical elements in this strategy and were arguably as valuable to Zaluzhnny as the longbow was to King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The success of the Javelin missiles experienced in the defense of Kyiv could fundamentally change the nature of armored warfare. These relatively low cost (versus the cost of a tank), highly lethal and precision guided weapons, had a 93% hit rate in the Ukrainian area of operations[7]. And the results were usually devastating. Most were the entire loss of crew with the entire 10-ton turret flying high in the sky. It’s far too early to declare the obituary to tank warfare after a century of tank warfare, but precision guided, highly accurate, lethal missiles and munitions, available in large numbers to whoever can afford them, will change warfare forever.
The Russians’ armored columns were not dispersed and spread out across a massive plain, as in the World War II during the largest tank battle in history at the Battle of Kursk (500 east of Kyiv). In hindsight the Russian desire for need for offensive speed and mass, vs dispersed security and maneuver, was a poor strategy. Instead, these massive, armored columns were attacking in formation on multiple lane highways in convoys that were up to 40 miles long. Javelins fired from up to a mile away with precision accuracy, completely destroying the first tanks or BMPs could stall the whole column. Then pre-sighted artillery claimed the majority of Russian casualties. For several days the 40-mile armored column north of Kyiv was stalled after sustaining massive casualties.
General Zaluzhnny wanted me to travel to the decisive point on the battlefield- two cities north of Kyiv named Moschun and Irpin. I was the first person to interview the Commander in Chief after the Battle of Kyiv and he wanted me to go to the decisive point of the battle and interview his unit commanders. We usually wait until ‘after the war’ to do ‘staff rides’ but this was too good an opportunity to learn how David had beaten Goliath in Ukraine. So, we went to the battlefield.
In March 2022, the Russian attacks from the west, east and south has been stopped. But the Russian army of the north, the main effort, bore down on one decisive point near Moschun and Irpin, two cities north of Kyiv with 30,000 Russians against around 3,000 Ukrainians, a Ukrainian brigade and battalion, respectively. I met with both commanders individually for two hours each and walked the battlefield that is still littered with destroyed Russian equipment and live munitions.
Russian clothing, boots, equipment and loot littered the battlefield in Moschun and Irpin.
The bodies of dead Russian soldiers no longer littered the battlefield, but they were left behind in their withdrawal – which provides another insight into the shallow ethical underpinnings and values of the Russian army. LINK TO VIDEO OF DAMAGE IN MOSCHUN
Russian electronic warfare (EW) was vicious and effective at the beginning of the Battle for Kyiv. The Ukrainian forces were often “blinded” by it, it took down their eyes and ears, and often fell back to old fashioned runners when their communications went down. The two commanders with whom I spoke shook their heads when remembering it[8]. They noted that Russian artillery, EW, and drones were superior in every way, to include in significant numerical superiority. Despite these disadvantages, however, it was superior leadership, morale, innovation and the will to fight for their country that favored the Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces leadership at the field grade officer-level – particularly Lieutenant Colonels and Colonels who command battalions and brigades – are the leaders developed under the Commander-in-Chief, General Valeriy Zaluzhnny. Their attitudes and performance are clear reflections of General Zaluzhnny’s values and style, and he has honed those attributes in his subordinates over the past eight years. Put bluntly, he is an amazing western-style leader, and his subordinates love him. They have all been at war for eight years and are battle hardened. They are by far the most battle-hardened Army in all of Europe. This was a clear advantage that the Ukrainians had over the Russian army, the Russian army consisted primarily of untested leaders and conscripts. As soon as Russia invaded, the Ukrainians executed their plan to channel the enemy into this massive kill zone north of Kyiv. The Russians attempted at least three unsuccessful river crossings and experienced a high level of attrition each time, in some cases losing entire battalions. One could even make the case for Divine Intervention as the River of Irpin was 15 feet higher than normal, which backed up the estuary. The Ukrainian Commander, Colonel Vdovychenko Oleksandr[9], took advantage of this situation by demolishing the dam holding back this water, which flooded the area and hampered the Russian airborne mechanized advance even more by swamping their vehicles and making off-road maneuver impossible. Despite this situation, the Russians continued to try and advance en masse. Moreover, the Ukrainians nullified the 20:1 Russian artillery advantage with extremely effective, precise, and lethal artillery fire on those crossings.
Russian mass artillery was often hit effectively with Ukrainian counter-battery fire. Unfortunately, a Ukrainian blogger in his Moschun home with a battery outside his window took a live feed of Ukrainian outbound counter fire during the Battle for Kyiv. The Russians, who were monitoring the live feed, reverse triangulated and determined the location of the Ukrainian battery and sent in a hypersonic missile that took out a large part of the battery with many killed in action (KIA). The Ukrainian Commander was clearly emotionally devastated remembering those losses. The soldiers just disappeared. The families are asking him for their bodies, and it clearly bothers him. They just disappeared. I asked “how many soldiers did you lose” and his answer was “every one is one too many”. A very different attitude towards the value of human life than the Russians who coldly leave their dead all over the battlefield. That blogger already is in jail for 15 years, since Ukrainian security did what the Russians did and tracked him. They have also let the population know his crime so no one else does it. The power of social media in wartime can have many direct and second and third order effects.
While the Russian army outnumbered the Ukrainian forces with two Russian divisions - 76th Guards Air Assault Division and the 98th Guards Airborne Division – and the 155th Separate Marine Brigade against a single Ukrainian brigade – the 72nd Brigade (Mechanized) – the Battle for Kyiv came down to a few key engagements. One key event was in the forest north of Moschun where a local farmer reported a heavy concentration of tanks. The Ukrainian Armed Forces sent up drones but could not identify any enemy due to the thick forest cover. They fired artillery into the forest and a massive secondary explosion confirmed their fears. A large unit from the Russian Army was there. The Russians, having been exposed, attacked immediately with tanks and armored personnel carriers, with EW that was so effective it disabled a lot of the Ukrainian drones and communications.
A Ukrainian Commander, Major Dmytro Zaretsky, was ordered first to liberate the city of Bucha (where Russian atrocities against civilians was well documented) and then to liberate the city of Irpin[10]. He had never been in the city and was not issued any maps. He was innovative, so he used Google Maps to develop a hasty plan as the Russians advanced. Furthermore, he was issued weapons systems his soldiers had never trained on such as Stinger, NLAW anti-tank, and Javelin anti-tank missiles. His soldiers used YouTube in the middle of the battle and learned to use those systems. The first Stinger launched took down a Russian helicopter. They took down six more. Javelins started taking out armored troop carriers (BTMs) and T-72 tanks about one kilometer outside of Moschun.
A second key event occurred In Irpin where the first two NLAWS destroyed the lead and trail BTM vehicles in a Russian airborne battalion column. NLAWs were in much more supply than Javelins and were very effective in urban settings with shorter ranges. After destroying the first and last armored vehicles, the Ukrainians were able to destroy 100% of the Russian airborne battalion. Many of the photos seen in the US of destroyed Russian vehicles were from that ambush. I traveled that street with the Ukrainian Colonel Noskov after the battle.
Major Zaretsky chose perfectly. Once his team destroyed the first and last vehicles, there was nowhere for the Russians in the vehicles in the middle to go. There was a clear field of fire on both sides of the Russian convoy with well-placed Ukrainian machine guns. With military communications still disabled, the Commander used WhatsApp to call in artillery strikes on the convoy. During the same battle, the Ukrainians also found a local youth in Irpin who was a computer hacker. He hacked into Russian computers to see the Russian drone footage, so the Ukrainian Commander could see everything the Russian enemy was seeing and anticipate their next moves. Major Zaretsky credits Elon Musk’s satellites as being the reason he could use the internet to use Google Maps, YouTube, WhatsApp and allow the hacker to access the Russian computers.
Major Zeretsky, the commander who liberated Bucha and Irpin, with destroyed Russian T-72 and a destroyed Ukrainian town hall in front a heart shaped sign that this peaceful village had as a town sign prior to the war.
A third key event centered on four soldiers who were clearing a twenty-story building in an Irpin apartment complex. Every window is now shot out. The soldiers looked down from the building and saw an entire Russian airborne company with all its vehicles parked at the base of the building. The soldiers decided to simply drop smoke grenades on the convoy. The Russians were so confused that they ran away, leaving all their vehicles, equipment, and many weapons which the Ukrainian soldiers captured and were later put to use by the Ukrainians.
At the pivotal point in the Battle for Kyiv, on 21 March 2022, the 72nd Brigade for Ukraine was taking huge losses. The Brigade Commander Colonel Vdovychenko Oleksandr, called the Commander-in-Chief, General Zaluzhnyy, and requested permission to withdraw. Zaluzhnny told him that if he withdrew, and the Russians pushed through the chokepoint, and flooded into Kyiv, they would lose Kyiv and likely the war.
General Zaluzhnny ordered Colonel Olesksandr to fight to the last soldier. Oleksandr’s unit did not withdraw and held fast. They fired many more Stingers, NLAWs and Javelins. And eventually the Russians withdrew. The world almost lost Kyiv and thus Ukraine. As that Brigade Commander in Moschun personally told me that story, he said "nature and people saved Ukraine that day.” When asked how the Stingers and Javelins performed, he raised his thumb, with a destroyed Russian armored personnel carrier behind him that was taken out by a Javelin from 1 kilometer, held up his thumb and said in English “super”.
Colonel Olesksandr, the hero who led the 72nd Brigade to hold the line at Moschun and Dan Rice in Moschun. Colonel Olesksandr giving a “thumbs up” when asked about Stingers and Javelins with two Russian destroyed vehicles behind him. The unit patch which in Ukrainian read “Ukraine or Death”.
When I asked what the words above a white skull on a black background of his unit patch said, the translator responded, “Ukraine or Death.” I could only imagine that would be an extremely difficult motto to fulfill, but it was completely appropriate for the unit that was told to hold the line and fight to the last man that day, did so, and as a result saved Kyiv.
The war in Ukraine is one of the most advanced and history with two very sophisticated, well-armed, and developed armies fighting the war of the future. And the future of Ukraine hangs in the balance. It is ushering in the wars of the future and all military leaders need to recognize the profound change in warfare that is occurring. Highly lethal and precision guided weapons, relatively low cost can take out high cost of capital and high concentrations of troops in tanks, armored personnel carriers, and even Naval flagships. Electronic warfare and social media can affect the outcome of a battle.
On May 21, 2022, General Mark Milley, the U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave the 2022 commencement address at West Point and said spoke about the future of warfare[11]. “Right now, a fundamental change is happening in the great character of war,” and that the US is battling “two global powers, China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities and both who fully intend to change the current rules-based order.” He went on about Ukraine “Yet again in Ukraine we are learning a lesson that aggression left unanswered only emboldens the aggressor. Let us never forget the massacre that we have just witnessed in Bucha nor the slaughter that occurred in Mariupol and the best way to honor their sacrifice is to support their fight for freedom and to stand against tyranny,” "You'll be fighting with robotic tanks and ships and airplanes," Milley said. "We've witnessed a revolution in lethality and precision munitions. What was once the exclusive province of the United States military is now available to most nation states with the money will to acquire them." “We can no longer cling to concepts and organizations and weapons of the past. We may not have divisions and corps of the past. We may not have tanks and Bradley’s, carriers, or manned fighters and bombers.”
General Milley’s predictions might already have proven prescient. The entire time in the warzone, I didn’t see a single manned aircraft from either Ukrainian or Russian side. The only manmade things flying through the sky were unmanned: artillery shells, missiles and drones. In fact, the last day in Lviv, the Russians sent in 10 sea-based missiles. All were shot down with three of them shot down by Stingers.
The Battle of Kyiv was one of the greatest upsets in military history. The technological, strategic, tactical and innovative changes that occurred on that battlefield are a bellwether for wars of the future and the need to develop innovative and agile leaders of character at all levels to be able to fight and win future battles.
The key to the battle, in my opinion, came down to superior leadership, a better battle plan, fewer but better weapons, innovation at all levels of the Ukrainian Army to learn on the fly, and better training.
The Battle of Kyiv has been won. The Battle for Ukraine can be won- as long as the West continues to provide Ukraine with the weapons, ammo and training that Ukraine needs to defeat the West’s main threat: Russia. The west formed NATO in 1949 out of fear of Russia. NATO is now 30 members and soon to be 32 members if Sweden and Finland are admitted. Russia is still the primary enemy of NATO. Ukraine is fighting Russia alone and needs the support of the 30 NATO members to weaken their combined enemy.
The Ukrainian offensive battle in the east and south to dislodge Russian troops is a very different than the defensive battle of Kyiv. A Ukrainian offensive needs different weapons, strategy and tactics than a Ukrainian defensive. And an offensive, even with the right weapons, will also be very costly for the Ukrainians. The terrain in east and the south of Ukraine is open plains. There is no place for an offensive to hide. In order to dislodge the Russians, the Ukrainians need a massive amount of long-range artillery, 155 mm M777 and M109 Howitzers and Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) M270, as well as replacements for all anti-tank (US Javelins) and anti-aircraft weapons (US Stingers) that effectively defended Ukraine.
I started my career off as a Field Artillery officer, and specifically was MLRS M270 trained, prior to transferring branches into the Infantry, and have served in combat as an Infantry officer. Putin has multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). We cannot expect the Ukrainian infantry to attack into Russian defenses being outgunned in artillery. And our 155 mm Howitzers cannot battle being outgunned by Russian multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS). Putin is the aggressor, and he brought MLRS with him, has massively outgunned artillery vs the Ukrainians, and it has been strategically important on the battlefield. Of course, Putin will protest the west providing MLRS and claim it is aggression and escalation. Military professionals know this is not true. If we would provide Ukraine with MLRS it would only be arming our ally with the exact weapons with which Putin and the Russian army currently has a massive advantage. The US doesn’t need to supply the rockets that can reach deep into Russia. On the contrary, standard MLRS rockets, which have much shorter range, would be used only within the borders of Ukraine and agreed upon by Ukraine to never escalate into Russian borders. Ukraine’s military motto is “The First Army of Peace”. This is an army that will not attack its neighbors, it is defensive in nature to protect the peace within its borders.
The US and NATO have done an amazing job helping to prepare and defend the brave Ukrainian military. In order to go on the offensive and evict Russia from Ukraine, we need to provide them with different weapons systems, in large numbers. It’s the moral imperative to help free the sovereign nation of Ukraine.
By Dan Rice, MBA, MS, MSeD
Special Advisor to the Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief
President, Thayer Leadership at West Point
Photos and article copyright © Dan Rice2022
Photos:
Dinner in Ms. Liudmyla Dolhonovaka, Dan Rice and Colonel Oleksii Noskov in Lviv, Ukraine on the exfil out of Ukraine at an underground history restaurant.
The Ukrainians used the US Iraq War concept of putting all enemy war criminals on a deck of cards. The Ace of Spades is President Vladimir Putin.
Ukrainian tank barriers and sand-bagged positions located throughout Kyiv, yet the city is showing signs of life with flowers blooming in the spring after the Battle of Kyiv.
[2] Interview with General Valeriy Zaluzhnny and Dan Rice, Kyiv, Ukraine 13 May 2022.
[3] Interview with Luidmyla, Colonel Oleksii Noskov and Dan Rice, March 2022-May 2022 via Zoom and in person.
[4] Interview with General Valeriy Zaluzhnny and Dan Rice, Kyiv, Ukraine, 13 May 2022.
[5] Liudmyla Dolhonovaska and Dan Rice interview 11 May 2022, Lviv, Ukraine.
[6] Several interviews with Luidmyla Dolhonovska Colonel Oleksii Noskov and Dan Rice, May 2022, Lviv and Kyiv, Ukraine.
[8] Interviews with General Zaluzhnny, Colonel Noskov, Ms. Dolhonovska, Colonel Oleksandr and Major Zaretsky May 2022 in Ukraine.
[9] Interview with Colonel Oleksandr and Dan Rice in Moschun translated by LT Vadym Babych, Ukraine 15 May 2022.
[10] Interview with Major Dmytro Zaretsky and Dan Rice, Kyiv, Ukraine, translated by LT Vadym Babych. 16 May 2022.
[11] General Mark Milley, 2022 West Point graduation commencement speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGAXyrP-Lm4
About the Author(s)
Dan is the President of Thayer Leadership and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He served his commitment as an Airborne-Ranger qualified Field Artillery officer. In 2004, he voluntarily re-commissioned in the Infantry to serve in Iraq for 13 months. He has been awarded the Purple Heart, Ranger Tab, Airborne Badge and cited for ‘courage on the field of battle” by his Brigade Commander.
SCHOLARLY WORK/PUBLICATIONS/AWARDS
Dan has been published in the Wall Street Journal, Small Wars Journal, and Chief Executive magazine. In 2013, he published and co-authored his first book, West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage, which features 200 of West Point graduates who have helped shape our nation, including the authorized biographies of over 100 living graduates.. The book received 3 literary awards from the Independent Book Publishers Association plus an award from the Military Society Writers of America (MSWA). Dan has appeared frequently on various news networks including CNN, FOX News, FOX & Friends, Bloomberg TV, NBC, MSNBC, and The Today Show.
EDUCATION
Ed.D., ABD, Leadership, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education (graduation expected 2023)
MS.Ed., Leadership & Learning, University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, 2020
M.S., Integrated Marketing Communications, Medill Graduate School, Northwestern University, 2018
M.B.A., Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, 2000
B.S., National Security, United States Military Academy, 1988
2. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 30 (PUTIN'S WAR)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MAY 30
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 30
Karolina Hird, Mason Clark, and George Barros
May 30, 3:30pm ET
Mounting casualties among Russian junior officers will likely further degrade Russian capabilities and lead to further morale breakdowns. The UK Ministry of Defense stated on May 30 that Russian forces have suffered devastating losses amongst mid and junior ranking officers. The UK MoD reported that battalion and brigade level officers continue to deploy forwards and into harm's way—rather than commanding from rear areas and delegating to lower-ranking officers—due to senior Russian officers holding them to an “uncompromising level of responsibility” for their units.[1] The British Defense Ministry further reported that junior officers are in charge of low-level tactical operations due to a lack of professionalism and modernization within the Russian Armed Forces and that the continued losses of these junior officers will complicate command and control efforts, particularly in Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) cobbled together from the survivors of multiple other units.[2] ISW previously assessed that continued demoralization and poor command and control among Russian forces could present Ukrainian forces opportunities to conduct prudent counteroffensives, particularly as the Russian military continues to pour resources into the battle of Severodonetsk at the cost of other lines of effort.
Domestic dissent within Russian military circles, claiming that the Kremlin is not doing enough to win the war, continues to grow. Former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer Igor Girkin (also known as Strelkov) condemned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statements about the priority of the “special operation” in Ukraine being the liberation of the Donbas.[3] Girkin claimed that the Kremlin has forgone the ideological underpinnings of the conflict by focusing the conflict on the Donbas, rather than the entirety of Ukraine. Girkin complained that Kremlin officials are no longer questioning the legitimacy of the existence of Ukraine and that the concepts of “denazification” and “demilitarization” have been forgotten. Girkin accused the Kremlin of appeasement policies and stated that the threat of defeat continues to grow.
Girkin’s dissent is emblematic of continued shifts within circles of Russian military enthusiasts and ex-servicemen. As ISW has previously reported, the Kremlin has repeatedly revised its objectives for the war in Ukraine downwards due to battlefield failures. The Kremlin is increasingly facing discontent not from Russians opposed to the war as a whole, but military and nationalist figures angry at Russian losses and frustrated with shifting Kremlin framing of the war. Russian officials are increasingly unable to employ the same ideological justifications for the invasion in the face of clear setbacks, and a lack of concrete military gains within Ukraine will continue to foment domestic dissatisfaction with the war.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to incrementally capture areas of Severodonetsk but have not yet fully encircled the city.
- Russian forces focused on regrouping near Izyum to renew offensives towards Slovyansk and Barvinkove and conducted only minor, unsuccessful, attacks. Russian forces are making incremental advances towards Slovyansk and seek to assault the city itself in the coming weeks, but are unlikely to achieve decisive gains.
- Russian forces in Kharkiv continue to focus efforts on preventing a Ukrainian counteroffensive from reaching the international border between Kharkiv and Belgorod, and Ukrainian forces have not conducted any significant operations in the area in recent days.
- The limited Ukrainian counterattack in northern Kherson Oblast did not take any further ground in the last 48 hours but has disrupted Russian operations. Russian forces launched several unsuccessful attacks against the Ukrainian bridgehead on the east bank of the Inhulets River.
- Mounting casualties among Russian junior officers will further degrade Russian morale and command and control capabilities.
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. We have stopped coverage of Mariupol as a separate effort since the city’s fall. We had added a new section on activities in Russian-occupied areas:
- 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—Kharkiv City;
- Supporting effort 2—Southern axis;
- Activities in Russian-occupied areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces focused on regrouping near Izyum to renew offensives towards Slovyansk and Barvinkove on May 30 and conducted only minor, unsuccessful, attacks.[4] Russian troops reportedly conducted an unsuccessful assault on Kurulka, about 30 kilometers south of Izyum.[5] The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Russian forces deployed a squadron of Ka-52 helicopters to the area to provide air defense, and reported Russian troops have moved over 250 units of (unspecified) weaponry and equipment to the area to replenish their force grouping around Izyum.[6] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces have rebuilt a railway bridge near Kupyansk to facilitate the movement of troops and equipment in the area.[7]
The ongoing replenishment of troops in the Izyum area and persistent attempts to advance to the southeast indicates Russian forces are likely reprioritizing attempts to advance towards Slovyansk, though they are increasingly attempting to simultaneously advance from two directions - southeast from Izyum and west from Lyman. Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) troops claimed to capture Staryi Karavan and Dibrova, both between Lyman and Slovyansk, on May 30.[8] Russian Telegram channels additionally reported fighting in Raihorodok, 6 kilometers northeast of Slovyansk.[9] Russian forces are making incremental advances towards Slovyansk and seek to assault the city itself in the coming weeks. However, Russian advances remain limited and are unlikely to increase in pace in the near term, particularly as Russian forces continue to prioritize assaults on Severodonetsk at the cost of other lines of effort.
Russian forces continued ground assaults in and around Severodonetsk on May 30.[10] Russian forces reportedly control the northeast and southeast outskirts of the city and are continuing to gain ground within the city.[11] Ukrainian and Russian sources reported ongoing fighting to the south of Severodonetsk in Toshkivka, Ustynivka, Voronove, Borivske, and Metolkine, as Russian forces continue efforts to complete the encirclement of Severodonetsk from the south.[12] Russian forces are reportedly transferring large quantities of personnel and equipment to the area to strengthen operations against Severodonetsk.[13] A Russian Telegram channel claimed that Russian forces control the entire southern bank of the Siverskyi Donets River, except for the part of the river than runs through Severodonetsk.[14] ISW cannot independently confirm this claim, though it is consistent with previous reporting on persistent, incremental Russian advances in and around the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk area.
Russian forces continued assault operations to the east of Bakhmut with the intention of severing Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) northeast of Bakhmut.[15] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces are fighting in Komyshuvakha, Novoluhanske, and Berestov, all settlements ranging from the northeast to southeast of Bakhmut.[16] Russian forces will likely continue to focus on pushing towards GLOCS northeast of Bakhmut and are unlikely to attempt to capture the city itself.
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Withdraw forces to the north and defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum)
Russian forces fired on Ukrainian positions north of Kharkiv City and did not make any confirmed advances on May 30.[17] Russian forces conducted MLRS and artillery strikes against Odnorobivka, Udy, Ruski Tyshky, Cherkasy Tyshky, Ruska Lozova, Pitomnyk, Borshchova, Peremoha, Tsyrkuny, Shestakove, and the Kyivskyi District of Kharkiv City.[18] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that the goal of these artillery attacks is to deter further Ukrainian advances towards the international border.[19]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporozhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces focused on recapturing positions taken by previous Ukrainian counterattacks and shelling forward targets to prevent further Ukrainian counteroffensive actions on May 30.[20] The Ukrainian General Staff and Southern Operational Command both reported that Russian troops are replenishing equipment and regrouping forces in Kherson Oblast to strengthen their existing defensive lines against Ukrainian gains made during limited Ukrainian counteroffensives on May 28.[21] Russian Telegram channels provided further confirmation of limited and localized Ukrainian gains in Kherson and stated that Russian forces are fighting to dislodge a Ukrainian bridgehead on the left bank (east side) of the Inhulets River, as ISW assessed on May 29.[22] Ukrainian forces have not made any confirmed advances since May 28, and the Ukrainian counteroffensive in northern Kherson Oblast is likely a localized operation to disrupt Russian frontline positions, rather than a wider counteroffensive to recapture large areas of terrain.
Russian forces conducted artillery strikes against Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts and a missile strike against a previously-destroyed bridge in Odesa.[23] These sporadic strikes are unlikely to significantly disrupt Ukrainian logistics. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported that an unidentified partisan detonated an IED in Melitopol near the residence of the Russian-appointed Mayor of Zaporizhia Eugene Balitsky.[24] Partisan activity in occupied territories likely continues to disrupt Russian administrative activities in these areas.
Activity in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Russian occupation forces continued efforts to exert bureaucratic control in occupied areas but did not make any significant changes on May 30.
3. Biden rules out sending weapons to Ukraine that can strike inside Russia
I do not get it. Are we going to help the Ukrainians defend themselves effectively and win the war? Or not?
Biden rules out sending weapons to Ukraine that can strike inside Russia
US president says Washington will not send long-range rocket systems asked for by Kyiv
Joe Biden on Monday said the US would not send Ukraine long-range rocket systems that could be used to attack Russian territory, dealing a blow to Kyiv, which has repeatedly asked for such weapons.
“We are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia,” the US president said in response to a question on whether Washington would consider sending long-range systems to the country.
US media reported last week that the administration was preparing to dispatch long-range rocket systems to Ukraine, including the Multiple Launch Rocket System, a US weapon capable of firing long-range rockets.
On Monday, a senior US administration official said that “nothing is on the table with long-range strike capabilities” but that providing an MLRS system — which could also be used for short-range munitions — was still “under consideration”.
US officials have previously said Washington does not want to see American military aid used to help Ukraine strike inside Russia.
On Friday, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged that Ukraine had asked for an MLRS system but said a decision on whether to provide one had not yet been taken.
“Certainly we’re mindful and aware of Ukrainian asks, privately and publicly, for what is known as a Multiple Launch Rocket System. And I won’t get ahead of decisions that haven’t been made yet,” he said.
Senior Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have ratcheted up pressure on the US and allies to provide longer-range weapons, including the MLRS and a separate long-range rocket system known as himars.
Ukrainian forces view longer-range fire as critical in the fight for the Donbas, which is becoming a war of attrition, where both sides are shelling each other with heavy artillery and sustaining big losses.
Dmitry Medvedev, a former prime minister of Russia who is now deputy chair of the country’s security council, on Monday welcomed Biden’s comments, describing them as “rational”, according to Reuters.
On Friday, following the US media reports that Washington was weighing sending long-range rocket systems, a Russian television host on a state-owned channel warned sending Ukraine an MLRS system would “cross a red line”.
The US has already pledged dozens of American-made 155mm howitzers, which have a longer range and are more accurate than standard Russian cannons. The majority have arrived in Ukraine and are beginning to be used on the battlefield, US defence officials have said.
The weapons are part of an overall package of lethal assistance to Ukraine worth billions of dollars, including the artillery and anti-tank systems that played a critical role in fending off Russian efforts to take Kyiv and other parts of the country.
This month, the US Senate approved a further $40bn in military, economic and humanitarian assistance.
4. In major blow, EU bans imports of most Russian oil
About time. But only most, not all.
In major blow, EU bans imports of most Russian oil
By LORNE COOK and SAMUEL PETREQUIN
50 minutes ago
AP · by LORNE COOK and SAMUEL PETREQUIN · May 31, 2022
BRUSSELS (AP) — In the most significant effort yet to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, the European Union agreed to ban the overwhelming majority of Russian oil imports after tense negotiations that exposed the cracks in European unity.
From the moment Russia invaded on Feb. 24, the West has sought to hit Moscow’s lucrative energy sector to cut off funding for its war. But any such move is a double-edged sword, especially in Europe, which relies on the country for 25% of its oil and 40% of its natural gas. European countries that are even more heavily dependent on Russia have been especially reluctant to act.
In a move unthinkable just months ago, EU leaders agreed late Monday to cut around 90% of all Russian oil imports over the next six months.
In response to the EU’s decision, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, took to Twitter, saying: “Russia will find other importers.”
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Russia has not shied away from withholding its energy supplies, despite the economic damage it could suffer as a result. And Russian energy giant Gazprom announced it would cut natural gas supplies to Dutch trader GasTerra on Tuesday and it is considering cutting off Denmark. It’s already turned the taps off in Bulgaria, Poland and Finland.
Dutch trader GasTerra said the move was announced after it refused Gazprom’s “one-sided payment requirements.” That’s a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that European nations pay for gas in rubles — an arrangement many have refused. GasTerra said homes would not be hit as it had bought gas elsewhere in anticipation of a shutoff.
Talks at EU headquarters in Brussels were set Tuesday to focus on ways to end the trading bloc’s dependence on Russian energy, by diversifying supplies and speeding up the transition to renewable sources and away, as much as possible given recent price hikes, from fossil fuels.
The oil embargo, tied up in a new package of sanctions that will also target Russia’s biggest bank and state media outlets accused of spreading propaganda, covers crude oil and petroleum products but has an exception for oil delivered by pipeline.
Hungarian Prime minister Viktor Orban made clear that he could only support the new sanctions if his country’s oil supply security was guaranteed. Hungary gets more than 60% of its oil from Russia and depends on crude that comes through the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline.
The EU estimated that could mean around 90% of Russian oil — the majority of it brought into Europe by sea — is banned by the end of the year. As part of the measure, Germany and Poland agreed to stop using oil from the northern branch of the Druzhba pipeline.
The sanctions package must still be finalized in coming days.
The leaders reached their compromise after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged them to end “internal arguments that only prompt Russia to put more and more pressure on the whole of Europe.”
___
Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.
___
AP · by LORNE COOK and SAMUEL PETREQUIN · May 31, 2022
5. Shanghai moves toward ending 2-month COVID-19 lockdown
Did it work?
Excerpts:
“The epidemic has been effectively controlled,” she said, adding that the city will start the process of fully restoring work and life on Wednesday.
...
The success came at a price. Authorities imposed a suffocating citywide lockdown under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to snuff out any outbreak with mass testing and isolation at centralized facilities of anyone who is infected.
However, the latest economic data showed that Chinese manufacturing activity started to rebound in May as the government rolled back some containment measures.
Shanghai moves toward ending 2-month COVID-19 lockdown
BEIJING (AP) — Shanghai authorities say they will take some major steps Wednesday toward reopening China’s largest city after a two-month COVID-19 lockdown that has throttled the national economy and largely bottled up millions of people in their homes.
Full bus and subway service will be restored as will basic rail connections with the rest of China, Vice Mayor Zong Ming said Tuesday at a daily news conference on the city’s outbreak.
“The epidemic has been effectively controlled,” she said, adding that the city will start the process of fully restoring work and life on Wednesday.
Schools will partially reopen on a voluntary basis for students and shopping malls, supermarkets, convenience stores and drug stores will continue to reopen gradually with no more than 75% of their total capacity. Cinemas and gyms will remain closed.
Officials, who set June 1 as the target date for reopening earlier in May, appear ready to accelerate what has been a gradual easing in recent days. A few malls and markets have reopened, and some residents have been given passes allowing them out for a few hours at a time. In online chat groups, some expressed excitement about the prospect of being able to move about freely in the city for the first time since the end of March, while others remained cautious given the slow pace and stop-and-go nature of opening up so far.
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Shanghai recorded 29 new cases on Monday, continuing a steady decline from more than 20,000 a day in April. Li Qiang, the top official from China’s ruling Communist Party in Shanghai, at a meeting Monday was quoted as saying that the city had made major achievements in fighting the outbreak through continuous struggle.
The success came at a price. Authorities imposed a suffocating citywide lockdown under China’s “zero-COVID” strategy that aims to snuff out any outbreak with mass testing and isolation at centralized facilities of anyone who is infected.
However, the latest economic data showed that Chinese manufacturing activity started to rebound in May as the government rolled back some containment measures.
Schools will reopen for the final two years of high school and the third year of middle school, but students can decide whether to attend in person. Other grades and kindergarten remain closed.
Outdoor tourist sites will start reopening Wednesday, with indoor sites set to follow in late June, the Shanghai tourism authority said. Group tours from other provinces will be allowed again when the city has eliminated all high- and medium-risk pandemic zones.
Beijing, the nation’s capital, further eased restrictions Tuesday in some districts. The city imposed limited lockdowns, but nothing near a citywide level, in a much smaller outbreak that appears to be on the wane. Beijing recorded 18 new cases on Monday.
6. Paper Trail of Terror - REVIEW: 'The Bin Laden Papers'
The book may be problematic but this review covers some important ground on releasing classified information as well as the state of AQ.
Paper Trail of Terror - Washington Free Beacon
REVIEW: 'The Bin Laden Papers'
In autumn of 2017, my colleague Thomas Joscelyn was invited to visit the Central Intelligence Agency. It was a long time coming. He and our colleague Bill Roggio at FDD's Long War Journal had for years pushed the intelligence community to release the complete set of documents that American Navy SEALS captured at Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 1, 2011. The al Qaeda leader was shot dead that night, ending a 10-year search for the man behind the 9/11 attacks.
The intelligence community released a handful of the documents in 2012. They released more in 2016 and 2017. But tens of thousands more remained classified. Joscelyn and Roggio, who had doggedly tracked al Qaeda for two decades, insisted there was no reason to withhold the files from the public.
They had a point. Usually, such documents are classified to protect "sources and methods." In this case, we knew the source of the documents: bin Laden's lair. We also knew the methods used to acquire them: the raid.
Notably, my colleagues did not push for the immediate release of the documents. People in the field understood that the intelligence community could exploit the files for additional operations. And they did. Soon after the raid, American forces tracked down other senior terrorists, with lethal success.
But by 2017, the files were growing stale. The arguments for releasing them finally prevailed. When I accompanied Tom to the CIA that day, he was handed a couple hard drives. But there were few smiles in the room. Joscelyn and Roggio had been a thorn in the agency's side. To return the favor, our interlocutors gave no guide for the files. It was a veritable haystack, with no indication of what the needles even looked like. Many files were infected with viruses. It would take years to get through them all.
Thankfully, the Long War Journal was able to produce some relevant analysis based on a video of bin Laden's son, Hamza, at his wedding in Iran and several other documents. But it wasn't much of a head start. The documents were released to the public shortly thereafter.
Five years later, Nelly Lahoud, a senior fellow at New America, has released a book based on roughly 6,000 of those documents. It is no simple task to stitch together a narrative that made sense of the various letters, journal entries, and other missives from bin Laden's files. Unfortunately, Lahoud's book only underscores this.
Hers is a narrative that is not particularly easy to follow, even for those who have tracked al Qaeda closely. While largely chronological, the book toggles between the mundane details of the bin Laden family, the scattered trajectory of the terrorist network after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the interplay between various jihadists and their leader in exile. Some of these jihadists are important to the story of al Qaeda. Others are not. And the author struggles to make that distinction. The result is a book that often stumbles from one unsatisfying narrative to another.
Lahoud's thesis is perhaps best summed up in the last line of her epilogue: "We now know from the Bin Laden Papers that the man whose post-9/11 statements were brimming with threats was in actuality powerless and confined to his compound, overseeing an ‘afflicted' al-Qaeda."
But as Joscelyn and Roggio have repeatedly shown, this assertion is false. The files show that bin Laden and his lieutenants managed a sprawling terror network. Through intermediaries, he regularly communicated with subordinates around the globe during the final year of his life. Bin Laden weighed in on key decisions affecting the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and beyond. He oversaw plots against the West, all of which were fortunately thwarted or failed. And he tried to rein in the most unruly jihadists in Iraq.
As former acting director of the CIA Michael Morell wrote, the agency was surprised to learn from the documents that bin Laden was not only "managing the organization from Abbottabad, he had been micromanaging it."
The book's greatest flaw is that it reads like "finished intelligence." It cherry picks from the documents to tell a story. Admittedly, nobody wants to read all those documents; most readers would welcome an author's doing the heavy lifting. But in this case, Lahoud makes some highly controversial assertions while only serving up slices of evidence from the sources she cites.
Lahoud is on particularly thin ice with her treatment of the complex relationship between al Qaeda and Iran. She dismisses the vast body of evidence suggesting the two share a strategic partnership despite their mutual distrust and sectarian tensions. The evidence has been slow but steady over the years. The 9/11 Commission Report, released in 2004, gave clear indications of the ways in which the two worked together. Subsequent U.S. Treasury Department sanctions designations of senior al Qaeda figures operating in Iran have further shaped our understanding of how the world's most deadly terrorist group and the world's most prolific state sponsor of terrorism have partnered.
One file found in Abbottabad identifies Yasin al-Suri as a key al Qaeda facilitator based in Iran. Using the bin Laden files, among others, the Treasury Department reported in July 2011 that Suri operated "under an agreement between al-Qaeda and the Iranian government." The 2021 assassination, purportedly by the Israeli Mossad, of Abu Muhammad al-Masri on the streets of Iran further points to the fact that senior terrorists have roamed free in Iran for years even as other al Qaeda operatives have been under house arrest.
Another complexity that Lahoud glosses over is the relationship between al Qaeda and the Pakistani government. Lahoud suggests throughout the book that the terrorist group was at odds with Islamabad. We know, however, that Pakistani leadership provided assistance and shelter to the Taliban and a wide range of al Qaeda-affiliated actors over the years. This was a significant source of tension with Washington—so much so that the U.S. government declined to inform Pakistan before the Abbottabad raid.
Lahoud emphasizes the tensions that existed between bin Laden and the affiliate groups that pledged allegiance to al Qaeda. While command and control was undeniably a challenge at times, bin Laden held far more sway than Lahoud concedes. And it's now clear that these affiliates are bin Laden's primary legacy. Without them, al Qaeda would be confined to its original redoubts in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It's unclear why Lahoud chose not to explore the deeper complexities of these issues yet devoted pages of the book to banal poetry written by bin Laden's third wife, for example. Indeed, questions surrounding the next phase of jihadism, not to mention America's relations with Iran and Pakistan, remain highly relevant to U.S. foreign policy even as the "War on Terror" is eclipsed by domestic discord in America and escalating great power competition with China and Russia, not to mention the latter's invasion of Ukraine.
The fight over the release of bin Laden's files is over. But the battle over how to interpret them continues.
The Bin Laden Papers: How the Abbottabad Raid Revealed the Truth about Al-Qaeda, Its Leader and His Family
By Nelly Lahoud
Yale University Press, 384 pp., $28
Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is senior vice president for research at the nonpartisan research institute Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
7. Putin’s Hard Choices - Why the Russian Despot Can Neither Mobilize Nor Retreat
Excerpts:
Finally, the Biden administration has a remarkable resource in the Russia diaspora. There are now hundreds of thousands of highly educated Russians living in cities across Europe, in Central Asia, in Turkey, and in the South Caucuses. Some have left for economic reasons, estimating that Russia’s financial future is bleak. Many have left because they could not countenance the war. They do not constitute a government in exile and are unlikely to spearhead a democratic transition within Russia. Because they left, they may not be particularly welcome even in a post-Putin Russia. Those who left during an earlier wave of emigration, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, enjoyed no influence on the political developments in the Soviet Union. Very few ever returned, and only a handful lived to see it collapse in 1991. Similarly, the twenty-first century diaspora is unlikely to be a vehicle for transforming Russia. It, too, may never return.
However small the diaspora’s contributions to Russian politics may prove to be, they will not be without meaning. The diaspora will sustain patterns of cultural creativity untethered to the Putin regime. At a time when Russia-West travel and trade are diminishing, the diaspora will serve as an economic bridge between Russians and the non-Russian world. It will generate discussion and debate that will trickle into Russia through family and friends and through social media. It will embody a Russia that is not equivalent to the strategies and the statements of Putin.
In 1990, the historian Marc Raeff published an exquisite exploration of a Russian émigré alternative to the Soviet Union. He titled it Russia Abroad, A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939. Raeff was the son of Russians who left their country after the Bolshevik Revolution, and a product of the European milieu that his parents inhabited after they had emigrated. But in his work, he managed to avoid both the nostalgia and the bitterness that often follow in the wake of exile. Instead, he saw the strength and the potential of a far-flung diaspora. At first, the emigres “did not ‘unpack’ their suitcases; they sat on their trunks,” Raeff writes, so sure were they that the Soviet Union would quickly unravel. In this hope they were disappointed, but over time they demonstrated “how an exiled group can carry on a creative existence, in spite of dispersion and socioeconomic or political handicaps.” That same potential now resides in a new version of "Russia abroad." It should not go untapped.
Putin’s Hard Choices
Why the Russian Despot Can Neither Mobilize Nor Retreat
May 31, 2022
Russian President Vladimir Putin has landed in an unenviable position. His country has the resources to inflict damage on Ukraine in perpetuity. But because the first phase of the war has been so costly for Russia and because Ukraine’s military is mounting such stiff resistance, Russia faces serious difficulty achieving anything meaningful on the battlefield without committing much more manpower than it currently has available.
Calling up large numbers of reservists while putting Russian society openly on a war footing solves the problem in theory. But it is something for which the Russian public is fundamentally unprepared. To date, Putin has referred to the war in Ukraine as a “special military operation” and held only one mass rally in support of the war. Full-out mobilization, which would make war an inescapable fact of Russian life, would revolutionize the regime Putin has constructed since coming to power in 2000. Putinism has been a formula: the government discouraged people from meddling in politics, while leaving them mostly on their own, and the people readily surrendered their responsibility for decision making. In 2014, he could achieve his military aims in Ukraine without radically redefining Russian politics. That is no longer an option.
If Putin decides to mobilize, he will be altering the deal he’s made with the public and potentially destabilizing his regime. As the United States watches from the sidelines, it may feel tempted to encourage Russians to turn against Putin. Without having much or perhaps any real influence on Russian public opinion, however, the Biden administration can do its best to avoid costly mistakes. Most important will be its effort to understand how and why Russians think what they do. In the long-term conflict that is unfolding, curiosity will be a precious commodity.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE
For the first ten years or so of Putin’s time in power, a “no-participation pact” between the Kremlin and the Russian public had been in effect. It was an unspoken agreement between ruler and ruled: “Don’t rock the boat, and you will enjoy stability, relative prosperity, and opportunities for self-fulfillment or enrichment.” But both parties breached this pact in December 2011. Upset by Putin’s return to the presidency and rigged parliamentary elections, protesters chanted, “Russia without Putin.” In response, the Kremlin started chipping away at the rights and freedoms that Russian society had enjoyed until then, pitting the patriotic majority against those the regime considered excessively “modernized” and “Westernized.” After this clash, a version of normalcy returned, but Putin’s popularity declined and the regime’s legitimacy began to erode. This new chapter in Putin’s presidency began – circa 2011 – on a sour note.
In the fall of 2013, Putin was preparing for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Russian resort town on the Black Sea. He did not appear to have military adventures abroad on his agenda. Only a few months later, though, the pro-European Maidan uprising in Ukraine and the unexpected flight of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, changed Putin’s calculus. He had regarded Yanukovych as his man and expected him to keep Ukraine in the Russian orbit. With Yanukovych gone, it was a situation that Putin felt was slipping out of his control. He annexed Crimea and interfered on the side of armed insurgents in eastern Ukraine, gradually installing the Russian military and allocating to Moscow a quasi-imperial role in the Donbas.
The annexation of Crimea went a long way to restoring Putin’s public support. It produced a spontaneous burst of patriotism and confirmed a mood of confrontation with the West. But the Kremlin did not let the conflict intrude too much on the day-to-day lives of most Russians, leaving a significant remnant of normalcy.
The United States and the EU imposed sanctions. They generated a sharp economic decline in 2015, but over time the economy steadied, and the people were able to adjust. If political activism against the regime was suppressed, civil society organizations were still allowed to operate. Charitable, educational, and cultural initiatives carried on: nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and media outlets that did not march in lockstep with the government could do their work. Sporadic protests (on various grounds) were sometimes treated brutally, but each time a wave of protest came it crested, leaving no movement behind and no reason for the Kremlin to be seriously concerned. In this way, Putin modified the nature of Russian politics in 2014 without completely recasting it.
The fighting in the Donbas went in waves. When its intensity faded somewhat after 2014, foreign policy receded from public consciousness in Russia. The Syrian civil war, where Russian forces were fighting on the side of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, seemed far away and did not result in large-scale Russian casualties. Though international crises were never absent, those who wished to ignore them could ignore them.
A NOT-SO-DISTANT WAR
By 2020, the Russian government was far from sanguine about the prospect of dissent. Russia’s leading opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, bore the brunt of the government’s mounting anger. He was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in August 2020 and went to Germany to convalesce. Upon Navalny’s return to Russia in January 2021, he was arrested. After his arrest, his team released one of his trademark videos exposing the corruption of top-ranking elites, and this time the target of exposure was Putin himself. Navalny was far from a direct threat to Putin’s power. He was, however, a counterweight to Putin’s popularity, a matter of utmost concern for the Kremlin, since Putin’s uncontested status and high approval rating are the very foundation of political stability.
Normalcy and stability may have been illusions for the Russian public in 2020 and in 2021. Yet they were sustainable illusions. The war Putin began in February of this year shattered these illusions. The scale of the Russian invasion is vastly greater than anything undertaken in 2014, and the break between Russia and the West is almost without precedent: the scale of sanctions, the restrictions on travel, the shutting down or exit of Western institutions from Russia. And so, in the coming months, Putin will face a punishing choice. He could de-escalate and try to mend relations with the West. Or he could wage full-scale war on Ukraine, deepening even further the rift with Europe and the United States.
All-out war would require at least an incremental mobilization. Putin could thereby expand his battlefield options. Here, the word “mobilization” has two meanings: to prepare an army for war by calling up reservists and specialists and to orient Russian society entirely toward war. Mobilization roils domestic and foreign affairs alike; it tends to define politics as aggression and aggression as politics; and it encourages jingoism. Were Putin to opt for mobilization in both senses of the word, he would need to build a strong justifications for militant patriotism. He would have to frame the confrontation even more explicitly as a war against the West, while pegging Ukraine as the enemy. (Currently, Ukrainians are often referred to as “brothers,” “the same people,” while the Kremlin claims to wage a war against the “Nazis” among them.) Conventional civilian life would come to an end, not to restart until the war ended, whenever that might be and however it might come to pass.
Full-out mobilization would make war an inescapable fact of Russian life.
What mobilization would enable, for Putin, is an expanded set of war aims: an assault once again on Kyiv, a drive to partition to the country into eastern and western halves, or a concerted effort to turn Ukraine into a failed state, its infrastructure, its cities, and its economy completely destroyed.
Mobilization would simultaneously impose enormous political dangers on Putin. He has based his regime on public disengagement from politics and foreign policy. It would be risky in the extreme to announce something like a people’s war, as opposed to a mere “special military operation.” Mobilization would require Russians to actively participate in the war and embrace its justifications and objectives, which would have to be clear and certain. Up to now, the official reasons for the war have been vague and shifting. Nor is mass mobilization necessarily a controlled process. It could radically empower the most hawkish faction of the elites, inflaming nationalist sentiment in unpredictable ways, especially if the war did not go well.
WHO BELIEVES THIS STUFF?
The official Russian war narrative is as familiar as it is fluid. Provoked by the West and by atrocities perpetrated by Ukraine’s government in the Donbas since 2014, Russia has been forced into a “special military operation.” At the beginning and intermittently, the narrative has been tied to the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine and to the full independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (or oblasts), the most consistent causus belli. Also emphasized is the existence of Ukraine as a natural extension of the “Russian world.” Essential to these story lines is the prediction that NATO will attack Russia, making the “special military operation” in Ukraine preventive in nature. The war lives in a liminal place between something circumscribed, something much less than a war, and an “existential struggle” against the West, against NATO, and against the designs of the United States and its major European allies.
Of course, the architects of the “special military operation” say it is going well. It would be going better, the official line implies, if the United States and its partners were not arming Ukraine to the teeth, manipulating Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, and through him stoking Ukrainian nationalism and “Nazism.” In the Kremlin’s story, there are many villains—not just the United States, but also the United Kingdom, Poland, the Baltic Republics, and Europe writ large.
Some Russians are antiwar, some are eager not to hear bad news about the war and angry when confronted with evidence of atrocities. Some are nervously pro-war, and some are resolutely pro-war, the true believers. Most importantly, many are disengaged: it is Ukraine’s war; it is the Kremlin’s war; it is not their war. No survey data can do justice to the kaleidoscopic adjustments in feeling and attitude within a country at war. The tensions and contradictions do not just play out across different groups of people. They play out within the minds of individuals.
What may be most pertinent to Russian public opinion is that the war has not been immediately felt at home. There have been few strikes on military assets in Russia. For most people, restrictions on travel and the economic pressure of sanctions have not drastically changed their daily lives. For families with members in the military and for the families of conscripted soldiers the war is not far away of course. The Kremlin barely mentions casualties, making it easier for many Russians not to know. For the vast majority of Russians, the war is hardly all absorbing. That is why mobilization would pose such a challenge: it would mean a shift from a “special military operation” to a “people’s war,” and with that, the loss of the fantasy that the war is far away. The suffering and the casualties of a full-scale war would need to be met with proportional sacrifices at home. Fear and anger would spread across a Russian society that for decades had been incentivized to shy away from strong political emotions.
DO NO HARM
Were Putin to decide in favor of mobilization, and were the Kremlin to fail at the task, the United States might be tempted to take advantage of the disarray. After all, the United States wants to expel the Russian army from Ukraine.At least a few U.S. government officials have speculated about going further and about speeding the process of Russia’s overall military disintegration. Some believe it is necessary to humiliate Russia. But the United States as a vehicle of antiwar or anti-Putin opinion within Russia is not only improbable--it is almost sure to be counterproductive. The United States should try to be and to appear officially agnostic on domestic Russian politics, to refrain from overt commentary and not to align itself with opposition movements. This has nothing to do with fearing the Kremlin’s political sensitivities. The goal is to leave the space in Russian politics open for Russians to move toward a post-Putin Russia by their own devices.
Proceeding with a light touch and with caution, the Biden administration should nevertheless act on Russian public opinion in two ways. It should do what little it can to foster goodwill. Washington can explain that its wishing Ukraine well does not translate into wishing the Russian people ill. This might be hard to reconcile with the outrage many Americans feel about the way in which Russia has conducted its war. Expressions of goodwill can also be hard to get across. The U.S. government has few platforms for reaching the Russian public. But the value of these expressions is self-evident. In no sense should the U.S. government replicate the zero-sum, us versus them, East-West binaries that Putin has deployed to explain and justify his war.
Where President Biden’s public rhetoric is concerned, the cardinal rule should be to do no harm. With the U.S. so robustly on the side of the Ukrainian military, Biden’s ability to directly persuade Russians or to garner any kind of sympathy is modest at best. Interestingly, Biden attempted to send a message of goodwill to the Russian people when he visited Warsaw in March. In a speech, he tried not to frame U.S. support for Ukraine as antithetical to the interests of the Russian people. But a few ad-libbed words at the end --“For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said of Putin--dominated discussions for days afterward. Biden’s message of goodwill got lost. In Russia, it is doubtful that any part of his speech except his words about Putin were televised. Given that the U.S. aim cannot be Russia’s unconditional surrender, talk of defeating Russia and even of weakening Russia is misleading: preferable are a set of aims related to the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. As a media strategy for Russia, talk of defeating or weakening Russia further deepens the alienation from the West experienced by the vast majority of Russians, including those who question the war.
For the vast majority of Russians, the war is hardly all absorbing.
Finally, the Biden administration has a remarkable resource in the Russia diaspora. There are now hundreds of thousands of highly educated Russians living in cities across Europe, in Central Asia, in Turkey, and in the South Caucuses. Some have left for economic reasons, estimating that Russia’s financial future is bleak. Many have left because they could not countenance the war. They do not constitute a government in exile and are unlikely to spearhead a democratic transition within Russia. Because they left, they may not be particularly welcome even in a post-Putin Russia. Those who left during an earlier wave of emigration, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, enjoyed no influence on the political developments in the Soviet Union. Very few ever returned, and only a handful lived to see it collapse in 1991. Similarly, the twenty-first century diaspora is unlikely to be a vehicle for transforming Russia. It, too, may never return.
However small the diaspora’s contributions to Russian politics may prove to be, they will not be without meaning. The diaspora will sustain patterns of cultural creativity untethered to the Putin regime. At a time when Russia-West travel and trade are diminishing, the diaspora will serve as an economic bridge between Russians and the non-Russian world. It will generate discussion and debate that will trickle into Russia through family and friends and through social media. It will embody a Russia that is not equivalent to the strategies and the statements of Putin.
In 1990, the historian Marc Raeff published an exquisite exploration of a Russian émigré alternative to the Soviet Union. He titled it Russia Abroad, A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939. Raeff was the son of Russians who left their country after the Bolshevik Revolution, and a product of the European milieu that his parents inhabited after they had emigrated. But in his work, he managed to avoid both the nostalgia and the bitterness that often follow in the wake of exile. Instead, he saw the strength and the potential of a far-flung diaspora. At first, the emigres “did not ‘unpack’ their suitcases; they sat on their trunks,” Raeff writes, so sure were they that the Soviet Union would quickly unravel. In this hope they were disappointed, but over time they demonstrated “how an exiled group can carry on a creative existence, in spite of dispersion and socioeconomic or political handicaps.” That same potential now resides in a new version of "Russia abroad." It should not go untapped.
8. Guided U.S. Rockets Could Double Ukraine’s Strike Range
Ukraine is pretty smart. I think they know the response if they fire into Russia though at some point they may have to sufficiently defend themselves. We need to provide Ukraine all the equipment it needs to successfully defend itself, defeat the Russians, and win Putin's War.
The sad irony of these statements from the President is that they will not have the effect on Putin that we intend. He will not be restrained by our public display of restraint. Like the pronouncement that we will not deploy US troops or not establish a no fly zone, this will not prevent escalation or moderate Putin's behavior. It emboldens him because he feels mush.
“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”
― Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Excerpts:
“We are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia,” Mr. Biden said.
The rockets that are being sent have a much shorter range than the Army’s tactical-missile system, which can travel more than 185 miles and which the administration isn’t including in its next arms package for Ukraine.
It couldn’t be determined how many of the GMLRS rockets the U.S. would provide. One official said they could arrive in Ukraine within weeks. Training on their use would begin quickly and take at least 10 days.
The rockets would be outfitted on a wheeled launcher called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.
Guided U.S. Rockets Could Double Ukraine’s Strike Range
Biden plans to provide Ukraine with precision-guided missiles capable of hitting targets from a distance of more than 40 miles
May 31, 2022 5:30 am ET
WASHINGTON—The Biden administration plans to provide Ukraine with a guided-rocket system capable of hitting targets from a distance of more than 40 miles, according to U.S. officials, providing new details on plans first reported last week.
Kyiv has asked for longer-range weapons to strike Russian targets as it struggles to defend against attacks in the eastern part of Ukraine.
The Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System the U.S. plans to send has roughly twice the range of the M777 howitzers that the U.S. has provided to Ukraine.
U.S. officials said last week that the White House was nearing a decision on what rockets to provide to Kyiv but didn’t identify the specific weapons that would be sent.
Officials said late Monday that the goal in sending the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System—or GMLRS—is to boost Ukraine’s firepower against Russian troops who have invaded the country’s Donbas region, without enabling Kyiv to expand the war deep into Russian territory.
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“We are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia,” Mr. Biden said.
The rockets that are being sent have a much shorter range than the Army’s tactical-missile system, which can travel more than 185 miles and which the administration isn’t including in its next arms package for Ukraine.
It couldn’t be determined how many of the GMLRS rockets the U.S. would provide. One official said they could arrive in Ukraine within weeks. Training on their use would begin quickly and take at least 10 days.
The rockets would be outfitted on a wheeled launcher called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.
The administration is expected to announce its decision this week. A National Security Council spokeswoman declined to comment, saying only that mobile rockets were being considered for use in Ukraine.
Unlike the battle for Kyiv and urban centers, control for Ukrainian territory in the east has been largely fought with artillery. Ukrainian officials have long sought longer-range rockets, saying such weapons are essential for halting and reversing the Russian invasion.
Russia Gains Ground in Ukraine’s East; Kharkiv Residents Brace for Attacks
Russia Gains Ground in Ukraine’s East; Kharkiv Residents Brace for Attacks
Play video: Russia Gains Ground in Ukraine’s East; Kharkiv Residents Brace for Attacks
Russian forces have made gains in the eastern city of Severodonetsk in recent weeks, where shelling and street battles have occurred. Ukrainian officials called on Kharkiv residents to take precautions after the city came under renewed Russian bombardment on Thursday. Photo: Esteban Biba/Zuma Press
The requested weapons have included the Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, or MLRS, which are mobile tracked artillery launchers that can fire dozens of rockets.
U.S. officials said that the GMLRS will give Ukraine the capability to strike Russian targets throughout the Donbas area in eastern Ukraine.
The system is manufactured by Lockheed Martin Corp., which describes the rockets as among the “MLRS family of munitions” since they can be fired from either an MLRS tracked launcher or a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System wheeled launcher.
The administration has faced criticism on Capitol Hill from legislators who say it is moving too slowly on Ukraine’s weapon requests.
Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) on Monday urged the White House to immediately provide the MLRS.
“It was clear during my meetings in Europe, including with a senior Ukrainian liaison at @US_EUCOM and other allied countries, that #Ukraine needs this weapons system now to defend against the continued Russian assault on their country,” Sen. Portman said on Twitter, referring to the U.S. European Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in that region.
The Biden administration’s decision comes as Russia made gains Monday into the center of Severodonetsk, one of the last Ukrainian strongholds in the eastern Donbas region.
Since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, the U.S. has sent more sophisticated weapons systems, starting with Stinger and Javelin hand-held missiles, and expanding to M777 howitzers and soon the GMLRS.
9. In Joseph Conrad, a Lens on Russia’s Barbarism
A new perspective for me. I did not know that he was raised in Ukraine.
Excerpts:
Conrad’s sense of bitter humiliation could never be extinguished. His fury about the cruel treatment of Poland, still intense late in life, applies to the current depredations in Ukraine. “I spring from an oppressed race where oppression was not a matter of history but a crushing fact in the daily life of all individuals, made still more bitter by declared hatred and contempt,” he wrote. “The Russian mentality and their emotionalism have always been repugnant to me. I can’t think of Poland often. It feels bad, bitter, painful. It would make life unbearable.”
Conrad also exposed the contradiction between Russian politics and high culture. He was unfashionably anti-Russian when the Russian Ballet was all the rage in Europe, and when leading English writers—D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, helped by their Russian friend S. S. Koteliansky—were translating Ivan Bunin, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. Conrad told his friend and editor Edward Garnett, who sympathized with the Russian anarchists, and whose wife Constance visited Tolstoy in Russia and translated many of his works, “You are so russianised my dear that you don’t know the truth when you see it—unless it smells of cabbage-soup when it at once secures your profoundest respect.”
Conrad’s brilliant analysis confirms that Russian barbarism is worse than ever. It continues to carve a destructive path through civilized Europe.
In Joseph Conrad, a Lens on Russia’s Barbarism
Raised in Ukraine by Polish parents, the writer grew up under Russian rule—and chronicled the cruelty of a regime opposed to Western values.
By Jeffrey Meyers
May 27, 2022 2:45 pm ET
Joseph Conrad never ceased to condemn the violence and brutality of Russia, whose forces are today destroying cities and raping and murdering civilians in the Ukraine war. Russian troops recently moved past Berdichev, 125 miles southwest of Kyiv, where Conrad was born in 1857, and nearby Zhitomir, where he lived as a young child. Raised in Ukraine by Polish parents, Conrad grew up under Russian rule. In his boyhood the local society was composed of Russian civil servants, Polish landowners, Jewish merchants and Ukrainian peasants.
After Conrad’s father Apollo was implicated in the Polish revolution suppressed by Russia in 1863, he and his family were exiled to the harsh climate and brutal life of Vologda, a penal town 250 miles northeast of Moscow. Conrad had a harrowing relationship with his gloomy and guilt-ridden father who exercised a profound effect on his life. Apollo’s political essay “Poland and Muscovy” (1864) described Russia’s century-old oppression of Poland and condemned Russia as the “terrible, depraved, destructive embodiment of barbarism and chaos,” as “the plague of humanity” and as “the negation of human progress.” Apollo believed that Catholic, democratic Poland was historically destined to protect Western Europe from the pitiless hordes of Moscow. Conrad adored his patriotic father but disliked Apollo’s disastrous politics that had traumatized his childhood and believed the pursuit of revolution was futile and destructive. In his teens, Conrad fled from the morbid atmosphere of Polish martyrdom to the freedom of England and life at sea.
Conrad’s major political statement, “Autocracy and War” (1905), was published the year Japan defeated Russia and a Russian Revolution failed. Echoing Apollo’s themes with words that sound familiar today, Conrad argued in his essay that Russia was a barbaric Asiatic despotism, implacably opposed to the humane values of Western civilization: “This dreaded and strange apparition, bristling with bayonets, armed with chains, hung over with holy images; that something not of this world, partaking of a ravenous ghoul still faces us with its old stupidity, with its strange mystical arrogance already heaving in the blood-soaked ground with the first stirrings of a resurrection.”
Conrad drew on Apollo’s frightening conception of Russia, “unrestrained, organized and ready to spew out millions of her criminals over Europe,” in his two great political novels. “The Secret Agent” (1907) portrays the disastrous revolutionary underworld of Conrad’s father, and the rabid anarchists who threaten the stable and all-too-tolerant society of Edwardian England. Adolf Verloc owns a squalid pornography shop that provides a front for his violent activities. Mr. Vladimir, the First Secretary of the Russian Embassy, forces Verloc to try to blow up the Greenwich Observatory and “stop time.” Verloc bungles the job and kills his mentally handicapped young brother-in-law Stevie, who unwittingly carries the bomb and blows himself up. Verloc’s wife takes revenge for the death of her innocent brother by murdering Verloc, and then commits suicide.
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“Under Western Eyes,” set in 1904, begins with the conflict between the Russian revolutionary movement and the czarist secret police. Razumov, a student in St. Petersburg, betrays his friend Haldin who has sought refuge in his rooms after assassinating a Russian official. The secret police then force Razumov to spy on a group of anti-Russian exiles in Geneva, Switzerland. When Razumov confesses his betrayal to these revolutionaries, one of them, also exposed as a police spy, expresses loyalty to his comrades by bursting Razumov’s eardrums as punishment. Permanently deafened, Razumov is crippled by a tramcar and returns as an invalid to Russia. These exiles capture what Conrad calls “the very soul of things Russian”: The hypocrisy and mindless destruction. The compulsion to betray, to repent and to debase themselves. The Dostoyevskian mixture of instinctive cowardice and anguished longing for spiritual absolution.
The novel’s narrator, a professor of languages, expresses Conrad’s prescient theme—the inevitable betrayal of the revolution: “The scrupulous and just, the noble, humane and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement—but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, of disenchantment—often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured—that is the definition of revolutionary success.”
In May 1917 Conrad accurately predicted that Russia was an untrustworthy ally in the war against Germany and was bound to let England down. In February 1918, after the Russian Revolution the previous October, he was also far-sighted about the dangers of the revolution infesting Western Europe: “Whatever happens, Russia is out of the war now. The great thing is to keep the Russian infection, its decomposing power, from the social organism of the rest of the world.” In March 1920 he warned that the Russian peril, rooted in the barbarism of Central Asian tribes, was greater than ever: “once Tartar and Turkish, and now even worse, because arising no longer from the mere savagery of nomad races, but from an enormous seething mass of sheer moral corruption—generating violence of a more purposeful sort.”
Conrad’s sense of bitter humiliation could never be extinguished. His fury about the cruel treatment of Poland, still intense late in life, applies to the current depredations in Ukraine. “I spring from an oppressed race where oppression was not a matter of history but a crushing fact in the daily life of all individuals, made still more bitter by declared hatred and contempt,” he wrote. “The Russian mentality and their emotionalism have always been repugnant to me. I can’t think of Poland often. It feels bad, bitter, painful. It would make life unbearable.”
Conrad also exposed the contradiction between Russian politics and high culture. He was unfashionably anti-Russian when the Russian Ballet was all the rage in Europe, and when leading English writers—D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield, helped by their Russian friend S. S. Koteliansky—were translating Ivan Bunin, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov. Conrad told his friend and editor Edward Garnett, who sympathized with the Russian anarchists, and whose wife Constance visited Tolstoy in Russia and translated many of his works, “You are so russianised my dear that you don’t know the truth when you see it—unless it smells of cabbage-soup when it at once secures your profoundest respect.”
Conrad’s brilliant analysis confirms that Russian barbarism is worse than ever. It continues to carve a destructive path through civilized Europe.
Mr. Meyers is author of “Joseph Conrad: A Biography” (1991). He wrote introductions for editions of Conrad’s “The Mirror of the Sea,” “The Secret Agent” and “Under Western Eyes.”
10. Xi Jinping is Poised to Become “Leader for Life” in Exchange for Sharing Politburo Seats with Rivals
Excerpt:
In light of the possible composition of the PBSC, one of Xi’s top priorities after the 20th Party Congress will be to thrash out a mechanism for his succession. If Xi were to rule until the 22nd Party Congress in 2032, a good number of Sixth-Generation rising stars –those born from 1959 to 1969 – including Li Qiang, Chen Min’er and Ding Xuexiang will have reached the retirement age of 68 by the early 2030s. As a result, the senior cadre who eventually succeeds Xi might come from a member of the Seventh Generation (7G) of CCP leadership born in the 1970s (China Brief, November 12, 2021). At this stage, however, it is too early to speculate who among the 7G affiliates – who have only risen to the rank of vice minister, vice provincial governor or vice mayor – have a chance of making it to the top (Thinkchina.sg, December 6, 2021; (SCMP, June 26, 2021). Clearly, Xi’s bid for lifetime tenure – and the fact that his economic and pandemic policies are meeting strong opposition within the ruling elite – demonstrates the highly undemocratic and non-transparent institutions of the party and state. It also shows the dangers of the Xi leadership’s ignoring institutional reforms pioneered by Greater Architect of Reform Deng Xiaoping and reinstating the earlier norms inaugurated by the late chairman Mao Zedong.
Xi Jinping is Poised to Become “Leader for Life” in Exchange for Sharing Politburo Seats with Rivals
Introduction
President Xi Jinping has presided over a dramatic enhancement of his own personality cult in the run-up to the 20th Party Congress this autumn. The latest sign of this hero worship is that national media have bestowed on Xi the title of lingxiu (领袖). Lingxiu is usually translated as “leader.” But in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) lexicon, lingxiu is a more esteemed and grandiloquent version of “leader.” Throughout the CCP’s history, only the “Great Helmsman” Mao Zedong attained this elevated designation. Xinhua, CCTV and other major media have started running 50 video episodes highlighting Xi’s career, particularly his “momentous contributions” to the party and the country. According to Xinhua, Xi has “sketched out the big picture of the domestic and foreign situation, put forward reform, development and stability… and [is] responsible for progress in running the party, the country and the army” (Ming Pao, May 23; Xinhua, April 18).
Hagiographic references to Xi, who already gained the important title of “leadership core” in 2016, seem to debunk speculations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the overseas Chinese community that the 69-year-old Shaanxi native is gravely sick and facing ingrained opposition from political foes –led by Premier Li Keqiang –on both economic and foreign policy. Famous overseas key opinion leaders (KOLs) such as New York-based Chen Pokong are adamant that the pro-market policies of Premier Li and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Chairman Wang Yang are trumping Xi’s quasi-Maoist views on the party’s near-absolute control over the economy (Chen Pokong Youtube, May 18; Radio French International, May 12). Some have even gone so far as to speculate that Xi has been forced to yield his number one position in the party and state to Li (Radio Free Asia, May 18; VOA Chinese, March 27).
The practice of referring to Xi as lingxiu traces back to last April, when the supreme leader went on an inspection trip to Guangxi Province. The provincial media started eulogizing Xi as “the core of the whole party and the people’s lingxiu.” “The emotions of the people’s lingxiu are tied to Guangxi residents; his great thoughts are shining over the entire province,” local newspapers said. Guangxi media also indicated that the people would “forever support the lingxiu, protect the lingxiu, and follow the lingxiu” (Nanning Daily, April 28; HK01.com, April 20). In a recent meeting, senior cadres in Guangdong intoned that China was becoming wealthy and strong only due to “the power exercised by General Secretary Xi Jinping in making [sole] decisions [through his] personal authority and giving the final word [on policies]” (Rthk.hk, May 21; Hk.finance.yahoo.com, May 21)
There is therefore little question that President Xi, who is also General Secretary of the CCP and Chairman of its Central Military Commission, will secure at least one more five-year term as supreme leader of China at the 20th Party Congress later this year. It is also probable that his status as “core and lingxiu [of the leadership] for life” will be officially recognized and that he will be handed a fourth term at the 21st Party Congress in 2027. This means that Xi will rule until at least 2032, when the conservative, quasi-Maoist leader will be 79 years of age.
Xi Plays a Strong Hand
Xi’s continuation in power looks set to continue despite widespread speculation that he has been severely criticized by party elders such as former premier Zhu Rongji, or that current Premier Li – who will serve as head of government until next March – may be scheming to undermine his powers. In a May 25 televised conference with thousands of national and local leaders, Li doubled down on the imperative of arresting the palpable signs of economic decline that have become particularly glaring in March and April. Li saluted Xi’s leadership and the importance of the latter’s “zero tolerance” COVID policy, but also urged officials to “complete their task of economic and social development even as they do a good job of preventing and controlling the pandemic.” “We must have a firm grip over the overall situation [of the country] and avoid “focusing on only one goal (单打一, dandayi) and “imposing rigid uniformity on policies (一刀切, yidaoqie),” Li added. The Premier further noted that logistics and supply-chain snarls must be curbed “so as to resume production and meet [economic] targets.” As Xi’s zero-COVID policy approach has been widely criticized for maiming the economy, Li seems to be mounting a not-so-subtle challenge to the supreme leader’s authority (Xinhua, May 25; United Daily News, May 25).
However, the fact of the matter is that as Mao Zedong said regarding internecine bickering among factions: “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Xi is the only Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) member with control over the People’s Liberation Army, the People’s Armed Police, as well as the ordinary police and the intelligence establishment. Xi’s confidante Ding Xuexiang, the Director of the CCP General Office, assigns drivers, secretaries and security details to most of the Politburo members and party elders. Ding also maintains a surveillance system over both civilian and military leaders, which includes phone-tapping and close monitoring of their out-of-office activities (The Diplomat, February 1; South China Morning Post (SCMP), March 11, 2015). The General Office of the CCP Central Committee issued a directive on May 16 warning party elders not to “give improper opinions” (妄议, wangyi) on the central party leadership (i.e., supreme leader Xi). Former top cadres must also respect the country’s recently tightened immigration regulations when seeking to go abroad. Both retired and serving cadres have also been asked to divest themselves of their overseas assets – and to bring this precious foreign exchange back to the country (Radio Free Asia, May 17; Xinhua, May 15).
A Bargain with Rivals?
Due to the fact that the economy is facing problems such as flagging consumer spending and tepid manufacturing – which have been exacerbated by Xi’s uncompromising stance on his “zero tolerance” pandemic policy – the supreme leader has apparently agreed to make compromises on both economic policy and personnel issues (Caixin.com, May 25; China Brief, May 5). As the official China News Service underscored in a May 19 commentary, “the direction of the wind is changing and the e-platform economy is witnessing one encouraging sign after another” (China News Service, May 19). Premier Li has repeatedly stressed the importance of upholding economic growth and employment while ignoring the kind of ideological obsessions that are the hallmark of Xi. As a result, Xi has had to significantly moderate his policy of upholding the party’s ironclad control over technology conglomerates (China Brief, May 5). This policy shift is demonstrated by the relatively liberal statements that his key advisor, Politburo member and Vice Premier Liu He recently made on how regulations over IT firms must be “based on [the principles of] marketization, legalization and internationalization” and that control mechanisms must not harm the market (People’s Daily, March 16; Gov.cn, March 16).
On the personnel front, members of the Xi Jinping Faction are apparently facing challenges. Chances are high that the political fortunes of Politburo member and Shanghai Party Secretary Li Qiang – who is reportedly Xi’s favored candidate to succeed Premier Li – have been damaged due to negative fallout from the extended lockdown in Shanghai. Other Xi protégés who have run into trouble include the former party secretary of Hubei Province Ying Yong and the former party secretaries of the key cities of Hangzhou and Zhengzhou, respectively Zhou Jianyong (周建勇) and Xu Liyi (徐立毅) (Cnstock.com, April 20; Radio Free Asia, March 30).
The upshot is that while Xi still towers over all other Politburo- and ministerial-level cadres, he has to make concessions in the key area of personnel arrangements to be endorsed by the 20th Party Congress. Take, for example, the composition of the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC), China’s de facto, highest ruling political body. The projection of the make-up of the seven-member Standing Committee to be confirmed by the party congress is as follows: General Secretary Xi Jinping; Head of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee Ding Xuexiang; and either Li Qiang or Chongqing Party Secretary Chen Min’er. Two seats are expected to be reserved for the rival Communist Youth League Faction (CLYF) led by Premier Li. Li is pushing for the Vice Premier in charge of agriculture and CYLF stalwart Hu Chunhua to succeed him. According to party convention, one key qualification for the premiership is that the successful candidate must have served as vice premier. None of Xi’s preferred cadres to carry Li’s mantle is a current or former vice premier. Either Premier Li or CPPCC Chairman Wang, both of whom will be one year shy of the usual retirement age of 68 at the 20th Party Congress, may remain on the PBSC. If Li were to stay in the supreme council, there is a good possibility that he might move to the National People’s Congress as Chairman. The sudden prominence that Premier Li has enjoyed in the media over the past two months can be seen as an effort to strike a bargain with Xi. Namely, Li will not oppose the extension of Xi’s tenure at the Party Congress in return for Xi’s support for fellow CYLF members such as Vice-Premier Hu and CPPCC chief Wang (VOAChinese, March 22; Heritage.org, March 7; The Diplomat, August 4, 2020).
Zhao Leji (born 1957), the youngest PBSC incumbent who heads the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s topmost anti-graft body, will also get a second term as Standing Committee member despite having gone from being a Xi confidante to the latter’s political foe (Facebook.com, October 28, 2020; VOAChinese, January 9, 2019). The last slot may be given to a rising star with no obvious factional affiliations. If this were to come to pass, the Xi faction will control three out of seven PBSC spots. However, changes in the line-up of both the Politburo and the PBSC are likely in the run-up to the Congress.
After Xi, Who?
In light of the possible composition of the PBSC, one of Xi’s top priorities after the 20th Party Congress will be to thrash out a mechanism for his succession. If Xi were to rule until the 22nd Party Congress in 2032, a good number of Sixth-Generation rising stars –those born from 1959 to 1969 – including Li Qiang, Chen Min’er and Ding Xuexiang will have reached the retirement age of 68 by the early 2030s. As a result, the senior cadre who eventually succeeds Xi might come from a member of the Seventh Generation (7G) of CCP leadership born in the 1970s (China Brief, November 12, 2021). At this stage, however, it is too early to speculate who among the 7G affiliates – who have only risen to the rank of vice minister, vice provincial governor or vice mayor – have a chance of making it to the top (Thinkchina.sg, December 6, 2021; (SCMP, June 26, 2021). Clearly, Xi’s bid for lifetime tenure – and the fact that his economic and pandemic policies are meeting strong opposition within the ruling elite – demonstrates the highly undemocratic and non-transparent institutions of the party and state. It also shows the dangers of the Xi leadership’s ignoring institutional reforms pioneered by Greater Architect of Reform Deng Xiaoping and reinstating the earlier norms inaugurated by the late chairman Mao Zedong.
Dr. Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation and a regular contributor to China Brief. He is an Adjunct Professor in the History Department and Master’s Program in Global Political Economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of six books on China, including Chinese Politics in the Era of Xi Jinping (2015). His latest book, The Fight for China’s Future, was released by Routledge Publishing in 2020.
11. Why China Is Miles Ahead in a Pacific Race for Influence
This seems to provide some explanation:
The Yanks, it is often said, used to be more productive. Many of the airports and hospitals still in use across the Pacific were built by the United States and its allies during World War II.
At some of those old installations, there are memorial plaques in hidden corners, but the infrastructure has mostly been left to decay. Suva-Nausori Airport was constructed by U.S. Navy Seabees in 1942. Eight decades later, it looks as if not much has changed.
Richard Herr, an American law professor in Australia who has been a democracy consultant for Pacific countries since the 1970s, said he often wondered why the Solomon Islands’ main airport — known in World War II as Henderson Field, the site of major battles against the Japanese — had never been rehabbed with American technological expertise.
Honiara International Airport in the Solomon Islands. It was a U.S. military site in World War II.
Any American who passes through Honiara is likely to ask that question. It’s one of many places in the region where the United States is missing in action beyond signs for Coca-Cola.
“The United States doesn’t have a significant presence in the Pacific at all,” said Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University in New Zealand. “I’m always shocked that in Washington they think they have a significant presence when they just don’t.”
Why China Is Miles Ahead in a Pacific Race for Influence
News Analysis
To many observers, the South Pacific today reveals what American decline looks like. Even as Washington tries to step up its game, it is still far behind, mistaking speeches for impact and interest for influence.
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Chinese vessels in the harbor in Suva, Fiji, in 2014.Credit...Reuters
By
May 31, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
SUVA, Fiji — Take a walk through the city where China’s foreign minister met on Monday with the leaders of nearly a dozen Pacific Island nations, and China’s imprint is unmistakable.
On one side of Suva, the capital of Fiji, there’s a bridge rebuilt with Chinese loans and unveiled with the country’s prime minister standing beside China’s ambassador. On the other, down Queen Elizabeth Drive, sits Beijing’s hulking new embassy, where the road out front has been fixed by workers in neon vests bearing the name of a Chinese state-owned enterprise.
Looming over it all is Wanguo Friendship Plaza, a skeletal apartment tower built by a Chinese company and meant to be the South Pacific’s tallest building, until Fiji’s government halted construction over safety concerns.
Eight years after Xi Jinping visited Fiji, offering Pacific Island nations a ride on “China’s express train of development,” Beijing is fully entrenched, its power irrepressible if not always embraced. And that has left the United States playing catch-up in a vital strategic arena.
All over the Pacific, Beijing’s plans have become more ambitious, more visible — and more divisive. China is no longer just probing for opportunities in the island chains that played a critical role in Japan’s strategic planning before World War II. With the Chinese foreign minister halfway through an eight-nation tour of the Pacific Islands, China is seeking to bind the vast region together in agreements for greater access to its land, seas and digital infrastructure, while promising development, scholarships and training in return.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi of China with Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama of Fiji in Suva on Monday.
China’s interest in the Pacific Islands, made more explicit by a series of recently leaked documents, starts with maritime real estate. From Papua New Guinea to Palau, the countries of the region have jurisdiction over an area of ocean three times as large as the continental United States, stretching from just south of Hawaii to exclusive economic zones butting up against Australia, Japan and the Philippines.
Chinese fishing fleets already dominate the seas between the area’s roughly 30,000 islands, seizing huge hauls of tuna while occasionally sharing intelligence on the movements of the U.S. Navy. If China can add ports, airports and outposts for satellite communications — all of which are edging closer to reality in some Pacific Island nations — it could help in intercepting communications, blocking shipping lanes and engaging in space combat.
China has already shown how to accomplish “elite capture” in countries with small populations, major development needs and leaders who often silence local news media. And while the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, did not rapidly secure the sweeping proposal he pitched to a region that has long emphasized sovereignty and consensus, he has already collected a number of smaller victories.
Most significant, in the Solomon Islands, Mr. Wang signed several new agreements, including a security deal that gives China the power to send security forces to quell unrest or protect Chinese investments, and possibly to build a port for commercial and military use.
Local police officers training with Chinese police liaison team officers in a photo released in March by the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force.
Chinese officials deny that’s the plan. But the deal — along with others in the Solomons and Kiribati whose details have not been disclosed — has been made possible because of something else that’s visible and much-discussed in the Pacific: a longstanding lack of American urgency, innovation and resources.
To many observers, the South Pacific today reveals what American decline looks like. Even as Washington officials have tried to step up their game, they are still far behind, mistaking speeches for impact and interest for influence.
“There’s a lot of talk,” said Sandra Tarte, the head of the government and international affairs department at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. “And not much real substance.”
The Absent American
The Yanks, it is often said, used to be more productive. Many of the airports and hospitals still in use across the Pacific were built by the United States and its allies during World War II.
At some of those old installations, there are memorial plaques in hidden corners, but the infrastructure has mostly been left to decay. Suva-Nausori Airport was constructed by U.S. Navy Seabees in 1942. Eight decades later, it looks as if not much has changed.
Richard Herr, an American law professor in Australia who has been a democracy consultant for Pacific countries since the 1970s, said he often wondered why the Solomon Islands’ main airport — known in World War II as Henderson Field, the site of major battles against the Japanese — had never been rehabbed with American technological expertise.
Honiara International Airport in the Solomon Islands. It was a U.S. military site in World War II.
Any American who passes through Honiara is likely to ask that question. It’s one of many places in the region where the United States is missing in action beyond signs for Coca-Cola.
“The United States doesn’t have a significant presence in the Pacific at all,” said Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in security studies at Massey University in New Zealand. “I’m always shocked that in Washington they think they have a significant presence when they just don’t.”
American officials point out that the United States does have big military bases in Guam, along with close ties to countries like the Marshall Islands. And in February, Antony J. Blinken became the first secretary of state in 36 years to visit Fiji, where he announced that the United States would reopen an embassy in the Solomon Islands and engage more on issues like illegal fishing and climate change.
Fiji’s acting prime minister at the time, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, called it an American return, and “a very strong philosophical commitment.” The question is whether it’s enough.
Mr. Blinken said last week that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do it.” He promised that the United States would “shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open and inclusive international system.”
But that vision in this part of the world has been slow to arrive. The Biden administration took more than a year to release its Indo-Pacific strategy, which is light on specifics and heavy on gauzy phrases (“maximally favorable”) that mostly make sense in clubby gatherings of men in dark suits with flag lapel pins.
Even Republicans and Democrats in Congress who agree that something must be done to counter China have been squabbling for 15 months over a bill to make the United States more competitive — and it still would do little, if anything, for contested places like the Pacific.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken with Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, then Fiji’s acting prime minister, in Nadi, Fiji, in February.Credit...Pool photo by Kevin Lamarque
The Latest on China: Key Things to Know
Card 1 of 4
Discontent among the population. The Chinese government’s censorship and surveillance, which the pandemic has aggravated, are pushing a small but growing group of Chinese to look for an exit. Younger Chinese in particular are embracing the view that they might need to flee the country in the pursuit of a safer and brighter future abroad.
A new trick for internet censors. To control the country’s internet, China’s censors have relied for years on practices like on deleting posts, suspending accounts and blocking keywords. Now they have turned to displaying users’ locations on social media, fueling pitched online battles that link Chinese citizens’ locations with their national loyalty.
An uncertain harvest. Chinese officials are issuing warnings that, after heavy rainfalls last autumn, a disappointing winter wheat harvest in June could drive food prices — already high because of the war in Ukraine and bad weather in Asia and the United States — further up, compounding hunger in the world’s poorest countries.
Compared to China’s presence in the region, it is nowhere near an equivalent surge. In Fiji, for example, the Chinese Embassy is centrally located and well staffed with officials who speak better English than their predecessors and often appear in local news media.
The American Embassy, by contrast, sits on a hillside far from downtown Suva in a heavily fortified compound. It covers five nations (Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu), doesn’t have a full-time ambassador — President Biden nominated someone only last week — and is known for being understaffed.
Joseph Veramu, a former U.N. consultant who runs Integrity Fiji, which focuses on values like transparency, said in an interview in Suva that he had invited U.S. embassy officials to events five or six times in recent years. Only once did someone come — without saying much, and refusing to allow photos.
“I guess they must be very busy,” he said.
The Chinese Alternative
Many Pacific Island nations do not welcome another age of great-power competition. As Matthew Wale, the opposition leader in the Solomons, said in a recent interview: “We don’t want to be the grass trampled over by the elephants.”
But what they do want, and what China seems better at providing right now, is consistent engagement and capacity building.
While the United States has shown off Coast Guard vessels it is using to police illegal fishing, China is planning to build maritime transportation hubs and high-tech law enforcement centers where Chinese officers can provide expertise and equipment.
While the United States, and its allies Australia and New Zealand, offers humanitarian aid — after the tsunami in Tonga, for instance — China is offering thousands of scholarships for vocational, diplomatic and disaster-response training, along with “cooperation in meteorological observation.”
A Chinese-built road in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 2018.Credit...David Gray/Reuters
“China has always maintained that big and small countries are all equals,” Mr. Xi, the Chinese leader, said in a written message to Pacific foreign ministers on Monday. “No matter how international circumstances fluctuate, China will always be a good friend.”
Pacific Island nations now find themselves deciding how much to trust or resist that friendship. Mr. Wang has yet to gain support for the most sensitive proposals, including collaboration on customs systems and other digital operations of government. In places like Suva, where Pentecostal churches blare praise music over thunderstorms, Chinese Communism may always be eyed warily.
But Monday’s gathering in Suva was Mr. Wang’s second meeting with Pacific Island leaders in the past eight months, and more are planned. Clearly, China intends to keep emphasizing that friendship means building stuff and offering promises of prosperity, while expecting news censorship, resource access and security opportunities in exchange.
The pressing question in this part of the world is: What does friendship mean to America?
Chris Buckley contributed reporting from Sydney, Australia.
12. Would We Do Better? Hubris and Validation in Ukraine
Important analysis. We need to check our hubris and our bias and objectively assess Putin's War.
But it will be hard to convince me that quality people and leaders are NOT the most important ingredient in modern warfare.
Excerpts:
Consequently, the analysis of the Ukraine war needs to address another unasked question: What if this view that quality people and leaders are the most important ingredient in modern warfare is wrong? What if Stalin was correct that quantity has a quality all of its own? If that is the case, then the Ukrainians may need much greater assistance if they are to survive a Russian-style grinding war of attrition.
Additionally, as the United States plans for how it will compete and potentially fight China and Russia in the future, the approach should be characterized by humility and an intense desire to challenge existing assumptions, concepts, and capabilities, rather than to validate current approaches.
As it did for Russia, it could happen to us, and we need to fully understand what “it” is.
Would We Do Better? Hubris and Validation in Ukraine - War on the Rocks
The hapless Russians are flailing in Ukraine. Their poorly prepared, unprofessional soldiers are incapable of modern combined arms warfare. Even if Russian soldiers were trained and ready, the incompetent Russian officer corps — full of corrupt yes-men — is incapable of employing them effectively.
The latest evidence of Russian ineptness is the annihilation of a unit attempting to cross the Siverskyi Donets River in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs (not an unbiased source on these matters) reported that elements of a Russian brigade, detected by aerial reconnaissance, suffered heavy losses: “70 units of Russian armoured vehicles burned as a result of artillery strikes of the Armed Forces. Of the 550 servicemen in the Russian brigade, 485 were killed.”
Or so we are told. But is that really the case?
Western commentators are by and large content with this narrative and have pounced on the river-crossing fiasco as further evidence of a Russian military that continues to struggle in the face of determined resistance by well-trained and motivated Ukrainian forces. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, military experts dissected the Russian deficiencies, attributing their failure principally to inadequate preparation and bad leadership. They say this failure is one of many that “indicate problems higher in its chain of command than the battlefield level and probably indicate that senior leadership is pushing for gains that troops are unprepared to achieve.” Thus, “Russia is offering the world lessons in how not to do it, say Western combat veterans.”
What if, however, the analysts are seeing the lessons from Ukraine incorrectly, through lenses refracted by their own biases and hubris? What if the key variable is not the professionalism of the Russian military, but the nature of this war?
As we shall see, U.S. and Russian doctrines are similar for a river crossing operation and many other types of tactical and operational maneuvers. If Russia’s failure is attributable to personnel failures, then the war does not challenge current U.S. warfighting concepts and capabilities — if they are wielded by professionals. If the problem is not personnel, then U.S. approaches could be invalidated. Hence, the question: Would U.S forces do better in a war like Ukraine?
Learning to “Whelm”
This wagging of fingers at the bumbling Russian military is new. Many, if not most, military analysts thought the war in Ukraine would end quickly with a Russian fait accompli. The Red Army is in town — resistance is futile!
Many of these assessments were based on wargames involving the Baltic countries — the vulnerable eastern flank of NATO. They showed that the Russians would be in Tallinn, Estonia, and Riga, Latvia within 60 hours. This is where it was believed the Russians posed the most significant security challenge, and the games sought to understand which increases in NATO force posture would provide deterrence.
Given the geography and modest troop presence in the Baltic States, these findings were plausible. The distance from the Russian border to Riga is only about 130 miles, and the three Baltic States are essentially a rather narrow strip with Russia and Belarus directly on their borders. Additionally, the Russians have a militarized enclave in Kaliningrad, astride the Suwalki Gap, that controls land access from Poland into the Baltics. Furthermore, NATO forces in these countries, at the levels employed in the wargames, would be significantly outnumbered and outgunned by any Russian invasion.
The invasion of Ukraine is obviously not going as expected by the Western analytical community, much less by the Russians. One should not, however, forget that Ukraine is not the Baltics. Ukraine has strategic depth and substantial military forces, who have been reorganizing and training under NATO supervision since the 2014 Russian invasion. They are also receiving massive and largely unimpeded materiel support from the West.
Nevertheless, Western military analysts have now gone from being overwhelmed by Russian military power to being underwhelmed by their performance in Ukraine. Perhaps it is time to take a deep breath and simply “whelm.”
Why Has Russia Been Stymied?
Much of the analysis now is focused on identifying the causes for the surprising Russian failures, seeking to lay blame for why the Russians cannot effectively employ their sophisticated kit. The answer apparently lies in a crucial difference: The Russians are not like us.
A recent assessment by West Point’s Modern War Institute is emblematic of what is now a broad consensus view that logistical failures and the inability to conduct effective combined arms are the Achilles Heels of the Russian military. This is partly due to a lack of training and combat experience. More fundamentally, it is because their soldiers are poorly led and do not have the noncommissioned officer corps and mission command empowerment of subordinate leaders prevalent in U.S. and other Western militaries. Thus, the Ukrainian edge is that it “has been attempting to model its military on NATO and US standards, including building up its own NCO corps through engagement in programs like NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme.”
Consequently, in the words of one analysis,
the Russian military many believed to be the second strongest in the world has serious limitations. It has proven to be a facade of gleaming new tanks and planes concealing all of the performance and command problems noted above, until they had to fight.
In short, Russia has a “Potemkin Army.”
What If the Diagnosis Is Wrong?
It is hard to argue with the symptoms of Russian performance, but what if the diagnosis is wrong? What if Western militaries share a similar malady, but are failing to see it because of superficial assessments of the Russians?
In this regard, the river crossing case is particularly instructive. All of the commentators in the Wall Street Journal article emphasize the difficulty of these operations. Retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Peter DeLuca’s comments are representative: “All combat should be a highly orchestrated ballet of kinetic violence, humans, vehicles and aircraft … and a river crossing is one of the most complicated maneuvers.” Consequently, he continues, “it all has to be coordinated to be effective, and we haven’t seen the Russians do that at all in Ukraine.” A British commando engineer, Tony Spamer, also weighed in, basing his comments on his experiences in Afghanistan. “We’d have never rolled up to a site and tried to give it a go.” Instead, he explained that “his units would conduct up to seven slow-speed rehearsals at their base and then practice at speed, each time shaving minutes off the dangerous operations before deploying for action.”
The military professionals cited in the article go into detail about how they would have done this operation differently: elaborate reconnaissance, securing the far side of the river first, deception using multiple false crossing sites, using smoke to obscure the operation, etc. These are all sound doctrinal principles for a river crossing. Ironically, the article notes that this is also Russian doctrine: “Russian troops involved appear to have ignored their own military doctrine and combat manuals, launching a hasty attempt at a maneuver that requires careful planning, extensive resources and strict oversight.” The likely reason for the Russian disaster on the Siverskyi Donets River: “senior leadership is pushing for gains that troops are unprepared to achieve.”
The Russians have, however, conducted several successful river crossings of the Siverskyi Donets River to position forces for offensive operations against Izyum. These crossings enabled the Russians to posture forces for offensive operations in the region south of the river.
These crossings, as well as other successful Russian operations, receive scant media attention. Nor do Ukrainian failures figure prominently in reporting from the war. This is likely the result of a sophisticated all-media Ukrainian information campaign, reinforced by positive stories from journalists whose access is carefully managed by the Ukrainian government. This control of information is reinforced by their military’s excellent operational security. Indeed, it was the Ukrainian government that distributed the video of the botched Siverskyi Donets River crossing.
This is to be expected from the Ukrainians who are, after all, engaged in a possibly existential conflict in which international media narratives play a key role in securing support. However, those who are captivated by stories of Russian failures should think carefully about why that is, perhaps because they validate their personal competence and that of their country’s military.
The failed river crossing is portrayed as yet more evidence that the lackluster Russian performance to date in Ukraine is a failure of leadership, compounded by inadequately trained, inexperienced soldiers with steadily declining morale.
A Comforting Diagnosis for the Wrong Ailment
What is comforting about blaming the Russian failures on their practice, rather than their doctrine, is that it relieves Western militaries of any requirement to thoroughly examine their own doctrine. This is important because, as the various articles note, the doctrine for a river crossing operation is similar across militaries.
River crossing doctrine is based largely upon hard-earned lessons from World War II in Europe, when all armies faced the challenge of crossing rivers and other obstacles to maneuver. Indeed, an opposed river crossing was one of the most difficult to execute operations. Perhaps the most infamous example is the January 1944 attempt to cross the Rapido River during the Italian campaign. That operation failed in the face of determined German opposition and resulted in high American casualties. There were also successful examples, most notably the March 22, 1945, night crossing by boat of the Rhine River at Nierstein by the 5th Infantry Division, part of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army — “the first crossing of the Rhine River by boat by an invading army since Napoleon Bonaparte.” A more famous example was the earlier capture of the Ludendorf bridge over the Rhine at Remagen on March 7, 1945.
World War II was the last time the U.S. Army or the Russian Army actually crossed a river against a competent, well-armed adversary. Operations in Afghanistan were generally discretionary, and river crossings, while complex, faced little opposition there. Nor were they a critical component of an operation’s success, whereas in World War II they were, and in Ukraine they are. Hence, the Russian sense of urgency.
What Is the Ailment?
The river-crossing story highlights the real ailment afflicting both the Russians and their Western observers: chronic inexperience in offensive combat against a competent adversary that is able, in today’s description, to contest all domains in a protracted war that generates high numbers of casualties. Neither Russia nor the West has had operational or combat experiences relevant to the war in Ukraine in over a generation, if not actually since World War II.
By operational experience — I mean practice in deploying, maneuvering, and supporting large, multi-echelon formations in joint operations against a competent, well-armed enemy who is determined to fight and capable of doing so — both militaries have veteran leaders with years of combat experience. Russia has been busy with its military since the 1990s in Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, and Syria, and in other countries with its Wagner Group military contractors. The United States and many of its NATO allies are veterans of Afghanistan, and the U.S. and British militaries saw extensive service in Iraq. However, Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, the last large-scale U.S. combat operations, were against opponents who were vastly overmatched and occurred in an environment where the United States enjoyed air supremacy and total sea control.
The Ukrainian challenge is different than that facing the Russians. The Ukrainians are defending, and they have had deep experience in this type of operation in the Donbas region since the invasion in 2014. Whether or not they can take the offensive at any scale in the future remains to be seen.
The Russo-Ukrainian War, as of May 24, is only three months old, which is short by the standards of any major war. One could usefully recall that it took from July 7 to September 26 in 1941 for the German assault on the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa to reach and take Kyiv. The current war appears to be evolving into a protracted war of attrition. Therefore, the Russian strategy of limited maneuver and a heavy reliance on fires may yet be sound. They seem to be learning, as Russia analyst Michael Kofman pointed out in a recent War on the Rocks podcast. This protraction of major combat operations is also beyond the experience of serving Western officers.
At the beginning of the war, Russia’s active-duty personnel and major weapons systems allocated to the invasion significantly outnumbered that of Ukraine almost two-to-one. Accurate casualty and materiel loss data is difficult to obtain, particularly from Ukraine, where the data is understandably considered a national secret. Nevertheless, if the numbers being reported by each combatant are in the ballpark, then these running estimates show both sides are suffering significant levels of attrition, most importantly in personnel.
If this is true, then Ukraine is potentially in serious trouble if the war continues much longer. Carl von Clausewitz’s observation is as true now as it was in the 19th century: “It is of course in the nature of things that, apart from the relative strength of the two armies, a smaller force will be exhausted sooner than a larger one; it cannot run so long a course, and therefore the radius of its theater of operations is bound to be restricted.” It remains to be seen whether Russia, with its untapped, but largely untrained, manpower can maintain usable forces in the field longer than Ukraine, which is also mobilizing its reserves and volunteers.
Western militaries are also conditioned by what Jeffrey Record calls “casualty phobia.” He traces this phenomenon to the Vietnam War, but notes that its modern implications were manifested in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. His thesis is that U.S. policymakers and senior military officers believe that the “use of force in situations of optional intervention should be prepared to sacrifice even operational effectiveness for the sake of casualty avoidance” and that in the war against Serbia, “force protection was accorded priority over mission accomplishment.” To support this conclusion, Record cites then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton to support this conclusion: “The paramount lesson learned from Operation Allied Force is that the well-being of our people must remain our first priority.”
Consequently, Western militaries have focused heavily on force protection. This was possible because of the discretionary nature of most operations—the types of operations most serving military members have experienced almost exclusively during their careers. There also is an ever-present concern behind most operational decisions that the perceived public aversion to casualties could unhinge policy. This is not to say that the irregular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not brutal and deadly. They certainly were at the soldier, squad, platoon, and company levels. That said, operations rarely involved the employment of battalion or larger formations in combined arms operations.
In over 20 years of war in Afghanistan, not a single platoon position was lost in combat. Casualty levels were extraordinarily low by even Vietnam War standards and medical attention was prompt and comprehensive. Finally, combat was deadly only at the ground level; aircraft largely operated with impunity outside the range of limited adversary air defenses. Aviation losses were in low-altitude operations and almost exclusively helicopters.
The war in Ukraine has starkly demonstrated the high human costs of large-scale, high-intensity warfare. Russian casualties at the Siverskyi Donets River and in other battles show that these are wars where company, battalion, and even larger formations can be annihilated in the blink of an eye, resulting in large numbers of soldiers killed in action and wounded, as well as significant materiel losses.
Consequently, in Ukraine, we are seeing the return of the imperative for force preservation, rather than force protection. This is currently beyond the consciousness of Western militaries and current combat casualty care capacity.
Changing the mindset from “force protection” to “force preservation” borders on heresy in current Western military culture. In Ukraine, Russia is learning the necessity of force preservation the hard way — in the unforgiving crucible of combat. A reasonable question is whether or not Western governments have prepared themselves, much less their citizens, for a conflict that could result in thousands of deaths and many more casualties in just a few weeks. Would this butcher’s bill awaken the passion of the people described in Carl von Clausewitz’s On War trinity, even in countries with volunteer militaries? Could this level of casualties challenge, if not unhinge, policy?
The fact that the Russians are reconstituting units from fresh troops and remnants of units decimated in combat is the reality of protracted, high-intensity combat. Our own history from World War II shows the potential cost of peer warfare. The 1st Infantry Division, in 443 days of total combat in North Africa, Sicily, and Europe, suffered 20,659 casualties. This figure is greater than the authorized strength of 15,000 for a World War II U.S. infantry division.
Importantly, these levels of casualties in the Ukraine war also call into question the ability of Western armies to maintain adequate fighting strength in other than short wars with modest casualties. Much is being made of the Russians relying on hastily mobilized reserves to replace losses. Ironically, as has been demonstrated since the Napoleonic Wars, the levée en masse is a requirement for protracted state warfare at this level. The Russians and Ukrainians both have systems in place to conscript their citizens; the practice has been abandoned, along with its supporting infrastructure, in most Western countries. Perhaps this is a case of prudent preparation, rather than an act of desperation?
This War Is the Same, but Different
While many aspects of the Ukraine war echo past major wars, such as World War II and, to a lesser degree, the Korean War, there are several new dimensions. One in particular, likely explains the Siverskyi Donets River crossing debacle: ubiquitous surveillance of the battlefield. The Ukrainians reported that they had discovered the Russian crossing operation via aerial reconnaissance. The potential sources of this information are much more diverse and numerous now than in even the most recent conflicts. They include a wide variety of drones, commercially available satellite imagery, intelligence from Western sources, and other means.
This new reality essentially means that there is nowhere for a relatively large formation to hide. Surprise, particularly at a limited number of potential crossing points on a river, may not be possible. Thus, these types of physical deception operations may also be pointless. Finally, given the sophistication of many sensors, smoke screens may be less useful than in the past.
This new reality renders those criticizing the Russians not only wrong but dangerous. They are clinging to a doctrine that may be completely outdated in the current operational environment. That they persist in the view that Russian incompetence is mostly due to untrained and poorly motivated soldiers, led by corrupt and incompetent leaders, gives them a comfortable answer that does not invalidate their expertise or current practices.
Why Is This Dangerous?
Understandably, military experts see the war through the lens of their own experiences: their wars. Because the war in Ukraine is beyond their direct experience, many American observers rely on analogies with what they know, such as Operation Desert Storm or the initial phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Their views are rightly sought out, given the paucity of knowledge about military operations among most civilian policymakers and the broader populace. Thus, their view that the Russian failure is in execution, not doctrine, prevails.
These experts also offer comforting conclusions: The good guys, who look like us, are beating the bad guys, with our help. It is a righteous war. We would do just fine. These are also dangerous conclusions, from two perspectives.
First, they validate current U.S. approaches without looking beyond first-order explanations for Russian inadequacies to learn from them. In the parlance of how the U.S. military parses things — doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, people, facilities, and policy — the Russian military is similar in most of these areas to the U.S. military with two glaring exceptions — their obvious deficiencies in leadership and people. This both shows the validity of our doctrine, organizations, training, and materiel — both on hand and being developed for competition and potential conflict with China and Russia. There’s no need to look behind these doors if the real problem is people and leaders.
Right?
It may be true that the Russians do not have a professional all-volunteer military, a strong noncommissioned officer corps, or mission command-oriented leaders who take the initiative. Whether this last point is actually true in the U.S. military — given evidence of risk aversion in Afghanistan and Iraq — it is strongly believed to be so within the institution. In the words of then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley: “I think we’re overly centralized, overly bureaucratic, and overly risk averse, which is the opposite of what we’re going to need in any type of warfare.”
The U.S. Army in the 1970s and 1980s looked to the World War II Wehrmacht for lessons about how to fight the Soviets outnumbered and win. After all, the Germans had actually fought the Red Army. Former Nazi officers, such as Gen. Hermann Balck and Gen. Friedrich von Mellenthin, explained their system and its importance during conferences and meetings with U.S. officers and officials. Americanized versions of German professional military education practices, officer professionalism, and encouraging subordinate initiative through Auftragstactik, which became U.S. mission command, were adopted in the U.S. Army as best practices. But we should well remember that the same type of Red Army destroyed the vaunted Nazi Wehrmacht during World War II in a long, grinding war of attrition supposedly suffered from the similar centralized leadership and hastily trained soldier maladies as today.
Furthermore, a revisionist history, not unlike that of the Lost Cause narrative about the Confederate defeat in the U.S. Civil War, was peddled by the Germans. Robert Cittino wrote that they
described the Soviet army as a faceless and mindless horde, with the officers terrorizing their men into obedience and dictator Josef Stalin terrorizing the officers. It had no finesse. Its idea of the military art was to smash everything in its path through numbers, brute force, and sheer size.
Thus, just like the Union Army, “‘quantity had triumphed over quality.’ The better army lost, in other words, and the elite force vanished beneath the superior numbers of the herd.”
These perceptions shaped U.S. views about Russian forces during the Cold War and, despite being disproven in the 1990s, are echoed in assessments today. As retired Army colonel and diplomat Joel Rayburn said in an interview with the New Yorker, “A bad army was ordered to do something stupid.” While officers are now promoted based on patronage, this is not all that dissimilar from the requirement for political reliability in the Russian military in World War II. What should have been considered then and now is why the German forces were crushed by such an inferior adversary? Perhaps enough people, materiel, and an indomitable will to fight despite privations and setbacks are exactly what are really necessary to endure and win in peer warfare. Ironically, the traits exhibited by the U.S. military itself in World War II as it did its part to defeat the Axis powers. These are also the Russian traits that Tolstoy wrote about, that bested one of the most celebrated armies in history: Napoleon’s Grande Armée. They may explain the continued support of the Russian people for the war, despite Western disbelief, that Putin has framed as a war by the West against Mother Russia, and has labeled Ukrainians as “Nazis” to further evoke the Great Patriotic War.
This leads to the second danger: hubris. The unspoken implication of the Western analysis is that we would do better than the Russians because we are better than them.
Are we?
The words of Gen. James McConville, when he assumed office as Army Chief of Staff in August 2019, are not just talking points, they are deeply believed within the U.S. Army and by the other services about themselves: “Our Army — Regular, National Guard, and Reserve — is the best-trained, best-equipped, and best-led land force ever to take to the field.” McConville also gave the principal reason for why this is true: “People are always my #1 priority: Our Army’s people are our greatest strength and our most important weapon system.” Given these deeply held convictions, it is not surprising that militaries that do not share U.S. approaches would fall short on the battlefield.
These views are dangerous in Western assessments of the Ukrainian military. Currently, the prevailing narrative is that the Ukrainian edge is that they have evolved into a modern Western military, trained for over a decade in Western methods. They are professionals. Therefore, they will prevail. Just as we would. Again, nothing to learn here.
However, the actual evidence is unclear; the assessments of the prowess of Ukraine’s military may be wishful thinking and hubris. The title of a Wall Street Journal article epitomizes this view, saying it all came down to “years of NATO training.”
One should recall that Western initiatives to reform the Ukrainian military did not even begin until after the 2014 Russian invasion. Although they have progressed, many of the senior officers were raised in the Soviet system. When I visited the National Defense University in Kyiv in 1996 on an exchange visit as the director of academic affairs at our National University, all of the senior leaders were former Soviet officers. Some were also Russian citizens who chose to stay in Ukraine because there was nothing in Russia to go home to after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Consequently, a deeply entrenched Soviet-style bureaucracy and training model permeated the Ukrainian military. Thus, their rehabilitation is fundamentally a bottom-to-top institution rebuilding and culture-changing endeavor that will take time. In particular, initiatives to create a merit-based and proficient officer and noncommissioned officer corps are decades-long efforts that are just taking root at the lower- and mid-levels of the Ukrainian military. Consequently, many of the tactics above the small unit look more Russian than American, as does most of the equipment.
An indication that there is some way to go beyond the NATO training is that there is little evidence that the Ukrainians are executing joint and combined arms offensive operations. This capability will be important if the transition from the defense and attempt offensive operations to restore territory lost to Russia. Furthermore, Ukraine also appears to be ceding ground in the Donbas to a slow, grinding Russian advance.
Consequently, the analysis of the Ukraine war needs to address another unasked question: What if this view that quality people and leaders are the most important ingredient in modern warfare is wrong? What if Stalin was correct that quantity has a quality all of its own? If that is the case, then the Ukrainians may need much greater assistance if they are to survive a Russian-style grinding war of attrition.
Additionally, as the United States plans for how it will compete and potentially fight China and Russia in the future, the approach should be characterized by humility and an intense desire to challenge existing assumptions, concepts, and capabilities, rather than to validate current approaches.
As it did for Russia, it could happen to us, and we need to fully understand what “it” is.
David E. Johnson, Ph.D., is a retired Army colonel. He is a principal researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and an adjunct scholar at the Modern War Institute at West Point. From 2012 to 2014 he founded and directed the Chief of Staff of the Army Strategic Studies Group for Gen. Raymond T. Odierno.
Image: Ukrainian Airborne Command via ArmyInform
13. Repacking Pandora’s Box: Managing the Dangers of Weapons Proliferation in Postconflict Ukraine
This will be a challenge. And as long as the threat from Russia remains even if all Russian forces are withdrawn from Ukraine the people are not likely to want to give up their weapons willingly. Of course Stingers are not something the average person should keep on the wall in the garage.
But we need to anticipate the problems and get proactive. Perhaps all export weapons (and anything that is software based) should have some kind of kill switch that can be activated when conflict is over or when weapons fall into the wrong hands .
Repacking Pandora’s Box: Managing the Dangers of Weapons Proliferation in Postconflict Ukraine - Modern War Institute
These weapons have proven essential to Ukraine’s fight for its freedom. In the wrong hands, however, they pose serious risks: MANPADS, for example, could just as easily be used against a civilian airliner, a nightmare scenario for many counterterrorism experts. Given the myriad armed actors in Ukraine, keeping these weapons out of the wrong hands will prove a daunting challenge—one that the international community should start thinking about now.
Will Past Become Prologue? Advanced Weapons and the Historical Dangers of Proliferation
Due Diligence and Prior Planning
At first glance, it may seem counterintuitive that conversations about active irregular warfare contexts, in which urgent defense and humanitarian needs loom large, should include discussions on disarmament. There is no doubt that Ukraine desperately needs all the military aid available to help it defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Today, however, conflicts do not simply end—actors disarm, rearm, and reorient as a result of combined nationalistic and ideological beliefs, systematic exclusion from alternate forms of development and livelihood opportunities, and the fact that often their most marketable skill in such settings has become their ability to make and sustain violence. Disarming those who have just watched their country destroyed by foreign invaders (who most assuredly do not plan to disarm themselves) represents an understandably unappealing proposition, and will require negotiation, security guarantees, and the professionalization of Ukrainian security forces. The last point is particularly important given the fact that the level of professionalization will inform Ukraine’s ability to manage domestic threats before they become international ones. Such assurances will be the outcome of extended negotiation and training, which is why the time to begin those dialogues is now. Disarmament efforts also require systematic assessment and institutionalization of lessons learned for future scenarios. Finally, international military observers and agencies will also need to identify foreign legions, volunteer battalions, territorial defense units, militias, and partisan groups, many of which have acquired small arms and light weapons.
Specifically, donor nations should maintain as much control and tracking of their weapons as possible in order to ensure their recovery once the conflict concludes. Antitank guided missiles and MANPADS should only be handed over to Ukrainian forces with strict end-user agreements that prevent subsequent sales and require return of the weapons once requested by the donor nation. Such agreements can also stipulate which elements of the Ukrainian forces are allowed to receive weapons, thereby prohibiting their issuance to formations suspected of extremist ideology or violations of the laws of war. Current US legislation for the provision of military aid to Ukraine expressly prohibits the use of such equipment by the neofascist elements of the Azov Battalion. Additionally, such agreements can stipulate requirements for periodic inventorying of weapons supplies and the provision of such records to the donor country with the understanding that this will facilitate later recovery of unused munitions. Finally, donor nation intelligence services can, as the CIA did in Afghanistan, actively track and seek to recover weapons following the cessation of hostilities.
A multifaceted disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration approach for weapons supplied to the Ukrainians should already be underway. And it reinforces the need for global support in developing a Ukrainian-led plan to rebuild the country. This plan should include resources dedicated to compensating individuals who return various weapon systems (above market rates) and to education and training opportunities so that former fighters have incentives to return to the workplace.
It is no small task to keep the right weapons in the right hands for the right reasons, in large part because what is “right” is highly subjective. And such determinations can change from one day to the next in highly fluid contexts like Ukraine, which are characterized by ambiguity and uncertainty. But the difficulty of the task does not negate its necessity. If the international community fails to address the proliferation of weapons from Ukraine, those weapons might contribute to regional insecurity, as occurred in the aftermath of the Libyan intervention in 2011. The flow of military equipment left unsecured following the fall of the Qaddafi regime subsequently played a critical role in providing key military capabilities to transnational opposition groups rebelling against governments in Mali, Niger, Chad, and elsewhere in the region. The international community would do well to consider these issues now, learning the lessons of the past, in the hope that history will not repeat itself.
Lieutenant Colonel Doug Livermore is currently serving as the deputy commander of a deployed Army National Guard special operations detachment. In his civilian role, he is the director of special programs for the deputy under secretary of the Navy, the national director for external communications for the Special Forces Association, and a fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative. You can follow him on Twitter (@Dolivermore) and connect on LinkedIn.
Dr. Erin K. McFee is a UKRI future leaders fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science Latin America and Caribbean Centre, a fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, and a researcher at the Office for Military-Affiliated Communities at the University of Chicago. You can learn more about her work at erinmcfee.com and her UKRI-funded initiative at trustafterbetrayal.org, follow her on Twitter (@erinmcfee), and connect on LinkedIn.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, or that of any organization the authors are affiliated with, including the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Office for Military-Affiliated Communities at the University of Chicago.
Image: An NLAW antitank guided missile system at the International Center for Peacekeeping and Security of the National Academy of Land Forces, Lviv, Ukraine. (credit: nicktys, via depositphotos.com)
14. Top Gun reinstates Taiwanese flag on Maverick's jacket after outcry
Top Gun reinstates Taiwanese flag on Maverick's jacket after outcry
Top Gun fires a warning at China by reinstating Taiwanese flag on Maverick's jacket after its removal for trailer provoked outcry
- In the 1986 original, Tom Cruise wore a jacket featuring Taiwan and Japan flags
- The sequel's 2019 trailer saw them removed, sparking fury among fans
- The flags have now been restored after Chinese production film pulled out
PUBLISHED: 11:23 EDT, 30 May 2022 | UPDATED: 11:23 EDT, 30 May 2022
Daily Mail · by Jack Newman For Mailonline · May 30, 2022
Top Gun: Maverick has risked angering China by restoring the Taiwanese flag on the back of Tom Cruise's jacket in the new blockbuster.
In the original 1986 classic, Lieutenant Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell wears a leather bomber jacket featuring patches on the back, commemorating his father's battleship tours to Japan and Taiwan in 1963 to 1964.
But when the trailer for the highly-anticipated sequel was released in 2019, the flags had been mysteriously removed.
Top Gun: Maverick has evaded Chinese censors and restored the Taiwanese flag on the back of Tom Cruise's jacket (pictured)
In the 2019 trailer, the flags of Taiwan and Japan were removed from Maverick's leather bomber jacket
There was speculation the decision was influenced by Chinese film distributor and production company Tencent Pictures, who were part producing the aviation romp.
The flags had been replaced by random symbols in an apparent kowtow to the Communist nation's political demands.
But when the film was released this week, fans were relieved to see the flags had been restored, with one scene even featuring a close-up shot.
Chinese fans were left unimpressed, with one saying on social media: 'Fine, don't take our money. We will watch the pirated version.'
The move is a rare U-turn for Hollywood and has not been explained by the film's producers.
Ho Siu Bun, a film critic based in Hong Kong, told VICE World News: 'It is unprecedented. Major film studios have never been shy about pandering to the Chinese market.
A shot from the original movie show's Tom Cruise's character wearing a jacket emblazoned with both flags
'And even if it is a simple scene, editing is very costly. So no one knows why they changed it back.'
Tencent ended up pulling out of the film, fearing the film's themes and closeness with the US military could upset the ruling Communist Party, and the production company is uncredited in the sequel.
During the first screenings in Taiwan, audiences cheers and clapped when their flag unexpectedly appeared.
China does not recognise Taiwan as an autonomous nation and it is officially known as the Republic of China.
Inclusion of Taiwan's flag would be seen as a challenge to China's rule, with the flag even censored by Apple on its iPhones in the country.
China remains the biggest film box office, raking in $7.3billion in ticket sales last year, a third of total global sales.
Hollywood has been increasingly courting the market and relying on Chinese funding for its big productions in recent years.
In 2010, after a script was leaked for a remake of the Cold War film 'Red Dawn' featuring China instead of the Soviet Union as invaders of the continental U.S., Chinese state-run media railed against attempts to 'demonize' Beijing.
In the end, MGM spent some $1 million digitally erasing evidence of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, frame by frame, and substituting in North Koreans and Russians in their place.
Earlier this year, China radically edited the original ending of the cult classic Fight Club to comply with the country's restrictive censorship rules.
Streaming platform Tencent Video hosted the 1999 David Fincher film but transformed the anarchist, anti-capitalist message that made the film a global hit.
Instead of multiple buildings exploding, as in the original ending, the authorities win in the censored version.
Top Gun: Maverick has not yet been released in China.
Daily Mail · by Jack Newman For Mailonline · May 30, 2022
15. Ukraine troops hold out as Russia assaults Sievierodonetsk wasteland
Ukraine troops hold out as Russia assaults Sievierodonetsk wasteland
- Summary
- Companies
- Russian forces advance slowly on Sievierodonetsk city centre
- Thousands of civilians trapped in Sievierodonetsk
- EU resolves impasse over Russian oil ban
KYIV, May 31 (Reuters) - Ukrainian forces were still holding out in Sievierodonetsk on Tuesday, resisting Russia's all-out assault to capture a bombed-out wasteland that Moscow has made the principal objective of its invasion in recent days.
Both sides said Russian forces now controlled between a third and half of the city. Russia's separatist proxies acknowledged that capturing it was taking longer than hoped, despite one of the biggest ground assaults of the war.
Western military analysts say Moscow has drained manpower and firepower from across the rest of the front to concentrate on Sievierodonetsk, hoping a massive offensive on the small industrial city will deliver something Russia can call a victory in one of its stated aims in the east.
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"We can say already that a third of Sievierodonetsk is already under our control," Russia's TASS state news agency quoted Leonid Pasechnik, the leader of the pro-Moscow Luhansk People's Republic, as saying.
Fighting was raging in the city, but Russian forces were not advancing as rapidly as might have been hoped, he said, claiming that pro-Moscow forces wanted to "maintain the city's infrastructure" and were moving slowly because of caution around chemical factories.
The Ukrainian head of the city administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, said the Russians now controlled half of the city.
"Unfortunately ... the city has been split in half. But at the same time the city still defends itself. It is still Ukrainian," he said, advising those still trapped inside to stay in cellars.
Ukraine says Russia has destroyed all of the city's critical infrastructure with unrelenting bombardment, followed by wave after wave of mass ground assault involving huge numbers of casualties.
Thousands of residents remain trapped. Russian forces are advancing towards the city centre, but slowly, and have not succeeded in encircling the Ukrainian defenders holding out there.
Regional governor Serhiy Gaidai told Ukrainian television there did not appear to be a risk of Ukrainian forces being encircled, though they could ultimately be forced to retreat across the Siverskiy Donets river to Lysychansk, the twin city on the opposite bank.
Stryuk, head of the city administration, said evacuating civilians was no longer possible. Authorities cancelled efforts to evacuate residents after an attack on Monday that killed a French journalist.
Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council aid agency which had long operated out of Sievierodonetsk, said he was "horrified" by its destruction.
"We fear that up to 12,000 civilians remain caught in crossfire in the city, without sufficient access to water, food, medicine or electricity. The near-constant bombardment is forcing civilians to seek refuge in bomb shelters and basements, with only few precious opportunities for those trying to escape."
1/6
A local resident walks next to a building destroyed by a Russian military strike, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Bakhmut, in Donetsk Region, Ukraine May 29, 2022. REUTERS/Serhii Nuzhnenko
Elsewhere on the battlefield, there were few reports of major action on Tuesday. In the east, Ukraine says Moscow is trying to assault other areas along the main front, including pressing towards the city of Solviansk. In the south, Ukraine claimed in recent days to have pushed back Russian forces on a bank of the Inhulets River that forms a border of Russian-held Kherson province.
OIL BAN
After having failed to capture Kyiv, been driven out of northern Ukraine and made only limited progress elsewhere in the east, Moscow has concentrated the full force of its armed might in recent days on Sievierodonetsk, which had a pre-war population of around 110,000.
Victory there and in adjoining Lysychansk would let Moscow claim control of Luhansk province, one of two eastern regions it claims on behalf of separatist proxies, partly achieving one of President Vladimir Putin's stated war aims.
But the huge battle has come at a massive cost, which some Western military experts say could hurt Russia's ability to fend off eventual Ukrainian counterattacks elsewhere, regardless of who wins the battle for Sievierodonetsk.
"Putin is now hurling men and munitions at the last remaining major population centre in (Luhansk), Sievierodonetsk, as if taking it would win the war for the Kremlin. He is wrong," the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War think tank wrote this week.
"When the Battle of Severodonetsk ends, regardless of which side holds the city, the Russian offensive at the operational and strategic levels will likely have culminated, giving Ukraine the chance to restart its operational-level counteroffensives to push Russian forces back."
The EU on Monday agreed its toughest sanctions against Russia since the war began, for the first time targeting Russian sales of oil, by far Moscow's main source of income.
The EU will now ban import of Russian oil by sea. Officials said that would halt two-thirds of Russia's oil exports to Europe at once, and 90% by the end of this year as Germany and Poland also phase out imports by pipeline. read more
Hungary, which relies on Russian oil through a huge Soviet-era pipeline, secured an exemption, though EU officials said they expected this would be "temporary". read more
Ukraine says the sanctions are taking too long and are still too full of holes to stop Russia: "If you ask me, I would say far too slow, far too late and definitely not enough," said Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office.
Moscow, meanwhile, has switched off gas supplies to several EU countries in a dispute over how to receive payments, although the moves so far, during warm months when demand is lower, have yet to have the severest impact. On Tuesday, Russia switched off the main Dutch gas buyer, GasTerra, which said it would find supplies elsewhere. read more
Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February claiming Moscow aimed to disarm and "denazify" its neighbour. Ukraine and its Western allies call this a baseless pretext for a war to seize territory.
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Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff; Editing by Stephen Coates and Alison Williams
16. Is America heading for civil war? (Reviews of Three Books)
Is America heading for civil war?
National Guard troops outside the Capitol in Washington, January 14 2021, days after the storming of the building by supporters of Donald Trump © New York Times/Redux/eyevine
In the summer of 2015, America caught a glimpse of how its future could unfold. The US military conducted a routine exercise in the south that triggered a cascade of conspiracy theories, particularly in Texas. Some believed the manoeuvre was the precursor to a Chinese invasion; others thought it would coincide with a massive asteroid strike. The exercise, called Jade Helm 15, stood for “homeland eradication of local militants”, according to one of the right’s dark fantasy sites. Greg Abbot, Texas’s Republican governor, took these ravings seriously. He ensured that the 1,200 federal troops were closely monitored by the armed Texas National Guard. In that bizarre episode, which took place a year before Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president, we see the germs of an American break-up.
As with any warning of impending civil war, the very mention of another American one sounds impossibly alarmist — like persistent warnings from chief Vitalstatistix in the Asterix comic series that the sky was about to fall on Gaulish heads. America’s dissolution has often been mispredicted.
Yet a clutch of recent books make an alarmingly persuasive case that the warning lights are flashing redder than at any point since 1861. The French philosopher Voltaire once said: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” As the University of California’s Barbara Walter shows in her bracing manual, How Civil Wars Start, US democracy today is checking all the wrong boxes.
Even before Trump triumphed in the 2016 presidential election, political analysts were warning about the erosion of democracy and drift towards autocracy. The paralysing divisions caused by Trump’s failed putsch of January 6, 2020, has sent it into dangerous new territory. Polls show that most Republicans believe, without evidence, that the election was stolen by Democrats backed by the so-called “deep state”, the Chinese government, rigged Venezuelan voting machines, or a feverish combination thereof.
In This Will Not Pass, a book by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, Joe Biden is quoted telling a senior Democrat: “I certainly hope [my presidency] works out. If it doesn’t I’m not sure we’re going to have a country.” That a US president could utter something so apocalyptic without raising too many eyebrows shows how routine such dread has become.
In 1990, the CIA correctly forecast that Yugoslavia would break up within two years because its politics was hardening into ethnic factions. In 2022, America’s two parties are increasingly sorted along racial and identity lines. Republicans are white, small town and rural — the party now holds just one truly urban congressional district in New York’s Staten Island. Democrats are now almost entirely urban and multi-ethnic. The habits of a normal democracy in which the losing party forms a loyal opposition are vanishing.
More than a third of Republicans and Democrats today believe violence is justified to achieve their political ends, compared with less than a tenth apiece in 2017, the year Trump took office. His rhetoric opened the floodgates to separatist feelings. When one party loses, its voters feel as though their America is being occupied by a foreign power. America, Walter points out, has become “a factionalised anocracy” — the halfway state between autocracy and democracy — that is “quickly approaching the open insurgency stage”. Violence stalks America’s political language. As Stephen Marche, a Canadian novelist, writes in The Next Civil War, a richly imagined jeremiad about America’s coming disunion, the country “is one spectacular act of violence away from a national crisis”.
How did America reach this pass? Take your pick of grim milestones — Newt Gingrich’s scorched earth approach to his term as polarising speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling that handed the 2000 election to George W Bush, America’s unhinged response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI’s fateful probe into Hillary Clinton’s almost comically trivial emails, Democrats attributing Trump’s win to Vladimir Putin, Trump’s attempt to uproot every guardrail within reach, or Congress’s failure to unite on the need to punish a violent assault on itself. America’s democratic backsliding is like Ernest Hemingway’s famous observation on going bankrupt: “Gradually then suddenly.”
Burns and Martin provide a diligently researched and often illuminating chronicle of America’s recent political degeneration. Much of it boils down to the absence of character. As the dust settled on last year’s Capitol Hill assault — composed of an almost entirely white rabble of retired policemen, nurses, property developers, doctors, lawyers and small-business owners carrying confederate flags, nooses, Smith & Wesson handguns, stun devices, firecrackers, handcuffs, chemicals and knives — Republican leaders breathed a sigh of relief. The Capitol may have been littered with glass; its corridors smeared with fecal matter. But the Trumpian spell had been broken. This “despicable human being” had “finally discredited himself”, said Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader. Kevin McCarthy, his counterpart in the House, said Trump’s actions were “atrocious and totally wrong”.
Three weeks later, McConnell voted to acquit Trump for what he had called a “failed insurrection”. McCarthy backtracked even more, heading to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida retreat, to renew his fealty. In the intervening weeks, he had concluded that his only pathway to becoming Speaker was with the blessings of the disgraced ex-president. “Trump was on life support,” said Adam Kinzinger, one of just 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him. “He [McCarthy] resuscitated him.” The authors brand McCarthy as “perhaps the most ingratiating figure” in the Republican party. There is fierce competition for that honour; South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, among others, is hard on McCarthy’s heels.
It was not absurd to hope that Biden’s folksy touch would lower America’s fever. It was nevertheless forlorn. America is even more bitterly separated into imagined rival nations that it was under Trump. Biden did not help matters by promising to restore bipartisan normalcy — a pious hope shredded under Barack Obama — while also vowing to be a transformative Franklin Roosevelt-style president. With a 50:50 Senate, this was never realistic. Joe Manchin, the obstinate West Virginia Democrat, who has blocked Biden’s big reform bills, did not hold the balance of power in FDR’s Washington.
Democrats thus retreated into their by-now routine ethnic division of spoils. Biden treated his cabinet selection as an “identity politics Rubik’s Cube”, write Burns and Martin. Far from dangling the hope of a new generation, his vice-president, Kamala Harris, has been “fixated on real and perceived snubs in ways the West Wing found tedious,” they write. Their party faces likely decimation in this year’s midterm elections in November, which will set up a crushingly depressing 2024 rematch between Biden and Trump. A popular Trumpian T-shirt says: “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat”.
More seriously, the number of rightwing militias in the US has exploded in recent years. White supremacist sentiment has also penetrated US law enforcement agencies, says Walter. The numbers of armed potential insurgents is a multiple of the left insurgent groups, such as the Black Panthers, and Symbionese Liberation Army, that caused such panic in the early 1970s.
How would a 21st century US civil war actually happen? Nothing like the first time. Unlike the 1860s, when America was neatly split between the slave-owning confederates and the north, today’s separatist geography is marbled. Unlike then, America’s armed forces today cannot be outgunned. Even in a country that, uniquely, has more privately owned guns than people (at more than 400mn), many of which are military-grade, it would be no contest. Yet America, of all countries, knows that asymmetric warfare is unwinnable. Think of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Think, also, of how America was born — its revolutionary army lost almost every encounter with Britain’s vastly better equipped redcoats. Yet, with the help of the French, America’s guerrilla forces prevailed. Now substitute today’s federal army for the redcoats. Armies have a terrible record of pacifying restive populations. Every casualty breeds 10 more rebels.
“They will slip in and out of the shadows, communicating on message boards and encrypted networks,” writes Walter. “They will meet in small groups in vacuum-repair shops along retail strips. In desert clearings along Arizona’s border, in public parks in southern California, or in the snowy woods of Michigan, where they will train to fight.”
The Democrats face likely decimation in this year’s midterm elections in November, which will set up a crushingly depressing 2024 rematch between Biden and Trump
Walters’ book lays out America’s possible roads to dystopia with impressive concision. Her synthesis of the various barometers of a country heading to civil war is hard to refute when applied to the US. But she mars her case with a number of basic errors. Nowhere near 60 per cent of the world’s countries are “full” democracies, as she claims. Nor is India a “strictly secular democracy”. Its constitution celebrates rather than shuns all religions. Her book is nevertheless indispensable.
None of the writers offer a simple antidote for America’s continued democratic slide. Their remedies — find ways of making multi-ethnic democracy work, get money out of politics, teach civics to American children — have the air of wishful afterthoughts, rather than serious game plans.
Though Canadian, Marche is poignantly aware of the degree to which global liberty rides on what happens to America. In spite of its inaugural hypocrisies, no other nation was founded on the creed that it could live with — and indeed thrive on — fundamental differences between strangers. Marche concludes with these stirring words: “It would be a lie, an evil lie, to say that the American experiment did not give the world a glorious and transcendent vision of human beings: worth affirming in their differences, vital in their contradiction. That is still a vision of human existence worth fighting for.”
Yet the warning signs have become impossible to ignore. At the end of their book, Burns and Martin quote Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s former prime minister, on America’s tendency to self-sooth with familiar homilies. They are no longer helpful. “You know that great line that you hear all the time: ‘This is not us. This is not America?’” Turnbull asks. “You know what? It is actually.”
This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, Simon & Schuster, $29.99, 480 pages
The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future by Stephen Marche, Simon and Schuster, £20, 239 pages
Edward Luce is the FT US national editor
17. Regime Change: Favorite Pastime Of United States – OpEd
A view from Pakistan. Is the US complicit in Pakistan's recent change? The author uses history to support his argument. He provides his email for those who would like to respond to him.
Regime Change: Favorite Pastime Of United States – OpEd
It may be recalled that when Imran Khan’s government was removed through ‘non-confidence vote’ he openly alleged that the United States was behind this. Although, the US administration categorically denies having played any role, many in Pakistan don’t accept the denials.
This morning I was lucky enough to find an article an article by by Lindsey A. O’Rourke published in The Washington Post as back as December 23, 2016 which stated that the United States tried to change governments of other countries 72 times during the Cold War era.
The CIA has concluded with “high confidence” that Russia intervened covertly during the presidential election to promote Donald Trump’s candidacy. They based this assessment on the discovery that Russian security agencies had hacked the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign — and had released selected Democratic documents to WikiLeaks to undermine Clinton’s candidacy.
However, it must be remembered that The US has a long history of hacking other democracies. If true, Russia’s actions are reminiscent of Cold War covert political warfare, with an Internet-era twist. Following are six key things the research uncovered about those efforts.
Obviously, studying covert interventions is tough. By definition, the operations are designed so that the intervening state can plausibly deny it was involved, deflecting blame onto other actors. It’s impossible to get reliable cross-national data, given how widely countries vary in their rules about government transparency and freedom of the press. Add in flourishing conspiracy theories, and it can be hard to separate historical fact from fiction.
To tackle these problems, the writer has spent the past several years investigating allegations of US-backed covert regime changes during the Cold War. She has done so by going through relevant documents from the National Archives, National Security Archive and presidential libraries. Fortunately, the combination of the US government’s declassification rules, congressional inquiries and journalistic coverage has revealed a great deal about these operations.
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1. From 1947 to 1989, the United States tried to change other governments in other countries 72 times
That’s a remarkable number. It includes 66 covert operations and six overt ones. These 72 US operations were during the Cold War — meaning that, in most cases, the Soviet Union was covertly supporting anti-US forces on the other side. However, a look at these US actions allows us to survey the covert activities of a major power, so we can glean insight into such interventions’ causes and consequences.
2. Most covert efforts to replace another country’s government failed
During the Cold War, for instance, 26 of the United States’ covert operations successfully brought a US-backed government to power; the remaining 40 failed.
Success depended in large part on the choice of covert tactics. Not a single US-backed assassination plot during this time actually killed their intended target, although two foreign leaders — South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem and the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo — were killed by foreign intermediaries without Washington’s blessing during US-backed coups.
Similarly, covert actions to support militant groups trying to topple a foreign regime nearly always failed. Of 36 attempts, only five overthrew their targets. Sponsoring coups was more successful; nine out of 14 attempted coups put the US-backed leaders in power.
3. Meddling in foreign elections is the most successful covert tactic
The author found 16 cases in which Washington sought to influence foreign elections by covertly funding, advising and spreading propaganda for its preferred candidates, often doing so beyond a single election cycle. Of these, the US-backed parties won their elections 75% of the time.
Of course, it is impossible to say whether the US-supported candidates would have won their elections without the covert assistance; many were leading in the polls before the US intervention. However, as the CIA’s head of the Directorate of Intelligence, Ray S. Cline once put it, the key to a successful covert regime change is “supplying just the right bit of marginal assistance in the right way at the right time.”
In an election where Clinton won the popular vote by 2.86 million but lost the electoral college, thanks to 77,744 voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
It’s impossible to say for sure, but the numbers were certainly close. If Clinton had replicated Obama’s 2012 turnout in those three swing states, she would have won them by more than half a million votes. Even if she had been able to convert just one percent of these states’ Trump voters, she would have won by a combined 55,000 votes.
The Clinton campaign undoubtedly had many strikes against it: high unfavorability ratings, inaccurate polling, FBI Director James B. Comey’s letter and strategic mishaps. Still, Russia’s covert campaign probably compounded these problems. Thanks to WikiLeaks’s slow trickle of hacked emails, the news cycle throughout October was flooded with embarrassing anti-Clinton stories, preventing her from building momentum after the debates.
4. Regime changes rarely work out as the intervening states expect
A Trump presidency might not be as much of a boon for Russia as hoped or feared. Clinton warned in the third presidential debate that Putin “would rather have a puppet as president of the United States.”
However, as the writer showed in a recent International Security article with Alexander Downes, leaders installed via regime change generally don’t act as puppets for long. Once in power, the new leaders find that acting at their foreign backers’ behest brings significant domestic opposition. They therefore tend to moderate their policies or turn against the foreign backer completely. In fact, there are already reports that the Kremlin is feeling “buyer’s remorse” over Trump’s victory, given his unpredictability.
5. Covert regime change can devastate the target countries
Author’s research found that after a nation’s government was toppled, it was less democratic and more likely to suffer civil war, domestic instability and mass killing, at the very least, citizens lost faith in their governments.
Even if Russia didn’t make the difference in electing Trump, it successfully undermined confidence in US political institutions and news media.
As historian Timothy Snyder pointed out, “If democratic procedures start to seem shambolic, then democratic ideas will seem questionable as well. And so America would become more like Russia, which is the general idea. If Trump wins, Russia wins. But if Trump loses and people doubt the outcome, Russia also wins.”
6. The best antidote to subterfuge is transparency
States intervene covertly so that they don’t have to be held accountable for their actions. Amid reports that Russian hackers have been emboldened by the success of the DNC hack, exposing Moscow’s hand is the first step toward deterring future attacks against the United States and upcoming elections in Germany, France and the Netherlands. It may also be the best way to dispel disinformation and restore faith in US democratic institutions at a time when 55% of Americans say they are troubled by Russian interference into the election,
The United States is beginning this effort. Congress has announced bipartisan investigations and Obama ordered a comprehensive report on covert foreign interference into US presidential elections going back to the 2008 election.
Given how serious these allegations are, and especially considering that President-elect Trump rejects the intelligence community’s consensus conclusion, releasing these reports publicly before the inauguration could help set US democracy right.
Shabbir H. Kazmi
Shabbir H. Kazmi is an economic analyst from Pakistan. He has been writing for local and foreign publications for about quarter of a century. He maintains the blog ‘Geo Politics in South Asia and MENA’. He can be contacted at shkazmipk@gmail.com
18. ‘Real courage’: Remembering the OSS commandos who helped defeat the Nazis in Southern France
‘Real courage’: Remembering the OSS commandos who helped defeat the Nazis in Southern France
Jamie Jamison gently touches a commemorative stele that marks the area where her great uncle died in 1944 during a visit to the site near Le Rialet, France, May 28, 2022. Jamison is the great niece of Bernard Gautier, one of the two Office of Strategic Services men killed during a firefight with German troops. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
CASTRES, France — On June 6, 1944, U.S. troops launched the famous D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
But the fight did not stop on the beaches of Normandy.
A lesser known but outsized contribution to the war was made by the men of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) who parachuted into the rural highlands of Southern France near Toulouse to help France’s resistance fighters in their struggle against the Nazis.
From Friday through Sunday, a group of French and American visitors headed for sites in the villages of Brassac, Boissezon, Le Vintrou and Lautrec to honor the OSS officers of Operational Group “Patrick,” or OG PAT, who parachuted behind enemy lines in 1944 to join the fight.
The visit marked the 80th anniversary of the founding of the OSS in 1942 and was spearheaded by collaboration between American expat Meredith Wheeler and Cyril Pefaure, a member of France’s Federal Union of Veterans Affairs and retired French special forces veteran.
At front left, retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Jim Jamison leads a flag honor guard formation for a ceremony commemorating fallen resistance fighters and U.S. special operators killed during World War II, in Le Rialet, France, May 28, 2022. Jamison accompanied his wife Jamie, who is the grand niece of an Office of Strategic Services member killed while fighting German troops. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
From left, retired French Adjudant Cyril Pefaure, Sergent-Cecile Girardi, Meredith Wheeler and retired U.S. Air Force Col. Pierre Oury stand and salute for a moment of silence at a memorial for fallen U.S. soldiers and French resistance troops killed during World War II in Le Rialet, France, May 28, 2022. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Wheeler, who has lived in the region for almost 20 years and has written about the instrumental role of OSS operations during WWII, came across the story of the OSS after being asked to represent her nation and carry the U.S. flag during local commemoration events.
“I saw a commemorative stele naming two Americans with very French-sounding names. That made me wonder what happened here,” Wheeler said. “I knew there were no large battles fought here by American forces. I had no idea and was completely in the dark!”
A former journalist, Wheeler said she got curious and learned that the team’s story was not well documented.
“They jumped out of their aircraft at low altitude, only guided by the moonlight, into enemy territory not knowing what was ahead for them. I admired the courage, guts and determination, and their story drew me in.”
Though the French resistance had been fighting back against the Nazis for more than a year, American OSS operators and British specialists deployed together and recruited and trained locals to better fight a “shadow war” against the increasingly demoralized German forces, according to the nonprofit OSS Society.
Local men had been drafted by the Nazis and taken into forced labor camps in Germany, supporting the war effort, Wheeler said. To evade the work camps, some hid from the Germans on remote farms and in the mountains.
“They were not trained warriors,” Wheeler said. “They were farm boys, bakers and bankers.”
The OSS missions supporting civilian resistance laid the foundation for what would later become the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. But during the war, the newly formed OSS had a broadly defined mission well beyond the scope of intelligence collection. Much of its unconventional guerilla combat skills flowed into today’s military special operations.
During the memorial events, various French veterans’ groups laid wreaths at the stele marking the hilltop landing zone where the team first touched down.
A War Department identification card for then-1st Lt. Conrad LaGueux is on display at Le Militarial museum in Boissezon, France, May 27, 2022. LaGueux led a team of Office of Strategic Services parachute team to fight alongside French resistance fighters during World War II. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Night jump
Shortly after midnight on Aug. 7, 1944, an American commando team of 15 men parachuted from a British Short Stirling bomber into southern France’s Black Mountains. The team was commanded by 22-year-old Lt. Conrad LaGueux, who later became a legendary agent for the CIA and led evacuation efforts in Saigon.
To break through the excited nervousness and occasional bouts of fear during their flight from a base in Algeria, the young officer suggested they sing familiar songs to take courage, Wheeler said, citing the written memoirs of one of the paratroopers.
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, Yankee Doodle do or die ...” their voices rang over the droning engines.
After surviving a barrage of German anti-aircraft fire, the team reached the landing zone and hooked up to the static line. This was the moment they trained for. Jumping at low altitude, below 500 feet, their khaki chutes opened, slowing their descent toward the dark hills below.
Arriving within two months after D-Day cemented American foothold on French soil, their task was to pave the way for Operation Dragoon, the allied invasion along France’s Mediterranean coast which was to open an additional pressure front against Germany.
To remember this courageous leap into danger that started the mission, Pefaure organized a commemorative parachute jump into the same drop zone used 78 years prior. Five former special forces operators and an active-duty French commando paratrooper performed a demonstration jump for onlookers below.
French and American parachutists descend over Berlats, France, May 27, 2022. The jumpers commemorated the 1944 night landing of U.S. soldiers of Office of Strategic Services, which contributed to a turning tide against the fight against Nazi troops in Southern France. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Col. Ed Norris, U.S. Marine Corps attache in Paris, speaks during a commemoration ceremony honoring Office of Strategic Services operations in the region near Berlats, France, May 27, 2022. A Marine Raider, Norris said modern special forces learned much from experiences learned during guerilla operations in Nazi-occupied France. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
A French paratrooper flies a large French flag over landing site "Virgule," near Berlats, France, May 27, 2022. American paratroopers used the landing site when they jumped into Nazi-held France to support French underground resistance fighters in the Tarn region. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
“It is important to keep these links to our heritage,” said James King, a retired U.S. Marine Corps special operations officer and embassy staffer who was part of the demonstration jump. “Jumping into this extremely small landing site is a physical link to the past. These guys back then jumped at night, from only 400 feet with barely steerable round chutes, behind enemy lines. That’s a true commando mission and took real courage.”
The mission of OG PAT, however, was off to an ill-fated start. The central stop of the memorial events took place in the small hamlets Le Rialet and Betges, where the team, minus one member injured during landing, launched an ambush on German troops.
A photograph of U.S. Army Technician 5th Grade Robert Spaur is displayed at Le Militarial museum in Boissezon, France, May 27, 2022. Spaur parachuted into France’s Tarn region with Operational Group PAT of the Office of Strategic Services and was killed in action Aug. 12, 1944, during a firefight with German troops. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Losing men
In the afternoon of Aug. 12, 1944, a small German convoy of motorcycle teams, equipped with sidecars and one with a machine gun, traveled to the village of Le Rialet as reinforcements after a morning skirmish with French resistance fighters, Wheeler recounted in an article for the OSS Society.
The OSS members decided to use the element of surprise to attack and fired on the first motorcycle, killing or injuring all three riders. The Germans expected an ambush, however, and heavy machine-gun fire from the combat-experienced troops pushed the outgunned OSS team into retreat.
Sgt. Bernard Gautier and U.S. Army Technician 5th Grade Robert Spaur, members of OG Pat, tried to take out the machine gun, Wheeler wrote, citing witness accounts shared with her during an interview with Gilbert Brial, a local resistance fighter who was 19 at the time.
They fired their entire magazines at the Germans from their Thompson submachine guns to allow the rest of their team to fall back, according to a stele on the site of the ambush.
After killing one and seriously injuring another German, both Americans retreated through the woods, mortally wounded. One was later found sitting slumped over against a tree. The other made it to a nearby bridge before collapsing at the water’s edge below, his head partway in the stream.
The bodies were retrieved by locals and buried at the church in Le Vintrou. Later both were moved to their final resting place at the Epinal American Cemetery.
At center, Mayor Gérard Cauquil and Jamie Jamison unveil a memorial stele in the cemetery of Le Vintrou, France, May 28, 2022. The stele marks where Jamison’s great uncle, Bernard Gautier, and his fellow soldier Robert Spaur were first interred after they were killed in a firefight with German troops in 1944. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
A stele, shown on May 27, 2022, marks the original parachute landing zone codenamed “Virgule” where 15 American paratroopers of the Office of Strategic Services landed Aug. 7, 1944, near Berlats, France. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
French military vehicle enthusiasts drive a vintage military Jeep during commemoration events in Berlats, France, May 27, 2022. The event was held at the original parachute landing zone codenamed "Virgule" where 15 American paratroopers of the Office of Strategic Services landed Aug. 7, 1944, to support local resistance fighters in their fight against Nazi troops in the area. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Seventy-eight years later, Gautier and Spaur are still remembered at two memorials, and every year French veterans organize a remembrance ceremony. A new stele was unveiled Saturday, marking the former graveside of Gautier and Spaur in the shadow of the small village church in Le Vintrou.
Jamie Jamison, the great niece of Gautier, traveled to the site with her husband and unveiled the memorial alongside the local mayor.
Jamie Jamison, center, talks to a French journalist about her grand uncle Bernard Gautier at the site where he landed with his small special forces paratrooper element in 1944 near Berlats, France. Gautier died six days after his arrival to France during a firefight with German troops. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
“It’s heartwarming to know the difference they have made for France and the Tarn region,” Jamison said. “It has been absolutely humbling to see the memory of my great uncle and his fellow OSS operatives preserved with such respect here in France. It has been an incredible journey, along with some incredible people who do wonderful work in their memory.”
In death, Gautier and Spaur were able to send a message to the local German commanders: Uniformed Americans were among their own lines, hidden in the hills around them.
Misinformation and deception through the ranks of the French locals led to false intelligence reports putting the number of Americans in the villages around the nearby city of Castres at nearly 100 when it was merely 12 Americans supporting the local resistance, Wheeler wrote.
Models of U.S. Army and French resistance uniforms are on display at the airport in Albi, France, May 26, 2022. Former French special forces paratrooper Cyril Pefaure organized various events to commemorate the landing of U.S. forces in the Tarn region of France and educate people on how American troops supported the underground fight against Nazi troops in the summer of 1944. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Defiant in their grief, team members attacked again, blowing up an important bridge in the region only two days later.
Spooked by the impact of the OSS, the Wehrmacht tried to reinforce its defenses with a resupply train full of weapons. On Aug. 19, a French resistance team aided by OG PAT succeeded in derailing the train loaded with munitions, forcing a surrender of all aboard.
That same morning 94,000 American and French forces landed on the beaches near St. Tropez, which spelled the end of German occupation in Provence.
The attack was so persuasive that the German commander yielded Castres to the partisans without another bullet needing to be fired and nearly 5,800 Nazi soldiers surrendered to the ragtag team of guerilla fighters, according to a CIA factsheet.
“The OG PAT teams set the gold standard for covert operations. That’s how you win a war,” said Paula Doyle, a retired CIA associate deputy director of operations and now adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. “The missions that happened here are the acorns that turned into the strong intelligence and special operations organizations we have today, and we owe deep gratitude to those men who served here in France. We continue to walk in their footsteps.”
French military and police veterans attend a commemoration ceremony honoring the U.S. contributions to the regional resistance against Nazi Germany, near Berlats, France, May 27, 2022. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Protecting the memory
Among the older people in the region, the missions of the OSS and the mysterious Americans jumping from the sky have long been part of local lore. For the younger generation, far removed from the experiences of war, memory of events may fade. During the ceremonies, Pefaure asked for the youngest attendants to step forward to hold banners and place commemorative memorial candles. It was a conscious step to involve the next generation, he said.
“These kinds of commemorations point to the heart of our French-American friendship,” he said “When the French needed them, the Americans were there for us. And that’s something we will not forget and hope continues far into the future. It’s important we include the next generation in the events.”
A special forces veteran of the war in Afghanistan, Pefaure said he also feels a personal connection to the operations of the small team that came to support his homeland.
“The Americans really helped us during our deployments,” he said of his experience in the Middle East. “I’ve also lost two friends during conflicts in Africa and still carry that memory. The two American casualties here therefore took on a special meaning to me. For me it is about giving back and making sure these men are never forgotten.”
Of the original group of the local resistance fighters that welcomed the Americans, only four are still alive, said George Brial, whose father Gilbert welcomed the OSS team to the village where he was hiding in 1944 where the team found refuge in a farmhouse to hide and recuperate. Later the then-teenager used a small sub machine gun supplied by the OSS to join the fight.
The OSS agents brought not just weapons — but also chewing gum, chocolate and hope.
“The perception was these guys are skilled soldiers with good equipment,” Brial recalled his father saying. “They could help France fight back against tyranny. I only wish I would have the same courage my father and these men had.”
A young girl places a memorial candle on a stele commemorating the landing of Operational Group PAT during World War II, during a ceremony near Berlats, France, May 27, 2022. OG PAT helped French resistance fighters free the region from Nazi occupation in 1944. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
French military veterans participate in an honor guard formation during a ceremony at landing site "Virgule," near Berlats, May 27, 2022. Five former U.S. special forces operators and a French commando soldier parachuted to the same landing site used by U.S. paratroopers of the Office of Strategic Services when infiltrating into Nazi-occupied Germany in 1944. (Alexander Riedel/Stars and Stripes)
Now 97, Brial’s father was unable to attend the ceremonies. The last member of OG PAT died in 2008.
“Time is running out — as few of these men are still alive,” Wheeler said of the urgency to preserve their memories. Together with Pefaure, she said, she will do what she can to preserve the memories of the fallen in her adopted homeland.
During the intimate commemoration ceremonies to the daredevils who jumped into the unknown, the names of each fallen fighter were read aloud.
After Gautier and Spaur’s name, a French voice called out “Mort pour La Liberté!”
A moment of silence followed as the wind shook the leaves of oaks and beech trees surrounding the site.
They died for liberty. And the people of France remember their sacrifice.
19. Italy's Youngest SOF: 17 Stormo Incursori | SOF News
Italy's Youngest SOF: 17 Stormo Incursori | SOF News
By Riccardo Catalano.
Special operations in the Italian military is a tradition that goes back to World War 1, with the first group of “Arditi” (those who dare) born in 1917. This unit was an attempt to give an impulse that could change the stalling situation of the trench warfare. Following World War 2, where both the Army and the Navy employed special forces teams with good results (particularly the Navy with its successful raids against the British fleet), the Italian military slowly but steadily improved its SOF capabilities.
During the cold war, Italian special forces acquired more and more skills, benefitting from the integration with their NATO counterparts and also growing in size. At the time of the USSR dissolution, the Army had a SF battalion (9 Battaglione d’assalto “Col Moschin”) as a part of the Airborne “Folgore” Brigade, while the Navy had a group of frogmen (Gruppo Operativo Incursori).
It was not until 2003 that the Italian Air Force created their Special Operation Wing called “Reparto Incursori Aeronautica Militare”. The tradition of special warfare in the Italian Air Force wasn’t entirely new. In fact, during World War 2, the Royal (at the time) Italian Air Force (Regia Aeronautica) trained a battalion of commandos/saboteurs called “Arditi Distruttori Regia Aeronautica” (ADRA). The unit was initially established to participate in the assault on the British fortress of Malta in the Mediterranean, a real thorn in the side for German and Italian armies in North Africa. The assault on the isle of Malta, as we know, never took place. The ADRA battalion was instead sent on an ambitious sabotage mission in Libya, where two airmen (later decorated with silver medals) managed to infiltrate an allied airfield near Bengazi and destroy 25 B-24 Liberators on the ground.
Today’s Air Force’s “incursori” (raiders) take on the legacy of these brave men. When the unit was established in 2003, the first operators came from the Combat Search and Rescue squadrons and from the SERE Training Center in Furbara, near Rome. The AF special warfare candidates, in the units first years of existence, were sent to the Army’s 9th Regiment “Col Moschin” to attend the 80/B special forces training course. Later on, the unit, which meanwhile changed its name in 17th Raiders Wing (17 Stormo Incursori), achieved its own training “self-sufficiency”.
The 17th has the size of a regiment and is organized with three groups, each the size of a battalion. It consists of a SF group (Gruppo Operativo), a training group (Gruppo Addestramento) and a support group (Gruppo Servizi di Supporto). All the candidates who qualify and obtain the sand colored beret and the ADRA dagger, continue their training and qualification courses while part of the Gruppo Operativo, the operational “arm” of the wing. The operators attend courses for military free fall operations, sniper, breacher, combat medic, JTAC, portable UAS pilot, Combat Controller, Combat Weather Observer, and many others.
Like all the Italian special forces, the 17th Wing is under the functional command of the COFS – Comando interforze per le Operazioni delle Forze Speciali (Joint Special Operations Forces Command). JSOFC has the responsibility to organize and conduct all the special operations for the Italian military as well as to define SOF doctrine and training. While all the units in the Italian special warfare community can execute the broad spectrum of missions typical of the special operations, each one has a unique area of expertise. For the 17th, this is defined by the Special Operations Air to Land Integration doctrine.
T-AF SOF operators have the primary mission of acting as a force multiplier for the air power, conducting missions like the assault of an enemy airfield and target acquisition for Air Force assets. The most unique capability of the 17th Wing is, without a doubt, deployed by the Combat Controller Teams who provide air to ground communications, close air support, and air traffic control in non permissive areas. In a community where the Army and the Navy have always had an advantage, given their long standing tradition in special warfare, the Italian Air Force has the difficult job to differentiate its special operation forces and convince, the always reluctant generals, that there is a place for special warfare in the Air Force.
Looking at the experiences from the global war on terror, is undeniable that for a country like Italy, special warfare has become a fundamental asset, more important than ever. This can only be achieved by specializing and focusing on air power related missions, where the traditional affinity towards technology of the Air Force can definitely be an asset.
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Author: Riccardo Catalano is a former SGT in the Italian Air Force. He is now a copywriter and editor.
20. Why Starlink Scares China: Researchers Pitch Plan To 'Destroy' SpaceX Satellites
Elon Musk shows how civil society can contribute to strategic influence operations and get information to oppressed and at risk populations.
Totalitarian/authoritarian regimes should be afraid. Very afraid.
Why Starlink Scares China: Researchers Pitch Plan To 'Destroy' SpaceX Satellites
In a paper published in April, Chinese military researchers said that China needs to develop the capacity to detect and destroy SpaceX's Starlink satellites.
The study, led by Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications researcher Ren Yuanzhen, was published in the Chinese peer reviewed journal, Modern Defence Technology.
However, after The South China Morning Post reported on its contents, the paper mysteriously vanished from the online edition of the journal.
Before it disappeared, former US diplomat David Cowhig was able to translate the paper in its entirety, revealing a series of countermeasures recommended against Starlink.
The paper says that China needs to "adopt a combination of soft and hard kill methods to disable some of the Starlink satellites and destroy the constellation's operating system."
Real Quick, What's Starlink?
Starlink is SpaceX's satellite internet constellation, which aims to provide low-cost internet to remote locations. The service, the largest of its kind, already has 2,146 satellites in low Earth orbit.
SpaceX hopes to have as many as 12,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation in the next five years and eventually build up to 42,000.
The company says that while most satellite internet services come from single geostationary satellites that orbit the planet at about 35,000 km, Starlink satellites orbit much closer to Earth, at about 550 km, reducing signal latency.
Though satellite internet is typically slower than traditional broadband, it's advantage lies in the fact that it can be easily accessed, even in remote locations which do not have cable or cellular towers.
Why is China Wary of Starlink?
To answer this question, it's worth looking at an opinion piece titled 'Starlink's Expansion, Military Ambitions Alert World' which was published this month in China Military Online, the official news portal of the Chinese military.
The author, Li Xiaoli, insisted that Starlink's "unchecked expansion" and SpaceX's "ambition to use it for military purposes" should ring alarm bells internationally.
Starlink's Use in Ukraine
Xiaoli pointed to the use of Starlink in Ukraine, where over 10,000 Starlink terminals have been delivered with the help of the United States government.
"In addition to supporting communication, Starlink, as experts estimated, could also interact with UAVs and, using big data and facial recognition technology, might have already played a part in Ukraine's military operations against Russia," he said.
In addition to the vast cost of, and questionable demand for, Starlink weighing on SpaceX's future, the company must also contend with mounting political and diplomatic risk.
His claims aren't entirely unfounded. According to The Times, Ukrainian forces used reconnaissance drones linked to Starlink terminals to send targeting information to artillery.
Separately, Reuters reported that Ukraine's defence ministry is using US-based Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology, potentially allowing authorities to vet people at checkpoints, unmask Russian assailants, combat misinformation, and identify the dead.
It is unclear, however, whether this technology was used in tandem with Starlink.
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‘A Strong Military Background'
Xiaoli wrote that Starlink has a "strong military background" since the US Air Force has been conducting tests with it since 2018 to provide low latency, high bandwidth internet to its planes.
In 2020, SpaceX won a $150-million contract to develop military-use satellites and signed an agreement with the US Army, letting it use Starlink's broadband to transmit data across military networks, Space News reported.
"When completed, Starlink satellites can be mounted with reconnaissance, navigation, and meteorological devices to further enhance the US military's combat capability in such areas as reconnaissance remote sensing, communications relay, navigation and positioning, attack and collision, and space sheltering," Xiaoli wrote.
Yuanzhen's paper also noted that, in its patent filing in 2017, Starlink's intended applications included satellite communication and transmission, satellite imaging, remote sensing, and other services, "implying great potential for combat information support and other services."
A Net Around the Globe
Another reason why China takes issue with Starlink is because of it plans to take up most of the low Earth orbit.
"The LEO is able to accommodate about 50,000 satellites, over 80 percent of which would be taken by Starlink if the program were to launch 42,000 satellites as it has planned," Xiaoli.
China filed a complaint with the United Nations in December 2021, saying that it had to conduct evasive maneuvers of its space station to avoid potential collisions with two Starlink satellites.
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What did the Researchers Recommend?
The paper put out by the Chinese researchers put forward a series of requirements that China would need to fulfil, in order to counter Starlink:
Full Starlink constellation wide area surveillance capability
Precise sensing of key targets
Capability to process situational data
Capability to recover from anomalous events in outer space
A low-orbit group target system
It also made some broader suggestions:
Strengthen research on space combat system requirements
Gain more control satellite frequency and orbit resources
Actively develop various new countermeasures
(With inputs from SCMP, Space News, and Reuters)
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)
21. He’s 31 and has one of the most important jobs in the war. Meet Ukraine’s top ‘digital general’
Can we learn from this example? Is this how to conduct strategic influence through information advantage?
He’s 31 and has one of the most important jobs in the war. Meet Ukraine’s top ‘digital general’
Mykhailo Fedorov handles cyber defense, tracks Russian troops and tries to change Russian minds. And he’s convinced Ukraine “will win.”
Mykhailo Fedorov was born in 1991, the year Ukraine became an independent nation following the collapse of the Soviet Union. As his country’s economy grew, powered in no small part by an IT boom, Fedorov became a tech entrepreneur, setting up a digital marketing firm in Zaporizhzhia, in southeastern Ukraine. What he learned there he applied, in 2018, to the political campaign of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, then an actor vying for the presidency.
Today, as Zelenskyy leads his country’s resistance against Russia’s invasion, Fedorov is still there, at the president’s side, as the country’s minister for digital transformation.
But his job title understates what he does: Now 31, Fedorov is, after the Ukrainian leader, perhaps the most prominent face in the country’s wartime administration, leading a digital “army” that covers everything from cyber defense to tracking the position of Russian forces. Fedorov is, in effect, the country’s top digital general. And the effort he spearheads is both vast and critical: Some 30,000 people from around the world, he told Grid in an email interview, are now involved in Ukraine’s digital battles.
Fedorov is also applying his digital savvy to repair war-damaged communications, chronicle alleged war crimes and reach ordinary Russians cut off from the truth about the Kremlin’s brutal campaign in Ukraine. “As far as we are concerned, as long as there is internet in Russia, we have the opportunity to get through to people,” Fedorov told Grid. “To directly tell ordinary Russians what is actually happening.”
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Grid: With Russia’s invasion, your role has gone from helping build up Ukraine’s IT sector to defending your country’s information infrastructure. Could you describe to us how the cyber war with Russia is playing out right now?
Mykhailo Fedorov: They’ve been hitting us for years, even before this invasion. Last year, if you talk about cyberattacks, Ukraine was among the world’s top targets. That was because of Russia. They kept mounting cyberattacks to try and hurt us.
With the invasion, the cyberattacks have of course become more intense. Take the first two months of the war — we saw more than 430 separate cyberattacks by at least six different groups of Russian hackers. It is a massive campaign against Ukraine.
Most of the cyberattacks are carried out to coincide with missile strikes and ground assaults by Russian forces on this or that particular target. The goal is the same, whether in cyberspace or on the ground: to damage our resources and critical infrastructure. Russian hackers have targeted everything, from central government institutions to state and local authorities, as well as the defense sector, the telecoms sector and our media.
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They haven’t yet succeeded in a large-scale cyberattack because of what we are doing with our cyber army to resist them, and to move as fast as we can to restore service when Russia does manage to disable a system or hit a network inside Ukraine.
One of the main things that has changed for us is that before the invasion, our focus, when it came to cyberspace, was almost entirely on defense. Now we are also trying to fight more aggressively against Russia in cyberspace. It is a massive effort, and it involves people around the world, volunteers who are helping us in cyberspace to make sure that Russia doesn’t win on this front. We have around 30,000 people — Ukrainian and international IT professionals — who are working here and internationally to make sure we succeed in cyberspace, that Russia doesn’t get the upper hand.
And we will almost certainly continue to fight in cyberspace even after the war on the ground comes to an end. Like I said, we have been engaged in cyber warfare with Russia since before this invasion. There is nothing to suggest that they won’t continue to attack our digital systems even after they are forced to retreat from the ground, after their tanks leave Ukraine.
G: As you say, you’ve expanded your operations with the digital army. Could you tell us more about that — what else has changed since the invasion, when it comes to Ukraine’s cyber efforts?
MF: A lot, and not just in terms of fighting back against Russia. We are also using our digital resources to document what the Russians are doing in Ukraine. We have introduced new apps that warn people about Russian attacks, and two weeks after the start of the war, we introduced a new system to collect photos and videos of what the Russians were doing inside Ukraine, and where they were operating, using geolocation services.
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Ordinary Ukrainians have been using our apps to send us information about the movements of Russian troops with just a few clicks. We check the information and verify it, and then we pass it on as quickly as we can to our armed forces. Around 300,000 people have used this system to help us gather information since the beginning of the war.
People are also helping us gather information about Russian war crimes. The world has seen the horrors that Russia has unleashed in places like Bucha, Irpin, Gostomel and in other parts of the country. To make sure we are documenting everything, we have been asking people to send us information digitally. The idea is to document all the war crimes by the Russian troops. So the effort is not simply to fight back, but also to make sure we do not let them escape accountability. We are documenting everything we can.
G: You’re also involved in trying to penetrate the Russian information — or misinformation, to describe it more accurately — wall, and to get the facts through to ordinary people in Russia, particularly those whose kin have been deployed in Ukraine. Could you tell us more about what you are doing in this area? What have been your biggest challenges in this area — and any notable successes?
MF: We are, yes — we are conducting information campaigns to reach Russian audiences to spread the truth about the war in Ukraine. It is an effort to get around the Russian TV propaganda in the country. Now they have tried to cut off independent information inside Russia. Russian President [Vladimir] Putin’s regime has gone after social media and other channels. But as far as we are concerned, as long as there is internet in Russia, we have the opportunity to get through to people. To directly tell ordinary Russians what is actually happening.
I cannot give you many details in this area. But we have many gifted professionals who are helping us with this. There are plenty of tools we can use and are using. We’ll be able to tell you more after the war.
G: What’s been happening with the Starlink satellite kits that were shipped to your country by Elon Musk?
MF: Currently, more than 12,000 Starlink dishes are in use in Ukraine. In recent years, we have worked a lot to increase the reach of the internet across Ukraine. But during the war, we need the Starlink dishes and their network to help us make sure that everything remains connected, as there are power outages in areas where hostilities are taking place.
They have helped us make sure that critical infrastructure can stay online. The biggest role they are playing — and this is all being done for free — is to help us restore communication in previously occupied territories, places where Russians have tried to cut off Ukrainian people from the outside world.
In many settlements around Kyiv and in the Chernihiv regions, where some really fierce fighting took place, communication was possible thanks to the Starlink dishes provided to us.
G: Looking ahead, what, from your perch at the digital ministry, does Ukraine most need right now? What is at the top of your wish list for the outside world?
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MF: More support, more sanctions on Russia, more to isolate the Russian economy, to seriously undermine its economic and financial capacity to continue with this aggression against Ukraine.
With this invasion of our country, the world has been clearly divided into black and white. Every business, every state must decide — either support Ukraine, stand with us, a democratic country, or work with the Russian Federation and finance the killing of civilians for no reason in a war of aggression.
G: With the war now entering its fourth month, what gives you hope right now? And what are your biggest fears, particularly as Russia steps up its attacks in the east?
MF: What gives me hope is the way we have been able to resist the Russians for all these months. We know for sure we will win. As our President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says, life will overcome death, and the world will overcome darkness.
Our main resource in this war is the bravery of our people, ordinary people who have taken up the fight, on the ground and even with our digital army. Everyone is involved. They are under fire, but they are not giving up.
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
22. Putin Has a Problem: Russia Has Suffered 'Devastating Losses' of Junior Officers
Especially tough when you do not have a professional NCO corps.
Putin Has a Problem: Russia Has Suffered 'Devastating Losses' of Junior Officers
Putin seems to have another headache to contend with in Ukraine: Russia has suffered “devastating losses” among its mid- and junior-level officers in Ukraine, degrading its ability to fight, UK intelligence claimed Monday.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence said the high death toll was likely caused by the expectation that junior officers expose themselves to the most dangerous parts of the fighting.
“Brigade and battalion commanders likely deploy forwards into harm’s way because they are held to an uncompromising level of responsibility for their units’ performance,” the MoD said.
“Similarly, junior officers have had to lead the lowest level tactical actions, as the army lacks the cadre of highly trained and empowered non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who fulfil that role in Western forces.”
It added: “The loss of large proportion of the younger generation of professional officers will likely exacerbate its ongoing problems in modernising its approach to command and control.”
Catherine Neilan is Insider’s senior UK political editor.
23. Russia's army could COLLAPSE amid huge losses, UK report says
Beware of reports that seem too good to be true. Of course if the Russian army collapses it may not be good depending on what Putin does in response.
Russia's army could COLLAPSE amid huge losses, UK report says
Russia's army could COLLAPSE amid huge losses of more than 30,000 troops - which Putin believes is a 'price worth paying' for victory in Ukraine, confidential UK report says
- The report is a secretive analysis of Putin's brutal on-going invasion of Ukraine
- It suggests Moscow's huge troop losses could lead to the collapse of its armies
- Despite losing more than 30,000 troops, report says Putin sees these losses as acceptable in order to achieve a 'victory' in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region
- Meanwhile, Russian forces continued efforts to capture city of Sievierodonetsk
- City is the last pocket of Ukrainian government control in Luhansk province
PUBLISHED: 16:20 EDT, 30 May 2022 | UPDATED: 04:44 EDT, 31 May 2022
Daily Mail · by Chris Jewers For Mailonline · May 30, 2022
Russia's army could collapse amid huge losses of more than 30,000 troops in Ukraine, according to a confidential UK report that emerged on Monday.
While Moscow's latest estimated troop losses make grim reading for President Vladimir Putin, the report claims he sees them as a 'price worth paying' for victory.
However, the new report - a secretive analysis of Putin's brutal invasion seen by The Mirror - claims that the losses could be too great for his soldiers, amid other reports that Russian morale is low.
Latest estimates from the Ukraine's Armed Forces suggest as many as 30,350 Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion was launched on February 24, which came after more than 100,000 of the Kremlin's troops massed on the border.
In addition, several thousand Russian military vehicles - including tanks, aircraft and mobile artillery units - have been destroyed in Putin's so-called 'special military operation' that has dragged into its fourth month.
In the latest example of heavy Russian losses, it was reported on Monday that a Ukrainian paratrooper regiment destroyed a Russian regiment.
Former Ukrainian journalist and editor, and a Ukraine Army veteran, Viktor Kovalenko claimed: 'The Ukrainian 80th Paratrooper-Storm Brigade confirms that they annihilated a unit of the Russian 104 Paratrooper-Storm Regiment (76th Division).'
He said around 20 Ukrainian servicemen were killed and their armour destroyed in the attack. The location of the assault was not reported.
Smoke rises in the city of Severodonetsk during heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops at eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on May 30, 2022, on the 96th day of the Russian invasion. A new report has claimed Russia's army could collapse under heavy losses
An eldery woman walks away from a burning house garage after shelling in the city of Lysytsansk at the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on May 30, 2022
The new report - a secretive analysis of Putin's brutal invasion seen by The Mirror - claims that the losses could be too great for his soldiers, amid other reports that Russian morale is low. Pictured: Putin is seen in Moscow on Friday
According to The Mirror, the new report suggests Kremlin officials have tried and failed to persuade Putin that his invasion has been a disaster, and that he believes he can still achieve a partial victory in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.
A victory in the region would give Russia leverage over Kyiv, the report says, while defeat would likely result in Putin being ousted as president.
Meanwhile, Russian troops pushed farther into a key eastern Ukrainian city and fought street by street with Kyiv's forces Monday in a battle the mayor said has left the city 'completely ruined' and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
On Monday, military analysts painted the battle as part of a race against time for the Kremlin, which they said wants to complete its capture of the industrial Donbas region before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine's defences.
According to The Mirror, the confidential report says: 'Russia's attempt to achieve a speedy and decisive victory in the Donbas has not yet succeeded. They are still grinding forward, gaining 1-2km a day.
'The Russians are now achieving what successes they have mostly by means of a slogging match with repeated, very costly, infantry attacks reminiscent of 1945 not 2022.'
It goes on to say that so far, Putin has been able to mostly hide the 'gross failures' of the invasion from the Russian public, or blame them on other Kremlin officials.
'The Russian population until recently bought Putin's disinformation. We have seen an attempt within the Kremlin to get a message across to Putin and his closest team that things are going wrong, perhaps even catastrophically wrong,' it adds.
On the report, British Russia commentator Bruce Jones told The Mirror that there will eventually come a point where Putin's forces can no longer sustain any more losses.
'This would be a straw that broke the camel's moment, where units would no longer be able to function as a fighting force because they are so depleted,' he said.
Ukrainian tanks move in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, Monday, May 30, 2022
A local resident points towards a residential building heavily damaged in a Russian bombing in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, Monday, May 30, 2022
A Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force member shows his weapon in Kharkiv area, eastern Ukraine, Monday, May 30, 2022
In recent days, the fighting has focused on Sievierodonetsk in a battle Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called 'indescribably difficult.'
The Ukrainian military said Russian forces reinforced their positions on the northeastern and southeastern outskirts of Sievierodonetsk, 90 miles south of the Russian border in an area that is the last pocket of Ukrainian government control in Luhansk province.
Relentless Russian artillery barrages on the city have destroyed critical infrastructure and damaged 90 percent of the buildings, and power and communications have been largely cut to a city that was once home to 100,000 people.
Luhansk Gov. Serhiy Haidai said the Russians were also pushing toward nearby Lysychansk. He said two civilians were killed and another five were wounded in the latest Russian shelling.
Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk sit on either side of the strategically important Siverskiy Donetsk River - and the Russian advance on the cities is part of an all-out push - executed without regard for personnel and equipment losses, said Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov.
'There is an impression that Russia has set the goal to seize Donbas at any cost,' said Zhdanov.
'The Kremlin has reckoned that it can't afford to waste time and should use the last chance to extend the separatist-controlled territory because the arrival of Western weapons in Ukraine could make it impossible.'
But in a potential setback for Ukraine, President Joe Biden appeared to dismiss reports that the U.S. was considering sending long-range rocket systems to the country.
On Monday, Biden told reporters that there are no plans for the U.S. to send long-range rocket systems to Ukraine, amid reports that the move is being considered.
A child looks up at a building destroyed during attacks in Irpin outskirts Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 30, 2022
A girl sits on a swing outside destroyed buildings during attacks in Irpin outskirts Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, May 30, 2022
Pictured: Russia's estimated army losses against Ukraine, according to Ukraine's Armed Forces
Weapons from the West have already helped Kyiv's forces thwart a Russian advance on the capital in the early weeks of the war.
That failure forced Moscow to withdraw, regroup, and pursue a more limited objective of seizing the Donbas, where Moscow-backed separatists already held swaths of territory and have been fighting Ukrainian troops for eight years.
The Ukrainians hope they can hold the Russians off long enough for them to run out of steam - or for more Western weapons to arrive.
Ukrainian officials have warned of the dire cost if more help does not arrive soon.
'The number of victims is rising every hour, but we are unable to count the dead and the wounded amid the street fighting,' Mayor Oleksandr Striuk told The Associated Press in a phone interview, adding that Moscow's troops advanced a few more blocks toward the city center.
'The city has been completely ruined,' he added, and only about 12,000 to 13,000 residents remain, sheltering in basements and bunkers to escape the Russian bombardment - a situation that recalls the siege of Mariupol that trapped residents and led to some of the worst suffering of the war.
While tens of thousands are believed to have died in Mariupol, Striuk estimated that 1,500 civilians have died in his city since the war began, from Russian attacks as well as from the dire conditions, including a lack of medicine or medical treatment.
A 32-year-old French journalist, Frédéric Leclerc-Imhoff, died Monday near Sievierodonetsk when he was hit by shrapnel from shelling while covering Ukrainians evacuating the area, according to his employer, French broadcaster BFM TV.
Ukrainian servicemen walk past a building heavily damaged in a Russian bombing in Bakhmut, eastern Ukraine, eastern Ukraine, Saturday, May 28, 2022
Igor Zakharevich (L), the militant-appointed mayor of Debaltseve, arranges the flags of Russia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic at the city administration building of Svitlodarsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, 26 May 2022
This satellite image released by Maxar Technologies on May 27 shows Russian armor unit and aftermath of artillery bombardments in Popasna, Ukraine, May 25, 2022
Mykola Sunhurovskyi, a military expert at the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center think tank, said weapons are taking a long time to arrive - given the Russians an opening to take advantage of the slow delivery and make up for difficulties its forces had earlier in the war.
'Russia clearly has been trying to take revenge for its past failures in Ukraine and achieve at least some of its goals,' Sunhurovskyi said.
Russian pressure also continued in the south on Monday. Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said an artillery strike on a shipyard in the southern port of Mykolaiv destroyed Ukrainian armoured vehicles parked there.
In the Kherson region, the Russia-installed deputy head of the regional administration, Kirill Stremousov, told Russia's Tass state news agency that grain from last year's harvest is being delivered to Russian buyers, adding that 'obviously there is a lot of grain here.'
Ukraine has accused Russia of looting grain from territories its forces hold, and the U.S. has alleged Moscow is jeopardizing global food supplies by preventing Ukraine from exporting its harvest.
Beyond long sieges of cities, Russia's troops have also been accused of carrying out targeted killings and other atrocities in areas they briefly held around Kyiv early in the war.
On Monday, prosecutors submitted the first rape case of the war to a court - the last step before a trial begins. A 31-year-old Russian soldier is accused of killing a man and raping his wife in Bohdanivka, a village northeast of Kyiv, officials said. The soldier's whereabouts aren't known and he will be tried in absentia, prosecutors said.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia´s Security Council, said that was a 'reasonable' decision. He said that 'otherwise, if our cities come under attack, the Russian armed forces would fulfill their threat and strike the centers where such criminal decisions are made.'
Medvedev added that 'some of them aren't in Kyiv.'
Russian pressure also continued in the south on Monday. Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said an artillery strike on a shipyard in the southern port of Mykolaiv destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles parked there.
In the Kherson region, the Russia-installed deputy head of the regional administration, Kirill Stremousov, told Russia´s Tass state news agency that grain from last year´s harvest is being delivered to Russian buyers, adding that 'obviously there is a lot of grain here.'
Ukraine has accused Russia of looting grain from territories its forces hold, and the U.S. has alleged Moscow is jeopardizing global food supplies by preventing Ukraine from exporting its harvest.
Russia, meanwhile, has pressed the West to lift sanctions against it as it seeks to shift the blame for the growing food crisis - which has led to skyrocketing prices in Africa.
Zelensky urged France not to succumb to such 'blackmail' as the Ukrainian president met Monday with French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seen on a screen, left, as addresses from Kyiv during an extraordinary meeting of EU leaders to discuss Ukraine, energy and food security at the Europa building in Brussels, Monday, May 30, 202
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, speaks to media prior the extraordinary meeting of EU leaders to discuss Ukraine, energy and food security at the Europa building in Brussels, Monday, May 30, 2022
Meanwhile, European Union leaders struggled on Monday to agree to impose an oil embargo on Russia, as Ukraine's president urged them to set aside their differences and endorse a long-delayed package of sanctions aimed at piling more economic pressure on Moscow to halt the war.
The EU has already imposed five rounds of sanctions on Russia over its war.
It's targeted more than 1,000 people, including Putin and top government officials, as well as pro-Kremlin oligarchs, banks, the coal sector and more.
But a sixth package of measures, announced on May 4, has been held up by concerns over oil supplies. The EU gets about 40% of its natural gas and 25% of its oil from Russia, and the divisions are embarrassing the 27-nation trading bloc and exposing the limits of its ambitions.
Addressing the EU leaders Monday by video-link in a 10-minute message, Zelensky urged them to end 'internal arguments that only prompt Russia to put more and more pressure on the whole of Europe.'
He said the sanctions package must 'be agreed on, it needs to be effective, including (on) oil,' so that Moscow 'feels the price for what it is doing against Ukraine' and the rest of Europe.
Only then, Zelensky said, will Russia be forced to 'start seeking peace.'
Daily Mail · by Chris Jewers For Mailonline · May 30, 2022
24. Math books outrage China with 'ugly, sexually suggestive, pro-American' images
An amazing report. If we did this, whoever is behind it is brilliant. More than 10 years ago someone manipulated a Chinese publishing company to publish these images. And then no one noticed and have now "infected" probably millions of children.
They must not follow the north Korean math education "model:" "If you have 5 American bastards and you kill three, how many Americans bastards do you have left to kill?"
Excerpts:
The drawings, found in a series of math textbooks that have been used by Chinese primary schools for nearly a decade, are controversial for various reasons.
...
Many expressed shock and anger that such “substandard” illustrations had not only made it into textbooks published by the state-owned People’s Education Press, the country’s biggest textbook publisher founded in 1950, but had gone unnoticed for so many years (the textbooks have been in use nationwide since 2013.) Others questioned how these textbooks had passed the country’s notoriously strict publication review process.
Math books outrage China with 'ugly, sexually suggestive, pro-American' images | CNN
CNN · by Nectar Gan · May 30, 2022
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
Hong Kong CNN —
China has ordered a nationwide review of school textbooks after illustrations deemed ugly, sexually suggestive and secretly pro-American caused public uproar.
The news has alarmed some experts and parents who fear the campaign is turning into a political witch hunt and represents an unnecessary tightening of the country’s already stringent censorship of cultural publications.
The drawings, found in a series of math textbooks that have been used by Chinese primary schools for nearly a decade, are controversial for various reasons.
Some Chinese internet users have criticized the pictures of children with small, drooping, wide-set eyes and big foreheads as ugly, offensive and racist.
Others have been outraged by what they see as sexual connotations in the drawings. Some of the pictures show little boys with a bulge in their pants that looks like the outline of their genitals; in one illustration of children playing a game, one boy has his hands on a girl’s chest while another pulls a girl’s skirt; in another drawing, a girl’s underwear is exposed as she jumps rope.
Internet users have also accused the illustrations of being “pro-United States,” because they show several children wearing clothes patterned with stars and stripes and in the colors of the American flag.
One drawing that showed an inaccurate rendering of the stars on the Chinese flag was accused of being “anti-China.”
Some Chinese internet users have been outraged by what they see as sexual connotations in the illustrations.
People's Education Press
Outrage over the illustrations has dominated Chinese social media discussions since Thursday, when photos of the drawings first circulated online. Several related hashtags have racked up tens of millions of views on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform.
Many expressed shock and anger that such “substandard” illustrations had not only made it into textbooks published by the state-owned People’s Education Press, the country’s biggest textbook publisher founded in 1950, but had gone unnoticed for so many years (the textbooks have been in use nationwide since 2013.) Others questioned how these textbooks had passed the country’s notoriously strict publication review process.
Nationalist influencers quickly placed the blame on “Western cultural infiltration,” alleging – without giving evidence – that illustrators had been covertly working for “foreign forces,” especially the United States, to corrupt the souls of innocent Chinese school children.
Amid the uproar, the People’s Education Press said on Thursday it was recalling the textbooks and would redesign the illustrations – but that failed to quell the public’s anger.
On Saturday, China’s Education Ministry stepped in, ordering the publisher to “rectify and reform” its publications and make sure the new version would be available for the fall semester. It also ordered a “thorough inspection” of textbooks nationwide to make sure teaching materials “adhere to correct political directions and values, promote outstanding Chinese culture and conform to the aesthetic tastes of the public.”
Some Chinese internet users have criticized the pictures of children with small, drooping, wide-set eyes and big foreheads as ugly, offensive and racist.
People's Education Press
But the campaign is not only about aesthetic and moral values – there is an ideological component as well. Textbooks have been front and center in Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s efforts to tighten ideological control over the country’s youth and fend off the influence of “Western values.”
Under Xi, the Chinese government has banned foreign teaching materials – including textbooks and classic novels – in all public primary and secondary schools, stating that all teaching materials “must reflect the will of the party and the country.”
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The criticism of the textbooks has also turned into personal attacks on the illustrators.
Some accused the academy of being a “hotbed for breeding traitors”; others took aim at its logo, saying it resembles a kneeling person holding a fork – a symbol interpreted as kowtowing to the West (some history bloggers have since pointed out that the logo was actually an adaption of the “art” character in an ancient Chinese writing called the oracle bone script).
In a sign of how far the nationalist wrath has gone, even the high-profile graphic artist Wuheqilin – who made a name by mocking Western countries with his ultra-nationalist artwork – has come under fire. Nationalists accused Wuheqilin of helping anti-China forces after he suggested the poor quality of the illustrations was likely in part a result of the low commissions offered to designers – a problem he said the industry had faced for years.
State media has also chimed in. “Toxic textbooks sound ideological security alarm from infiltration,” screamed a headline in the Global Times, a state-run nationalist tabloid, on Monday.
“The textbooks exposed in recent netizens’ campaigns are horrifying. Lessons from the Hong Kong and Xinjiang regions sounded an alarm to us that problematic textbooks are not a matter of aesthetics, but a threat to the country’s ideological security and the future of the nation,” Qin An, a professor at Tianjin University, was quoted as saying by the Global Times.
“Illustrations in many textbooks have obvious Westernized elements that vilify the Chinese. They are a clear sign of ideological struggle,” Qin told the newspaper.
In recent days, a growing volume of teaching materials has been lambasted online for pandering to Western culture or promoting problematic values. Others have targeted illustrations in sexual education books, prompting concerns that the publication of such educational materials – which are already in short supply in China – will also be affected.
“I worry that this has become a politically charged issue that doesn’t allow for even-handed consideration of the relevant facts,” said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
Paul Huang, a father of a five-year-old in the southern city of Guangzhou, said while he was glad to see poorly designed illustrations being removed from textbooks, he is concerned that the issue has been politicized.
“As a parent, compared with infiltration by foreign forces, I’m more worried about overtly stringent censorship of content that could have offered children a freer, more diverse perspective,” he said.
“Such censorship is making our textbooks more and more conservative and dull, which does no good for children’s development.”
Some publishing houses have already been affected.
On Saturday, 7.Hi Books, a manga publisher in the eastern city of Hangzhou, apologized to its readers for having to postpone the publication of its comics.
“We were informed today that due to a social incident caused by a certain publisher, all the published children’s picture books have entered a stage of self-inspection, and our unpublished comics will have to be postponed accordingly,” it said on Weibo.
In the comment section, many readers said they had seen it coming.
“It’s starting again. They never regulate what should be regulated, and only target those that shouldn’t be targeted,” said the top comment with 30,000 upvotes.
CNN · by Nectar Gan · May 30, 2022
25. Heroes of the resistance who are sabotaging Putin's war machine by blowing up trains, stealing weapons and assassinating Russian officers
IAN BIRRELL's brilliant insight into a stirring fightback in Ukraine
Heroes of the resistance who are sabotaging Putin's war machine by blowing up trains, stealing weapons and assassinating Russian officers, conscripts... and collaborators: IAN BIRRELL reveals the stirring fightback in Ukraine
- Ukrainians have mounted a staunch defence of their lands using sabotage
- They have assassinated Russian officers, conscripts and collaborators
- The brave saboteurs have also disrupted supply lines with explosives
PUBLISHED: 17:02 EDT, 30 May 2022 | UPDATED: 17:28 EDT, 30 May 2022
Daily Mail · by Ian Birrell for the Daily Mail · May 30, 2022
The bomb, almost 2lb of high explosive, was hidden in a fuse box by the front door of the block of flats and detonated when Andrey Shevchik arrived on his usual Sunday morning visit to his mother.
Shevchik, the leading Russian collaborator in his home town of Enerhodar, was left badly burnt with a broken collarbone and facial injuries. His two bodyguards were also wounded, but no other residents were around at the time of explosion.
‘The fact that no one else got injured tells us it was a targeted attack against a very specific person,’ said Dmytro Orlov, the town’s elected mayor. ‘They did not even call an ambulance, which indicates they had serious doubts about their security.’
He suggested the wounded 48-year-old man may have been taken more than 200 miles away for treatment in Crimea, the peninsula held by Russia for eight years.
This partisan-style attack on a prominent pro-Russian politician nine days ago is among the latest signs of an increasingly organised resistance movement in occupied Ukraine, which has seen collaborators ‘disappear’, trains disrupted and rewards placed on the heads of Vladimir Putin’s stooges.
Pro-Kremlin officials in Melitopol blamed guerrillas for a major explosion yesterday that was said to be a car bomb attack on Yevgeny Balitsky, self-declared governor of the region. There were three casualties, including a woman reported to be his niece. It has been claimed that partisans operating with special forces have already killed at least 100 Russian soldiers in this city.
Fightback: Russian military vehicles destroyed near the village of Kutuzivka in the Kharkiv region
Tapped phone conversations also reveal Russian troops in the region complaining of constant attack from sabotage groups.
In other seized towns, local resistance fighters are putting up threatening posters showing images of occupying soldiers being stabbed or pictures of pro-Russian officials with targets on their heads. Social media is used to expose collaborators.
Ukraine’s armed forces have even set up a website offering online tips for potential partisans on how to steal and start a tank, disable an armoured vehicle with rice in the fuel tank, create a Molotov cocktail or simply make nuisance calls to a Russian military base.
‘The day of reckoning is near,’ warns the Centre for National Resistance, run by Ukraine’s special forces. ‘Each of us in our place can resist the enemy and contribute to victory. Together we will turn the lives of the occupiers into hell.’
Certainly the Siberian-born Shevchik – a pro-Russian party councillor who declared himself Enerhodar’s leader after its capture in early March and was making moves to host a ‘referendum’ to join formally with Russia – suffered something diabolical.
Three days before the bombing, a mysterious fire broke out at a hotel being used by Russian forces and converted into Shevchik’s official residence. Coincidentally, it began the day after the town’s fire chief became the latest Ukrainian official to be detained.
As in other occupied cities, residents joined flag-waving protests when Enerhodar was captured – but these died down after a clampdown by Russian riot police.
Out of action: A Russian rocket launcher destroyed after tip-off by charity chief
‘The occupants at the beginning were very reserved so the partisan movement was not so active,’ said Mr Orlov. ‘But now they have started taking property from people, taking cars and mobile phones. They are stealing from businesses and torturing people who held official positions – and this is why we see the response.’
Although small, with a pre-war population of 53,000, Enerhodar is a key town since it supplies thousands of staff for two nearby power plants – one of them the largest nuclear power station in Europe.
The Mail discovered local activists have set up a channel on the Telegram messaging app, followed by more than 3,500 people, that posts images of alleged collaborators, with details of their activities and telephone numbers. It also identifies Russian troops – with a red dot placed on their forehead.
‘The channel is created to highlight that the local population does not accept the Russian occupant forces and to give local people an opportunity to take part in exposing traitors and collaborators,’ said ‘Alex’, who set it up. ‘The information frontline is less bloody but no less important.’
There are similar activities in Kherson, the second biggest city captured by Putin’s forces, where partisans are offering a £15,000 reward for the head of a pro-Kremlin official and where Valery Kuleshov, a pro-Russian blogger, was shot dead last month in his car.
Threats have been posted on social media, telephone poles, trees and walls. ‘Russian occupiers and everyone who supports them. We are close, already operating in Kherson. Death awaits you all!’ warned posters that appeared on the day of Kuleshov’s execution.
Ukraine’s flag also keeps appearing on buildings, along with the national colours of blue and yellow.
‘This is a local partisan resistance,’ said Serhiy Khlan, adviser to the head of Kherson Regional Administration. ‘It leaves the occupants uneasy every day, reminding them about the fact that Kherson is Ukraine.’
Mr Khlan said more organised efforts were starting in Kherson as Russia tries to impose its currency and language before the planned annexation. ‘It’s too early to talk about it but we have cases already when collaborators just disappear.’
Substantial rewards are even being offered on social media for some of Moscow’s allies in Crimea, including Sergey Aksyonov, governor of the region that was illegally seized by Russia in 2014.
Since the start of the invasion three months ago, there have been individual incidents of resistance that boosted Ukrainian morale – such as the farmer who towed away a tank with his tractor and some villagers who helped police seize 29 lost Russian soldiers.
Two neighbours in Dymer, near Kyiv, drove away a Russian tanker after seeing it beside the road with a flat tyre, delivering 700 litres of diesel fuel to a hospital.
Vasily, 63, a former army paratrooper, decided to act after Russian forces arrived in his village near Kharkiv and left boxes of ammunition beside their parked vehicles – but did not even tell his wife what he was doing on covert outings with his dog Malva.
First he dismantled parts from 48 missiles and hid them in his outdoor toilet. Then he took combat documents, removed batteries from military vehicles at night and destroyed a fuel supply pipe.
Civilians in training with air rifles to defend their homeland from the Russian invaders
His activities ended earlier this month when he detonated a mine on one of his ‘walks’ – and ended up losing a leg after crawling in agony to Ukrainian positions.
‘I had a feeling he was not just going on walks,’ said his wife Natalia. ‘Someone has to help the army. I’m so proud of him.’
Yevhen Shabunya also lost part of a leg after stepping on a mine during his solo partisan efforts. Having watched some YouTube videos about sappers, he went into fields around his village armed with a metal detector and fishing rod to find and detonate Russian booby traps.
Ukrainian resistance efforts seem to be having some impact. ‘Every night we are fighting with sabotage groups,’ said one Russian soldier based near Enerhodar in an intercepted phone call released earlier this month. ‘I want to go home. Many people are on the edge. We just want to get the f*** out of here.’
Other individual acts of heroism include the charity chief who tipped off Ukrainian forces after 12 Russian military vehicles, including a rocket launcher that can fire cluster munitions, parked by his house near Kyiv.
He knew this would probably lead to the destruction of his home – and was later widely praised after posting a picture on Facebook showing the destroyed missile launcher in front of his wrecked house.
‘It is no exaggeration to say 80 per cent of the precise location of Russian hardware destroyed by our artillery is provided by people who are part of the resistance movement or just local citizens,’ said one intelligence source.
The most active guerrilla movement resisting Russian occupation is believed to be in Melitopol, the third-biggest city captured by Putin’s forces, where civilian partisans are working with special forces in secretive units.
Ukrainian intelligence sources said their teams in the city ‘eliminated’ 70 Russian soldiers in the first month alone after launching undercover operations in the middle of March. They claimed to have killed two more ‘high-profile’ officers this month, their bodies left lying in the street.
A bridge used to supply the Russian army was blown up last month, while a train carrying troops and weapons was reportedly halted by a railway bombing last week. A hand grenade also exploded next to the enemy headquarters building.
Ivan Fedorov, the city’s exiled mayor, said ‘heroic’ partisans had carried our 20 ‘successful operations of resistance’, passed significant information to Ukrainian forces and ‘liquidated’ 100 of their enemies in nocturnal ambushes.
‘They try to do everything possible to make life uncomfortable for the occupants in Melitopol so they see danger from every corner, from every door, and are waiting to die,’ he added. ‘These are secret and very dangerous operations.’
The Russians have responded with intensive searches of homes and the detention of 500 people. Mr Fedorov himself was abducted from his office with a hood over his head before being freed a week later in a prisoner exchange.
Such resistance confounds Putin’s expectation that Ukraine would easily fold and his forces be welcomed as liberators. Even the loyal Russian media admit sabotage teams working with Ukraine’s armed forces target collaborators.
Putin's hopes for a quick victory were dashed by the bravery of the Ukrainian defence
‘In order to demotivate people to cooperate with Russia, they are trying to intimidate,’ said one Russian official after last week’s assassination attempt in Enerhodar. ‘The calculation is this: you cooperate with Russia and they will kill you.’
As Putin’s forces advance in Donbas and his allies push for annexation of occupied areas by Russia, Kyiv is stepping up guerrilla operations, even offering online advice to partisans through the Centre for National Resistance.
This website provides detailed instructions on sabotage, setting up ambushes and organising passive resistance, warning that operatives may have to live double lives by pretending to be loyal to Russia while secretly working to dislodge its rule.
‘In order to become an invisible avenger whom the occupiers fear, it is necessary to know tactics, medicine, internet security, homemade weapons and nonviolent actions,’ it says.
Roman Kostenko, an MP and former senior intelligence officer whose family home in Kherson has been seized by the Russians, is co-ordinating some partisan units after returning to uniform and evacuating his parents.
He said special forces were training people to boost partisan capabilities under a law passed late last year – and that they had placed operatives inside Moscow’s stooge administrations. This was a ‘very important component of our national security’.
‘For the enemy, people taking part in these activities are just ordinary citizens,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they look like losers but they can do very serious work in creating lots of damage.’
Additional reporting by Kate Baklitskaya
Daily Mail · by Ian Birrell for the Daily Mail · May 30, 2022
26. Ex-U.S. Commandos Are Training Civilians to Crush Putin Army
Ex-U.S. Commandos Are Training Civilians to Crush Putin Army
OFF THE BOOKS
Former U.S. special forces commandos are on the ground in Ukraine teaching guerrilla war tactics to civilians ready to repel invading forces from Russia.
Updated May. 30, 2022 3:20AM ET / Published May. 30, 2022 1:17AM ET
Oleksiy Dovbush
It’s called the Self-Defense Training Center (SDTC), which sounds like the name of a generic martial arts dojo in a suburban strip mall. But don’t be fooled by the handle. The SDTC is in fact a Ukrainian NGO committed to a cause as noble as it is bad-ass.
As civilians across the country took up arms and braced themselves to defend their homeland, a handful of American veterans traveled to Ukraine on their own dime in order to train these everyday men and women for combat.
“Everybody there who’s training is a volunteer,” said Adrian Bonenberger, one of the original trainers in the SDTC program, which he helped kick off in early March. “The whole point is to give people training based in democratic and egalitarian principles as expressed by Western militaries for small-unit leadership,” said Bonenberger, a former Army captain who twice deployed to Afghanistan.
Bonenberger told The Daily Beast that the tactics being taught to the SDTC cadets “depends on a different type of leadership than you see in Soviet-style armies, which tend to revolve around authority and an officer.” By contrast, Bonenberger said, in the Western military tradition “your authority derives from your competence.”
Bonenberger, who rotated home to New York City after a few weeks in Lviv, said that the Western style has practical advantages for the battlefield: “You get a much better fighting unit that way. [A] unit where people like each other, depend on each other, and trust their leadership.”
Former Army Ranger Dan Blakeley, who arrived in Lviv shortly after Bonenberger shipped out, told The Daily Beast that the standard course lasts between two to four weeks, and that the SDTC’s mission statement was rooted in “teaching basic defensive tactics, first aid, and leadership” to the cadets.
“All cadets are civilian volunteers, and of those who join the program, many have never held a gun. So we start with the basics [of] weapon handling, marksmanship, tactical combat casualty care, battle drills, verbal and non-verbal communications,” as well as hand-to-hand and urban combat techniques.
Oleksiy Dovbush
Blakeley described the SDTC as a decentralized organization that depends on local stakeholders in the community to provide storage facilities, training grounds, and housing for U.S. trainers.
He said room-clearing skills were honed in abandoned factories, private fields were used for outdoor target ranges, and local woodlands provided space to practice “cover and concealment” techniques since “that’s probably the environment where [the cadets] will end up fighting.”
Blakeley said he had heard of the SDTC program from a friend, and that he’d been motivated to participate by “the horrors of this war, the scenes in Bucha, Mariupol, Kharkiv, and the unwarranted killing of civilians… I knew I had to do something.”
Another volunteer trainer, former USAF officer Jeremy Fisher, who is now in Lviv, said that there were currently “40-50 cadets in various phases of training.” Fisher also said he has no regrets about his decision to put his life on hold and cover costs to pay his own way into a war zone.
“If ever there was a cause worthy of supporting, this is it. The passion, appreciation, and resolve of this country is the only thing greater than the pain being inflicted,” Fisher said.
SDTC’s cadets could end up joining the Territorial Defense Forces [TDF], which is made up of civilians, or be drafted into the Ukrainian Army. Either way that could mean seeing frontline combat.
Once a cadet joins the TDF he or she might be stationed in Lviv or sent elsewhere to shore up Ukrainian forces. However, the SDTC and the TDF remain unaffiliated organizations. That distinction is important, because the American instructors would be barred from training active-duty members of the Ukrainian armed forces by the U.S. government. But since members of the SDTC are civilians, there is no legal impediment to training them, according to Blakeley, who denied any official U.S. involvement in the program.
“The cadets have a healthy balance of respect for the challenge ahead of them, and a confident expectation of success,” Fisher said. “I’m so fortunate to be in a position to stand by them. It’s sincerely humbling.”
“When I am called to war I will be ready.”
The cadets interviewed by The Daily Beast also reported being in good spirits, despite the challenges ahead.
“People support each other and everyone works for our victory,” said a cadet who asked to be identified only as Petro for security reasons.
“I met many highly motivated people at SDTC, who are ready to go to the front and fight for their country. Many became my good friends. I am glad that such an organization exists and trains people,” said Petro, who spoke to The Daily Beast while hunkered in a bomb shelter after an air-raid warning in Lviv.
Petro, who recently lost his best friend to the fighting, said that his main motivation for joining the SDTC was “to be prepared for war, to be able to protect my country and relatives from the Russians occupiers. I can also be drafted into the army at any time, so I want to prepare as much as possible.”
Another cadet, Ross, said that like many of his cohorts he came to the SDTC without prior training.
“I had no military experience. I worked as a logistics manager before the war, so when Russia invaded, I needed to gain military knowledge. Instructors who come to us [from America] with military experience and share this with us are very important to me personally,” said Ross.
“I gain practical skills and it also gives me peace of mind, because when I am called to war, I will be ready,” he said.
Oleksiy Dovbush
Cadet Petro also said the training eases anxiety about eventually seeing combat.
“I learned how to behave in war, how to use weapons, how to move tactically, how to lead a group, and how to behave during artillery shelling. But the most important thing for me is morale. The knowledge gained reduces uncertainty and fear and I know what to do when I’ll get on a front,” said Petro, who has enrolled in multiple courses with the SDTC over the last two months.
Another trainee who’s enrolled multiple times in the programs is attorney Oleksiy Dovbush. Dovbush is a life-long resident of Lviv who worked with the U.S. vets to help found the center and who currently serves as the local director.
Dovbush expanded on the curriculum the SDTC offers the cadets, saying it includes reconnaissance, setting ambushes, land navigation, identification of enemy vehicles, and “an introduction to international humanitarian law.”
SDTC head Dovbush was quick to explain that the program was a stop-gap effort and not intended to serve as a full-scale boot camp.
“Training at the Training Center cannot be considered sufficient for military service and should be viewed as a foundation for further personal development in this direction,” Dovbush said.
Dr. Robert J. Bunker, the research director at the security consultancy C/O Futures LLC, echoed Dovbush’s concern, and said the best that could be hoped for is that basic training would likely make the cadets “frontline combat-capable” to face Russian forces.
“The new troops won’t have thought processes or muscle memory honed by repeated drills and training so under combat stress—artillery bombardment and direct infantry weapons fires—their performance will initially suffer,” Bunker said.
Oleksiy Dovbush
“How many of you believe you will end up on the front lines?”
In most mainstream U.S. media coverage of the war, the narrative battle lines are clearly drawn. The Russians are routinely denigrated as bumbling, foolish, inept both tactically and strategically—as well as being on the wrong side of history.
Moscow might be warmongering, but that doesn’t mean the Ukrainians aren’t taking heavy casualties, even if Americans aren’t hearing much about such losses at home, Blakeley said.
Bunker agreed.
“If the Ukrainians are suffering heavy losses—which is likely given how the combat environment has shifted to the Donbas, which is more open ground—it would be expected that they would be downplayed to keep their morale up in support of the overall war effort.”
For the cadets, that rate of attrition translates to a high probability that they’ll eventually be mobilized into the TDF or conscripted into the traditional armed forces. And, despite the anti-Russia propaganda, they appear to be very aware of this harsh reality.
“I once asked the question of the cadets ‘How many of you know someone who is actively serving on the front lines?’ Every hand shot up,” Blakeley said. “I then asked ‘How many of you know someone who has died on the front lines?’ Again every hand shot up. When I finally asked, ‘How many of you believe you will end up on the front lines?’ Almost all hands shot up. That’s both an unnerving and grounding response.”
The willingness for self-sacrifice and devotion to the homeland is in stark contrast with the morale exhibited by Russian soldiers, said Futures director Bunker.
“The majority of the Russian troops really want nothing to do with the invasion, don’t understand why they are in the Ukraine, and sure don’t want to die for the glory of Putin’s authoritarian police state,” Bunker said.
Whereas Ukraine sees itself in a life and death struggle, “Russian society is not on a war footing—the conflict is still very much being treated as a sideshow,” he said.
Cadet Petro said the gravity of the situation makes him all the more grateful for his American combat instructors.
“I want to thank all the Americans who help my country… This is a war about the values that Americans and Ukrainians have in common. It is a war of democracy against despotism [and] tyranny. In general, it’s a war for freedom,” Petro said.
SDTC instructor Blakeley said that the resolve, unity, and pride on display in Ukraine reminded him of “the first few months post-9/11 in the U.S.” He also said the Russians may have miscalculated the extent to which their invasion would be seen as an existential threat to traditional Ukrainian values.
“This tragic and senseless war has bonded Ukraine [together]. And that alone may be the determining factor for why Ukraine will win this war,” Blakeley said. “Because for them, there is no other option.”
27. Dan Rice, Special Advisor to Valeriy Zaluzhnyi - The battle of Kyiv will be taught in military history for years
Dan Rice, Special Advisor to Valeriy Zaluzhnyi
The battle of Kyiv will be taught in military history for years
19.05.2022 16:20
As Ukraine continues to repel a full-scale Russian invasion, unleashed more than 80 days ago, Dan Rice, a U.S. combat veteran, recently appointed Special Advisor to Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, came to Ukraine to speak with the latter precisely about leadership and what it takes for an army to hold its ground in the face of a massive Russian force.
Dan Rice sat down with Ukrinform to share the things he learned from Ukraine’s commanders about the ongoing war, the weapons Ukraine needs to push the Russians back and eventually win, and the lessons that NATO armies can learn from Ukraine’s forces in terms of effectively repelling Russian aggression.
RUSSIA TOOK ON ONE OF THE BEST ARMIES IN EUROPE
- How different is this war, as seen from the ground, from how it is perceived by the U.S. audience?
- You know it’s hard to really explain to somebody how this is total war. I mean this is a massive war. We’ve seen it on TV, I’ve been in a lot of combat zones, I’ve been in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon… This is different. This is total war against a sovereign nation, all those other wars were civil wars – this is an invading force that is morally bankrupt from the top to the bottom, taking on a smaller nation, underarmed, undermanned… Yet, the Ukrainian forces have really punched Putin in the nose. I think the battle of Kyiv will be taught in military history for years.
So this is a bigger war than I imagined, and the battle of Kyiv was actually more pivotal than I had any idea.
- How do you think Vladimir Putin actually came to the idea of actually going for a full-scale invasion and what, in your opinion, was the Russian president’s crucial miscalculation?
- I can’t get inside his head but I can see when I’m here now that the 2014 invasion of Crimea and then the Donbas – they basically took 10 percent of Ukraine – I think Ukrainian forces knew he was coming for the other 90 percent at some point. So this country has been on a war footing for years. All of those lieutenants that were in Crimea are now battalion commanders, lieutenant colonels, they’ve been at war for eight years. This country has basically been at war. Russians have not been at war – they had a couple of their troops off, while the majority of their population didn’t even know they were at war.
I think the miscalculation was taking on probably one of the best armies in Europe. Nobody in Europe has as much combat experience as Ukraine. In the last couple of years, it’s increased in armament. It doesn’t have what it needs but it has gotten some great equipment, specifically anti-tank, anti-aircraft, some electronic warfare, some drones, but they need a lot more to get rid of the Russians. His miscalculation was that he didn’t realize he was going against the country that is willing to fight and will fight to the death, and many have.
BATTLE OF MOSHCHUN BECAME A TURNING POINT IN THIS WAR
- Has there already been a turning point in this invasion or is it yet to come?
- I think the turning point was a battle north of Kyiv, in the towns called Moshchun and Irpin. That was the pivotal point in the battle. The Russians attacked in four different avenues of approach and they thought the Ukrainian forces were going to be in their known positions, in their barracks. For two days, Ukrainians knew they were coming so they moved their forces to get ready for the invasion and the Russians had no idea they were in for such a fight. So they all stayed on highways on these four avenues of approach, which made it easier for the Ukrainians to sight them with their anti-tank, and they just pummeled them. I think some 2,000 tanks and BMPs were taken out by anti-tank missiles – light anti-tank weapons, Javelins…
So it’s nearly 25,000 dead Russians. They didn’t see this coming, they totally miscalculated. They thought they were going to take Kyiv within three days. Actually, that was testimony before our Senate from our military, they thought it could fall. But it didn’t.
North of Kyiv, all the bridges were blown, which, again, this army learned from Crimea. In Crimea, they didn’t blow the bridges cause they thought they wanted them back when they returned. But they should have blown the bridges to stop the Russians.
Here, all the bridges were blown. The Russians got held up, stuck on highways, and then they just got targeted with anti-tank weapons. But the colonel I’ve been with in Moshchun, he had quite a battle. It was a brigade-size element, and a battalion in Irpin taking on 30,000 Russians coming down on them. And they fought them off. It was amazing. I walked the battlefield with the colonel, he explained the entire thing. This should go down in military history. They beat a much larger force. And now the Russians are basically stuck in certain areas and now Ukraine has to go on the offensive, for which you usually got to have a larger force. So they really need weapons. They need artillery the most, artillery shells from the west. I think the NATO countries need to support this.
NATO COUNTRIES HAVE TO SEND UKRAINE ALL WEAPONS THEY CAN
- We see that Putin failed miserably to achieve his initial goals in Ukraine. Do you believe Russia will stick to the current tactical goals they have announced for this stage of their “operation”? Could there be any unannounced ones that they might be pursuing?
- I think they failed in their primary goal, which was to take Kyiv and have the government gone into exile, to say that “these Nazis are gone now.” They failed miserably and I don’t think they can take Kyiv now unless they double down or triple down and put in a much larger force. But I think they realize they can’t go on the offensive without major casualties and even then they will probably not be able to achieve this.
My concern about this war at this point is that their objectives have changed. Instead of taking Kyiv and basically taking the whole country, I see the fear is that they keep Donbas, the eastern side, put a bridge all the way down to Crimea, and then they cross over to Transnistria, and then take Moldova. And then they’d basically surround Ukraine and try to control the Black Sea at that point and so they’d have a lot of the territory that they had when they were Soviet Union. I think that’s what they’re probably trying to do and that’s what the west has to stop – for multiple reasons.
The whole reason we started NATO in 1949 was to counter the Soviet Union, which was Russia plus 14 other states, enslaved and occupied by the Russians. So NATO’s mission has always been to counter the Russians. As Eastern Europe became free, more countries joined NATO, now we have former Yugoslavia’s Croatia, North Macedonia… There’s 30 countries now, and the goal of all NATO is to protect each other against the Russians cause everyone’s always feared that Russians will come back. Now they have, first time in 70 years.
So all of those countries, for their own interest, should be sending all those weapons. Ukraine needs artillery shells, new howitzers – you can take U.S. standard or Russian standard. Also it’s 82mm mortar, 152mm and 153mm artillery – these are all Russian. 81mm mortar, 105mm and 155mm howitzers – these are all American. They should pile up everything they have – both Croatia, France, the Czech Republic, Poland – get all their excess inventory, anything they can give, and send it right into Ukraine. The Ukrainians will kill the Russians, and that should be everybody’s goal. Basically, it sounds harsh but that’s the reality. This is immoral, bankrupt army that is invading its neighbors. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czech, Poland – they’ve all been there before with the Russians, they know what they’re fearing. That’s why everybody’s starting to arm up. But in addition to arming themselves, they should be helping Ukraine right now giving them the weapons they got. This is a critical stage of the battle. You can’t let the Russians keep coming back. You got to push them out.
- Do you think these weapons that you named could be a real game changer in this war?
- Already, the weapons that Ukraine received have been a game changer to keep Ukraine alive. I think if they did not receive Javelins, Stingers, and some other anti-tank weapons, they would have collapsed. I mean, to have this size of the armored force coming bearing down on a country, I don’t think any other country in Europe could have withstood that. The fact that Ukraine has is largely dedicated to their heroic, valiant defense, but without the weapons, they just couldn’t have done it.
HAD PUTIN TAKEN UKRAINE IN THREE DAYS, HE WOULD HAVE TAKEN MOLDOVA RIGHT AWAY AND MIGHT HAVE BEEN GOING TO INTO BALTIC STATES…
- Do you think Russian threats of a tactical nuclear strike are a real thing or just pure blackmail? And how should the international community react to the very fact that such threats are being voiced in the first place?
- First of all, I think Putin is a dictator and a madman. I don’t think he’s stable. Two – to invade a sovereign country like this… Their army basically has no values, from the top down, from Putin through the soldiers, you see the atrocities that they’re committing – they’re sick people and they’re undisciplined army. When they’re coming through the cities and they’re killing children, executing people, those handcuffed civilians, this is not a disciplined army.
So from the top down, there’s something wrong. And the world should know that fear. I can’t get inside Putin’s head personally but I think it’s probably just saber-rattling to make people in the west go out: “We shouldn’t even send weapons because he’s threatening nuclear arms!” But wait a minute, he has just invaded his neighbor. He’s already shown he has no morals, he is violating sovereignty of a nation. People shouldn’t be backed down by a dictator – that’s basically appeasement. That’s what we did in World War 2, with Churchill, with Chamberlain: “Let them take Czechoslovakia, let them take Austria…!” That doesn’t work against a dictator like this. You got to fight him. That’s why Ukrainians are standing and fighting. I think they’d rather be dead than live under occupation. And I’ve seen a lot of Ukrainians telling me that. And they’re fighting tough.
But when you’re talking about what Putin is going to do next, if he’s going to use a nuke, he’s going to use it. He has 6,000 nuclear weapons. He could have used it throughout these 20 years that he’s been around. He’s now using conventional forces to attain his political goal, which is to occupy and own Ukraine, and to dominate the wheat markets. Now he’s got energy, he’s got wheat, he’s got food security for Africa, so this is a power grab. And this was his miscalculation as it’s now in the best interest of the EU and U.S. to support the fight here to make sure this doesn’t go to those other countries because had he taken Ukraine in three days, I don’t think he would have stopped here. I think he would have taken Moldova right away. He might have been going into the NATO countries – Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia…
He’s become the best salesman for NATO than NATO could ever have. Look, in the last 30 days you have Sweden and Finland both wanting to join. They’ve had the last 70 years to join and they didn’t, but they are right now, because Putin is forcing everybody to come together. The reason NATO is so important is cause it all boils down to Article 5. It says that if anybody attacks one of the NATO countries, they all have to respond and support that country. It doesn’t mean that if that country invades somebody else, they’ll support it. In fact, they’ll probably kick it out of NATO if that happens. NATO is a defensive organization. That whole Russian propaganda saying that NATO is encroaching on Russia…
There’s already 5 NATO countries that border Russia. They’re already on the borders. Russia is the largest country in the world. It has vast borders. Nobody wants to invade Russia, and I think everybody knows that. Only the madman is telling his people that “they’re starting to surround us.” They’ve got a very strange culture over there. Right now, they think they’re invading Ukraine to get rid of Nazis. They’ve already lost the information operation for this war. The whole world knows they’re lying. Their people don’t know it but the rest of the world doesn’t believe any of that stuff that comes out of Russia. They believe Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military has done such an amazing job with messaging of the war, the strategic communications. They’re telling the truth – good or bad. If they lose a city, they tell the truth. If they gain the city, they say so. But everything the Russians say is basically a lie. And they’re telling their troops lies. They didn’t tell them they were going to invade a country. They told them they were going on a special mission. The third of their troops are conscripts. They’re getting killed out here. And some of them are turning on their officers. And that’s good news for all of us. We just hope more of them will kill their officers and eventually they’ve got to remove themselves from this country and free Ukraine.
THE PRIMARY REASON THAT MOST PART OF UKRAINE IS RIGHT NOW FREE IS THAT IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO LEADERSHIP
- How pressing is the threat of this invasion turning into a long-dragging war of attrition?
- I think it will if the Ukrainians are not properly supplied. I think at the current levels of weapons and ammunition, they can barely just hang on and they could actually lose ground. And if Russians put even more troops in here, you could see Ukraine collapse just under the weight of the enormous Russian army, second-largest in the world. That is why it’s so important for the west to pony up, and they have. So many countries – the Netherlands has been supplying weapons, Sweden, the United States is supplying a lot of weapons. A lot of these weapons are some of our best – the Javelins and Stingers in particular. And I was on a battlefield talking with these commanders – some of them had no training going into the battle on these weapons. They were actually issued Stingers during a battle, they pulled YouTube, they learned how to fire a Stinger and then shot down a Russian helicopter. That’s a very effective weapon system – user-friendly.
Also, the Ukrainian military has been so innovative. They’re learning on the fly and they’re adapting quickly to Russian tactics. The Russians do have their playbook but they’re not well-led. The Russian military leadership is very different. They don’t care about their soldiers. You can see that. They leave their dead all over the battlefield. How confident are you in your military if you leave your wounded and dead on the battlefield? Ukrainians always recover their dead.
- What Ukrainian capabilities turned out to yield better results than initially expected, from your point of view?
- The primary reason that most of Ukraine is right now free is that it all boils down to leadership. I think General Zaluzhnyi is an amazing leader and you can see the discipline in the army – and I’ve worked with the militaries all over the world, I went to West Point, I was in the U.S. Army three different times – so you can spot different things when you meet soldiers to see if it’s a disciplined army, if it’s a well-organized and motivated army. Just by seeing how they carry themselves and their weapons you can say if they’re disciplined. I’ve spoken not only with the general in our two-hour interview the other day, going through all his background plus the war, and it was absolutely amazing. I also spoke with his subcommanders, and they all love him. This is not an army of the old Soviet style, which it used to be when Ukraine was part of the USSR. Over the last several years, actually since Crimea, this army has changed dramatically. Everything from starting special operations forces to psychological operations, to information operations – they have changed entirely. And a large part of it is working with NATO special forces. A lot of Ukrainians have been trained by U.S. green berets – I think, 26,000. So when you start working together, that’s where NATO is good – getting standards across all of these NATO countries. So you can learn from each other, also they have the same type of weapons, they help each other when necessary and fight alongside each other.
The Ukrainian military right now I think can actually add more to NATO than NATO can add to them. NATO can now give them weapons.
- What exactly do you think the NATO armies could learn from the Ukrainian forces, from their current experience of repelling Russian aggression?
- It’s so much. For me, being a military person, just doing a battlefield tour – we call it a staff ride – with the commander, who’s pointing stuff out, it was just amazing to see how the war is a constantly changing environment. You don’t know what the enemy is going to throw up against you.
NOW IT’S ALL CLEAR – THIS IS GOOD UKRAINE VERSUS EVIL RUSSIA
- Is Russian propaganda still making its way to the United States in terms of pushing its own vision of the nature of its war with Ukraine? Are there any media platforms channeling the Russian vision to this end?
- From that side of the Atlantic it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction and truth from lies so with all this information going on social media and mainstream media, it’s hard for even a good, honest journalist to make sense of it. So that’s why it’s so important for people like me to come here and see this, and report facts. One of the things I want to do is to tell a story. I interviewed many people, I filmed things.
I think the Russian media is so powerful that some of their lies get out there and it gets confusing for some people to understand where truth is. But the reality is that this is a sovereign nation with great people, with western values – and I think these values are why NATO should welcome them in.
On the other part, the Russians have just a horrible army, committing atrocities. They claim there are Nazis here but it’s actually they who’re behaving like the Nazis, torturing people, executing prisoners… committing war crimes on a massive scale. They’re sending in MLR systems on civilian targets. There’s no military even in the area and they’re firing MLR systems taking out an entire grid.
Why can’t they just follow the Geneva conventions? They are laws in a land war and if you follow them you could still win a war.
- How significant will the actual sanction damage be for Russian economy? What is the safety margin of the Russian economy against the backdrop of all those sanctions imposed?
- These are really good questions on both sanctions and deterrence. One of the debates now is on whether deterrence works. So clearly it didn’t here because Russia invaded.
On the other side, deterrence has worked because he hasn’t used his nuclear weapons yet. The sanctions will take a lot of time.
Some of the things coming of this as positive is that the west has come together and NATO has never been stronger. It’s basically survivalship. You see that the Russian army is back on the move again, first time in 70 years, heading west and invading countries, it’s going to bind everybody together.
Now everybody knows Putin has control of energy and food, and he uses them as weapons. Now he’s got even more food now that he holds Donbas and other areas that have real high quality wheat (I believe Ukraine produces 20% of the world’s high-yield wheat).
So, while controlling energy and food, he’s oppressing his own people. This is a soulless country, they have a negative birth rate, alcoholism is through the roof, their age of death continues to decline, it’s a poorly-run country with a GDP outside of energy is horrible, this is a third world country. That’s outside of the fact that they have nuclear weapons and energy. But that doesn’t help the people anyway. He oppresses his people, and now he’s trying to oppress even more people.
In 2005, Vladimir Putin said the biggest catastrophe in the last century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. So that’s the mentality of his person. And, unfortunately, we have only played into it. In 1999, it was Chechnya, in 2008 he took Georgia, in 2014 he took Crimea, in 2021 he took Belarus with what basically was a coup d’etat, installing his people in the government, and used Belarus to go in to invade. So all those times the world did nothing or very little. This time, however, Ukraine put up a fight and now suddenly the whole world is supporting it. It’s very encouraging but it’s too bad it required that tragedy to get there. You see blue and yellow all over the world.
- What is the main weakness of the Russian army – and Russian society?
- Since World War 2, there have been a lot of wars, there were gray areas, but now it’s all clear – this is good Ukraine versus evil Russia. I’m talking about from the dictator all the way down to the bottom. But if you look at President Zelensky, the whole world sees he’s done an amazing job rallying the world, getting world leaders to support Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has become more and more isolated. Everybody hates him, everybody sees he’s a dictator and murderer. He murders his own press, he murders his own people – he’s a nut job. So while he’s isolated himself, Ukraine has only become more appealing to the world, and I think that will help in many ways, after the tragedy is over. Tourism will hopefully increase, hopefully there’s going to be a sort of a European Marshall Plan to help rebuild Ukraine quickly – it would be in everybody’s best interests.
- How did Ukraine surprise you in a good way?
- I’ve been to Kyiv before on a tourism trip nearly five years ago. This time, I drove from Krakow to Lviv, then to Kyiv and all around the Kyiv area. It’s an amazing country in a lot of ways. It’s first of all beautiful, it’s very advanced. I’m shocked at how advanced most of the younger people here are. Most of them speak English, and they didn’t speak English as well when I was here five years ago. There’s an increase in the number of people bracing the west, bracing western values. Also, there’s very good wifi and internet across the country, as well as cell coverage. That’s an advancing change. And I think the educational system here is great. I think it’s one of the most educated nations in the world.
So we’re talking about a very advanced country, which is why the tragedy is even more shocking. When you go to, say, to Afghanistan, it’s a really undeveloped country with a 4% literacy rate, there’s conflict, there’s tribal warfare there, but this here is one of the most advanced countries in Europe being invaded by a horde of Russians that are ripping, pillaging an killing. It’s kind of shocking to see the disparity and contrast in that.
Ievgen Matiushenko
28. US congressional delegation makes surprise visit to Taiwan
US congressional delegation makes surprise visit to Taiwan | CNN Politics
CNN · by Wayne Chang,Eric Cheung,Clare Foran · May 30, 2022
CNN —
A US delegation led by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, arrived in Taipei on Monday in a previously unannounced visit, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said.
The delegation will meet with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday, where they will discuss “regional security, economic and trade cooperation, and all issues related to US-Taiwan bilateral relations,” presidential spokesperson Xavier Chang said.
During their visit, the delegation will also meet Premier Su Tseng-chang and Economic Affairs Minister Wang Mei-hua, before departing on Wednesday.
Earlier this month, during a news conference in Tokyo, Biden said that the United States would intervene militarily if China attempts to take Taiwan by force. The warning appeared to deviate from the deliberate ambiguity traditionally held by Washington, though the White House quickly downplayed the comments, saying they don’t reflect a change in US policy.
Under the “One China” policy, the US acknowledges China’s position that Taiwan is part of China, but has never officially recognized Beijing’s claim to the self-governing island of 23 million. The US provides Taiwan defensive weapons, but has remained intentionally ambiguous on whether it would intervene militarily in the event of a Chinese attack.
China responded to the President’s strong warning by expressing “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to Biden’s comments, saying it will not allow any external force to interfere in its “internal affairs.”
Biden’s warning made headlines around the world – and put growing tensions between the small democratic island and its neighboring autocratic superpower back in the spotlight.
On Monday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said 30 Chinese warplanes made incursions into its air defense identification zone, or ADIZ, the highest daily figure in more than four months. In response, the Taiwanese military issued radio warnings and deployed air defense missile systems to monitor the activities, the ministry added.
Taiwan was excluded from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, a regional economic plan recently unveiled by Biden during his Asia trip. The framework is Biden’s attempt at engaging a region increasingly coming under the influence of China.
But Taiwan and the United States could begin talks to deepen trade and economic ties “in a few weeks,” two senior Taiwanese government officials have told CNN.
Prior congressional trips
Duckworth’s visit follows her trip to Taipei in June 2021 when she announced that the US will donate 750,000 Covid-19 vaccines to Taiwan, when there was a lack of vaccines while local infections were on the rise.
“I will continue working to support the people of Taiwan and make sure they get what they need to reach the other side of this pandemic,” Duckworth said in a statement discussing that trip.
CNN has reached out to Duckworth’s office to ask for comment on the senator’s current visit to Taiwan.
In April, a high-profile bipartisan congressional delegation composed of senators Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican; Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat; Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican; Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican; Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican; and GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas arrived in Taiwan for a one-day surprise visit.
“Honored to be in #Taiwan where freedom reigns,” Graham tweeted at the time. “The courageous people of Taiwan are great allies of the United States and a beacon of freedom in a troubled region.”
CNN’s Kevin Liptak and Jessie Yeung contributed to this report.
CNN · by Wayne Chang,Eric Cheung,Clare Foran · May 30, 2022
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
