Informal Institute for National Security Thinkers and Practitioners

Quotes of the Day:

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

- Albert Einstein

"The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws."

-Walt Whitman

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

- Benjamin Franklin

(now that I have returned from Mongolia, I will try to get back on my news distro schedule as I recover from jet lag)

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 24, 2023

2. Dictator Gets Upset When You Call Him a Dictator

3. Wagner’s Aborted Mutiny Leaves No Winners in Russia

4. U.S. Suspected Prigozhin Was Preparing to Take Military Action Against Russia

5. The Ultra-Secret Underwater Spy System That Might Have Heard the Titan Implode

6. Russian War Report Special Edition: Prigozhin and Wagner forces mutiny against Moscow

7. Site of Alleged Wagner Camp Attack Recently Visited by War Blogger

8. China’s foreign minister meets Russian official in Beijing after rebellion

9. US convenes nuclear weapons meeting with China, France, Russia, UK

10. What's going on in Russia?

11. Will India Surpass China to Become the Next Superpower?

12. How the mutiny in Russia will shape the battlefield in Ukraine

13. Putin’s Armor Has Been Pierced

14, Tech Startup Targets Missile Motors as Silicon Valley Moves Into Weapons

15. U.S. Senate committee passes 2024 NDAA with Taiwan provisions

16. Prigozhin’s Mutiny Is the Beginning of Putin’s End

17. Putin’s Armor Has Been Pierced

18. As Russia uprising subsides, U.S., allies brace for what comes next

19. Opinion Putin finally learns the lesson all tyrants learn

20. US Army Pacific Kicks off Khaan Quest 23 in Mongolia, Strengthening International Cooperation

21. US special operators are tinkering with a low-tech kind of aircraft to overcome high-tech threats in future wars

22. Pivot to the Pacific? That Misses the Point

23. Opinion Lecturing India’s leader on human rights is not the best path

24. Book Review: The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History

25. Meta to block news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada

26. Revenge on the CIF - How “The Haters” Cut Special Forces’ Last Link To JSOC

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 24, 2023

Maps/graphics//citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-june-24-2023

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin announced late on June 24 that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal under which Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin will travel to Belarus without facing criminal charges in Russia; some portion of Wagner Group fighters will sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD); and no Wagner personnel will be charged for their involvement in an armed rebellion.
The Wagner Group encircled the Russian Southern Military District (SMD)’s headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and drove to within 330km of Moscow City prior to the announcement of the deal. Wagner forces will reportedly begin withdrawing to their bases soon, and footage reportedly depicts Prigozhin departing Rostov-on-Don.
The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine.
Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin.
The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities.
Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects.
The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits.
The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD.
Russian forces launched their largest series of missile strikes against Ukraine in recent months on June 24, despite the armed rebellion within Russia.
Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front and reportedly made advances on June 24, and regular fighting continued on other sectors of the line.

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JUNE 24, 2023

Jun 24, 2023 - Press ISW

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 24, 2023

Kateryna Stepanenko, Karolina Hird, Riley Bailey, Angelica Evans, and Mason Clark

June 24, 2023, 10pm ET

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cutoff for this product was 4pm ET on June 24. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the June 25 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment. Due to their coverage of an armed rebellion in Russia, many Russian sources did not discuss the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine, and ISW’s coverage of kinetic activity on the frontlines is therefore relatively limited today.

The Kremlin announced late on June 24 that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal under which Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin will travel to Belarus without facing criminal charges in Russia; some portion of Wagner Group fighters will sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD); and no Wagner personnel will be charged for their involvement in an armed rebellion. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov announced that Russian authorities will drop the criminal case against Prigozhin and that Prigozhin will go to Belarus, thanking Lukashenko for his role in mediating the deal with the “higher goal to avoid bloodshed.”[1] Lukashenko’s press service earlier broke the news about the deal, reporting that Lukashenko negotiated with Prigozhin and claiming that Lukashenko and Putin agreed to undertake “bilateral actions” to resolve the crisis earlier in the day.[2] Lukashenko stressed the importance of avoiding a ”bloody massacre” and ensuring security guarantees for Wagner fighters.[3] Prigozhin released an audio message after the initial Belarusian report, claiming his “march for justice” achieved its goal and that he ordered Wagner forces back to their training grounds to prevent the situation from turning bloody (after Wagner forces already killed over a dozen Russian personnel).[4] Prigozhin notably did not mention Lukashenko‘s involvement or the details of any negotiated deal in his own statement. The specifics of the deal, how and on what timeline it will be implemented, the expected outcomes for each party, and the extent to which all involved parties will follow the agreement, remain unclear at this time.

The Wagner Group encircled the Russian Southern Military District (SMD)’s headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and drove to within 330km of Moscow City on June 23 and 24, prior to the announcement of the deal. Wagner forces will reportedly soon begin withdrawing to their bases, and footage reportedly depicts Prigozhin departing Rostov-on-Don. Widely circulated social media footage posted in the early hours of June 24 depicted Wagner forces establishing a cordon around SMD headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, and Wagner-affiliated sources later posted footage showing Prigozhin walking around the headquarters with Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseyev while demanding to see Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.[5] Geolocated footage posted around 1030 Moscow time confirms that Wagner personnel crossed the administrative border of Voronezh Oblast at the Burgaevka checkpoint, where Russian personnel laid down their arms and surrendered to Wagner.[6] Footage posted a few hours later depicted a column of Wagner vehicles and equipment traveling through a checkpoint on the M4 Rostov-on-Don-Voronezh-Moscow highway near the Ikorets River, about 85km south of Voronezh City.[7] Geolocated footage showed a Wagner contingent with two Pantsir-1 air defense systems moving through Buturlinovka, about 135km southeast of Voronezh City.[8] Russian sources claimed that this Wagner convoy split off from the main convoy in order to seize an airbase near Buturlinovka, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation that any Wagner fighters did so.[9] Russian sources posted footage reportedly of Russian Ka-52 helicopters striking claimed Wagner targets on the highway in Voronezh.[10] Wagner forces may have shot down up to three Mi-8 MTPR electronic warfare helicopters, one Mi-8 helicopter, one Ka-52 helicopter, one Mi-35 helicopter, one Mi-28 helicopter, and one An-26/Il-28 transport aircraft, resulting in the deaths of at least 13 pilots and airmen - and one of the single deadliest days for the Russian air force of the war in Ukraine to date.[11]

Geolocated footage posted in the early afternoon Moscow time on June 24 showed Wagner troops reaching Lipetsk Oblast and continuing north on the M4 highway towards Moscow.[12] Russian forces began digging up sections of the M4 in Lipetsk Oblast in order to inhibit Wagner’s movement.[13] By nearly 1800 Moscow time, available visual evidence placed Wagner forces in Krasnoe, northern Lipetsk Oblast, about 330km south of Moscow.[14] Russian security forces reportedly began preparing defensive lines on the southern bank of the Oka River in Moscow Oblast, and unverified reports claim that locals spotted Wagner fighters in Kashira, 95km south of Moscow.[15] ISW has not observed visual confirmation of Wagner fighters closer to Moscow than Krasnoe, despite claims they reached Kashira. Kremlin newswire RIA Novosti posted footage following the announcement of the deal on the evening of June 24 depicting columns of Wagner equipment and personnel departing Rostov-on-Don.[16] ISW has not observed additional visual evidence of Wagner withdrawals as of the time of this publication.

Wagner Group columns on the M4 highway possessed a substantial amount of heavy equipment. Various milbloggers claimed that the Wagner column was comprised of up to 4,000 personnel and between 40 to 50 pieces of equipment, including MRAPs, T-90M main battle tanks, BMP infantry fighting vehicles, Pantsir air defense systems, and Grad MLRS systems.[17] One milblogger remarked that Wagner’s apparent combination of a fast-moving convoy protected by a layered mobile air defense umbrella (comprised of Pantsirs and MANPADs) that effectively defended ground forces from Russian government aircraft was reminiscent of Wagner’s tactics during previous operations in Libya, though the Wagner Group‘s theoretical ability to sustain independent operations in Russia is unclear.[18]

The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine. As ISW reported on June 23, Russian authorities mobilized Rosgvardia (Russian National Guard) special police (OMON) and special rapid response (SOBR) units in response to Prigozhin’s initial announcement of the armed rebellion.[19] Several Russian milbloggers reported that Rosgvardia columns were activated and were seen in Moscow Oblast and en route to Rostov Oblast.[20] However, ISW has not observed any reports or footage suggesting that Rosgvardia units engaged with Wagner at any point. Rosgvardia’s founding mission is to protect internal threats to the security of the Russian government such as an advance on Moscow, and it is notable that Rosgvardia failed to engage even as Wagner captured critical military assets in Rostov-on-Don and destroyed Russian military aircraft.[21] Some Russian commentators additionally noted that the majority of personnel activated for domestic defense were conscripts and Rosgvardia units, and questioned why Russian authorities decided to mobilize conscripts instead of activating wider and more specialized security forces.[22] Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen forces, also theoretically specialized in domestic security, claimed to have activated in response to Wagner advances but never actually met or engaged Wagner - unsurprisingly, and in line with Kadyrov’s paramount objective of maintaining his own internal security force.[23] The Kremlin’s dedicated internal security organs failed to respond to an independent military force capturing the headquarters of the SMD and advancing on Moscow - and Wagner likely could have reached the outskirts of Moscow if Prigozhin chose to order them to do so.

Russian sources were quick to emphasize that Wagner’s armed rebellion did not impact Russian forces in Ukraine, but Wagner’s actions demonstrated Russia’s lack of reserves in rear areas. The Russian MoD immediately blamed Prigozhin’s armed rebellion for presenting Ukrainian forces with opportunities, claiming that Ukrainian forces began launching assaults in the Bakhmut direction to exploit the internal upheaval.[24] Russian sources widely voiced concerns that the rebellion could disrupt Russian forces’ ability to defend against Ukrainian counteroffensives, but many milbloggers asserted that Russian forces are continuing to repel Ukrainian attacks.[25] A prominent milblogger specifically applauded elements of the SMD serving along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front for continuing necessary work at the front despite the “mess” with the SMD headquarters in Rostov-on-Don.[26] Another prominent milblogger argued that Wagner’s armed rebellion did not disrupt Russian frontline combat or aviation operations.[27] Prigozhin indicated that he did not want to disrupt ongoing Russian operations in Ukraine or impede Russian military aircraft flying out of airfields in Rostov Oblast likely to avoid further criticism of his effort.[28] Prigozhin may have also intended to hold the potential to storm SMD headquarters and disrupt Russian operations in Ukraine as leverage in his conflict with the MoD and demands to Putin, and therefore did not launch attacks on the headquarters or MoD personnel that could have led to severe tactical impacts in Ukraine. However, Prigozhin’s rebellion has illustrated that Russian forces lack reserves in many rear areas and almost certainly will degrade the morale of Russian personnel in Ukraine, knowledge that Ukrainian forces may use to adjust attempts at breaking through Russian defenses.

Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin. Prigozhin attempted to justify his armed rebellion by accusing the Russian MoD - namely Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov – of causing irreversible Russian losses on the battlefield and for striking a Wagner base, but notably did not criticize Putin.[29] Prigozhin may have deliberately designed his justification to allow Putin to publicly use Shoigu and Gerasimov as scapegoats for his invasion of Ukraine. Putin, however, denounced Prigozhin (without explicitly naming him) during his televised speech the morning of June 24, indirectly accusing Prigozhin of initiating an armed rebellion and committing treason due to “exorbitant ambitions and personal interests.”[30] Putin’s harsh stance indicated that he remains aligned with the Russian MoD institution - which has consistently proved loyal to him despite numerous military failures and has previously appeared to have Putin's support - and its efforts to formalize Russian irregular units, rather than relying on independent actors like the Wagner Group, as Prigozhin desired.[31]

The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities. The Lukashenko-brokered deal notably strips Prigozhin of control of Wagner Group in exchange for dropping criminal charges for rebellion and treason. The deal will, if executed as framed by Peskov, subordinate some portion of the Wagner Group under the Russian MoD, as Defense Minister Shoigu has long desired. However, it is unclear how the Kremlin will define Wagner personnel as having not participated in the rebellion, and Peskov’s announcement does not specify the fate of Wagner personnel who did participate, other than receiving a pardon. These personnel could potentially sign contracts with the MoD on an individual basis; demobilize in Russia (a likely dangerous course of action for Kremlin internal security), travel to Belarus in some capacity, or deploy abroad to support Wagner’s previous main effort of operations in Africa or the Middle East. It is unclear if Wagner forces will willingly cooperate in their integration under the Russian MoD, or if the Russian Armed Forces will willingly serve alongside Wagner Group personnel in the future. Putin’s stance on Shoigu and Gerasimov remains unclear at this time, and Peskov specified that any military reshuffles are exclusively Putin’s prerogative and were ”hardly” discussed during the negotiations.[32]

Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects. Prigozhin likely viewed the MoD’s July 1 deadline to formalize control over all irregular formations, including Wagner, as an existential threat to his political (and possibly personal) survival. He likely therefore elected to risk using his forces in a bid to change the MoD’s leadership rather than lose Wagner Group entirely, and as ISW assessed on June 23, his only real hope for lasting success was to secure MoD defections, and he did not do so.[33] Prigozhin almost certainly planned this effort in advance due to the observed coordination and speed of Wagner movements, but ISW cannot confirm this hypothesis from the open source.

Prigozhin’s rebellion further eroded his existing support base in the ultranationalist community, Russian government, and within elements of Wagner Group itself. Prigozhin’s armed rebellion likely further eroded existing support for Wagner by forcing Wagner-affiliated regional authorities and recruitment organizations to denounce Prigozhin‘s effort. Kursk Oblast Governor Roman Starovoyt called on Prigozhin to stop his plans and to prevent an internal conflict.[34] Starovoyt acknowledged that Kursk Oblast previously cooperated with Wagner to train personnel for local militias.[35] ”Union of Donbas Volunteers” Head Alexander Borodai also denounced Wagner’s armed rebellion as a stab in the back against Russia.[36] Prigozhin has likely previously relied on the ”Union of Donbas Volunteers” to access the Russian ultranationalist community’s recruitment pool.[37] Prigozhin also likely angered many Wagner personnel and Wagner-sympathetic ultranationalists by not following through with his attempted march on Moscow. A Wagner-affiliated milblogger claimed that Wagner prepared for the march on Moscow in advance and intended to provoke the evacuation of top officials and leadership from the city.[38] The milblogger decried that Prigozhin,” a politician with dubious prospects,” destroyed the whole effort.[39] The notable criticism of Prigozhin from a Wagner-affiliated milblogger is likely reflective of widespread discontent among the pro-Wagner information space that previously applauded the rebellion.[40] One prominent Russian milblogger noted that many Russian milbloggers who have supported Wagner in the past ignored the rebellion or made neutral statements about it.[41] The alleged agreement that Prigozhin reached with Lukashenko and the Kremlin is likely to upset Wagner personnel as it represents the end of Prigozhin’s effort to insulate Wagner from subordination to the MoD. It is unclear at this time if Prigozhin secured buy-in from Wagner commanders or rank-and-file personnel before making the alleged agreement, and many Wagner personnel will likely be displeased with the potential of signing contracts with the MoD, demobilizing, or deploying away from Ukraine.

The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits. The Belarusian Presidential Press Service announced that Putin informed Lukashenko about the unfolding situation in southern Russia the morning of June 24, suggesting Putin approached Lukashenko to resolve the armed rebellion, though the Belarusian government often spins interactions with the Kremlin to its advantage and this framing is unconfirmed.[42] Lukashenko reportedly used his own “existing channels” to clarify the situation on the ground and negotiate with Prigozhin.[43] Lukashenko’s reported access to previously established channels and successful negotiation with Prigozhin likely indicates Lukashenko has unspecified influence over Prigozhin he could leverage to de-escalate the situation.[44] Lukashenko previously used Wagner forces to advance his election campaign after Belarusian authorities arrested 3 Russian citizens who allegedly belonged to the Wagner Group in late July 2020.[45] Lukashenko accused the alleged Wagner operatives of planning to interfere with Belarusian elections despite Wagner forces openly using Belarus as a transit country for their missions in the past.[46] The incident resulted in Lukashenko initiating a call with Putin on August 15, 2020, and releasing 32 Wagner personnel.[47] Lukashenko will likely seek to use the de-escalation of the armed rebellion to advance his goals, such as delaying the formalization of the Russia-Belarus Union State or preventing Putin from using Belarusian forces in Ukraine.

The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD. Suggestions that Prigozhin’s rebellion, the Kremlin’s response, and Lukashenko’s mediation were all staged by the Kremlin are absurd. The imagery of Putin appearing on national television to call for the end of an armed rebellion and warning of a repeat of the 1917 revolution – and then requiring mediation from a foreign leader to resolve the rebellion – will have a lasting impact. The rebellion exposed the weakness of the Russian security forces and demonstrated Putin’s inability to use his forces in a timely manner to repel an internal threat and further eroded his monopoly on force. Prigozhin’s rapid drive towards Moscow ridiculed much of the Russian regular forces – and highlighted to any and all security figures, state-owned enterprises, and other key figures in the Russian government that private military forces separate from the central state can achieve impressive results. Wagner’s drive also showcased the degradation of Russia’s military reserves, which are almost entirely committed to fighting in Ukraine, as well as the dangers of reliance on inexperienced conscripts to defend Russia’s borders. The Kremlin struggled to respond quickly in the information space and residents in Rostov-on-Don residents did not oppose Wagner and in some cases greeted them warmly – not inherently demonstrating opposition to Putin but at minimum acceptance of Prigozhin’s actions.[48] Finally, the Kremlin’s apparent surprise at Prigozhin’s move does not reflect well on Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB. Prigozhin consistently escalated his rhetoric against the Russian MoD prior to his armed rebellion and Putin failed to mitigate this risk.[49] We cannot and will not speculate on the concrete impacts of Prigozhin’s rebellion and the Kremlin’s weak response and are not forecasting an imminent collapse of the Russian government, as some have done. Nonetheless, Prigozhin’s rebellion and the resolution of the events of June 23 and 24 - though not necessarily the Prigozhin/Kremlin struggle writ large - will likely substantially damage Putin’s government and the Russian war effort in Ukraine.

Russian forces launched their largest series of missile strikes against Ukraine in recent months on June 24, despite the armed rebellion within Russia. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched 40 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles from ten strategic Tu-95 bombers from the Caspian Sea, nine Kh-22 cruise missiles from eight strategic 22M3 bombers from the northern direction, and two Kalibr sea-based cruise missiles from the Black Sea as well as two S-300 anti-aircraft missiles and three Shahed-131/136 drones.[50] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian air defenses shot down all 40 Kh-101/Kh-555 cruise missiles, two Shahed-131/136 drones, and one Kalibr cruise missile.[51] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces struck residential areas in Kyiv as well as Dnipro City and Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.[52] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces struck Ukrainian electronic intelligence centers and aviation equipment at an airfield in Kirovohrad Oblast and fuel storage facilities in Dnipro City.[53] Prigozhin stated earlier in the day that Russian aviation units operating in Ukraine were flying according to their schedules and that Wagner’s control over military infrastructure in Rostov Oblast, including the Rostov airfield, would not disrupt Russian operations.[54] If Prigozhin was able to disrupt operations connected to the large strike series from the SMD headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, he likely refrained from doing so to avoid criticism that he was undermining the Russian war effort.

Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front and reportedly made advances on June 24. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar stated on June 24 that Ukrainian forces launched simultaneous assaults and made progress north and southwest of Bakhmut.[55] Malyar also started Ukrainian forces continue to engage in heavy fighting along the Zaporizhia front.[56] Ukrainian Tavrisk Group of Forces Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi reported on June 23 that Ukrainian forces achieved successes and advances in an unspecified area of the Tavrisk (Zaporizhia) direction.[57] Russian milbloggers claimed that intensified Ukrainian assaults and decreased Russian artillery fire contributed to Ukrainian advances south of Orikhiv during the night of June 23 and on June 24.[58] The Russian MoD claimed that Ukranian forces also conducted unsuccessful offensive operations in the South Donetsk and Lyman directions.[59] Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) representative Vadym Skibitsky stated on June 24 that Ukrainian forces will likely continue active offensive and defensive operations for the next two to three months.[60]

Key Takeaways

The Kremlin announced late on June 24 that Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko negotiated a deal under which Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin will travel to Belarus without facing criminal charges in Russia; some portion of Wagner Group fighters will sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD); and no Wagner personnel will be charged for their involvement in an armed rebellion.
The Wagner Group encircled the Russian Southern Military District (SMD)’s headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and drove to within 330km of Moscow City prior to the announcement of the deal. Wagner forces will reportedly begin withdrawing to their bases soon, and footage reportedly depicts Prigozhin departing Rostov-on-Don.
The Kremlin struggled to cohere an effective rapid response to Wagner’s advances, highlighting internal security weaknesses likely due to surprise and the impact of heavy losses in Ukraine.
Putin unsurprisingly elected to back the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) and its ongoing efforts to centralize control of Russian irregular forces (including Wagner) over Prigozhin.
The Lukashenko-brokered agreement will very likely eliminate Wagner Group as a Prigozhin-led independent actor in its current form, although elements of the organization may endure under existing and new capacities.
Prigozhin likely gambled that his only avenue to retain Wagner Group as an independent force was to march against the Russian MoD, likely intending to secure defections in the Russian military but overestimating his own prospects.
The optics of Belarusian President Lukashenko playing a direct role in halting a military advance on Moscow are humiliating to Putin and may have secured Lukashenko other benefits.
The Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium. The Lukashenko-negotiated deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution, and Prigozhin’s rebellion exposed severe weaknesses in the Kremlin and Russian MoD.
Russian forces launched their largest series of missile strikes against Ukraine in recent months on June 24, despite the armed rebellion within Russia.
Ukrainian forces conducted counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front and reportedly made advances on June 24, and regular fighting continued on other sectors of the line.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these 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 the Ukrainian 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.

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
Activities in Russian-occupied areas

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Kupyansk-Svatove line on June 24. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Berestove, Kharkiv Oblast (28km southeast of Kupyansk).[61] A Ukrainian junior sergeant serving in the Kupyansk direction reported that Russian forces are unsuccessfully attempting to move closer to Kupyansk.[62] The junior sergeant also reported that unspecified Chechen units are operating in the Kupyansk direction, although ISW has not observed any visual confirmation of Chechen forces recently operating in this direction.[63] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces destroyed three Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups near Berestove and Yahidne (24km southeast of Kupyansk).[64]

Russian forces continued ground attacks near Kreminna amid Russian claims of continued Ukrainian assaults in the area on June 24. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations south of Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna).[65] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Serhiy Cherevaty reported that the intensity of Russian attacks has declined in the Svatove and Kreminna directions.[66] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that the Russian Central Grouping of Forces repelled four Ukrainian attacks in the Serebrianska forest area (11km south of Kreminna).[67] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces suppressed three Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups near Yampolivka (17km west of Kreminna), Torske (15km west of Kreminna), and Dibrova.[68]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian Objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces intensified counteroffensive operations in the Bakhmut area on June 24. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that Ukrainian forces launched simultaneous offensive operations near Bakhmut itself; north of Bakhmut near Orikhovo-Vasylivka (11km northwest of Bakhmut), Bohdanivka (8km northwest of Bakhmut) and Yahidne (2km north of Bakhmut); and southwest of Bakhmut near Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut).[69] Malyar reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified progress in all directions where Ukrainian forces are conducting offensives in the Bakhmut area.[70] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian elements of the Southern Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian assaults near Vesele (20km northeast of Bakhmut) and Bakhmut.[71] The Russian MoD claimed on June 23 that Ukrainian forces are taking advantage of Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin’s armed rebellion to start new offensive operations in the Bakhmut direction.[72] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces significantly intensified the tempo of their operations in the Bakhmut direction, but that Russian forces maintained their positions in the area.[73] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted an unsuccessful offensive operation near Ivanivske (6km west of Bakhmut) and Vesele.[74]

Ukrainian and Russian forces continued limited ground attacks along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City front on June 24. The Russian MoD claimed that Russian elements of the Southern Grouping of Forces repelled Ukrainian attacks near Avdiivka, Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka), and Marinka (27km southwest of Avdiivka).[75] Ukrainian Tavrisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Valeriy Shershen reported that Ukrainian forces captured territory that Russian forces have controlled since 2014 near Krasnohorivka (22km southwest of Avdiivka) in the past week.[76] A prominent Russian milblogger accused Ukrainian sources of spreading false information about Ukrainian advances near Donetsk City, Novomykhailivka (36km southwest of Avdiivka), and Krasnohorivka.[77] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Avdiivka and Marinka.[78] A BARS-13 (Russian Combat Reserve of the Country) affiliated source claimed that Russian forces advanced towards Marinka and captured Ukrainian strongholds in the area on June 23, although ISW has not observed visual confirmation of these claims.[79]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks in western Donetsk Oblast on June 24. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful offensive operations near Vuhledar (30km southwest of Donetsk City).[80]

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces continued ground attacks on the administrative border between Donetsk and Zaporizhia oblasts. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian elements of the Eastern Grouping of Forces repelled three Ukrainian assaults south and southwest of Velyka Novosilka.[81] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully counterattacked near Zolota Nyva (13km southeast of Velyka Novosilka) and attempted to recapture lost positions near Makarivka (7km south of Velyka Novosilka).[82]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly made gains on June 24. Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar reported that heavy fighting continues along all lines of Ukrainian attack in southern Ukraine.[83] A Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces intensified assaults towards Robotyne (12km south of Orikhiv) on the night of June 23 after stopping assaults southwest of Orikhiv.[84] The milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces occupied Russian trench positions near Robotyne and that decreased Russian artillery fire facilitated Ukrainian advances.[85] A prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces advanced 1.5km towards Robotyne from the north and occupied new positions as of the evening of June 24.[86] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces are transferring elements of the 22nd Separate Guards Special Purpose (GRU) Brigade and the Russian Airborne forces’ (VDV) 45th Guards Spetsnaz Brigade to the area to prevent further Ukrainian advances.[87] Another Russian milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces stopped advancing on Robotyne by the evening of June 24.[88]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

ISW is holding today’s force generation section in light of other developments within Russia.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian civilians into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

ISW is holding today’s occupation section in light of other developments within Russia.

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks).

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus, as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

See topline text.

A spokesperson of the Kastus Kalinouski Regiment, a Belarusian volunteer unit serving alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces, claimed on June 24 that the regiment has a large number of reserves in Belarus and urged Belarusians to join an unspecified future operation to take control of the country.[89] It is unclear if the regiment’s announcement was rhetorical posturing in light of Wagner Group financier Yevgeny Prigozhin‘s armed rebellion in Russia or a legitimate announcement that the regiment plans to start operations in Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Dictator Gets Upset When You Call Him a Dictator

Perhaps the response should be to ask to prove to us that you are not a dictator?

Dictator Gets Upset When You Call Him a Dictator

President Biden creates a diplomatic kerfuffle by accurately describing Chinese communist Xi Jinping.

By James Freeman

June 23, 2023 4:22 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dictator-gets-upset-when-you-call-him-a-dictator-5a3bb1f8?utm

Could President Joe Biden’s oratorical skills be improving with age? This column has been saying for a while that President Biden should avoid public speaking—at least on consequential issues—given his habit of making confused and dangerous misstatements. But one must give credit where credit is due. This week the president was precisely accurate in describing a foreign leader whom Mr. Biden had previously mischaracterized.

The Journal’s Sabrina Siddiqui and Vivian Salama report:

President Biden said Thursday he didn’t believe his description this week of Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a dictator had set back U.S. relations with China, after Beijing summoned the U.S. ambassador for an official reprimand following the president’s comments...

China’s Foreign Ministry vehemently objected to the president’s description of their leader... and Beijing lodged its official complaint, known as a démarche, with Ambassador Nicholas Burns, according to U.S. officials.

The touchy Mr. Xi is a dictator but he self-identifies as the head of a legitimate government. No word yet on which pronouns he prefers but he is clearly triggered by mentions of his thuggish communist rule. His minions have spent much of the week trying to create a safe space for him throughout the diplomatic world. The Journal report continues:

The Chinese Embassy in Washington declined to comment on the démarche, which took place hours after Secretary of State Antony Blinken departed from Beijing, where he held high-stakes meetings aimed at slowing escalating tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The State Department also declined to comment.

Démarches are used when one country wants to lodge a complaint or express an official position, and often takes place after an incident. Washington démarched a senior Chinese diplomat from the embassy following the discovery of the Chinese spy balloon.

Xi’s dictatorship aggressively enforces speech codes and has therefore managed to keep many Chinese from learning that the U.S. president accurately described the tyrant who rules over them. The Journal reporters note:

The U.S. officials noted that Chinese state media hasn’t publicized the démarche, partially in the hope of seizing on momentum from Blinken’s trip, and partially to avoid drawing attention to the U.S. president’s characterization of Xi as a dictator...

Chinese authorities haven’t published their statements on government websites and the matter has been ignored by state-run media and the nation’s social media channels, indicating domestic censorship of Biden’s remarks and Beijing’s response.

As for the Biden remarks that triggered Mr. Xi’s diplomatic tantrum, they will not be inspiring anyone to compare Mr. Biden to Cicero and the president’s overall message was debatable. But the important thing is that in a passing reference, Mr. Biden made clear that Mr. Xi is not a freely elected leader presiding over a government committed to the rule of law. Here’s an excerpt from the official White House transcript of President Biden’s Tuesday remarks at a California campaign event:

And so, things are changing. We put together in Southeast Asia — and, by the way, I promise you we’re going to — don’t worry about China. I mean, worry about China, but don’t worry about China. (Laughter.)

No, but I really mean it. China is real — has real economic difficulties. And the reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment in it is he didn’t know it was there. No, I’m serious. That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened. That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course up through Alaska and then down through the United States. And he didn’t know about it. When it got shot down, he was very embarrassed. He denied it was even there.

Some readers may think it odd to be celebrating Mr. Biden’s rhetoric after slogging though those sentences and sentence fragments. But consider how far he’s come in assessing and describing Mr. Xi.

Last October this column noted that back in 2012, then-Vice President Joe Biden spoke at a luncheon in Los Angeles for then-Vice President Xi Jinping of China. After calling it “an honor” to welcome Mr. Xi, Mr. Biden said, according to a transcript published by Congressional Quarterly, that it was “a great pleasure getting to know him” and, if you can believe it, that Beijing had “taken concrete steps to enforce intellectual property rights.” Mr. Biden continued:

I strongly believe, and I think Vice President Xi does as well, that the honest, sustained dialogue we’ve had this week can and will build a stronger relationship that benefits both our nations and our people.

And ladies and gentlemen, it is now my great pleasure to introduce to you the Vice President of China, a man you are going to learn a great deal more about for a good number of years, ladies and gentlemen, my friend, Vice President Xi.

While you may not be in love with Mr. Biden’s current speech-making, it’s clearly much better than it was 11 years ago. Progress!

Speaking of the rule of law and respecting intellectual property rights, if the overly sensitive Mr. Xi wants people to stop calling him a dictator, he has a wonderful opportunity to begin the process of shedding that label.

The Journal’s William McGurn writes this week:

Two years ago Saturday, Hong Kong’s popular Apple Daily published its last edition. The paper had managed to keep going for about six months even after owner Jimmy Lai had been arrested. He’s still in prison, and after being convicted on lesser criminal charges, he is awaiting trial for sedition and foreign collusion in September.

Mr. Lai’s imprisonment has transformed him into one of China’s most recognizable political prisoners. But that’s only half the story. The other half is that the government of a city that purports to be a center of global trade and finance took his newspaper from him without benefit of a court order or judgment.

The Chinese regime’s abuse of Jimmy Lai is exactly what dictators do.

***

James Freeman is the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi” and also the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival.”

***

Follow James Freeman on Twitter.

Subscribe to the Best of the Web email.

To suggest items, please email best@wsj.com.

(Lisa Rossi helps compile Best of the Web.)

3. Wagner’s Aborted Mutiny Leaves No Winners in Russia

Excerpts;

One widely shared conclusion in Russia, however, was that none of the key players in the power struggle that began when Prigozhin seized the southern city of Rostov on Saturday morning has been strengthened by the ordeal that brought the country to the edge of civil war.

...

“The entire system has lost yesterday, including Prigozhin, who is also part of the system,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment who was in Moscow on Saturday. As for Putin, he added, “it turned out that the czar is not a real czar because he couldn’t control a man from his own system who’s supposed to be under his full control.”

As a result, the authority and self-image of the Russian state has sustained lasting damage, likely fueling future challenges to its writ regardless of what happens to Prigozhin. That is especially so as the war in Ukraine, which helped precipitate the Wagner mutiny, continues raging with no end in sight, causing mounting casualties on both sides.

...

A volatile personality and a former inmate of Soviet prisons, Prigozhin isn’t necessarily the favorite alternative for many Russians, particularly the Moscow elites. That is especially so because Wagner’s ranks include thousands of violent criminals recruited in Russian prison camps.

Yet, the very fact that there was so little spontaneous rallying for the Russian president on Saturday, in Rostov or in Moscow, showed the pent-up hunger for change after 23 years of Putin’s rule, many Russian analysts noted.

As of Sunday morning, Wagner remained in charge of the Millerovo military airfield in southern Russia, according to Russian reports. It wasn’t clear when and how Prigozhin will leave for Belarus, and how many of his men will follow suit.

...

“The entire world has seen that Russia is on the brink of the most acute political crisis,” Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser and a political analyst in Moscow, said on Telegram. “Yes, the putsch failed now. But putsches have fundamental reasons. And if the reasons remain, a putsch will happen again. And it could be successful.”

Wagner’s Aborted Mutiny Leaves No Winners in Russia

The authority of the Russian state has sustained lasting damage, inviting future challenges

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-russia-processes-wagners-aborted-mutiny-no-winners-emerge-in-the-aftermath-989d9345

By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow

June 25, 2023 6:26 am ET

Shaken by the Wagner mutiny, Russia began addressing the damage of Saturday’s bout of violence as its citizens tried to understand how these events will affect President Vladimir Putin’s regime, which has shown itself so unexpectedly vulnerable.

The whereabouts of Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin were unclear on Sunday, and neither he nor Putin made public remarks about the conditions under which the rebellion ended. The Russian minister of defense and the head of Russia’s armed forces also remained out of sight.

One widely shared conclusion in Russia, however, was that none of the key players in the power struggle that began when Prigozhin seized the southern city of Rostov on Saturday morning has been strengthened by the ordeal that brought the country to the edge of civil war.

Putin, who earlier in the day demanded his security forces to crush what he described as a treasonous mutiny, amnestied Prigozhin and his men by the evening, after Belarus President Aleksander Lukashenko negotiated a face-saving compromise.

U.S. Suspected Prigozhin Was Preparing to Take Military Action Against Russia

By David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes

David Sanger and Julian Barnes frequently collaborate on intelligence stories in Washington.

The New York Times · by Julian E. Barnes · June 25, 2023

LIVE See more updates: Russia-Ukraine War

June 24, 2023, 9:48 p.m. ET

The information was considered both solid and alarming because of the possibility that a major nuclear-armed rival of the United States could descend into chaos.

Yevgeny Prigozhin in a screen capture from his video address from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, on Saturday after it was captured by his mercenary troops. Credit...Prigozhin Press Service, via Associated Press

By David E. Sanger and

David Sanger and Julian Barnes frequently collaborate on intelligence stories in Washington.

June 24, 2023Updated 9:57 p.m. ET

American intelligence officials briefed senior military and administration officials on Wednesday that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, was preparing to take military action against senior Russian defense officials, according to officials familiar with the matter.

U.S. spy agencies had indications days earlier that Mr. Prigozhin was planning something and worked to refine that material into a finished assessment, officials said.

The information shows that the United States was aware of impending events in Russia, similar to how intelligence agencies had warned in late 2021 that Vladimir V. Putin was planning to invade Ukraine.

But unlike with the initial invasion, when U.S. officials declassified the intelligence and then released it to try to deter Mr. Putin from invading, intelligence agencies kept silent about Mr. Prigozhin’s plans. U.S. officials felt that if they said anything, Mr. Putin could accuse them of orchestrating a coup. And they clearly had little interest in helping Mr. Putin avoid a major, embarrassing fracturing of his support.

In this case, the information that the long-running feud between Mr. Prigozhin, who got his start as “Putin’s chef” in St. Petersburg, and Russian defense officials was about to devolve into conflict was considered both solid and alarming. Mr. Prigozhin is known for his brutality, and had he succeeded in ousting the officials, he would likely have been an unpredictable leader. And the possibility that a major nuclear-armed rival of the United States could descend into internal chaos carried with it a new set of risks.

While it is not clear exactly when the United States first learned of the plot, intelligence officials conducted briefings on Wednesday with administration and defense officials. On Thursday, as additional confirmation of the plot came in, intelligence officials informed a narrow group of congressional leaders, according to officials familiar with the briefings who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. By Friday night, Mr. Prigozhin had dramatically escalated his feud, launching a march on Moscow that the Russian government described as an attempted coup. On Saturday, he called his fighters off and agreed to flee to Belarus.

CNN earlier reported that the United States had briefed congressional leaders about their concerns that Mr. Prigozhin was preparing to challenge Russia’s military leadership.

U.S. officials say Mr. Prigozhin hates Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and the feeling is mutual. Credit...Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, via Associated Press

For years, Mr. Prigozhin hated Sergei K. Shoigu, the minister of defense, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, and the feeling was mutual, U.S. officials said. But it took the war in Ukraine, officials said earlier this year, for the animosity to spill into the open, frequently expressed by Mr. Prigozhin in ill-tempered posts on Telegram, a social media platform.

In recent months, intelligence officials have tracked the growing animosity between Mr. Prigozhin and leaders of Russia’s defense ministry and spent considerable time analyzing it.

The intelligence agencies’ conclusion was that it was a clear sign of the internal tensions caused by the war in Ukraine, a product of Russia’s struggle to supply its troops adequately.

It was an indication, one official said, of how the war was going badly for both Wagner and the regular military.

Intelligence reports released as part of the Discord leaks also showed that the United States had intercepted communications between senior Russian military leaders debating how to handle Mr. Prigozhin’s constant demands for more ammunition.

In interviews before the current crisis, U.S. officials said it was not just Wagner forces that faced supply shortages, but the entire Russian military. Those problems have plagued the Russian military for months, but American officials said earlier this week that they had become more obvious as the Ukrainian counteroffensive began.

Mr. Putin also may have given Mr. Prigozhin the false belief he could move beyond public criticism to action against his military allies. During the fight for the city of Bakhmut, the U.S. government assessed that Mr. Putin very likely ordered regular Russian units to reinforce Wagner forces.

After the capture of Bakhmut, the Russian defense ministry moved to cut down the power of Wagner. Russia forced all volunteers for its forces to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense. The move cut Wagner off from recruits and meant that for the mercenaries to return to the battlefield in Ukraine, Mr. Prigozhin would have to subordinate his forces to the Defense Ministry, said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Placing Wagner forces under the control of Mr. Shoigu was “out of the question” for Mr. Prigozhin, Ms. Stanovaya said.

Many of Mr. Prigozhin’s tensions with the military had played out in public. He used interviews and Telegram posts to berate Mr. Shoigu and General Gerasimov, calling them incompetent and charging that they were misleading Mr. Putin about the progress of the war with Ukraine.

American officials conceded that there was an element of theater to Mr. Prigozhin’s public complaints but that it was nevertheless useful for Mr. Putin, who himself has privately criticized his military leadership for being too passive during the Ukraine war.

Still, American officials concluded that Mr. Prigozhin’s public statements were not controlled by Mr. Putin. His fight with the ministry of defense, officials said earlier this year, was real, not political theater, fueled by the huge casualties Russia had suffered in Bakhmut.

Mr. Prigozhin’s critique went beyond an argument over needed supplies. He charged that the military leadership was corrupt and incompetent. For their part, some military leaders were jealous of his influence with Mr. Putin, American officials said earlier this year.

But it was only in recent days that intelligence officials got the initial warnings that Mr. Prigozhin might take action.

Officials said that intelligence agencies had not known what the results of Mr. Prigozhin’s actions might be, but they were immediately worried about how it might affect the control of Russia’s nuclear weapons. President Biden, speaking in October, talked of the dangers that Mr. Putin would pose if he felt cornered and said the United States was looking for “off ramps” for Mr. Putin.

Since Mr. Prigozhin took action on Friday, American officials have been locked down, saying little publicly about his intentions or what they knew about events on the ground. Officials have been wary, both because events were moving fast and because they did not want to give Mr. Putin any excuse to blame the West for Mr. Prigozhin’s actions. But several officials said they fully expected that Mr. Putin would eventually say the uprising was the result of a foreign plot.

Mr. Prigozhin is under indictment in the United States for his role in trying to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump.

David E. Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent. In a 38-year reporting career for The Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book is “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age.”

Julian E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote about security matters for The Wall Street Journal.

The New York Times · by Julian E. Barnes · June 25, 2023

5. The Ultra-Secret Underwater Spy System That Might Have Heard the Titan Implode

Is it worth compromising US military/intelligence capabilities for a few rich people who embarked on a vanity trip?

Then again, perhaps we know that our adversaries do know of our capabilities so maybe it is not a bad thing to expose these capabilities to demonstrate what taxpayer money does for military operations by showing how it contributed to detecting the Titan accident.

The Ultra-Secret Underwater Spy System That Might Have Heard the Titan Implode

System of undersea microphones built to track Soviet submarines could have guided search for submersible headed to Titanic

By Dustin Volz

Updated June 25, 2023 12:01 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/titanic-titan-implosion-secret-military-technology-8c020e7b?mod=hp_lead_pos2

WASHINGTON—There are government secrets, and then there are government secrets about underwater spying.

Of all the categories of national secrets the U.S. government keeps, few have been as tightly guarded as how the military uses sophisticated acoustic technology to keep an ear on what its adversaries are doing thousands of feet below the sea.

Driving the push for such capabilities are decades of Cold-War brinkmanship and fears about Soviet submarines that could launch nuclear weapons. Today’s tensions with China have provided a reminder of the systems’ importance: The People’s Liberation Army Navy sails a fleet of dozens of submarines, including six that can carry ballistic missiles.

Russian War Report Special Edition: Prigozhin and Wagner forces mutiny against Moscow

https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/russian-war-report-wagner-mutiny/

By Digital Forensic Research Lab

On the evening of Friday, June 23, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin effectively broke ties with Moscow and initiated a mutiny against the Russian military, successfully occupying Rostov. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned Prigozhin’s actions in an address to the nation as Russian authorities secured Moscow and reportedly engaged Wagner forces around Rostov. At the time of writing on the afternoon of Saturday, June 24, Prigozhin appears to have accepted a pause in further escalation, stating that Wagner forces will return to base. Today’s special edition of the Russian War Report provides an overview of the last thirty-six hours, including details on how Prigozhin’s rhetoric escalated into open conflict, open-source analysis of the latest footage, and a review of some of the competing narratives on Telegram and across the Russian information ecosystem.

How Prigozhin used Telegram to declare war on the Russian Ministry of Defense – and then suddenly pull back

The Russian-founded messaging platform Telegram, which became a primary tool circulating pro-Kremlin narratives throughout Russia’s war in Ukraine, achieved an unprecedented level of influence on June 23, with Prigozhin wielding it to vent his rage at the Russian defense establishment and launch a mercenary mutiny. For months, Prigozhin has engaged in rhetorical warfare against his rivals in the Kremlin, in particular Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov. The Wagner founder blamed them for ineptitude over the course of the war in Ukraine, including a months-long public argument about supplying his forces with adequate munitions during its siege of Bakhmut.

Prigozhin’s one-man war against the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) reached new heights in a series of Telegram posts that began on Friday, June 23, and continued into Saturday. At 10:50 am Moscow time, he posted a thirty-minute video to his Prigozhin Press Service Telegram channel excoriating the MoD, accusing its leadership of deceiving Putin and the Russian public in early 2022 into believing that Ukrainian aggression was imminent, and that Russia had no choice but to invade Ukraine.

Sitting in a chair in front of a Wagner Group flag pinned to an otherwise blank wall, Prigozhin proceeded to make his case against the MoD and its entire war effort. “Right now, the [MoD] is trying to deceive society and the president and tell a story that there was insane aggression from the Ukrainian side and they were going to attack us together with the whole NATO bloc,” Prigozhin said effectively undermining the Kremlin’s entire case for war. “Therefore, on February 24, the so-called special operation was launched for completely different reasons.” He described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “monstrous shame show” and an “incompetently planned operation” conducted by “a bunch of creatures” and “mentally ill scum” who “don’t have the balls” to fight aggressively with the necessary decisiveness to win the war, including their unwillingness to use tactical nuclear weapons. “The grandfathers are rather weak. They cannot get out of their comfort zone,” he added.

“A handful of dipshits decided for some reason that they were so cunning that no one would realize what they were doing with their military exercises, and nobody would stop them when they went to Kyiv,” Prigozhin said. He went on to blame Shoigu for killing thousands of capable Russian soldiers, and he directed his ire at Russian oligarchs enriching themselves on the war while seeking to return former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to power. “Our sacred war against those who wrong the Russian people has turned into racketeering, into theft,” he said.

Prigozhin later added that he would follow up the video with a second “interview,” but this would turn out to be a gross understatement, as the initial video was merely the first of more than a dozen messages he would post to his Prigozhin Press Service Telegram channel over the next thirty-six hours.

Later in the day at 5:10 pm Moscow time, Prigozhin amped up his criticism of the MoD even further with a Telegram audio post in which he accused it of committing “genocide” against Russians. Calling out Shoigu and Gerasimov directly, Prigozhin said “they should be held responsible for the genocide of the Russian people, the murder of tens of thousands of Russian citizens, and the transfer of Russian territories to the enemy.”

As angry audio clips of Prigozhin continued to appear into the evening, multiple pro-Wagner Telegram channels circulated a video around 9:00 pm Moscow time purporting to document the aftermath of a Russian airstrike on a Wagner encampment. The video shows scenes of a wooded area lined with stone paths subjected to a moderate amount debris and several fires burning in trenches; a body is briefly seen towards the end of the clip. It is unclear where or when the footage was filmed, and it brought to mind similar suspicious footage contextually devoid footage circulated prior to the February 2022 invasion accusing Ukraine of engaging in sabotage and other aggression against Russia.

Within ten minutes, Prigozhin posted another angry statement, this time accusing the MoD of attacking his forces at the camp. “Today, seeing that we aren’t broken, they decided to launch rocket attacks on our rear camps,” he exclaimed. “A huge number of fighters were killed, our comrades in arms. We’ll decide how to respond to this atrocity. The ball’s in our court.”

Approximately fifteen minutes later, Prigozhin effectively declared war against the MoD in another Telegram audio clip. “The Wagner Group commanders’ council has made a decision,” he announced. “The evil that the country’s military leadership is carrying out must be stopped. They neglect soldiers’ lives. They’ve forgotten the word ‘justice’ and we’re bringing it back. Those who destroyed our guys today, those who destroyed many tens of thousands of Russian soldiers’ lives will be punished.” Later, he described his forces as “25,000 strong,” adding, “We’re going to get to the bottom of the lawlessness in this country.”

As Prigozhin continued posting additional threats and taunts on Telegram, the MoD described the alleged footage circulated on pro-Wagner channels as fake, while Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee announced that the Federal Security Service, or FSB, would initiate a criminal case against Prigozhin “on the fact of calling for an armed rebellion.”

Prigozhin continued posting on and off throughout Saturday as his forces advanced north in the direction of Moscow. Then just before 8:30pm local time, he uploaded another message, stating he would return Wagner forces to their camps. It remains unclear whether he intends to keep that promise.

—Andy Carvin, managing editor, Washington, DC

Putin calls Prigozhin’s “criminal adventure” an “armed mutiny” and “treason”

After spending Friday night away from cameras, Putin released a televised statement late Saturday morning. Addressing the Russian public as well as the armed forces and security personnel “who are now fighting in their combat positions, repulsing enemy attacks,” Putin described Prigozhin’s actions as a “criminal adventure” and an “armed mutiny.”

“Today, Russia is waging a tough struggle for its future, repelling the aggression of neo-Nazis and their patrons,” he stated. “The entire military, economic, and informational machine of the West is directed against us. We are fighting for the lives and security of our people, for our sovereignty and independence, for the right to be and remain Russia, a state with a thousand-year history.”

“This battle, when the fate of our nation is being decided, requires consolidation of all forces,” Putin continued. “It requires unity, consolidation, and a sense of responsibility, and everything that weakens us, any strife that our external enemies can use and do so to subvert us from within, must be discarded. Therefore, any actions that split our nation are essentially a betrayal of our people, of our comrades-in-arms who are now fighting at the frontline. This is a knife in the back of our country and our people.”

Comparing the mutiny to 1917, when “Russians were killing Russians and brothers were killing brothers,” Putin declared, “We will not allow this to happen again. We will protect our people and our statehood from any threats, including from internal betrayal…. Inflated ambitions and personal interests have led to treason—treason against our country, our people and the common cause which Wagner Group soldiers, and commanders were fighting and dying for.”

“Once again, any internal revolt is a deadly threat to our statehood and our nation. It is a blow to Russia, to our people,” he continued. “Our actions to defend the fatherland from this threat will be harsh. All those who have consciously chosen the path of betrayal, planned an armed mutiny, and taken the path of blackmail and terrorism, will inevitably be punished and will answer before the law and our people…. Those who staged the mutiny and took up arms against their comrades—they have betrayed Russia and will be brought to account. I urge those who are being dragged into this crime not to make a fatal and tragic mistake but make the only right choice: to stop taking part in criminal actions.”

“I am certain that we will preserve and defend what we hold dear and sacred, and together with our motherland we will overcome any hardships and become even stronger,” Putin concluded.

—Andy Carvin, managing editor, Washington, DC

Wagner forces enter Rostov, occupy Russian Southern Military District headquarters

Over the course of Prigozhin’s Telegram posts, he boasted that his “25,000 strong” Wagner forces had marched across the border from Ukraine into Russia before claiming they had shot down a Russian armed forces helicopter before entering the city of Rostov. For many hours overnight, he provided no evidence to back his claims. This finally began to change as footage emerged on Russian Telegram, ultimately confirming that Prigozhin had indeed occupied Rostov.

At 3:47 am Moscow time, the pro-Wagner channel VChK-OGPU posted a video in which a helicopter can be heard circling over Rostov at night. The channel noted, however, “No one has yet seen the video of the Wagner PMC column and the battles with the Ministry of Defense.” Two minutes later, the channel changed its tune by sharing a second video appearing to show rocket fire and bursts of assault rifles, describing it as the “first video reportedly showing fighting between PMC Wagner and Ministry of Defense units.” The footage circulated widely on Telegram but remained unverified.

Less than twenty minutes later, at 4:09 am, VChK-OGPU shared a third clip showing what appeared to be a convoy of Wagner tanks, trucks, and other vehicles crossing a checkpoint without any opposition. Unlike the previous clips, however, the footage was easily visible, as it appeared to have been recorded during the pre-dawn twilight. According to open-source sun-tracking data, the sun rose in Rostov this morning at 4:25 am, with twilight commencing at 3:50 am, putting the video’s release squarely in the middle of pre-dawn twilight. The exact location of the footage is still under review and cannot be confirmed.

At 5:01 am, not long after sunrise, the Verum Regnum Telegram channel circulated video clips of what appeared to show Wagner forces arriving in central Rostov, just outside the MoD’s Southern Military District headquarters at the intersection of Pushkinskaya Ulitsa and Budonnovskiy Prospekt. One of the videos appeared to show forces beginning to set up a perimeter around the MoD building.

Telegram footage allegedly of Wagner forces in central Rostov. (Source: Verum Regnum/archive)Top: Highlights from the video showing a tank in front of the southwest corner of Pushkinskaya Ulitsa and Budonnovskiy Prospekt (top left) and a man recording footage on his phone in front of the intersection’s northwest corner in front of the MoD’s Southern Military District building (top right). Bottom: Google Street View of the same intersection facing westward, where both corners are visible. (Source: Verum Regnum/archive, top left and top right; Google Street View/archive, bottom)

A second clip showed how that presence had expanded with the placement of additional armored vehicles blocking the entire intersection from vehicle traffic.

Wagner soldiers (left) and armored vehicles (center and right) block the intersection in front of the Southern Military District building in Rostov. (Source: Verum Regnum/archive)

Around 7:30 am Moscow time, a pair of videos appeared on the WAGNER Z GROUP/Z PMC WAGNER’Z Telegram channel and Prigozhin’s press channel respectively. The first video showed Prigozhin and his entourage entering the inner courtyard of the Southern Military District building. Prigozhin is later seen bragging about his successes with Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov while demanding that Yevkurov speak to him respectfully. In the second video, he addressed the camera and bragged that he had captured Rostov without firing a single shot.

Later, prior to 2:00 pm Moscow time, new footage emerged showing people running from the neighborhood of the MoD building. Initial reports suggested it was a Russian Armed Forces attack within the vicinity, but this has not been confirmed.

The many civilians running from the sound of an explosion were likely due to the crowds that came out to observe Wagner’s occupation of the MoD building. In one video, people can be seen chatting with Wagner soldiers and thanking them.

—Andy Carvin, managing editor, Washington, DC

Wagner forces emerge south of Moscow in Lipetsk

The governor of Lipetsk, Igor Artamonov, announced Saturday afternoon that Wagner forces had entered the region, approximately 400 km south of Moscow. The Associated Press noted that the governor added, “The situation is under control.” Meanwhile, footage emerged that appeared to show excavators destroying the highway between Lipetsk and Moscow.

At the time of writing there were conflicting reports as to whether the Wagner convoy had traveled from Rostov or was comprised of defectors from the Russian Armed Forces.

—Andy Carvin, managing editor, Washington, DC

Explosion at oil depot in Russian city of Voronezh

On June 24, videos depicting an explosion at an oil depot in the region of Voronezh were widely circulated online. The DFRLab identified the precise location of the explosion and confirmed the videos as authentic.

The video published online was captured from buildings in close proximity to the Leroy Merlin store in Voronezh, as clearly observed in the footage. The DFRLab also corroborated the location of the oil depot Red Flag Oil Combine (Комбинат Красное знамя) and identified approximate coordinates for the area where the video was recorded. Below, the screenshot on the left is extracted from the video, while the image on the right is from Google Maps, illustrating the precise positions of the oil depot, store, and the recorded video.

Photo shows the locations of oil depot, store, recorded video, marked as blue, yellow, red respectively. (Source: Left Twitter/archive, Right Google Maps/archive)

Additional footage documented the shelling of a residential area in Voronezh. The footage reveals visible damage to cars. In order to verify the location of the building, the DFRLab utilized reverse image search via Google and Yandex, then cross-referenced the results with Google Maps, verifying the location of the shelling.

Imagery from Google Maps (left) shows the location of residential area in Voronezh (center and right). (Source: Google Maps/archive left; RtrDonetsk/archive, center; @christogrozev/archive, right)The location of residential area as seen on Yandex Maps. (Source: Yandex/archive)

—Sayyara Mammadova, research associate, Warsaw, Poland

—Valentin Châtelet, research associate, Brussels, Belgium

Amid chaos in the Russian information space the Kremlin attempts to limit information on Prigozhin

According to TASS, Russian social network VKontakte (VK) and search engine Yandex are blocking content related to Prigozhin. Reportedly, instead of Prigozhin’s statement that was published on June 23 at 9:52 pm Moscow time, a VK page for Prigozhin’s Concord company displayed a message that the material was blocked on the territory of Russia on the basis of the decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office. At the time of the writing, Prigozhin’s posts on Concord VK page were available, though none of them correspond to 9:52 pm Moscow time. TASS added that the Yandex search results for Prigozhin notifies a reader that some of the search results are hidden in accordance with federal law. Using a virtual private network (VPN), the DFRLab replicated the search of the content mentioned by TASS and found that they are accessible from other locations. The restrictions seem to be geofenced to Russia.

Separately, TASS reported that there are Telegram-access disruptions detected in various Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, and Volgograd Oblasts.

Russia’s internet regulator Roskomnadzor warned that the government can place internet performance restrictions in locations where counter-terrorist operations might take place, such as Moscow, Voronezh, or Rostov. Roskomnadzor also added that the use of Telegram is not limited for now.

Meanwhile, the Telegram channel Faridaily reported that residents of Moscow and the surrounding region are receiving calls from unknown mobile numbers with messages from Wagner. According to the Telegram post, one person received a call on their Viber messenger with a recording of Prigozhin’s appeal about “restoring justice.” Another person received a call on behalf of Wagner with an automated voice encouraging them to join Wagner when their units move toward Moscow.

Meanwhile, footage from Russian state media Rossiya 24 surfaced online showing a confused news anchor. Apparently lacking instructions from the Kremlin on how to report about the armed insurrection in Russia, they said, “Next we are going for short commercial and then… commercial.”

—Eto Buziashvili, research associate, Tbilisi, Georgia

Related Experts: Andy Carvin, Valentin Châtelet, Sayyara Mammadova, and Eto Buziashvili

Image: Founder of Wagner private mercenary group Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks inside the headquarters of the Russian southern army military command center, which is taken under control of Wagner PMC, according to him, in the city of Rostov-on-Don, Russia in this still image taken from a video released June 24, 2023. Press service of "Concord"/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT. TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

7. Site of Alleged Wagner Camp Attack Recently Visited by War Blogger

Photos at the link.

Site of Alleged Wagner Camp Attack Recently Visited by War Blogger

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2023/06/23/site-of-alleged-wagner-camp-attack-recently-visited-by-war-blogger/

Aric Toler

Aric Toler started volunteering for Bellingcat in 2014 and has been on staff since 2015, now serving as the Director of Training & Research.

June 23, 2023

A Russian military blogger visited a Wagner base shortly before it was allegedly the target of a shelling attack, which Wagner head Yevgeny Prigozhin has blamed on the Russian Ministry of Defence (MOD), although which the MOD has denied.

On the evening of June 23, a Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel posted the following message, which was soon-after shared by Prigozhin on his personal Telegram channel: “A missile attack was carried out on a PMC Wagner base. There are many casualties. According to the information of the fighters who are witnesses, the attack was carried out from a rear direction – that is, it was carried out by soldiers of the Russian Ministry of Defence.”

The video shared by the Wagner channel shows panicked men going through a forested base, eventually reaching an area with damaged trees, lingering fires, and an apparent corpse. It is as yet unclear if this footage shows the aftermath of a genuine attack or if it was staged.

The same camp was in a video posted on Telegram by Russian war correspondent Aleksandr Simonov the day before the alleged attack. Simonov is often embedded with Wagner units and posts videos from their positions and operations on his Telegram channel. It is unclear how much time passed between Simonov’s visit to the base and the post on Telegram showing it.

Simonov introduces the video as a visit to a rear Wagner base where fighters await their orders. The site is presumably in occupied territory of Ukraine given trenches and underground sleeping quarters can be seen. As the video unfolds, Wagner fighters walk Simonov through the base eventually taking him to a clearing where soldiers are taking part in target practice.

Wagner fighters appear in a video published by a Russian war blogger on June 22. Source: Simonov’s June 22 video

Features in both videos show that they are in the same location, including a bench near a path, a gas mask, and items along the side of the same distinct path.

Men in uniform can be seen in a forest with a bench highlighted in the red box. Source: Simonov’s June 22 video

The same bench can be seen in the video posted to the Wagner Telegram channel reporting the attack on June 23. Source: Wagner channel’s June 23 video.

Equipment can be seen beside a path in a forest setting in Simonov’s Telegram video. Source: Simonov’s June 22 video.

The same equipment can be seen beside a path in the video posted to the Wagner Telegram channel reporting the apparent attack on June 23. Source: Wagner channel’s June 23rd video.

A helmet and gas mask an be seen atop a stick beside men in uniform in Simonov’s video published on June 22. Source: Simonov’s June 22nd video.

The same helmet and gas mask can be seen in the video posted to the Wagner Telegram channel reporting the apparent attack on June 23. Source: Wagner channel’s June 23rd video.

The location of this Wagner base is still unclear, but the contents of both the Wagner and Simonov videos imply that it is located within occupied Ukrainian territory given shelter has been sought in a wooded area and makeshift underground sleeping quarters can be seen.

Prigozhin has followed up with further Telegram posts insulting Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, and calling for action against the Russian Ministry of Defence, asking “whoever wants” to help him “put an end to this disgrace”. The Russian Ministry of Defence has denied Prigozhin’s accusations, and called it an “informational provocation”.

Michael Sheldon contributed to this report.

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8. China’s foreign minister meets Russian official in Beijing after rebellion

Excerpts:

While China’s state media coverage of Prigozhin’s insurrection was relatively muted, sticking closely to the Russian domestic media version of events, social media was more active.

Multiple posts described the warlord as An Lushan, a reference to a famous rebel general in the eighth century during the Tang dynasty, who rebelled against the empire and set up a shortlived rival kingdom. But the posts were quickly deleted.

Another user on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, appeared to evade government censorship and attracted a lot of reposts by using euphemisms to describe the insurrection, referring to it as a “PUBG” battleground first-person shooter video game and sarcastically giving Putin the pseudonyms of “tsar” and “grandpa”.

But it was clear that despite the government’s efforts to control the narrative, even Beijing’s most stalwart supporters in the state media could not completely conceal their view of Putin’s dimming prospects after recent events.

The end of the rebellion “obviously narrowed the impact on Putin’s authority” Hu Xijin, the former editor of the nationalist Global Times, said on Twitter, before adding: “Although not to zero.”

China’s foreign minister meets Russian official in Beijing after rebellion

Financial Times · by Joe Leahy · June 25, 2023

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang met Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko on Sunday as Beijing tries to gauge the impact of warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s insurrection on the political stability of one of its closest strategic allies.

Chinese state media said the pair, who were pictured smiling and walking together after their meeting in Beijing, “exchanged views . . . on Sino-Russian relations and international and regional issues of common concern”.

The reports did not mention the rebellion and China has made no official statement on the events. China’s state media has downplayed the drama — on Sunday giving precedence to an exchange of letters between President Xi Jinping and a Belgian zookeeper discussing pandas.

But the muted official coverage of the rebellion belies the importance for Xi and the Chinese Communist party leadership of the stand-off in Russia, Beijing’s most important partner in its effort to combat what it sees as US hegemony.

A weakened Russia would not only deprive the Chinese leader of a reliable ally but would also potentially destabilise China’s extensive border with its giant neighbour. “We don’t need another civil war in Russia as well, we need stability in all countries,” said Henry Huiyao Wang, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a think-tank in Beijing.

This desire for stability, Wang said, was why Beijing wanted peace talks between Ukraine and Russia to start as soon as possible. China’s envoy Li Hui visited both countries last month but little progress has been made.

For China’s leadership, the challenge has long been how to express support for Russian president Vladimir Putin without further alienating Europe. Premier Li Qiang visited France and Germany last week to try to strengthen ties that have been weakened by Beijing’s close relationship with Russia.

Over the past two years, Xi has repeatedly expressed strong support for Putin, from their declaration of a “no-limits friendship” only days before Russia invaded Ukraine last year to a state visit by Xi to Moscow this year.

After the debacle of the past few days, Putin will be looking for reaffirmation from foreign leaders, especially China, his most powerful and credible ally.

In a statement released after the meeting, Russia’s foreign ministry said that “the Chinese side expressed its support for the efforts of the leadership of the Russian Federation to stabilise the situation in the country in connection with the June 24 events and reiterated its interest in strengthening Russia’s unity and further prosperity”.

“For Putin, it will be important to have that support from China, a globally important player, to stabilise the domestic climate,” said Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, a former political adviser at the European parliament who is now with National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan.

“They [China] are probably thinking and having talks about what is needed to secure Putin’s position because Putin has been very useful for China. That must be the driving consideration.”

At the same time, the chaos unleashed in Russia by the war against Ukraine will not be lost on Beijing, whose long-term ambition is unification with Taiwan using military force if necessary.

“There are so many lessons to learn from what happened last night,” said Ferenczy. The chaos in Russia might make China think about “how fragile control can be even in the most authoritarian regime”, she said.

While it tried to shore up Putin, Beijing would also be seeking more extensive contacts with other power brokers in Russia, analysts said. This would help it secure the relationship should someone else gain power.

“China may hedge its bets, not by withdrawing support from Putin, but by increasing engagement with other actors in and around Russia,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

While China’s state media coverage of Prigozhin’s insurrection was relatively muted, sticking closely to the Russian domestic media version of events, social media was more active.

Multiple posts described the warlord as An Lushan, a reference to a famous rebel general in the eighth century during the Tang dynasty, who rebelled against the empire and set up a shortlived rival kingdom. But the posts were quickly deleted.

Another user on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, appeared to evade government censorship and attracted a lot of reposts by using euphemisms to describe the insurrection, referring to it as a “PUBG” battleground first-person shooter video game and sarcastically giving Putin the pseudonyms of “tsar” and “grandpa”.

But it was clear that despite the government’s efforts to control the narrative, even Beijing’s most stalwart supporters in the state media could not completely conceal their view of Putin’s dimming prospects after recent events.

The end of the rebellion “obviously narrowed the impact on Putin’s authority” Hu Xijin, the former editor of the nationalist Global Times, said on Twitter, before adding: “Although not to zero.”

With additional reporting by Gloria Li in Hong Kong and Edward White in Hong Kong

Financial Times · by Joe Leahy · June 25, 2023

9. US convenes nuclear weapons meeting with China, France, Russia, UK

US convenes nuclear weapons meeting with China, France, Russia, UK

Reuters · by Reuters

WASHINGTON, June 23 (Reuters) - The United States this month convened a meeting of working-level experts from China, France, Russia and the United Kingdom to discuss nuclear weapons issues including strategic risk reduction, the State Department said.

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the talks were part of "a routine, continuing dialogue."

The department said in a statement on Friday that Washington hosted the meeting on June 13-14 in Cairo among the five nuclear weapons states, describing it as "an ongoing exchange in the context of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)."

The experts were drawn from the countries' respective ministries of foreign affairs and defense, the department said. They "discussed strategic risk reduction, as well as nuclear doctrines and policy," it added.

The NPT, which took effect in 1970, aims to halt the spread of nuclear weapons-making capability and guarantee the right of members to develop nuclear energy for peace means.

The treaty allowed the five nuclear weapons states - who are the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - to keep their nuclear arsenals.

A State Department spokesperson said expert representatives had also met in Dubai in February as part of the dialogue under the NPT, which the United States is currently chairing.

"We found both multilateral conversations to be professional and useful," the spokesperson said in an emailed response that did not address the question of whether any bilateral talks took place.

Reporting by Rami Ayyub and Simon Lewis; Editing by Caitlin Webber and Grant McCool

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Reuters

10. Prigozhin's Mutiny - What's going on in Russia?

This was written before Prigozhin's capitulation to Putin. But I think it is some very important analysis from Sir Lawrence Freedman.

Prigozhin's Mutiny

What's going on in Russia?

https://samf.substack.com/p/prigozhins-mutiny?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

samf.substack.com · by Lawrence Freedman

Having been told for months that Putin was fully in control and not vulnerable to coups, his authority is now being directly challenged in a way that may have far-reaching implications for the regime as well as the course of the war. The confidence there would be no coup was due to there being nobody obvious to lead one, given a serious candidate would need to be backed by credible military capabilities.

Now we have a candidate. This coup is being led by the boss of the Wagner mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin. At first the smart money was on his failure because the full weight of the Russian state is against him. Before he made his moves, he was declared a traitor, his offices were raided, and his bases shelled. But the Russian state is inept and decrepit. If the aim was to catch Prigozhin unawares and shut him up it failed, because he appears to have had some notice of what was being prepared for him and so took his own initiatives. If you are going to move against your opponents you need to be decisive. Prigozhin got away (like Zelensky in February 2022).

Instead a column of his men crossed from the Donbas into Russia, without hindrance, moving towards Rostov-on-Don. This is a vital command centre and logistic hub for the war. As he did so his people reportedly hacked into local TV and radio, broadcasting appeals for support, claiming that those who support Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu are the real traitors and supporters of Ukraine.

Putin now appreciates the danger that he should have realised weeks ago. In his Saturday morning address he denounced those stabbing Russia in the back at a time of war, insisted that they would be punished, confirmed that a ‘counter-terrorism’ regime was now in place in Moscow, and promised his people that everything was under control. He managed to do this without actually uttering Prigozhin’s name. The Wagner boss has become Voldemort.

There are many uncertainties about developments on the ground. These are situations when rumours are fertilised and grow rapidly, so it is unwise to talk yet with great confidence about what is happening let alone how events will unfold. But at times like this speculation is unavoidable.

How did we get here?

We are on reasonably sure ground when charting the development of this crisis for the Russian state. The tension has been evident for months, gaining attention with Prigozhin’s frequent complaints that he was being starved of ammunition during the long battle for the city of Bakhmut. At one point he threatened to walk away from the battle unless his needs were met, agreed to carry on when told that he would get his supplies, and then still grumbled that it was not enough. Once Bakhmut was taken, after months of gruelling urban combat, there were further complaints that weaknesses among Russian regular forces had allowed the Ukrainians to take back territory on the flanks, thus rendering the efforts of his men useless.

This led to a wider critique of the quality of Russia’s senior command for being out of touch with the harsh realities of the war, playing down casualties, and talking as if all was well when clearly it wasn’t. Then Shoigu made a push to have the Wagner group and other private military companies put under his direct control. Prigozhin made a big show of rejecting Shoigu’s orders. He was already in mutinous mood.

Through this it was assumed that Prigozhin was sufficiently close to Putin to have some latitude when it came to making a noise. Perhaps it suited Putin for a friendly critic to keep his main military advisors on their toes. Yet was he so friendly? The sharper the criticisms the closer they got to Putin. The accusation that the President was being kept wilfully uninformed by his underlings was hardly a ringing endorsement of his leadership. He was either gullible or complicit.

Nor did Putin make any effort to distance himself from Shoigu. Whenever he speaks about military operations, which he has been doing recently more often than at any point since the Ukrainian counter-offensive began, he takes the Shoigu line that all is well, that the Ukrainians are taking a beating, that NATO equipment is nothing special, and that his forces are being prepared for a long haul should this be necessary. One continuity in his pronouncements is that he remains far surer about why the war had to be fought than how it can be won. On this he remains remarkable vague.

Boiling over

It is the question of the war’s necessity that made Prigozhin’s latest accusations so incendiary. Those made on Friday were quite different in nature and direction to anything that had gone before, challenging not only the conduct of the war but the whole basis upon which it was launched. The shots might have been aimed at Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, the commander-in-chief, but Vladimir Putin was clearly in the firing line.

Remember that the pretext for this war was that Ukraine was mounting a ‘genocide’ against the Russian-speaking people of the Donbas, egged on by NATO. That made the invasion urgent, both to safeguard the potential victims and to remove the hateful neo-Nazi regime that was engaging in such terrible acts. The whole sequence of events leading to the 24 February 2022 invasion was orchestrated in line with this theory, starting with the Security Council meeting on the morning of 21 February which was asked whether the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk Peoples’ Republics (DNR/LNR) be recognised.

Putin immediately decided that they should be, confirmed the next day that this covered the classical boundaries of these oblasts rather than the DNR/LNR enclaves, and gained authority from the Duma to do whatever was necessary to defend them. This was followed by a staged incident in Luhansk, a request for help to meet Kyiv’s aggression, and then the full-scale invasion.

In his Friday morning video Prigozhin took down this whole contrivance. He explained that there was no extraordinary threat to the Donbas prior to the invasion, that artillery exchanges were no more than usual, and that the whole business was a put-up affair by Shoigu and other corrupt officers, backed by oligarchs making money out of the military build-up. So damning was the charge that the FSB, the security agency, opened a criminal investigation against Prigozhin. Later Prigozhin was on air again, showing images of the aftermath of an attack by Russian missiles and helicopters on a Wagner camp. He moved even further onto the rhetorical offensive. ‘The evil carried by the country’s military leadership must be stopped.’ The official Russian media denied the attacks, insisting sniffily, that they remained preoccupied with the fight against Ukrainian forces.

What is going on?

Maybe this was an elite fight that got out of hand, a consequence of a military system that failed to achieve unity of command and allowed a number of these private military companies, not just Wagner, to operate independently and according to their own agendas. Since he moved out of the shadows during the course of this war Prigozhin has shown an interest in an eventual political career. He has his own propaganda machine and significant name-recognition among the population. Most importantly he commands a substantial body of men – as many as 25,000 engaged in his current manoeuvres.

The language we have to describe these events often fails to grasp their singular nature. When we talk of coups we imagine armed men rushing into the Kremlin to arrest or kill Putin and installing a new leader, with the main media outlets seized to ensure that everyone knows who is now in charge. In that sense it is not a coup and Prigozhin has insisted that he is not mounting one. His aim is solely to remove Shoigu and Gerasimov and replace the ‘meat-grinding’ strategies they have followed in the war. At any rate following Putin’s speech whether or not this was his intention, Prigozhin is in a direct confrontation with the Russian President. One of them will be a loser.

Prigozhin will have some supporters among the civil and military elite, for his arguments if not for his character, and he is after all not short of funds when it comes to buying favours and intelligence. And while most will take it for granted that their careers and wellbeing depend on Putin’s survival, few can have many illusions left about the mismanagement of this war and the costs it is imposing on Russian society and economy. Most for now will be keeping their heads down, but if this goes much further then there will be demands for loyalty that will carry their own risks.

There has been some fighting, sufficiently serious for Wagner to claim to have shot down three helicopters, but it has not yet got close to a civil war, which would mean that the armed forces were completely divided against each other as if they were confronting an external enemy. On the ground Wagner does not appear to have faced much resistance, even as he walked into the Russian army’s main command centre.

Nor is it an insurrection. Prigozhin has urged people to go out on to the streets to get rid of their ‘weak government’, (‘we will find weapons’). To the extent that they know what is going on the Russian people are likely to be alarmed and perplexed but they are not going to rush out onto the streets and start building barricades. It is certainly not a drive to make peace. At Rostov Prigozhin has taken care to show that he is not interfering with the business of Southern Command as it tries to manage the war, although one must assume that the officers involved must be a tad distracted at the moment. He wants to appear patriotic and claims that he has a better way to fight the war.

It is, however, a mutiny. As such everything for Prigozhin depends on whether his accusations ring true to other troops and prompt them to join his ranks, or at least refuse to start fighting his men. By and large Wagner has shown more discipline and elan than many other Russian forces and it would not be surprising if they gained the upper hand in any fighting. This could soon have a knock-on effect on the cohesion of the loyalist military response.

Prigozhin is clearly not alone in his disdain for the higher command of this war. There are many military bloggers, often extremely nationalistic and pro-war, who are candid about the failings of Russian forces and also blame corruption and complacency at the top. What distinguishes him from others is that he has a large and apparently loyal force at his disposal. Unlike other generals he also has actual victories to his credit, albeit pyrrhic in nature. His men were to the fore in the capture of Soledar and Bakhmut. Elsewhere during the recent Russian offensive there were only costly failures.

Furthermore we know that for many in the front lines, especially those that have been fighting in the Donbas, conditions have been miserable, casualties extremely high, and commanders absent. The Wagner group has claimed that contracted Russian troops would rather be with them than under Gerasimov’s chain of command. Those in the Donbas have supposedly served as part of the LNR and DNR militias, but these have been hollowed out, as their troops kept on getting killed, and now seem to be run as rackets by the remaining local warlords. One of the many tragedies of this war is how those supposedly being protected from mythical Ukrainian atrocities have suffered harsh treatment at the hands of their protectors. Vital cities have been reduced to ruin. Since the first moves in the Donbas to challenge the Ukrainian authorities in the spring of 2014 this region has been impoverished.

What Next?

It is telling that Moscow’s instinctive response is to insist that the mutiny is already failing and that Wagner fighters are seeing the error of their ways and returning to join their true comrades. There is a hope, present in Putin’s speech, that the Wagner troops can be divided from their leader. Denying bad news is the default position of this regime but there is no evidence for now that the mutiny is faltering.

The big question is how the rest of the armed forces will respond. One of the most remarkable videos to emerge so far shows Prigozhin talking in Rostov with Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Vladimir Stepanovich Alekseev, the deputy chief of Russia's military intelligence service, who were both presumably on duty at the command HQ, and now appear to be effectively hostages. Alekeev had not long before issued his own video urging Prigozhin to abandon his adventure. Intriguingly from the same room Prigozhin’s main ally in the high command, General Sergei Surovikin (incidentally a participant in the 1991 coup against Gorbachev), had issued a similar appeal, delivered more in sadness than in anger. So where is Surovikin now? He is potentially a key player.

Shoigu and Gerasimov, who Prigozhin also claimed to be in Rostov, do not appear to be there now. As they still have Putin’s backing it will be up to them to organise the counter-mutiny. Prigozhin now has to decide whether to continue with his march on Moscow as he has promised knowing that preparations are being made to receive him. The UK MOD claims that his men have already reached a half-way point at Voronezh What happens now depends on the loyalty of troops. There are reports – rumours – of some from mainstream forces going over to Wagner. Many more may be passive spectators. If he can’t mobilise substantial loyalist units then Putin is in trouble. If he can then Prigozhin will be isolated and potentially crushed. One factor in all of this is where the loyal troops come from given that so much of the army is bogged down in Ukraine.

Even if Wagner is defeated quickly, which I would not take for granted, then this is still a big shock to the regime and it will have been weakened. If the confrontation goes in the other direction then all bets are off and panic may start to grip the Kremlin. The problem for autocrats like Putin is that they don’t really know what is going on among their people, and that tends to add to the panic. Moreover once the high command looks vulnerable what will the junior commanders do in their battles with Ukrainian forces? How keen will they be to die for a cause that seems lost? For now those watching events with the greatest enthusiasm will be the Ukrainian high command. There are opportunities opening up for offensive operations that they never expected.

Comment is Freed is a reader supported publication. A monthly subscription is £3.50 and an annual one £35. It includes at least four subscriber only posts a month.

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samf.substack.com · by Lawrence Freedman

11. Will India Surpass China to Become the Next Superpower?

Excerpts;

Fortunately, the future does not always resemble the past. But as a sign in the Pentagon warns: Hope is not a plan. While doing whatever it can to help Modi’s India realize a better future, Washington should also reflect on the assessment of Asia’s most insightful strategist. The founding father and long-time leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had great respect for Indians. Lee worked with successive Indian prime ministers, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Ghandi, hoping to help them make India strong enough to be a serious check on China (and thus provide the space required for his small city-state to survive and thrive).

But as Lee explained in a series of interviews published in 2014, the year before his death, he reluctantly concluded that this was not likely to happen. In his analysis, the combination of India’s deep-rooted caste system that was an enemy of meritocracy, its massive bureaucracy, and its elites’ unwillingness to address the competing claims of its multiple ethnic and religious groups led him to conclude that it would never be more than “the county of the future”—with that future never arriving. Thus, when I asked him a decade ago specifically whether India could become the next China, he answered directly: “Do not talk about India and China in the same breath.”

Since Lee offered this judgment, India has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure and development agenda under a new leader and demonstrated that it can achieve considerable economic growth. Yet while we can remain hopeful that this time could be different, I, for one, suspect Lee wouldn’t bet on it.

Will India Surpass China to Become the Next Superpower?

Four inconvenient truths make this scenario unlikely.

JUNE 24, 2023, 7:00 AMhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/24/india-china-biden-modi-summit-great-power-competition-economic-growth/

By Graham Allison, a professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Foreign Policy · by Graham Allison · June 24, 2023

When India overtook China in April to become the world’s most populous nation, observers wondered: Will New Delhi surpass Beijing to become the next global superpower? India’s birth rate is almost twice that of China. And India has outpaced China in economic growth for the past two years—its GDP grew 6.1 percent last quarter, compared with China’s 4.5 percent. At first glance, the statistics seem promising.

This question has only become more relevant as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington this week. From a U.S. perspective, if India—the world’s largest democracy—really could trump China, that would be something to shout about. India is China’s natural adversary; the two countries share more than 2,000 miles of disputed, undemarcated border, where conflict breaks out sporadically. The bigger and stronger China’s competitors in Asia, the greater the prospects for a balance of power favorable to the United States.

Yet before inhaling the narrative of a rapidly rising India too deeply, we should pause to reflect on four inconvenient truths.

First, analysts have been wrong about India’s rise in the past. In the 1990s, analysts trumpeted a growing, youthful Indian population that would drive economic liberalization to create an “economic miracle.” One of the United States’ most thoughtful India analysts, journalist Fareed Zakaria, noted in a recent column in the Washington Post that he found himself caught up in the second wave of this euphoria in 2006, when the World Economic Forum in Davos heralded India as the “world’s fastest-growing free market democracy” and the then-Indian trade minister said that India’s economy would shortly surpass China’s. Although India’s economy did grow, Zakaria points out that these predictions didn’t come true.

Second, despite India’s extraordinary growth over the past two years—when India joined the club of the world’s five largest economies—India’s economy has remained much smaller than China’s. In the early 2000s, China’s manufacturing, exports, and GDP were about two to three times larger than India’s. Now, China’s economy is about five times larger, with a GDP of $17.7 trillion versus India’s GDP of $3.2 trillion.

Third, India has been falling behind in the race to develop science and technology to power economic growth. China graduates nearly twice as many STEM students as India. China spends 2 percent of its GDP on research and development, while India spends 0.7 percent. Four of the world’s 20 biggest tech companies by revenue are Chinese; none are based in India. China produces over half of the world’s 5G infrastructure, India just 1 percent. TikTok and similar apps created in China are now global leaders, but India has yet to create a tech product that has gone global. When it comes to producing artificial intelligence (AI), China is the only global rival to the United States. China’s SenseTime AI model recently beat OpenAI’s GPT-4 on key technical performance measures; India has no entry in this race. China holds 65 percent of the world’s AI patents, compared with India’s 3 percent. China’s AI firms have received $95 billion in private investment from 2013 through 2022 versus India’s $7 billion. And top-tier AI researchers hail primarily from China, the United States, and Europe, while India lags behind.

Fourth, when assessing a nation’s power, what matters more than the number of its citizens is the quality of its workforce. China’s workforce is more productive than India’s. The international community has rightly celebrated China’s “anti-poverty miracle” that has essentially eliminated abject poverty. In contrast, India continues to have high levels of poverty and malnutrition. In 1980, 90 percent of China’s 1 billion citizens had incomes below the World Bank’s threshold for abject poverty. Today, that number is approximately zero. Yet more than 10 percent of India’s population of 1.4 billion continue to live below the World Bank extreme poverty line of $2.15 per day. Meanwhile, 16.3 percent of India’s population was undernourished in 2019-21, compared with less than 2.5 percent of China’s population, according to the most recent United Nations State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. India also has one of the worst rates of child malnutrition in the world.

Fortunately, the future does not always resemble the past. But as a sign in the Pentagon warns: Hope is not a plan. While doing whatever it can to help Modi’s India realize a better future, Washington should also reflect on the assessment of Asia’s most insightful strategist. The founding father and long-time leader of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had great respect for Indians. Lee worked with successive Indian prime ministers, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Ghandi, hoping to help them make India strong enough to be a serious check on China (and thus provide the space required for his small city-state to survive and thrive).

But as Lee explained in a series of interviews published in 2014, the year before his death, he reluctantly concluded that this was not likely to happen. In his analysis, the combination of India’s deep-rooted caste system that was an enemy of meritocracy, its massive bureaucracy, and its elites’ unwillingness to address the competing claims of its multiple ethnic and religious groups led him to conclude that it would never be more than “the county of the future”—with that future never arriving. Thus, when I asked him a decade ago specifically whether India could become the next China, he answered directly: “Do not talk about India and China in the same breath.”

Since Lee offered this judgment, India has embarked on an ambitious infrastructure and development agenda under a new leader and demonstrated that it can achieve considerable economic growth. Yet while we can remain hopeful that this time could be different, I, for one, suspect Lee wouldn’t bet on it.

Foreign Policy · by Graham Allison · June 24, 2023

12. How the mutiny in Russia will shape the battlefield in Ukraine

How the mutiny in Russia will shape the battlefield in Ukraine

Yevgeny Prigozhin is retreating, but his mutiny undermines the Kremlin’s war

Jun 24th 2023

The Economist

ONE MONTH ago Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group had just conquered the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after a nearly year-long battle, crawling forward by a few dozen metres a day. On June 24th Ukrainians watched with amazement, and some glee, as Mr Prigozhin’s forces marched on Moscow, covering 800km in a few hours and shooting down several Russian aircraft. That campaign seems to have ended less than a day after it began. But Russia’s war in Ukraine is unlikely to return to business as usual.

Mr Prigozhin’s mutiny struck at the heart of the war effort. Rostov-on-Don, the city which his forces seized in the early hours of June 24th, is a central logistics and command hub for the war, though the main headquarters sits in Novocherkassk 30km to the east. It is a key route into the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, and a staging post for Russian casualties. Voronezh is similarly important for operations in the northern part of the front. Mr Prigozhin said he would not impede the war, but his conquest of the Russian army’s headquarters in Rostov would have been highly disruptive. Russia’s air losses are thought to have included advanced electronic warfare helicopters.

Ukrainians had hoped that the threat of civil war next door would play out over a longer period in their favour. A source in the Ukrainian general staff said on June 24th that he hoped Russia would be forced to redeploy its scant front-line reserves, earmarked to repel an ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensive, to deal with the crisis at home. That now looks unlikely. Initial reports suggest that Wagner forces are already moving away from Moscow, though whether they return “back to field camps”, as Mr Prigozhin suggested, remains to be seen.

Read more of our recent coverage of the Ukraine war.

Nevertheless Ukraine’s army sought to take advantage of the chaos. Although there appears to have been little dramatic action in the south, where Ukrainian forces have conducted attacks since June 4th, Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, announced a multi-pronged offensive in the east, including Bakhmut, claiming “progress in all directions”. Ukrainian forces have made particular progress near Donetsk city, taking the village of Staromykhailivka, 14km to the west. That is ironic, for Mr Prigozhin, say informed observers, might have timed his own revolt to coincide with what many in Russia thought would be a big Ukrainian push that never materialised.

Yet even if Russian commanders return to their posts, the country’s brief civil war will leave a lasting imprint on the battlefield. The friction within Russia’s military leadership was already bad; it has become worse than ever. On June 24th Vladimir Alekseyev, the deputy head of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, casually mocked Sergei Shoigu, the defence minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff, in a meeting with Mr Prigozhin in Rostov. When asked if he would hand them over, he gestured with a wave: “You can take them.” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and a former president, later suggested that members of Russia’s military “elite” had participated in the rebellion.

Mr Prigozhin’s retreat appears to have been part of a deal. The Kremlin claims that the Wagner leader will be given safe passage to Belarus; troops involved in the mutiny given immunity from prosecution; and others permitted to sign formal contracts with the Russian defence ministry. But if Wagner forces do return to the field, mistrust between mercenaries and regulars will be worse than ever. If they are sidelined, despite the promise of an amnesty, Russia will lose up to 30,000 soldiers, including a battle-hardened elite of 5,000. They will find it hard to replace them. Some reports suggest that Mr Putin might also sack Mr Shoigu, who has served as defence minister for over a decade.

Mr Prigozhin has punctured the Kremlin’s authority. His small band of forces, not much more than a brigade’s worth, contrived the first land-based threat to Moscow since Hitler in 1941—even if it proved to be, quite literally, ephemeral. Mr Putin was counting on a long war in which the West would grow tired of arming and funding Ukraine. There is now strong evidence that the war’s prolongation is also accelerating the fragmentation and decay of his regime. The mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of new recruits, without which Mr Putin cannot mount any fresh offensive, would worsen that problem.

Moreover, Mr Prigozhin has also punctured Mr Putin’s rationale for war. In a video posted on June 23rd he rubbished Russian claims that Ukraine had bombed the Donbas region for eight years and that Ukraine and NATO intended to attack Russia. The war, he said, was in fact launched for the benefit of Russia’s “oligarchic elite”. That might prompt unsettling questions among Russia’s rank-and-file. “Who,” asks John Foreman, British defence attaché in Moscow until recently, “would want to fight on for a Russian regime which has shown such weakness, declaring a mutiny and then rowing back within the day?”■

The Economist

13. Putin’s Armor Has Been Pierced

Excerpts:

The question now is what this aborted revolt means for the loyalty of Russia’s ill-trained and demoralized regular forces, as well as for the notoriously complacent Russian population, the rattled oligarchs, and already disenchanted national leaders from China to Chechnya. The specter of “loose nukes” is another unspeakable implication of a Russian civil war with unclear control of strategic weapons.

Across all of these ample domestic and international pressure points, one cannot rule out the possibility that Putin’s house of cards, built on nothing more than the fading illusion of authority and control, could come crashing down more rapidly in the days ahead than many imagine. But even if Putin survives, his authority will never be what it once was as the emperor is revealed to be increasingly naked.

Putin’s Armor Has Been Pierced

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., William F. Browder · June 24, 2023

Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt has already revealed Putin’s domestic control to be slipping.

By Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., and William F. Browder

Ralph Waldo Emerson is regularly credited as having said, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” But even if reports are accurate that Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has negotiated a truce between Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prigozhin’s revolt has already revealed Putin’s domestic control to be slipping, and we are just in the first innings of a new era. With Putin no longer able to control the rival armed gangs of his own creation, his armor has been pierced, and his formidable aura is dissipating.

Having a 25,000-strong force of armed mercenaries seize Russia’s operational command center for the Ukraine war and advance toward Moscow was the biggest existential threat Putin has faced in his more than 20-year rule. Alexander Vindman, the former director for European affairs in the U.S. National Security Council, pronounced this uprising as having “grown into a full-fledged coup.” “The biggest beneficiary of this distraction is Ukraine, with Russian losing its war in Ukraine and opening up a second front on its own territories,” Vindman said.

Of course, Prigozhin himself is hardly a sympathetic character. He should not be confused with such charismatic Putin critics as the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny or the assassinated politician Boris Nemtsov. Prigozhin is a murderous thug who has personally ordered the execution—via sledgehammer—of those he felt had betrayed him. A longtime Putin crony who started as the Russian leader’s personal chef and turned his friendship with Putin into a lucrative business empire, Prigozhin’s Wagner Group is Russia’s most infamous private mercenary organization and has some of Russia’s most battle-tested fighters. Prigozhin has also been under U.S. sanctions for years due in part to his financing of “troll farms” to interfere in U.S. elections.

Regardless of Prigozhin’s unsavory background, his revolt has already—even after just one day—accomplished what many political experts said could not be done: a major challenge to Putin’s rule from within Russia. Remarkably, according to Prigozhin and apparently verified by Putin, Prigozhin’s Wagner contingent seized control of the major city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, a crucial artery in Russia’s resupply lines into Ukraine, without any major resistance from Kremlin troops. For the first time since Putin took power, portions of Russian territory were substantively controlled by armed forces explicitly seeking to overthrow him.

Three members of the Wagner Group, wearing combinations of military fatigues, body armor, and helmets, sit on top of a tank in the middle of a street. Several of the men carry rifles, and all wear partial face coverings.

Prigozhin’s Defiant Stand: ‘How Did We Get to This Situation?’

What Russian elites are thinking about the mercenary leader’s abortive march on Moscow.

Residents evacuated from Shebekino and other Russian towns near the border with Ukraine are seen in a temporary shelter in Belgorod, Russia, on June 2.

Russians Are Unraveling Before Our Eyes

A wave of fresh humiliations has the Kremlin struggling to control the narrative.

A target depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin is riddled with bullet holes in a shooting range in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 18, 2022.

Russian Guerrillas Are Trying to Violently Overthrow Putin

The Russian president faces a growing threat from his own citizens.

But even more damaging for Putin is the fact that despite his declaration of massive force and strength to the stop the uprising at all costs, the image being projected across Russia and across the world is one of weakness, not strength, since Putin has effectively lost control of the Frankenstein’s monsters of his own creation.

A classic divide-and-conquer leader, Putin long nurtured Wagner as a counterbalance to the formal Russian military structure, personally granting Prigozhin increased paramilitary authority. And when Putin cannot build his own counterbalancing factions, he co-opts existing power centers—from the Kadyrov clan in Chechnya, to oligarchs who subtly oppose Putin’s follies in Ukraine, to the many local mafias that exert effective control of some of Russia’s hinterlands—to get his way through fear and bullying rather than genuine loyalty.

But such divide-and-conquer tactics only work when the leader has the unquestioned power, standing, and capacity to play rival factions off each other so no one power center becomes too independent. The fact that these rival power centers are now turning on him is a testament to how Putin’s power has already slipped. Where these armed gangs with guns once feared Putin, now they smell weakness and opportunity to pounce. No longer the puppet master, Putin is now increasingly the hunted as the once-sycophantic opportunists he cultivated smell blood.

That weakness is surely also not lost on Putin’s head of state counterparts—whether in Belarus, China, or elsewhere—many of whom who have been on the receiving end of Putin’s bullying tactics themselves for many years. For a leader who has long held his supposedly airtight authoritarian control over Russia as a model to emulate for other countries—and who trumpets his own role in helping suppress domestic uprisings across the former Soviet sphere, from the color revolutions to Belarus to Kazakhstan—one can hardly imagine a more humiliating or potent challenge to his authority than from rival factions of his own creation. Putin’s international counterparts have no reason to take him so seriously when even Putin’s own sycophants no longer do, especially with Putin backtracking and compromising with Prigozhin merely hours after declaring the Wagner boss a “traitor.”

This is not even considering the potential opportunities for Ukraine to further press its advantage and weaken Putin in the days ahead, with both Russian military and Wagner troops presumably diverted from the Ukrainian front lines. Putin himself alluded to this threat in his emergency speech today, bizarrely comparing the situation to 1917—when, in his telling, Russia was on the verge of victory in World War I before Russia’s internal divisions and the subsequent collapse of tsarist Russia at the hands of Vladimir Lenin clutched defeat from the jaws of victory. Implicitly casting himself as the modern equivalent of the hapless and ill-fated Tsar Nicholas II seems hardly an inspiring example for the Russian people he meant to rally.

The question now is what this aborted revolt means for the loyalty of Russia’s ill-trained and demoralized regular forces, as well as for the notoriously complacent Russian population, the rattled oligarchs, and already disenchanted national leaders from China to Chechnya. The specter of “loose nukes” is another unspeakable implication of a Russian civil war with unclear control of strategic weapons.

Across all of these ample domestic and international pressure points, one cannot rule out the possibility that Putin’s house of cards, built on nothing more than the fading illusion of authority and control, could come crashing down more rapidly in the days ahead than many imagine. But even if Putin survives, his authority will never be what it once was as the emperor is revealed to be increasingly naked.

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., William F. Browder · June 24, 2023

14. Tech Startup Targets Missile Motors as Silicon Valley Moves Into Weapons

Tech Startup Targets Missile Motors as Silicon Valley Moves Into Weapons

Anduril’s purchase of a solid rocket engine maker marks a further pivot from software to military hardware

By Doug Cameron

Follow and Sharon Weinberger

June 25, 2023 5:00 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-startup-targets-missile-motors-as-silicon-valley-moves-into-weapons-ea34456d?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1

Anduril Industries, one of the first California-based tech startups to seek weapons contracts from the Pentagon, is purchasing a rocket-engine business to supply motors used in missiles.

The company is acquiring Adranos, an Indiana-based company developing a new solid rocket motor for conventional and hypersonic missiles. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal.

The move shows how Anduril, which already has drones deployed in Ukraine, is taking a bigger swing at the military market as Pentagon contractors attempt to expand production to meet demand following Russia’s invasion last year.

The backlog in rocket motor production has been one of the key chokepoints in delivering weapons like the Stinger missile, which Ukraine is relying on in its counteroffensive to push back Russian forces.

Consolidation in the solid rocket motor business has left just two large providers, Aerojet Rocketdyne AJRD 0.05%increase; green up pointing triangle and Northrop Grumman NOC -0.88%decrease; red down pointing triangle. Aerojet Rocketdyne has struggled to keep up with demand and is the subject of an agreed $4.7 billion takeover bid from L3Harris Technologies after antitrust regulators last year blocked an attempted combination with Lockheed Martin.

Anduril executives say the war in Ukraine only highlights the need for greater competition among solid rocket motor makers. As the U.S. pivots toward preparing for a potential conflict with China, defense and industry officials have expressed increasing concern that the U.S. manufacturing base isn’t sufficient to produce weapons, including missiles, for a major military engagement.

“At a time when we already weren’t producing enough weapons fast enough, we’ve now depleted a significant amount of those stockpiles in the war in Ukraine,” said Chris Brose, the chief strategy officer for Anduril. “All of this is made worse by the challenge of China.”

Anduril is one of a handful of defense technology startups that have attracted large-scale Pentagon contracts, despite a concerted push by the Defense Department to lure more firms and innovators from Silicon Valley and other tech hubs. While Anduril does build hardware, such as sensors and drones, its purchase of a rocket motor maker moves the company further into the realm of lethal weapons.

The business was founded in 2017, at a time when many tech companies in and around Silicon Valley were hesitant to work with the military. Anduril, by contrast, targeted the defense and security market, pitching the U.S. government on technology to protect the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rocket engines have been in short supply for weapons such as the Javelin antitank missile. PHOTO: AARON FAVILA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Heidi Shyu, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, said tech companies, such as Anduril, bring needed agility to the weapons market. “They are not the traditional hardware company who’s been working with defense forever,” she said of Anduril. “As a software campaign, they’re used to agility. They pivot fast.”

Adranos, the company Anduril is acquiring, was launched in 2015 as a spinoff from a Purdue University program. It has developed a new rocket motor for missiles and space launch using a different fuel from conventional motors that it said offers greater range.

Anduril said the Adranos factory in Mississippi was scaled to expand annual rocket engine output from hundreds to several thousand for missiles such as the Javelin being used in Ukraine.

“The demand signals are really strong and the providers are few,” said Chris Stoker, co-founder of Adranos.

Raytheon Technologies, which makes the Javelin in partnership with Lockheed Martin, has said the current rocket motor shortage could extend well into next year. Northrop Grumman has boosted production of its own engines, and Lockheed Martin is looking in the U.S. and overseas to expand output.

“We are actively pursuing alternate sources of supply,” said Lockheed Martin Chief Operating Officer Frank St. John.

For Anduril, the Adranos purchase is the latest in a series that have taken the closely held company into new areas including uncrewed underwater vehicles, adding to a portfolio focused on drones and surveillance equipment, all underpinned by its proprietary software.

Alistair MacDonald contributed to this article.

Write to Doug Cameron at Doug.Cameron@wsj.com and Sharon Weinberger at sharon.weinberger@wsj.com

15. U.S. Senate committee passes 2024 NDAA with Taiwan provisions

U.S. Senate committee passes 2024 NDAA with Taiwan provisions - Focus Taiwan

focustaiwan.tw · by > Chinese Version

Washington, June 23 (CNA) The United States Senate Committee on Armed Services passed a bill Friday that lays out the country's national defence policy and budget for the next year, including provisions calling for military cooperation with Taiwan.

The US$886.3 billion budgeted for the 2024 fiscal year under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved by the armed services committee with a 24-1 vote Friday and put through to the Senate for approval.

An executive summary provided by the committee states that the U.S. will seek to strengthen its posture in the Indo-Pacific region, in view of "long-term strategic competition with China and Russia."

Part of that effort includes the U.S. establishing "a comprehensive training, advising, and institutional capacity-building program for the military forces of Taiwan," the bill states.

At the same time, the bill calls for "engagement with appropriate officials of Taiwan for the purpose of expanding cooperation on military cybersecurity activities."

The passage of the bill at the Senate committee followed a similar pattern to corresponding legislation in the House, with the bill passing through the House of Representatives' armed services committee with a 58-1 vote Thursday.

According to the proposal, known as the "Chairman's Mark," put forth on June 12 by the committee's chairman Mike Rogers, the House version of the bill encourages joint military exercises between the U.S. and Taiwan, as well as exchanges among officials on both sides.

In addition, the bill urges the U.S. government to support Taiwan in acquiring defense articles and services "through foreign military sales, direct commercial sales, and industrial cooperation" to help build up its asymmetric strategies.

The bill now awaits approval on the House floor.

Once the Senate and House of Representatives approve their own versions of the NDAA, they will have to negotiate the two versions, produce a final bill and pass that bill in each respective body, before the bill can be signed into law by the president.

(By Teng Pei-ju)

Enditem/kb

focustaiwan.tw · by > Chinese Version

16. Prigozhin’s Mutiny Is the Beginning of Putin’s End

If this is going to result in the end, are we ready for when that happens? What are we doing now to be prepared for that end? What is the information foundation that we are laying down to be able to influence the successor(s)?

Excerpts:

There is another similarity to World War I that Putin did not mention: corruption and incompetence in the Russian military, as well as the inhumane treatment of its own soldiers. Anger with Russia’s top brass has not been limited to Wagner, and Prigozhin’s rage may well extend to the ranks of the Russian military. At the very least, that Prigozhin’s army was able to travel hundreds of miles unhindered shows that the Kremlin lacks the wherewithal to put down a domestic rebellion, especially when its best troops are fighting in Ukraine.

Despite the drama of the situation, a mutiny by Russia’s scariest people should not come as a surprise. The Kremlin allowed Prigozhin to recruit in prisons, which filled Wagner’s fighting force with desperate convicts. Prigozhin has long been the Kremlin’s man for dirty deeds, from interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with his so-called troll farm to fighting undercover in Ukraine, Syria, and the Central African Republic. The Kremlin could deny any connection to Prigozhin, and Prigozhin, of course, denied hiring trolls and warriors. When an unknown number of Wagner contractors in Syria were killed by U.S. forces in 2018, the Kremlin response was muted, since officially they were not members of Russia’s armed forces.

Prigozhin’s Mutiny Is the Beginning of Putin’s End

Nobody in Russia understands what the war in Ukraine is about. And now, nobody knows if that war is coming to them.

By Lucian Kim, a global fellow with the Wilson Center in Washington and NPR’s former Moscow bureau chief.

Foreign Policy · by Lucian Kim · June 24, 2023

When I saw the first images of armed men in ragtag uniforms taking over the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don on Saturday morning, I was immediately reminded of the “little green men” who began showing up in cities in Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Like the Russian troops and soldiers-of-fortune who began the Kremlin’s covert invasion of Ukraine, the fighters in Rostov displayed no insignia as they seized key buildings, including the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military District. Just as in Ukraine nine years ago, there was no resistance from local law enforcement officers, who chose life over a fight with determined gunmen.

This weekend’s lightning takeover of Rostov by the Wagner mercenary group was the first step in an armed mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the ex-con who rose to become Russia’s most infamous battlefield commander. From there, the Wagner forces began a march on Moscow until Prigozhin abruptly ordered his men to turn around and return to their bases. In the space of 24 hours, the full madness of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship was on display. The blowback of his attack on Ukraine was symbolized by a Wagner tank, marked with the letter “Z,” which stands for the Kremlin’s war effort, pointing not at Ukrainians but other Russians.

Prigozhin said his beef was with the military leadership, which he accused of trying to destroy the Wagner Group. He has a history of publicly insulting Russia’s defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, and getting away with it. But Prigozhin’s open show of arms on Russian soil sent a challenge to the Kremlin that Putin could no longer ignore. In a televised address, the Russian president called Wagner’s mutiny a “stab in the back” and warned of civil war. Putin even invoked the violent collapse of the Russian Empire in World War I, though he did not mention Tsar Nicholas II, the disgraced ruler murdered by Russian revolutionaries.

There is another similarity to World War I that Putin did not mention: corruption and incompetence in the Russian military, as well as the inhumane treatment of its own soldiers. Anger with Russia’s top brass has not been limited to Wagner, and Prigozhin’s rage may well extend to the ranks of the Russian military. At the very least, that Prigozhin’s army was able to travel hundreds of miles unhindered shows that the Kremlin lacks the wherewithal to put down a domestic rebellion, especially when its best troops are fighting in Ukraine.

Despite the drama of the situation, a mutiny by Russia’s scariest people should not come as a surprise. The Kremlin allowed Prigozhin to recruit in prisons, which filled Wagner’s fighting force with desperate convicts. Prigozhin has long been the Kremlin’s man for dirty deeds, from interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with his so-called troll farm to fighting undercover in Ukraine, Syria, and the Central African Republic. The Kremlin could deny any connection to Prigozhin, and Prigozhin, of course, denied hiring trolls and warriors. When an unknown number of Wagner contractors in Syria were killed by U.S. forces in 2018, the Kremlin response was muted, since officially they were not members of Russia’s armed forces.

It’s likely that Putin originally imagined Wagner as a Russian version of Blackwater, the U.S. private military contractor that came to prominence in the Iraq War. Wagner mercenaries in Syria and Africa played the part, wearing baseball caps and wraparound sunglasses while toting serious guns. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, Prigozhin stepped out of the shadows to claim ownership of Wagner—and credit for its costly victories. A sledgehammer became the unofficial symbol of the Wagner Group after Prigozhin said one of his fighters had been executed with the tool as punishment for switching to the Ukrainian side.

For Putin, the Wagner mutiny is a self-inflicted wound, the result of his suicidal war against Ukraine. Putin could have chosen to stay on the track of a middle-income economy, with oil and gas exports to Europe guaranteeing enough money to sate his cronies, repress his enemies, and keep the rest of the country quiet, if not happy. Yet the longer he stayed in power, the less interested Putin became in being remembered simply as the leader who stabilized Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was not enough. Putin wanted the legacy of restoring an empire, beginning with Ukraine.

At first, the mission of the “little green men” he sent into eastern Ukraine was to turn the country into a failed state by embroiling it in a perpetual, low-level war. But Ukrainians defied Russia, and even after the 2022 invasion, they rallied to their country’s defense and did not let it collapse. Though battered and bloodied, Ukraine is unified and clear about its purpose. Now Russia looks like the failed state. Nobody in Russia understands what the war in Ukraine is about. And after Prigozhin’s rebellion, nobody knows if that war might not still come to Russia. Who will defend Putin? And who will go for Prigozhin?

Under an agreement brokered by Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, charges against Prigozhin will be dropped, and he will be allowed safe passage to Belarus. But the deal hardly eliminates the threat that Prigozhin—or someone like him—poses to the Kremlin in the future. It is unclear if we are witnessing the beginning, middle, or end of Putin’s end. What is certain is that it is the final chapter of his rule.

Foreign Policy · by Lucian Kim · June 24, 2023

17. Putin’s Armor Has Been Pierced

Excerpts:

The question now is what this aborted revolt means for the loyalty of Russia’s ill-trained and demoralized regular forces, as well as for the notoriously complacent Russian population, the rattled oligarchs, and already disenchanted national leaders from China to Chechnya. The specter of “loose nukes” is another unspeakable implication of a Russian civil war with unclear control of strategic weapons.

Across all of these ample domestic and international pressure points, one cannot rule out the possibility that Putin’s house of cards, built on nothing more than the fading illusion of authority and control, could come crashing down more rapidly in the days ahead than many imagine. But even if Putin survives, his authority will never be what it once was as the emperor is revealed to be increasingly naked.

Putin’s Armor Has Been Pierced

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., William F. Browder · June 24, 2023

Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s revolt has already revealed Putin’s domestic control to be slipping.

By Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., and William F. Browder

Prigozhin’s Defiant Stand: ‘How Did We Get to This Situation?’

What Russian elites are thinking about the mercenary leader’s abortive march on Moscow.

Residents evacuated from Shebekino and other Russian towns near the border with Ukraine are seen in a temporary shelter in Belgorod, Russia, on June 2.

Russians Are Unraveling Before Our Eyes

A wave of fresh humiliations has the Kremlin struggling to control the narrative.

A target depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin is riddled with bullet holes in a shooting range in Lviv, Ukraine, on Feb. 18, 2022.

Russian Guerrillas Are Trying to Violently Overthrow Putin

The Russian president faces a growing threat from his own citizens.

Foreign Policy · by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., William F. Browder · June 24, 2023

18. As Russia uprising subsides, U.S., allies brace for what comes next

So what if all this was a ruse to get Progoshin to Belarus to open a northern front against Ukraine?

Excerpt:

Now apparently to be exiled to Belarus without the serious criminal charges Putin had threatened, Prigozhin’s future standing is unknown, as is whether those among his estimated 25,000 forces still deemed loyal to the state will continue to fight in Ukraine.

As Russia uprising subsides, U.S., allies brace for what comes next

Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s extraordinary showdown with Vladimir Putin has dealt a serious blow to the stability of the Russian regime, observers say

By Karen DeYoung, Missy Ryan and Michael Birnbaum

June 24, 2023 at 8:18 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Karen DeYoung · June 25, 2023

While they struggled to make sense of Saturday’s chaotic and fast-moving events inside Russia, the Biden administration and its Western allies were keenly aware there was little they could do about it beyond watching from afar.

President Biden consulted with top national security aides and his British, French and German counterparts. Secretary of State Antony Blinken convened Group of 7 diplomats. Top Pentagon officials made their own calls, canceled trips abroad and sought to reassure Ukraine, transfixed by the bizarre spectacle of Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group marching toward Moscow for a shootout with the Russian military.

And then, as quickly as it began, with Wagner head Yevgeniy Prigozhin declaring an open conflict with Russia’s military leadership, it seemed to be over. As Saturday became Sunday in Russia, both Prigozhin and the Kremlin declared that a deal had been struck, Wagner troops were turning back and there would be no “Russians against Russians” battle.

Yet, just as little was clear during a day of confusion and upheaval, “we don’t know if it’s over,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow and former deputy secretary general of NATO. “We can speculate all we want, but the fact is we have little idea of what happens next.”

While events were unfolding, the administration trod lightly in making public statements or taking any action, such as putting forces in Europe on alert, to avoid what analysts and former officials said might suggest the United States was trying to exploit the situation and play into long-standing Kremlin narratives about U.S.-led attempts to weaken Russian security.

Terse statements about consultations and briefings were all that emerged. President Biden went to Camp David as scheduled, and Vice President Harris traveled to North Carolina for an event marking the first anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Neither made any public mention of the Russia crisis.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed no such reticence, instead using the upheaval as an opportunity to ask for more weapons and a firm place for Ukraine in NATO, along with a warning to Russians that their foundations are crumbling.

“Today the world saw that the bosses of Russia do not control anything,” Zelensky said in his evening address from Kyiv. “Nothing at all. Complete chaos. Complete absence of any predictability … We know how to win and it will happen. Our victory in this war.”

“And what will you, Russians, do? The longer your troops stay on Ukrainian land, the more devastation they will bring to Russia. The longer this person is in the Kremlin,” he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin, “the more disasters there will be.”

Even before the apparent stand-down, U.S. and European officials and experts speculating about what was happening on the ground, and what it meant, had few facts beyond public statements, Russian media reports and screenshots of barricades erected around Moscow and mercenary troops on the move.

“This will have serious consequences regardless of the outcome,” a European diplomat, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an evolving assessment, said before Prigozhin announced his retreat. “Prigozhin will fail, if the elite stays loyal and enough troops will be ready to fight against Wagner. But even if this implodes, it is a serious sign.”

Former U.S. officials who have long dealt with Russia said that even though the immediate threat from Prigozhin may have eased, the extraordinary events had dealt a serious blow to the stability of the Russian regime.

“We have just watched armed, organized Russians who have come out of [Ukraine] and done a 400 kilometer run into Russia with the whole world watching,” said retired Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack, the top U.S. military official posted to Moscow from 2012 to 2014, and currently a fellow at the Wilson Center.

The question of whether regular Russian troops would have the will and the skill to fight the mercenaries occupied much of Western thinking Saturday.

Wagner forces have proved essential to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and have helped secure some of its most notable tactical victories, even as other top units — including Russia’s airborne and special operations spetsnaz forces — have effectively been destroyed there. “The Russian forces are too weak and don’t want to fight Prigozhin,” one Ukrainian official confidently asserted.

“The Russian military has committed the vast bulk of its forces to the fight in Ukraine,” said Eric Edelman, a former senior defense official in the George H.W. Bush administration. “And we know that the Wagner fighters are some of the most professional and have shown themselves to be the most capable fighters on the battlefield.”

A Western intelligence official predicted early in the day that Russian troops were unlikely to put up much resistance to Prigozhin’s forces if they were persuaded by his arguments that Russia’s military leaders, including Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, have performed disastrously in leading operations in Ukraine, are to blame for the extraordinary number of troops casualties and must be removed by Putin.

U.S. intelligence officials noted that Wagner fighters faced no obvious resistance when they took over Russia’s southern military headquarters in Rostov-on Don, near the Ukraine border, which became the launching place for their march on Moscow. It was, the officials said, an indication that Prigozhin enjoys some level of support among regular military forces as well as its security services.

As for Russia’s regular forces, “I imagine a lot of those soldiers currently deployed in Ukraine will be thinking long and hard about how enthusiastic they should be fighting against Ukrainians in a situation that must look increasingly clear to them … is for a losing cause,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. forces in Europe.

Beyond the question of what immediate effect the crisis might have on the war is whether it has done any significant or lasting damage to Putin. Although Prighozhin had long criticized Russia’s military leaders for inept handling of the war, a stance Putin might have considered useful in shifting blame for battlefield losses, on Friday the Wagner leader dismissed as bogus Putin’s basic rationale for the war in the first place — that it was necessary to prevent an attack on Russia being planned by Ukraine and its allies in the West. Putin, who had long protected Prigozhin, responded that he was “scum” and a traitor.

A weakened Putin could face challenges from the Russian elite, or inspire leaders in Russian regions such as Chechnya and Tatarstan, many of which have long-standing grievances with the central government, to push for additional autonomy or separation from Russia. In that kind of situation, “we’re very much talking about the dismantling of the Russian state as it currently exists,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who served as deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia from 2015 to 2018.

Putin may be less stable than he appeared, said Angela Stent, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Office. “It’s not a good look for Putin that this man [Prigozhin], this leader was able to challenge the authority of the ministry of defense, to take over a city, and to march down the road to Moscow,” she said. “And obviously Putin had to bargain with him.”

“This has been such a credible signal of the extent of discontent and dissatisfaction with the war in Ukraine and with the Putin regime in particular,” said Kendall-Taylor, who is now at the Center for a New American Security. “It’s going to be really difficult to overcome that.”

The real question, said Andrew Weiss, research director on Russia and Eurasia at the Carnegie Endowment, and a former National Security Council and State Department official “is are there significant, powerful people in the shadows who believe that this mess is the final straw, and Putin has screwed up so royally that they need to make him see the error of his ways and push him from power. I have a hard time believing that the scared people around him are likely to move against him.”

Zwack, the retired brigadier general, said that the weekend spectacle might have broken the seal on more widespread protests against the war. “We used to say the base is for Putin, but is there another base for Prigozhin, especially as this terrible war continues, and will the regime be held accountable,” he said. “We are still in the front end of this drama. I don’t think you have such an extraordinary event that just disappears.”

Russia’s neighbors are bracing for chaos if the situation in Moscow deteriorates, Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said in an interview. The NATO nations that border Russia are some of the West’s fiercest Putin critics, but they are also the most sensitive to what happens if instability spills across the heavily guarded frontier.

“If there is chaos in Moscow, there’s the same question people were asking back in 1991,” during a coup attempt against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. “Who controls the nuclear football?” said Rinkevics, who will become Latvia’s president next month.

There is no love lost in the Baltics for Putin, who has repeatedly threatened to retake the countries that were formerly occupied by the Soviet Union. Rinkevics on Friday tweeted an image of Prigozhin along with a lyric about the death of Eva Peron from “Evita,” the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical: “Oh what a circus, oh what a show.”

As it tries to position itself to react to and influence events in the region, the administration and its allies are hampered by restrictions on information, and how much of it can be trusted. “The historical thing worth remembering is that in previous eras we had a lot more data … In 1991,” during a coup attempt against Gorbachev, “Moscow was awash with reporters,” while there are now next to none, Weiss said. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow is down to a relative skeleton staff, he said, and while there is a plethora of social media information from Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, much of it comes from those with a vested interest with reality often hard to discern.

There may be some satisfaction in the West toward Putin’s predicament, but Renkevics said it was difficult to take any pleasure from the situation.

“Seeing the mood in Russia, the propaganda apparatus, there are going to be very challenging times ahead regardless of the turn of events,” he said.

A senior military official from a NATO country agreed. “It cuts both ways,” the official said. “We don’t want a Russia that is too strong. But we don’t want a Russia that is too weak. We don’t want to have a failed state — they’re still a nuclear power.”

Hannah Allam, Shane Harris, Dan Lamothe, Ellen Nakashima and Toluse Olorunnipa contributed to this report.

The Washington Post · by Karen DeYoung · June 25, 2023

19. Opinion Putin finally learns the lesson all tyrants learn

Is there anyone out there listening?

Excepts:

On Saturday night, after mediation from President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Prigozhin called off his advance about 120 miles short of Moscow, so it appears that Putin might survive this crisis. But Prigozhin’s future and that of his company remain to be determined. There is, after all, still a warrant out for his arrest.

The Wagner crisis has nonetheless revealed the hidden instability of Putin’s regime and shaken his aura of power. It could still create opportunities for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that, so far, has been only inching along. If the Russians are distracted with infighting, Ukraine may have the opportunity to score more battlefield successes — and that in turn could further undermine Putin’s hold on power.

There is a lesson here for all future tyrants who might think of launching wars of aggression. Are you paying attention, Xi Jinping?

Opinion Putin finally learns the lesson all tyrants learn

Columnist

June 24, 2023 at 3:27 p.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · June 24, 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin is learning what so many tyrants have learned before him: When you unleash the dogs of war, they can come back to bite you. When the Russian strongman sent his troops marching to take Kyiv, he never imagined that 16 months later mutinous Wagner mercenary group troops would march on Moscow.

But then Napoleon never imagined that invading Russia would lead to his exile and the restoration of monarchy in France. Hitler never imagined that invading Poland would lead to his suicide and the partition of Germany. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein never imagined that invading Kuwait would lead, eventually, to the overthrow of his regime and his death.

War is inherently an unpredictable and risky business, whose consequences can never be foreseen with clarity — and seldom managed with success. A dictator’s illusion of control can all too often collapse in the cauldron of combat — especially if the war turns into a prolonged, bloody conflict of attrition as has occurred in Ukraine.

Many analysts have assumed that time was on Putin’s side in this war, because Russia is so much larger than Ukraine and because Ukraine is so dependent on outside support from countries that might lack the patience to stay the course. But we are now seeing that time might be on Ukraine’s side after all, because its government was democratically elected and enjoys the near-unanimous support of its people to wage a war of territorial defense. Putin’s unelected, criminal regime, by contrast, intimidates the Russian people into acquiescence but does not command loyalty or love.

Like many dictatorships, Putin’s regime turns out to be more brittle than it appears from the outside. He has always relied on his skill in managing competing power centers, pitting oligarchs (and various branches of the government) against each another, so that he would be the ultimate arbiter of decision-making. That model worked for two decades but is breaking down amid the pressure of a losing war that is grinding up and destroying the Russian military.

In February, U.S. intelligence estimated that Russia had suffered at least 35,000 soldiers killed in action and at least 154,000 wounded, while the Oryx open-source intelligence site estimates that Russia has lost more than 2,000 tanks and nearly 900 armored fighting vehicles. Russia has not seen these kinds of losses since World War II. The rapid attrition of the Russian military — and their obvious incompetence — forced Putin to lean more heavily on the Wagner Group, the private military company started by Yevgeniy Prigozhin.

A criminal who spent time in jail in the Soviet Union in the 1980s for armed robbery and other offenses, Prigozhin opened a hot dog stand after getting out and parlayed that into a successful catering business providing food to the Russian military. That led to a nickname he hates: “Putin’s Chef.” Soon, he was cooking up a lot of trouble: His Internet Research Agency became a tool of Russian disinformation, helping to attack the 2016 U.S. election, and his Wagner Group became a tool for Putin to project power in Africa and the Middle East with a patina of implausible deniability. When Putin decided in 2014 to seize Crimea and foment an insurgency in eastern Ukraine, Wagner — full of former special forces operatives from the Russian military — was one of the instruments he used.

Wagner was not initially at the forefront of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the failures of the Russian military gave Prigozhin an opening to essentially grab market share from the Russian Ministry of Defense. Putin’s Chef cooked up a particularly ruthless and audacious scheme by recruiting convicts from Russian prisons to use in human-wave attacks. To keep the criminals in line, he circulated a film of a supposed deserter being executed with sledgehammer blows to the head.

Wagner’s attacks on the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut became the main focus of Russia’s stalled winter offensive. Eventually, Prigozhin’s men took the city but only at a staggering cost: U.S. intelligence estimated that, just between December and May, more than 20,000 Russian troops were killed and 80,000 were wounded, primarily in Bakhmut.

As Prigozhin became more powerful, that power seemed to go to his head, and he began releasing videos in which he taunted Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff, as cowards and criminals. He accused them of not providing enough artillery shells for his forces, ignoring the fact that the Russian military has limited stockpiles and understandably prioritizes its own forces. “Because of their whims, five times more guys than had been supposed to die have died,” Prigozhin said in a video filmed May 20 in Bakhmut. “They will be held responsible for their actions, which in Russian are called crimes.”

Putin did not seem to mind much; he probably imagined that a competition to make military progress in Ukraine would work out to his benefit. But in recent days the rivalry between Wagner and the Ministry of Defense has veered out of control. Earlier this month, Prigozhin’s forces captured a Russian officer he publicly accused of firing on a Wagner convoy. On Friday, Prigozhin accused the Russian military of attacking a Wagner camp, resulting in many casualties, and, referring to Shoigu, he said, “This scum will be stopped!” Russia’s Federal Security Service responded late on Friday by issuing a warrant for Prigozhin’s arrest for “incitement to armed rebellion.”

Prigozhin did not wait to be arrested. Like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, his men marched on Rostov-on-Don on Saturday and seized the Russian military headquarters there without a fight. Later in the day, a Wagner convoy headed to Moscow amid reports of roads to the capital being barricaded.

Opinion writers on the war in Ukraine

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“Over the coming hours, the loyalty of Russia’s security forces, and especially the Russian National Guard, will be key to how the crisis plays out,” noted the British Ministry of Defense. “This represents the most significant challenge to the Russian state in recent times.”

In dealing with this unexpected threat, Putin went so far as to invoke the 1917 Russian Revolution when, he said, “intrigues, squabbles, and politicking behind the backs of the army and the people resulted in a great shock, the destruction of the army and the collapse of the state.” Of course, he was implicitly comparing himself to Tsar Nicholas II, who made the ill-fated decision to take part in World War I and who sparked a military mutiny with his failures on the battlefield.

On Saturday night, after mediation from President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, Prigozhin called off his advance about 120 miles short of Moscow, so it appears that Putin might survive this crisis. But Prigozhin’s future and that of his company remain to be determined. There is, after all, still a warrant out for his arrest.

The Wagner crisis has nonetheless revealed the hidden instability of Putin’s regime and shaken his aura of power. It could still create opportunities for a Ukrainian counteroffensive that, so far, has been only inching along. If the Russians are distracted with infighting, Ukraine may have the opportunity to score more battlefield successes — and that in turn could further undermine Putin’s hold on power.

There is a lesson here for all future tyrants who might think of launching wars of aggression. Are you paying attention, Xi Jinping?

The Washington Post · by Max Boot · June 24, 2023

20. US Army Pacific Kicks off Khaan Quest 23 in Mongolia, Strengthening International Cooperation

On Friday i ran into some ROK Special Forces officers as well as the Japanese Special Forces Commander in our hotel in Ulaan Baatar who are participating in Khan Quest. The US 1st Special Forces Group troops were not in the same hotel so I missed them.

US Army Pacific Kicks off Khaan Quest 23 in Mongolia, Strengthening International Cooperation

U.S. Embassy in Mongolia

pacom.mil

NEWS | June 22, 2023

U.S. Embassy in Mongolia

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia -- Soldiers from the U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC) joined forces with soldiers from across the Pacific region for a momentous occasion—the opening ceremony of Khaan Quest 23 (KQ23), June 19 at the Five Hills Training Facility outside Ulaanbaatar.

KQ23 will focus on a Command Post Exercise (CPX), but the exercise will also include a Critical Enabler’s Capability Enhancement (2CE) and a Field Training Exercise (FTX); All elements of KQ23 are focused on peacekeeping and stability operations and involve Mongolian, U.S. and multinational forces working jointly to increase interoperability and readiness for the peacekeeping mission set.

“The importance of Khaan Quest stems from its purpose. It is a peacekeeping exercise. It serves to prepare participants for UN peacekeeping missions. It also develops peace support operations capabilities and interoperability,” said Maj. Gen. Chris Smith, Deputy Commanding General of USARPAC.

“This exercise is not only a great opportunity to exchange lessons and techniques, it is also an expression of the commitment of the participating nations to the charter of the United Nations. A key part of that charter is to maintain international peace and security. Peacekeeping still serves an essential purpose around the world.” he added.

The Mongolian Armed Forces invited military personnel from other countries to participate, currently there are 26 countries participating in this year’s KQ23.

“Mongolia always pursues a peace-loving, open, independent, and multi-pillar foreign policy. The exercise has been making a significant contribution to increasing the peace support capacity of participating countries and strengthening their friendship and military trust,” said President U. Khürelsükh, president of Mongolia and commander-in-chief of the MAF, at the opening ceremony.

The 14-day event is a regularly scheduled, multinational exercise co-sponsored by the U.S. Army Pacific Command and hosted annually by the Mongolian Armed Forces. KQ23 is the latest in a continuing series of exercises designed to promote regional peace and security. This year’s exercise marks the 20th anniversary of this training event.

pacom.mil

21. US special operators are tinkering with a low-tech kind of aircraft to overcome high-tech threats in future wars

Imagine conducting a HAHO operation with a glider in trail of a dozen SF troops.

US special operators are tinkering with a low-tech kind of aircraft to overcome high-tech threats in future wars

Business Insider · by Stavros Atlamazoglou

Soldiers from 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne) recover a GD-2000 glider at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona in February.US Army/Sgt. Thoman Johnson

The US military is preparing for a future where its ability to resupply troops is challenged.
The effort reflects expectations that potential foes, mainly China, can attack US supply lines.
In February, Special Forces soldiers tested a glider that could deliver supplies without detection.

The war in Ukraine has offered the US military a glimpse of how large-scale conventional conflicts will be fought in the 21st century.

To be sure, the US military has vastly better capabilities than either the Ukrainian and Russian militaries, but fierce fighting in Ukraine has shown the value of old technology and the limits of new hardware.

The war in Ukraine has only accelerated the US military's adjustments to the challenges it expects to face in future wars. For US special operators, who may have to operate far from friendly forces in those wars, one new effort is the use of a low-tech kind of aircraft to overcome high-tech threats.

A special-operations glider

US Army special operations soldiers load a GD-2000 glider into a C-27J airplane at Yuma Proving Grounds in February.US Army/Sgt. Thoman Johnson

In February, a US Army Special Forces team tested a prototype aircraft that could ease the logistical challenges faced by special-operations units in contested areas.

The Glider Disposable 2000 is an unmanned aerial delivery platform designed to resupply special-operations forces on the ground. The GD-2000 can carry up to 1,500 pounds of gear and fly for more than 15 minutes, depending on the operational environment, according to the firm behind the aircraft, Yates Electrospace.

The tests included air-dropping a GD-2000 with a 1,000-pound payload from a C-27J cargo plane over the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona. On several of the airdrops, the glider landed within about 100 feet of its intended landing spot, which is fairly accurate for what is essentially a gliding trunk. Equally importantly, the glider's hull remained intact and its cargo undamaged.

A GD-2000 glider is released from a C-27J over Yuma Proving Grounds in February.US Army

If the glider can be launched from an altitude of 40,000 feet, it can travel distances "in excess of 25 to 30 miles," the Special Forces detachment commander whose team tested the glider said in a press release. "That's a pretty unique capability and not matched by anything we currently have."

That long glide distance is equal to what special operators can cover during a High Altitude, High Opening free-fall jump. By jumping from that altitude, and with the aid of oxygen masks, the operators can glide to their target unseen by enemy radar.

Troops conducting HAHO jumps are normally restricted to the gear in their individual loadout, which is usually a few days' worth of food and ammunition. A glider that can carry 1,500 pounds of equipment over similar distances could greatly increase the firepower that special operators have on clandestine operations, allowing them to bring heavy weapons, unmanned ground vehicles, bikes, or more supplies.

The glider "gives us the ability to drop this from a plane outside of controlled airspace into international air space and fly resupply in from an unmanned autonomous craft. It's a huge enhancement to the mission," the Green Beret officer, who was not identified, said in the release.

Contested logistics

A CH-147 helicopter sling-loads supplies bound for remote US military outposts in northeastern Afghanistan in May 2008.David Bathgate/Corbis via Getty Images

During the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the US military's resupply operations have been largely uncontested. US and allied forces in those conflicts have often enjoyed complete air superiority, allowing planes and helicopters to conduct close-air-support and resupply missions as they pleased.

The war in Ukraine has shown that resupplying ground units in active combat or in close proximity to enemy forces isn't easy. Aerial resupply isn't an option because of the prevalence of anti-aircraft systems, and ground resupply is complicated — more for the Russians than the Ukrainians — because opposing forces typically have accurate long-range artillery and rockets.

That dynamic is a preview of what the US would face in a conflict with a capable adversary such as China or even Russia, which can still bring an array of anti-aircraft weaponry to bear.

Contested logistics has thus become a central focus for US war planners, because despite potent airpower, even the US military will have trouble resupplying its forces in a war with its main adversaries.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a defense journalist specializing in special operations, a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ), and a Johns Hopkins University graduate. He is working toward a master's degree in strategy and cybersecurity at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies.

Business Insider · by Stavros Atlamazoglou

22. Pivot to the Pacific? That Misses the Point

Yes we need to rebuild the capabilities of our arsenal of democracy. But we do not have to go it alone, especially when it comes to helping to arm friends, partners, and allies. Korea, and probably soon Japan, can help contribute as well as NATO countries.

Pivot to the Pacific? That Misses the Point

We need a rebuilt defense industrial base to make our forces ready for combat in any theater.

By Andrew A. Michta

June 23, 2023 6:16 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pivot-to-the-pacific-that-misses-the-point-military-army-weapons-backlog-1478899d?utm_source=pocket_saves

Should the U.S. give Asia priority over Europe? According to some national-security experts, the answer is increasingly yes. America’s resources are finite and its military capacity limited, the argument goes, so it should direct them to the Pacific theater, where China appears poised to attack Taiwan. Meantime, the Europeans can handle Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.

This argument ignores what should be the military’s primary focus: rebuilding its war-fighting capabilities. America needs to be able to respond wherever its interests are threatened—be it in the Atlantic or the Pacific, whose theaters are inextricably linked.

Since the end of the Cold War, our national-security community has increasingly conceived of war as a series of controllable conflicts. This mindset has come in large part from the military’s experience of fighting for two decades on 18th-century battlefields with 21st-century weapons. In its counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, the U.S. has controlled the airspace, managed secure communication and control nodes, and enjoyed largely unchallenged logistics systems.

This dominance over time led our defense establishment to accept a false sense of security. As successive administrations sought to capitalize on the “peace dividend,” they pursued domestic policy at the expense of the military, leaving the Defense Department with a significantly smaller Joint Force. After 9/11, the military was reformatted for expeditionary operations, specializing in “just in time” efficiency capabilities for weapons and munitions production. Though Washington thought this transformation was wise, it has since left our military unprepared for direct conflict against our two pre-eminent competitors.

The American military lacks the resources to contend with mobilizing Russian and Chinese forces. The U.S. Army came up 15,000 soldiers short—or 25%—on recruitment targets last year. A senior Army official told Congress last month that the service is projected to miss its target again for 2023. Many European armies are similarly underequipped, especially the U.K., France and Germany. The only North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries that have seriously begun to rearm—Finland, the Baltic states, Romania and especially Poland—are on Europe’s eastern flank. This comes as Moscow has announced it will increase its military to 1.5 million personnel by 2026 and as China continues to enhance its navy, which is already larger than America’s.

Meantime, over the past 30 years the U.S. defense industry has consolidated from 51 to five aerospace and prime defense contractors. This mismatch has led to multiyear delays for weapons and munitions deliveries to our forces and allies. As a result, our military isn’t positioned to fight simultaneous and potentially uncontrollable conflicts on the horizon—a problem that no amount of strategic finessing, rebalancing between theaters, or technological sophistication can resolve.

There’s a way forward, but it will require that we invest in expanding the military and the defense industrial base. The U.S. Navy, for instance, operates more-capable ships than the Chinese navy. Yet numbers matter, as even the most sophisticated ship can’t be in two places at once. American munitions may be orders of magnitude more precise than what the Chinese or the Russians can bring to the fight, but if U.S. stocks are insufficient, they will run dry while the enemy keeps firing.

The war in Ukraine offers a useful real-time example. According to U.S. estimates, the Ukrainian forces last year fired roughly 3,000 artillery rounds a day. America has responded to that demand and plans to boost its production of its 155mm artillery shell “from 14,000 a month to over 24,000 later this year”—reaching 85,000 a month by 2028. That’s a significant improvement, but such production and stockpiling, for the U.S. and its allies alike, needs to be ramped up across a series of weapons if the military is to be prepared for long-term battles against its two determined adversaries.

Instead of debating whether we should “pivot” to the Pacific, we should focus on enhancing U.S and European war-fighting capacities. In so doing, we must move from a fixation on “just in time” efficiencies to a “just in case” approach that puts a premium on stockpiling weapons and ammunition. Our national-security policy makers should abandon the assumption that future battles will resemble those of the past. When fighting a near-peer or peer adversary, the U.S. will need to have excess defense industrial capacity to respond should its logistical chain suffer from enemy attacks.

When it comes to national defense, the U.S. needs sufficient weapons and ammunition to deter its adversaries—and, if needed, to defend itself and its allies in Europe and Asia. Rebuilding its defense industrial base should be the top priority. No amount of strategic finessing can substitute for the real hard power the U.S. military must bring to the fight.

Mr. Michta is dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch, Germany, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

23. Opinion Lecturing India’s leader on human rights is not the best path

I spent last week with 2 former ambassadors from India (and attended a dinner hosted by the Indian Ambassador to Mongolia). These are brilliant diplomats from whom I have learned much (I have been able to engage with two of them 3 times over the past year.)

Excerpts:

In any event, lecturing Modi on human rights is not the best way for the Biden administration to deal with him. That would backfire — not only with him but also with most Indians who would resent Western bullying. Far better to ally with India’s society itself, expanding ties with its businesses, press, nongovernmental organizations, cultural groups and others. India is one of the most pro-American countries in the world, something that is palpable when you are there. Companies, students, scholars, activists — all want closer ties with the United States.

This people-to-people alliance will inevitably strengthen the government-to-government relations. But more importantly, I believe that an India that is more deeply connected to the United States will be a country that will naturally seek to perfect its democracy at home. It will also give it moral authority in a fracturing world that could use more of it.

Opinion Lecturing India’s leader on human rights is not the best path

Columnist

June 23, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · June 23, 2023

As the Biden administration warmly welcomes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington, some experts warn that the United States shouldn’t succumb to irrational exuberance about the two countries’ relations. My colleague Barkha Dutt writes that India will never be America’s ally, no matter how warm Washington’s embrace. India is intensely focused on its own national interests and will pursue them narrowly. The oft-cited example is India’s refusal to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The skeptics are right to note that India has long resisted the pull to become a full-fledged ally of the United States, a version of Britain in Asia. And it will continue to do so. Like any country, it does have its own interests to worry about.

But India is changing. In the past, the country has placed little emphasis on foreign policy, devoting its energies instead to managing the vast complexities of its own society, which is characterized by thousands of castes and communities, dozens of major languages and huge regional diversity.

Now, the rise of China has finally gotten India’s attention. The 2020 clash in the Himalayas — when Chinese and Indian soldiers fought bitterly over a disputed border area — was a wake-up call for India’s strategic elite and, to some extent, the entire country. Public sentiment shifted sharply, and today a large number of Indians regard China with hostility. For its part, Beijing has done little to try to solve the problem. It has actually reinforced its military infrastructure along the border, which would allow it to surge troops whenever it sees the need. Since the clash three years ago, India has constrained or outright banned many Chinese companies and technologies from operating in its market, including Huawei and TikTok. The threat from China will motivate India to strengthen its ties with the United States for decades to come.

Yet, as India emerges as a great power, it will have to adopt a more expansive vision of its interests around the world. It will need to define its attitude toward the international system itself, and how its own ideas and ideals should affect its stance. In the process, it might well decide that it values a rules-based international system, and see that, as the world’s largest democracy, it gains enormous soft power by adopting a foreign policy that is influenced by its democratic ideals, even if it won’t be feasible in every case to apply them. Such selectivity is, after all, true of most democratic countries, including the United States.

There is a separate critique of the overtures toward Modi that deal with his government’s policies toward minorities, the media, the judiciary and other independent agencies in the democratic system. Many of these criticisms are accurate. Modi has presided over a decay of democracy in India; all three of the major international think tanks that measure the quality of democratic governance have downgraded India in recent years. Sweden’s V-Dem Institute judges that India no longer ranks as a democracy at all, describing it instead as an “electoral autocracy.”

But how Washington should handle democratic decay in a country like India is a complicated problem. Modi is extremely popular in India and, what’s more, his Hindu nationalism is also popular. Like Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Viktor Orban in Hungary, Modi has tapped into an illiberal vein in India that scorns minorities, checks and balances, and liberal constitutionalism. In all these places, the nationalist-populist leader sets himself and his many followers against the old, secular, cosmopolitan elite that has ruled the country for decades. Truth be told, there is often much frustration with that elite, an establishment that seems disconnected from the heartland of the nation, from ordinary people and their ideas and emotions.

I sometimes wonder whether all these countries are revealing that the values of an open society — pluralism, tolerance, secularism — were an import from the era of the West’s dominance in the world, and that the erosion of these ideals is gradually revealing a more authentic, less tolerant nationalism. Former U.S. ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith said India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, told him, “I am the last Englishman to rule India.” The country Nehru and his fellow post-independence leaders created was built on values that its founders drew from their deep associations with Britain and the West. Their India was a secular, pluralistic, democratic and socialist state. All of those ideals have been fading in India in recent years.

In any event, lecturing Modi on human rights is not the best way for the Biden administration to deal with him. That would backfire — not only with him but also with most Indians who would resent Western bullying. Far better to ally with India’s society itself, expanding ties with its businesses, press, nongovernmental organizations, cultural groups and others. India is one of the most pro-American countries in the world, something that is palpable when you are there. Companies, students, scholars, activists — all want closer ties with the United States.

This people-to-people alliance will inevitably strengthen the government-to-government relations. But more importantly, I believe that an India that is more deeply connected to the United States will be a country that will naturally seek to perfect its democracy at home. It will also give it moral authority in a fracturing world that could use more of it.

The Washington Post · by Fareed Zakaria · June 23, 2023

24. Book Review: The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History

Another book to order for the "to read pile."

Excerpts:

Mackay creates a novel typology of counterinsurgency, dividing military thinking into two historical periods. The first period, from the 17th and 18th centuries, focused on the conduct of small wars with little consideration of the broader political context in which they were fought. The second period, from the 19th to the 21st century, is typified by a conservative and reactionary approach to countering revolutionary violence.

...

The book finally lands on FM 3-24, the 2006 US Army Field Manual developed to guide American and Coalition forces through concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It sees FM 3-24 as a largely bureaucratic distillation of 1960s era American thinking on counterinsurgency. Mackay argues that the manual was a culmination of conservative, modernist, and utopian approaches to counterinsurgency that were popular in the US military at the time, and is representative of contemporary counterinsurgent thinking.

...

By limiting the book to the practice of counterinsurgency rather than including ideological debates about the nature of insurgency as a socio-political movement, Mackay has allowed himself to focus specifically on military strategic and doctrinal thinking. This offers a level of precision that would have been unachievable in a broader text, however also runs the risk of removing insurgency from the human and societal context in which it exists. Other than some speculation about the range of alternate political worldviews towards the end of his writings, Mackay largely avoids the temptation to draw conclusions about insurgency beyond the scope of the book. Instead, the Counterinsurgent Imagination offers deep insights into the evolution of military, strategic and doctrinal thought that underpins current conceptions of counterinsurgency.

Book Review: The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History - Australian Institute of International Affairs

internationalaffairs.org.au

In this latest volume, Joseph Mackay offers a novel approach to understanding counterinsurgency. From its historical roots to the contemporary, this is a thorough-going intellectual history of the concept.

Throughout the early 2000s and into the mid 2010s, scholars and practitioners of warfare were captivated by a renewed intellectual interest in countering the political and social phenomenon of insurgency. Numerous authors attempted to unravel the lessons of the past and improve our understanding of insurgency, including its causes and modes; and counterinsurgency, including strategies and tactics which have proved to be both effective and counterproductive in the past. There were concerted efforts to apply these lessons to contemporary circumstances, especially to the conflicts that Western military forces faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to generate new ideas about counterinsurgency. Although many experts have reviewed past literature on counterinsurgency, few have done so as systematically and thoroughly as Mackay, and fewer still have produced such unique and valuable insights.

Mackay creates a novel typology of counterinsurgency, dividing military thinking into two historical periods. The first period, from the 17th and 18th centuries, focused on the conduct of small wars with little consideration of the broader political context in which they were fought. The second period, from the 19th to the 21st century, is typified by a conservative and reactionary approach to countering revolutionary violence. Mackay argues that contemporary counterinsurgency theory is essentially conservative and perhaps revisionist in its pursuit of protecting an existing order above change, with the theory at times seen to idealise the existing order and further attempt to build an idealised version of such. The book presents the experiences of Johann Ewald during the American War of Independence as a key turning point in the intellectual history of counterinsurgency. The book depicts Ewald as the first clear example of a counterinsurgent with a counterrevolutionary worldview, which serves as a distinct intellectual evolution from the first to second periods of counterinsurgent thinking in Mackay’s typology. This is both novel and illuminating as it depicts a watershed in the intellectual history of counterinsurgency that has been largely overlooked.

The Counterinsurgent Imagination presents its content in a chronological order that suits its arguments well. Mackay begins with an overview of counterrevolutionary warfare, linking prehistories of irregular warfare to the European concept of small wars in the 16th through to the 18th centuries, and also to contemporary counterinsurgency. The book then examines the experiences of two key thinkers representing the transition from the first to second periods of counterinsurgent thinking, Johann Ewald and C. E. Callwell. It notes that through his efforts to counter the American War of Independence, Ewald became a counterrevolutionary under what Mackay terms “transitory intellectual conditions,” and was an intellectual precursor to the conservativism seen in later conceptions of counterinsurgency. Mackay examines Callwell, widely considered to be a key intellectual figure of the British Empire’s approach to small wars, as another example of early conservatism in using repressive violence to counter revolutionary changes sought by insurgents.

The book then shifts its focus to the work of David Galula, one of the most famous counterinsurgents of the 20th century. Mackay positions Galula’s work as an example of contemporary conservative counterinsurgent thinking within the scope of the book’s typology, with Algerian counterinsurgency an example of counterrevolutionary violence intended to preserve the status quo.

The book finally lands on FM 3-24, the 2006 US Army Field Manual developed to guide American and Coalition forces through concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It sees FM 3-24 as a largely bureaucratic distillation of 1960s era American thinking on counterinsurgency. Mackay argues that the manual was a culmination of conservative, modernist, and utopian approaches to counterinsurgency that were popular in the US military at the time, and is representative of contemporary counterinsurgent thinking.

The Counterinsurgent Imagination is an ambitious book that presents an intellectual history of counterinsurgency from its conceptual roots in the 17th and 18th centuries, through the heavily examined 19th and 20th centuries, and up to the contemporary era. It provides a refreshing and insightful perspective on the history of ideas that underpin contemporary thinking on counterinsurgency by tracing the concept back farther than most others, and by linking early works on small wars to current debates.

By limiting the book to the practice of counterinsurgency rather than including ideological debates about the nature of insurgency as a socio-political movement, Mackay has allowed himself to focus specifically on military strategic and doctrinal thinking. This offers a level of precision that would have been unachievable in a broader text, however also runs the risk of removing insurgency from the human and societal context in which it exists. Other than some speculation about the range of alternate political worldviews towards the end of his writings, Mackay largely avoids the temptation to draw conclusions about insurgency beyond the scope of the book. Instead, the Counterinsurgent Imagination offers deep insights into the evolution of military, strategic and doctrinal thought that underpins current conceptions of counterinsurgency.

This is a review of Joseph Mackay’s The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Dr John Hardy is the Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research Manager at Rabdan Academy. John was previously Director of Security Studies at Macquarie University and a Research Fellow at the ANU National Security College (NSC).

This review article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.

internationalaffairs.org.au

25. Meta to block news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada

My first thought on seeing this was censorship. But this is about business and laws and of course business (profit) takes precedence for companies - both Meta and news organizations.

Meta to block news on Facebook and Instagram in Canada

washingtontimes.com · by Ryan Lovelace

By - The Washington Times - Friday, June 23, 2023

Meta is planning to block news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada because the country passed legislation requiring Big Tech companies to pay media outlets for news shared or repurposed on their platforms.

The clampdown on news north of the border comes as Meta is fighting to prevent similar laws in the U.S. Legislation was recently sidelined in Congress that would have given media outlets to have more power to negotiate advertising rates and content distribution with platforms such as Google and Facebook.

Canada‘s law is closer to the make-them-pay law adopted in Australia.

Meta also made threats to block news on its platforms in Australia in 2021 after the country passed legislation directing Big Tech to pay for news stories. Meta ultimately struck an agreement with the Australian government that ended its planned blockade of news.

Canada‘s Senate passed the Online News Act, also known as Bill C-18, on Thursday and Meta responded by announcing it would follow through on its plan to restrict the flow of information on its platforms.

“We are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18) taking effect,” Meta‘s announcement said. “We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada.”

Meta said it was already conducting product tests to develop an effective solution to end news on its platforms for Canada and its ongoing tests affect a small percentage of its Canadian users as of Thursday.

The Canadian government said its Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will oversee the implementation of the law, including the bargaining and negotiations that will result between cooperative Big Tech platforms and news publishers.

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez heralded the Online News Act as a law that will ensure fair compensation for newsrooms across Canada.

“It levels the playing field by putting the power of Big Tech in check and ensuring that even our smallest news business can benefit through this regime and receive fair compensation for their work,” Mr. Rodriguez said in a statement.

While Canada‘s feud with Big Tech escalates, similar legislation has stalled at the federal level in the U.S.

The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act last week, but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared it dead in the House and Sen. Alex Padilla, California Democrat, said he would block its passage in the Senate.

The battle between lawmakers and Silicon Valley is continuing in California, however. The California State Assembly passed a state-specific version of the antitrust journalism legislation earlier this month.

The California bill’s passage came after Meta threatened it could remove news from Facebook and Instagram in the Golden State.

• This story is based in part on wire service reports.

• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.

washingtontimes.com · by Ryan Lovelace

26. Revenge on the CIF - How “The Haters” Cut Special Forces’ Last Link To JSOC

Most of this occurred after I retired in 2011 and long after I commanded 1-1 SFG in Okinawa. A lot of inside baseball here that is not well known.

Revenge on the CIF - How “The Haters” Cut Special Forces’ Last Link To JSOC

The past, and maybe future, of the Special Forces' in-extremis response team

https://thehighside.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-cif-how-the-haters?r=1mgtb&utm

JACK MURPHY AND SEAN D. NAYLOR

JUN 23, 2023

∙ PAID

U.S. Army Special Forces raid a mock hostile compound under the cover of darkness during a training exercise. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Justin Morelli

The aftershocks from the Pentagon’s 2020 decision to cut the five active-duty Special Forces groups’ main link to Joint Special Operations Command continue to reverberate, with the validation exercises for the groups’ rebranded counterterrorism companies’ new mission starting this summer.

Prior to 2020, each group contained a company designed, trained and resourced to act as a back-up to JSOC’s special mission units, which conduct the United States’ most sensitive counterterrorism missions. Originally called the Commander-in-chief’s In-extremis Forces, these companies never took part in the sort of hostage rescue operation that was their raison d’etre. However, they helped evacuate U.S. officials from civil unrest in countries such as Sierra Leone and Tajikistan, conducted countless raids against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and tracked radioactive material during counterproliferation training exercises in Australia.

But the CIFs (pronounced “siffs”) were also a divisive presence in the Special Forces community. “There were a lot of people who thought they were a huge waste of resources,” said retired Col. Mike Kershner, the former deputy commander of Army Special Forces Command.

Imbued with a direct-action ethos that ran counter to the unconventional warfare mindset beloved by many in Special Forces, CIF personnel also came across sometimes as arrogant and all-too-willing to “play the JSOC card” – as one former SF officer said – in order to distance themselves from their peers.

“Probably since the creation of the CIFs there have been the haters that have been trying to shut them down,” said former acting defense secretary and retired Special Forces officer Chris Miller, who in 2020 signed the paperwork to do away with the companies’ links to JSOC. “But,” he added, “they always had their supporters.”

One of those supporters is retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, a career Special Forces officer who led Special Operations Command – Africa from 2015 to 2017. “The CIF played a vital role and it filled an operational gap that is no longer filled now and I believe leaves combatant commanders vulnerable,” said Bolduc, referring to the four-star flag officers who run the U.S. military’s regional combatant commands, such as U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command.

Since the Pentagon decided that JSOC no longer needed the CIFs, the companies haven’t been inactivated, but have simply been renamed after relinquishing their official role as stand-ins for the special mission units. The changes have left some in the Special Forces community questioning the wisdom of cutting the link to JSOC and others relieved that SF commanders have regained control over units that hitherto were only nominally theirs. Some even wonder aloud whether Army special operations leaders are retaining the companies in the hope that the Pentagon will someday return their national mission status.

“THOSE UNITS … WANT FOR NOTHING.”

The CIFs had their origin in the wave of international terrorist attacks of the late 1970s and early 1980s, particularly those that struck at U.S. military targets in Europe. U.S. European Command wanted its own dedicated forward deployed counterterrorism unit. But in the early 1980s there was no way for the Army’s new counterterrorism special mission unit, 1^stSpecial Forces Operational Detachment – Delta (usually known as Delta Force), to fulfill that requirement. Established in 1977, and validated as an active unit in 1980, Delta consisted of only two squadrons at the time, making it impossible for one of them to be forward deployed to Europe year-round, according to a former Delta squadron commander.

Instead, European Command turned to Special Forces elements it controlled in Europe to provide a no-notice counterterrorism capability. At first, that role was filled by the legendary Detachment A in Berlin, and its successor unit, the Physical Security Support Element, according to former Det A member Bob Charest.

In 1989, the Physical Security Support Element transferred its counterterrorism mission, as well as much of its specialized gear, to C Company, 1^st Battalion, 10^th Special Forces Group (“Charlie/1/10”), in Bad Tolz, Germany, ahead of PSSE’s 1990 deactivation, according to a retired Special Forces warrant officer who served in Det A and in C/1/10.

At around the same time, the Defense Department converted two other forward-deployed SF companies to CIFs: C Company, 3^rdBattalion 7^th Special Forces Group (“Charlie/3/7”) at Fort Gulick, Panama, and C Company, 1^st Battalion, 1^st Special Forces Group (“Charlie/1/1”) in Okinawa, Japan. All three CIFs followed roughly the same template.

That template involved each CIF working as an adjunct to Joint Special Operations Command, often referred to as the “national mission force,” which the Pentagon had established in 1980 at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina, (right beside Fort Bragg) to run the military’s most elite counterterrorism units, including Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6.

The units’ forward-deployed status was key to the original CIF concept, under which the CIF would move to the site of a terrorist incident – such as an attack on a U.S. embassy, a hijacking of a U.S. plane or the kidnapping of a U.S. official – and set up an operations center while the JSOC task force was still en route from the east coast of the United States.

Each CIF had three missions, according to a retired SF officer who commanded a battalion that included a CIF. The first was to be a crisis response force for the regional four-star combatant commander (previously called a commander-in-chief); the second “was to be the first on the ground until JSOC could arrive” to deal with a terrorist attack; the third was to work with friendly nations’ elite counterterrorism units, “because JSOC and Delta and [Team 6] couldn’t be spread around the world to do that kind of mission.”

(Kershner suggested that it wasn’t just a matter of numbers; JSOC’s special mission units simply weren’t interested in training local elite forces. “The national force would not train with any of those guys,” he said.)

But to do those missions, the CIFs had to be organized, trained and resourced differently than all other SF companies, as they had to maintain interoperability with JSOC. This meant that their weapons and equipment mimicked those of JSOC units, as did their training.

To that end, as the CIF concept was evolving in the mid-1980s, the Army established a new course for future CIF members. Sgt. Maj. Phill Hanson of 7^th Special Forces Group, a Delta Force veteran, was in charge. Hanson, who had begun training prospective CIF team members at Mott Lake at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1986, had his hands full writing the course curriculum and selecting his instructors from 5^th and 7^th Groups, he told The High Side.

One of Hanson’s tasks was to compress Delta’s Operator Training Course into a shorter program of instruction focused on only those skills needed by the CIF. However, his instructors from 5^th Group wanted to use their own tactics, techniques, and procedures, which were contained in a three-inch-thick binder. After numerous arguments in which Hanson pointed out that the Special Forces personnel were supposed to be adopting JSOC tactics rather than the other way around, “I picked up the thing [and] dropped it in an industrial shredder,” he said. “They were shitting their pants.”

The first six-week in-extremis course was run with Charlie/3/7 members using old CAR-15 Commando (XM177) rifles, Beretta pistols and shoothouses with intererior walls made of cheesecloth sheets nailed to wooden beams. At any given time, the course would be running four or more live ranges simultaneously.

“We did a final shooting test similar to one I gave to both squadrons at ‘the unit’ [i.e. Delta] and they did very well – in some cases better than some guys in the [Delta] squadrons had done,” Hanson said.

In 1987 Hanson’s course was redubbed the Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance, Target Analysis, and Exploitation Techniques Course. The first course under that name was run in January 1988. During those initial years, all prospective CIF members were required to attend the course, which moved from Mott Lake to Bragg’s Range 37 in 1993, according to former instructors.

At the time that the first CIFs were established, each Special Forces group had three battalions, each with three companies that in turn contained six 12-man operational detachments-Alpha, or A-teams. A CIF company was task organized with two A-teams making up one assault troop, of which each CIF had two, plus a sniper troop composed of two ODAs reinforced with extra communications experts and a troop sergeant major, according to retired Maj. Mike Perry, who was Charlie/1/1’s executive officer from 2006 to 2007 after spending the previous three years in the company’s sniper troop.

Half the sniper troop had to maintain level one military free-fall status so that if circumstances required, they could jump into the site of a crisis and begin collecting intelligence as fast as possible, Perry said. The CIF was also augmented by the group’s regional survey team, an A-team that did targeting analysis and built targeting packets, including three-dimensional maps of targets for the CIF to use in mission planning, but which also would survey U.S. facilities such as embassies to look for security weaknesses that terrorists might exploit, he added. (Although the RST was a part of the CIF’s table of organization and equipment, it worked out of a different office.)

These elements would not necessarily all deploy together. “The CIF isn’t designed to fight as a CIF,” said Perry. “Typically, your fighting element is going to be an assault troop with sniper support.”

As described by Perry, in a typical CIF mission the company would arrive at the site of a hijacking or other hostage scenario and set up both a tactical intelligence center and a tactical operations center. The TIC was the headquarters element to which the CIF snipers reported as they surveilled the target. It was usually nested inside the TOC, which was the field headquarters for the CIF’s assault troops, who would immediately begin preparing an emergency assault plan to be put into action if the terrorists began executing hostages and assaulters needed to go in immediately to save as many lives as possible.

When the JSOC task force arrived, it would take over the tactical operations center from the CIF, according to Perry. However, with the CIF’s snipers already in their hide sites and having familiarized themselves with the target, it made little sense to swap them out with the incoming special mission unit snipers, so the CIF snipers and TIC would remain in place, albeit now under JSOC command, he said.

If for some reason the JSOC task force was unable to get all its operators into country, the CIF could augment the Delta or Team 6 element for the assault if needed, according to Hanson.

In order to be trusted with such missions, each CIF had to pass an annual validation exercise run by JSOC, according to former Special Forces officers. “Woe to anybody who fails the validation exercise, because you just basically turned off the fund spigot for that year,” Perry said

Provided the CIF passed the validation exercise, that funding was substantial.

“The CIFs would get dual resourcing: from SF Command through the normal chain just like any SF company, and then they got additional resources from JSOC for counterterrorism-specific equipment and training,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF.

“There was unlimited funds,” Perry said. “Those units…want for nothing.”

That money not only paid for specialized gear but also for the training necessary to pass the validation exercises, including attendance at SFARTAETC (pronounced “suf-art-ick”).

The CIFs put their newly acquired skills to the test in annual JSOC joint readiness exercises and highly classified Ellipse exercises run by the regional four-star headquarters (now known as the geographic combatant commands) such as U.S. Central Command and U.S. Southern Command. Other internally graded evaluations were conducted by the Special Forces groups themselves, according to Perry.

The CIFs, and in particular the regional survey teams, also had what a former U.S. Special Operations Command staff officer called “the preparation requirement.” This involved visiting locations in the group’s area of operations (for instance, the Asia-Pacific region in the case of 1^st Group, or Europe in the case of 10^th Group) to ensure JSOC – and perhaps the CIFs – had all the information they might need should they have to conduct a mission there.

“There are certain plans and preparations in place, that need to be, at certain time intervals, validated and kept current,” the former SOCOM staff officer said. For example, the former staff officer added, “if the interstate has been closed in a certain city, and rerouted, you need to know that.” A former member of the U.S. Southern Command regional survey team says in his online biography that as part of that job he conducted more than ten security assessments and “advised Ambassadors, Diplomatic Security Officers, and Station Chiefs of US Embassies and Consulates in the SOUTHCOM Theater.”

“IT’S GOING TO HAVE A SECURITY DETAIL AND YOU’RE GOING TO FUCKING KILL THEM”

Around 2005 or 2006, according to Perry, Charlie/1/1, along with the other CIFs, was handed the counter-weapons of mass destruction mission, which in 1^st Group had previously been the preserve of another company, “because we already had specialized training and equipment.”

The counterproliferation mission, as it was known, required the CIF to go through a big annual certification (separate from the Ellipse exercise), preceded by a smaller internal evaluation exercise, according to Perry, who said the deputy head of Pacific Command attended the certification exercise while Perry was in charge of Charlie/1/1’s counterproliferation training.

“You train for everything from another country’s [small nuclear device] showing up to a dirty bomb – a bunch of…medical waste-grade tritium with a kicker charge – to bio agents to chemical labs,” Perry said. “You’re training for the whole shebang, but what we mostly practiced for the big exercises was looking for a nuke.”

In a typical exercise, which might last no longer than 72 hours, “you’ve got a window of opportunity from when somebody uncases the…mechanism and starts to put it into operation to find it” before it detonates, Perry said.

Racing against the clock and wearing civilian clothes, CIF operators accompanied by explosive ordnance disposal personnel and U.S. government scientists from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency would use airborne and ground sensors to locate the device. “You end up driving around some physicist and some EOD guy with a CIF guy driving and another CIF guy riding shotgun,” Perry said.

Finding the bomb was only half the challenge. “The assumption is it’s going to have a security detail and you’re going to fucking kill them,” he said.

Having gotten their hands on the device, the CIF team and its partners would “reach back” to U.S. government experts in the United States “to say, ‘this is what we’re looking at, here’s the signature of the radiological material’ … getting all the forensics up to the people who needed it,” Perry said. Once the experts had figured out exactly what the device contained, the “EOD guy” – a senior non-commissioned officer with specialized training from DTRA – would disarm it, he added.

Because the exercises used live radioactive material, they had to be conducted either on U.S. territory or in a country with which the United States had an agreement to conduct such training, according to Perry. Other than Guam and Hawaii, “Australia… was about the only place in my theater that you could do it, because it’s radiological material,” he said.

Perry rated the counterproliferation mission as one of the most rewarding in his 25-year military career. “I liked that mission,” he said. “Out of most of the shit I did, that one made me want to get out of bed in the morning.”

All this mandatory training left little time for the CIFs to do any missions for their chains of command. “They were always on alert and they were always being employed so they weren’t able to do other things that a battalion commander might want them to do,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF.

This did not help the CIF concept gain popularity with the upwardly mobile officers who tended to occupy battalion and group commander positions. “You’ve got a unit that does not work for the group commander, and I’ve not met a group commander who liked that,” Perry said.

The CIFs were popular, however, with the four-star regional combatant commanders, who enjoyed having a force ready to do no-notice missions under their control and already in their area of responsibility.

“They are ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, and that was what was invaluable to the theater commanders,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF. “They can go anywhere in theater on the theater commander’s order, and they were ready to go and could get there faster than anybody else.”

A “WHOLE DEPARTMENT OF FUCKERY”

But despite all the money spent preparing the CIFs, there is no evidence that any of them ever performed the sort of hostage rescue mission for which they were designed. When the issue of what to do with the CIFs arose in the Pentagon in 2020, Miller said, he asked whether “in the entire existence of this relationship with JSOC,” the CIFs had ever been used for that purpose.

“No one could give me an example of the CIF actually being used in a hostage rescue counterterrorism role because JSOC was unable to get there in time,” he said. “The answer I was given was no, it had never been used for its chartered mission.”

One reason, according to former special operations officials, was that unlike JSOC, most CIFs never had dedicated transport aircraft to move them immediately to a crisis. In contrast, JSOC’s forces on standby have an air rating known as 1B1, which applies to missions specially directed by the defense secretary, according to a retired Special Forces officer. (The highest is 1A1, for certain missions directed by the president.) In practice, the retired Special Forces officer said, this means aircraft and pilots are on alert to fly them anywhere in the world.

An exception was Charlie/1/1, 1^st Group’s CIF on Okinawa. “That was one of the things they fixed before I got to” Okinawa in 2003, Perry said. “They dedicated transportation to the CIF.”

The planes available to Charlie/1/1 were C-130s, the propellor-driven workhorses of the U.S. Air Force. The C-130 is not as fast as the C-17 jet transports used by JSOC, but it is so widely fielded among East Asian militaries that a C-130 landing at night at an airfield in the region rarely draws attention, according to Perry.

Charlie/1/1’s use of the C-130 fleet to reduce its signature was enabled by a U.S. military office on Okinawa, according to Perry.

“There was this whole department of fuckery that was designed to give those aircraft plausible deniability, so when you showed up on a C-130 it didn’t look out of the ordinary,” he said. “There was a whole section that was assigned just to do bogus tail number research.” For an added “low-vis” touch, CIF soldiers often wore flight suits when they traveled on the C-130s, so that the casual observer would assume they were flight crew members, he added. In theory, this enabled them to infiltrate without drawing attention to themselves.

Perry explained how this would work: “So a C-130 comes into a place like Clark [Air Base in the Philippines], and it refuels and then leaves. And like basically there’s a bunch of dudes in flight suits milling around, except some of those dudes in flight suits are still there” after the plane has taken off.

“THAT WAS NOT WHAT WE WERE TELLING CONGRESS”

Even so, just as Miller’s staff could not find any example of a CIF performing its mission of racing to a hostage crisis before JSOC could get there, U.S. Special Operations Command was also unable to validate the requirement for a CIF for that scenario, according to a former SOCOM staff officer. Equally, the former staff officer said, SOCOM’s modeling and historical analysis “never validated” the other requirement for the CIF, the one based on “capacity” – i.e. that each regional combatant commander required a CIF in case JSOC was busy elsewhere and not able to respond to a hostage crisis in his area of responsibility.

“JSOC liked that, because it wasn’t direct competition for them and all they had to do was kind of pay tacit lip service to that and say, ‘Yes, that’s true,’ when in fact all of the modeling, all of the historical looks that we did, never validated that,” the former SOCOM staff officer said.

In fact, former Delta Force commander and JSOC director of operations Eldon Bargewell once told the former staff officer that if Delta was “pressed that hard” that its squadron on alert was already tasked out when another crisis arose, it would simply recall the next squadron in line from training or whatever else it was doing, according to the former SOCOM staff officer.

Bargewell died in 2019, but his answer would have surprised neither Kershner nor Bolduc. “It quickly became quite apparent that they [i.e. the CIFs] would never be used…because the national mission force had a budget to justify,” said Kershner, who retired in 2003.

The special mission units and their higher headquarters want to be “the go-to people for anything that has to do with direct action, and they don’t want to share that with theater SOF,” said Bolduc, referring to special operations forces that do not fall under JSOC but are assigned roles for the geographic combatant commanders. “They certainly don’t want to have to figure out how to do interoperability with Special Forces CIF teams who they feel are inferior to them.”

Bargewell’s “was probably the correct answer,” the former SOCOM staff officer said, “but from a requirements standpoint, that was not what we were telling [the Defense Department], that was not what we were telling Congress.”

“THEY DID A LOT OF PERSONAL SECURITY WORK”

The CIFs may never have performed a hostage rescue mission in the real world, but they responded to numerous other crises for the regional combatant commanders.

For example, Charlie/1/10 provided a combat search and rescue capability during the 1991 Gulf War, after which the company conducted reconnaissance in the Kurdish areas of Iraq. The same CIF participated in two noncombatant evacuation operations the following year: Operation Silver Anvil, the April-May evacuation of more than 400 U.S. citizens from Sierra Leone amid unrest following a coup, and October’s Operation Silver Fox, the evacuation of the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Tajikistan during what the Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School described as “a period of extreme violence” in the capital, Dushanbe.

Silver Anvil barely made the news in the United States as it coincided with the Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of four policeman for the beating of Rodney King. Silver Fox likewise received little coverage.

In each case, Charlie/1/10 garnered little public credit at the time for its role. Indeed, in Dushanbe, where, according to one of the CIF personnel, the CIF members had worked closely with Russian paratroopers during the operation, it was the Russians who received the plaudits.

This would become a pattern for the CIFs, and was, from the military’s point of view, exactly what was supposed to happen. “The idea is the local cops get credit for it – ‘Good job, police force,’” Perry said.

Throughout the 1990s, these noncombatant evacuation operations were the sorts of missions the CIFs performed when they weren’t training for the hostage rescue missions that they weren’t doing. By the end of the decade, the demand for such missions led Army Special Forces Command to establish a CIF in each of the two active-duty SF groups that did not have one – 5^th and 3^rd Groups.

Mike Kershner was deputy commander at Special Forces Command when the process to create 3^rd and 5^th Group CIFs began in the fall of 1999. At the time, as is still the case, 3^rd Group was focused on Africa while 5^th Group was oriented on the Central Command area of operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. “We certainly thought they needed a CIF in their [areas of responsibility],” Kershner said. “My commander at the time, [Brig. Gen.] Frank Toney, could not understand why we would have a CIF, say, in Europe, and not a CIF in Africa, where there was probably a much higher probability of a CIF having to be utilized.”

The two new CIFs – B Company, 2^nd Battalion, 3^rd Special Forces Group and A Company, 1^st Battalion, 5^th Special Forces Group – were also the first companies to be assigned the CIF mission while stationed in the continental United States. (However, in 1998 Charlie/3/7 had moved from Fort Gulick, Panama, to Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, Puerto Rico, before relocating again in 2003 to Fort Bragg before finally settling at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, in 2011.)

Several factors underpinned SF Command’s willingness to give the CIF mission to companies stationed at Bragg (Bravo/2/3) and Fort Campbell, Kentucky, (Alpha/1/5) respectively. In the case of Bravo/2/3, European Command (which at the time had responsibility for much of Africa) had expressed confidence that it would be able to find a base closer to Africa to house the CIF. Ultimately, EUCOM was unable to deliver on that promise, but at the time, “that was a big plus,” Kershner said.

But there were other reasons why SF Command was not deterred from giving the CIF mission to companies located in the continental United States. One was the increasingly hard-to-hide nature of a full JSOC task force deployment, which involved many hundreds of personnel, dozens of flights and a joint operations center housed in a massive tent complex. “There were a lot of people that had doubts about the national mission force’s ability to get anywhere without leaving a signature all over the map,” Kershner said.

Another factor was the primary mission that SF Command had in mind for the CIF, which was training partner nation counterterrorism forces. “That’s what we thought we were actually going to be able to do,” rather than rescue American hostages, Kershner said. “We were under no illusions about them coming in and saving the day, because they wouldn’t be allowed to.”

“THE CIFs LIKE TO PLAY THE JSOC CARD”

Although the CIFs never executed their primary hostage-rescue mission and are often referred to as “junior varsity” in comparison with JSOC’s special mission units, that didn’t stop Special Forces soldiers wanting to join them. “For many SF guys, that was like the pinnacle,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF.

But that attitude on the part of CIF members struck many of their peers as unwarranted arrogance, particularly when some CIF personnel combined it with references to their JSOC association. “The CIFs like to play the JSOC card – ‘Well, we have to do the mission for JSOC, so we’re not going to work for you, battalion commander,’” said the former battalion commander. “That was a function of the arrogance within some of the CIFs…and that would create some friction.”

Miller, the former acting defense secretary, concurred. Some CIFs would try to “play Mom against Dad” by pointing to their “black funding” and saying, “We kind of are a JSOC asset,” he said.

The resourcing priority given to the CIFs could also create jealousies. By 2004, the annual “sustainment budget” for a normal Special Forces company in 1^st Group was “around $65,000,” Perry said. Meanwhile, he added, the equivalent figure for Charlie/1/1 was “up towards a million” dollars.

The same dynamic applied to personnel resources. “We’ve never fully manned the SF battalions and companies,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF. Nonetheless, “we always had to man the CIFs,” which led to “the mindset of some of the SF leaders…that the CIFs were draining them of resources,” he said.

The perception of arrogance, as well as the fact that the group and battalion commanders lacked control over companies in their own formations, meant there were plenty of Special Forces leaders who were happy to see the CIFs disappear. These “haters” got their chance with the winding down of the U.S. military’s role in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

Ironically, however, it was the CIFs’ deployment to augment the JSOC task forces in those wars, both Afghanistan and Iraq, that sowed the seeds of their demise.

“A LOT OF PEOPLE HAD DOUBTS ABOUT THE NATIONAL MISSION FORCE’S ABILITY TO GET ANYWHERE WITHOUT LEAVING A SIGNATURE ALL OVER THE MAP”

As was the case for the entire U.S. special operations community, the Bush administration’s response to the 9/11 attacks, in particular its decision to invade Iraq, changed the trajectory of the CIFs by creating a demand for counterterrorism forces that far outstripped what JSOC and its special mission units could supply.

The two CIFs at the forefront of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were also the two newest CIFs: Bravo/2/3 and Alpha/1/5. Neither had been established with the expectation that they would be doing much actual counterterrorism work, according to Kershner. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent rise of al-Qaida in Iraq, combined with the Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistan, created such a demand for highly trained direct-action forces that all five CIFs saw combat in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Although 5^th Group’s area of responsibility in theory included both Afghanistan and Iraq, in practice the group, and in particular, Alpha/1/5, became focused on the counterterrorism mission in the latter. That meant 3^rd and 7^th Groups became the main Special Forces effort in Afghanistan. With Bravo/2/3 committed to the fight in Afghanistan, Africa (which after 2007 fell under the newly created Africa Command) was left without an in-extremis force, so 10^th Group had to convert its 2^ndBattalion’s C Company to a CIF to temporarily take the Africa mission at the height of the war.

(The late post-9/11 era also brought a new moniker for the CIFs, which were renamed Crisis Response Forces in 2015 in order “to improve communication and mutual understanding in USSOCOM, DoD, and other departments and agencies,” SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw said.)

“WE COULD BEAT [JSOC] EVERY SINGLE TIME … TO ANYWHERE THAT WE NEEDED TO GO.”

By the time Bolduc arrived at Africa Command in 2013 as its director of operations, before becoming the Special Operations Command – Africa commander two years later, Bravo/2/3 had the Africa CIF mission again and had mitigated the disadvantage of being headquartered an Atlantic Ocean away from Africa by splitting itself in half, with each half of the CIF rotating through Ramstein Air Base in Germany every 90 days, according to Bolduc. Flying from Ramstein gave Bravo/2/3 a major advantage over JSOC when it came to responding to a crisis in Africa, he said.

“It was proven that we could beat them every single time from Germany to anywhere that we needed to go,” Bolduc said, adding that he was basing this on mission analyses conducted by Africa Command for a series of crises. “It would take [JSOC] 80-something hours to get there, and it would take us 12 hours.” (A former Delta staff officer disputed Bolduc’s estimate with regard to the JSOC task force, saying the units on alert would be “wheels up” from Fort Bragg [now Fort Liberty] on Air Force C-17s in three hours or less, and with in-flight refueling would be able to reach anywhere in Africa in much less than 80 hours.)

Bolduc reeled off a list of crises for which he said Bravo/2/3 deployed, including: the 2013 al-Shabab attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya; the July 2014 evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya; the June 2015 terrorist attack on a tourist beach in Tunisia; the November 2015 terrorist attack on a hotel in Bamako, Mali; and the January 2016 terrorist attack on a café and hotel in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso. The CIF also “did a lot of work” supporting the French military’s Operation Barkhane in the Sahel, often by providing a quick reaction force, he said.

U.S. Army Special Forces raid a mock hostile compound under the cover of darkness during a training exercise. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Justin Morelli

In addition to noncombatant evacuation operations and similar missions, the CIFs “did a lot of personal security work, providing protection for high-level individuals – ambassadors and the like,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF. “They augmented the Secret Service on presidential visits.”

That supporting role was often critical, according to Bolduc. Without Bravo/2/3’s work, President Barack Obama’s 2015 visitto Kenya would have been “ten times more difficult and exponentially more dangerous,” he said. “And when the secretary of state comes to the continent or the secretary of defense comes to the continent, our CIF teams are the ones that are called on to make sure that security goes right.”

Nonetheless, together with Charlie/3/7’s departure from Panama, for some in the SOF community the absence of permanent forward bases for Bravo/2/3 and Alpha/1/5 in their respective theaters undermined the argument that the CIFs’ unique value lay in their forward-deployed status.

Meanwhile, the very fact that the CIFs “could go off to Iraq and conduct counterterrorism operations [suggested that] they really weren’t needed in the Pacific and everywhere else,” said the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF. “There didn’t really seem to be a need for them.”

“THEY CAUSED MORE PROBLEMS THAN THEY WERE WORTH”

The beginning of the end for the CIFs came in 2017 during a special operations commanders’ conference held by Army Gen. Tony Thomas, the then-SOCOM commander, according to Bolduc, who said he was in the room when Thomas announced that he thought it was time to get rid of the CIFs because U.S. special operations had become “over-invested” in direct-action units.

(A former CIF officer also said Thomas initiated the move to end the CIFs. “Tony Thomas was the main guy who wanted to get rid of them,” he said,)

Bolduc said he put up a one-man fight at the conference against what he described as a “very bad organizational decision for the combatant commanders,” to no avail.

But the wheels of the Pentagon bureaucratic process turned slowly enough that it was not until 2020, when Chris Miller was serving in a temporary capacity as the assistant secretary of defense for special operations, that a packet landed on his desk with documents that, if signed, would do away with the CIFs (not the companies themselves, but their role as an “in-extremis” backup to JSOC).

“I wasn’t tracking that there was an effort to shitcan the CIFs,” Miller said. “All of a sudden a packet appears on my desk…which is to disestablish the CIFs.”

The memo showed up “in parallel” with the biennial rewrite of “the JSOC Charter,” a Defense Department document (officially called a “Terms of Reference”) that outlines how JSOC is supposed to function, including its roles and missions and details about organizations that coordinate with it, Miller said.

The initiative to end the CIFs arose during the rewrite because “that was where they got their authority to operate and their money from JSOC,” he added. “That was the driving force behind this effort by the haters in U.S. Special Operations Command, United States Army Special Operations Command and U.S. [1^st] Special Forces Command.” (In 2014 Army Special Forces Command became 1^st Special Forces Command [Airborne].)

Miller, who retired as a colonel in 2009, and who had served in a special mission unit earlier in his career, noticed that none of the commanders who had signed the paperwork (“the haters”) before it reached his desk had ever served on a CIF. These were Gen. Richard Clarke, who succeeded Thomas at SOCOM in 2019, Lt. Gen. Francis Beaudette at USASOC and Maj. Gen. John Brennan at 1^st Special Forces Command (Airborne).

Bolduc noted that Thomas’ career was spent largely in the Ranger Regiment and Delta, while Brennan is “primarily a Delta guy” and Clarke, who in 2019 succeeded Thomas as head of U.S. Special Operations Command, is a former commander of the 75^th Ranger Regiment who also served at JSOC headquarters. (The 75^th Ranger Regiment provides forces to most JSOC task forces and works closely with all elements of the command.)

Bolduc clearly believes it is no coincidence that the decision to end the CIFs bore the fingerprints of so many special mission unit and JSOC alumni. After Thomas “got the ball rolling,” he said, “Rich Clarke and the Delta mafia put the nail in the coffin [of the CIFs], because they’ve taken over SOCOM.”

Beaudette did not respond to an emailed request for comment. When The High Side tried to reach Brennan, who is now the director of operations at U.S. Special Operations Command, SOCOM spokesman Ken McGraw provided the following statement: “MG Brennan is, has been and will be on leave, but I can answer your question. USSOCOM supported relieving the Special Forces groups of the requirement to have a standing Crisis Response Element because those detachments were never called on to respond to a crisis. Rather than keeping detachments waiting for a mission that was not coming, they can now be used to meet valid Special Forces requirements.”

Previous attempts to do away with the CIFs had foundered because someone in the chain of command was a CIF alumnus and refused to sign off, according to Miller. This time, “for once you’ve got everybody in there is a hater and concurs with the disestablishment of the relationship of the CIFs with JSOC, essentially ending the CIFs,” he said.

One of those individuals was Miller, who’d spent a career in and around Special Forces units, but never in a CIF. “They’d act like they were…somehow more elite than the rest of us,” he said. “You had exceptions…but stereotypically, they caused more problems than they were worth.”

Nonetheless, Miller was taken aback by the paperwork that had arrived in his in-box. “I’m like, ‘Come on, this can’t be legit,’” he said. Assured by his staff that it was, and feeling “boxed in,” he decided to give his approval. “I don’t give it a second thought,” he said. “I’m just like, ‘Huh, okay, moving on, makes sense’…So that happened and they disestablished the CIFs.”

However, Miller said, the decision brought him an onslaught of angry texts and emails, “typically [from] drunk dudes at some CIF reunion saying, ‘You sell-out!’”

“HIGH-END PARTNERING”

The Army’s 1^st Special Forces Command (Airborne)’s “A Vision For 2021 And Beyond,” published in August 2021, offered the first, albeit jargon-filled, hint at the future for the companies that were soon to lose their CIF status. Under the heading “Current Priorities,” the document has a paragraph describing “Hard Target Defeat Companies,” which it says are “hyper-enabled teams that are empowered, equipped, and networked to support high-end Partners and Allies across the spectrum of special operations.” The companies “possess multi-domain capabilities to obtain access to and defeat enemy hard targets,” it continues. “They operate with regional partners to defeat these hard targets in sensitive and denied environments to enable the Joint Force to achieve overmatch.”

Although the document makes no reference to the CIFs, current and former Special Forces officers said the command’s goal was to turn the CIFs into the Hard Target Defeat Companies. This was not much of a change, because the CIFs already had a mission to defeat “hardened structures,” Perry said.

“One of the things we did a lot of in training…was we practiced to go through hardened structures to include vault doors,” he said. “We teach some of the engineers some pretty specialized stuff on how to blow vault doors.”

Taking down hardened and deeply buried targets such as enemy command bunkers and missile silos has been part of JSOC’s mission set since the 1980s. But the challenge posed by North Korea, and in particular the nuclear state’s deeply buried command-and-control facilities, “was the driving force” behind the creation of the hard target defeat companies, Miller said. “Alpha/1/5, that’s all they do,” he added, in a reference to 5^th Group’s former CIF company. “They’re just underground people.”

However, no sooner were the CIFs given a new name than they were rebranded again, this time as Critical Threat Advisory Companies. Despite the name change, the CTACs have kept the mission to go after hard and deeply buried targets, according to two retired Special Forces officers. Each CTAC (as well as each Ranger Battalion) may soon also include a Defense Threat Reduction Agency contractor to assist with this mission because the main reason for breaching enemy underground complexes would be to capture or destroy their weapons of mass destruction capability, according to a retired Special Forces officer.

The CTACs have also kept the old CIF mission of embassy threat assessment, which involves evaluating security measures, identifying landing zones, egress routes, and other important information that may be needed if a non-combatant evacuation operation is ever required, according to a current CTAC leader. The companies would then assist in the evacuation itself, the CTAC leader and another special operations official said.

In addition, the CTACs have retained the CIFs’ mission of advising and liaising with friendly nations’ special mission units. An official Army press release highlighted a training exercise last spring between 10^th Group’s CTAC, Poland’s GROM special operations unit and German special operators.

When asked about the CTACs, 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) spokesman Maj. Russell Gordon replied via email with a one-sentence statement: “Critical Threat Advisory Companies (CTACs) are elements within the various Special Forces Groups who focus on high-end partnering with the premier direct action elements of our partners and allies.”

The description raises the question of whether, beyond the obvious lack of a formal link to JSOC doing away with the ticking clock in-extremis capability, anything much has changed for the companies. When a reporter for The High Side read the USASOC statement to the former commander of a battalion that included a CIF, he replied, “That’s really describing the traditional mission of the CIFs.”

The CTACs are scheduled for validation exercises beginning this summer to ensure they are proficient and qualified on their mission-essential tasks and that their equipment enables them to complete their mission, according to two Special Forces soldiers.

In the meantime, according to a retired Special Forces officer, 7^th Group’s CTAC worked with Delta Force to conduct another typical CIF mission: supporting the Secret Service during January’s “Three Amigos” North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico.

“YOU’LL NEVER SEE THAT IN A MISSION STATEMENT”

But while the CTACs’ mission set closely resembles that of the CIFs, the removal of the formal link to JSOC, along with the extensive training and exercise regime that went along with it, comes with costs both tangible and intangible, according to a former CIF officer.

The CIFs were the only structure that “allowed connectivity into JSOC” for the Special Forces groups, and vice versa, the former CIF officer said. “That was the value of it…that’s the intangible” for both JSOC and the groups, he said.

“That’s worth a lot of money,” he added. “But you’ll never see that in a mission statement.”

A former SOCOM staff officer agreed “wholeheartedly” with that assessment, adding that because the CIFs also stayed in contact not just with JSOC headquarters but with the component units of the JSOC task forces such as the 160^th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Air Force special tactics squadrons “and to a certain extent even the SEALs…you had for different reasons a communication channel that otherwise would not have existed.”

Some Special Forces officers and NCOs acknowledge that the CIFs were under employed by the regional combatant commanders. During recent crises, it was Delta, the Ranger Regiment, or the 82nd's Immediate Response Force that got spun up for missions ranging from the 2019 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad by Shi’a militia supporters to riots in Washington D.C. But the CIFs’ demise has left the combatant commanders without their own dedicated crisis response units.While some global hot spots are within easy reach of U.S. bases abroad such as Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, other potential crisis points, particularly in Asia and South America, are thousands of miles from such infrastructure.

With this in mind, several active and retired Special Forces officers suggested that the repeated rebranding of the original CIF companies represents an attempt by Army Special Operations Command to retain the CIF capability until such time that the Defense Department again asks the companies to assume the JSOC tasks for which they were created.

“There is too much invested there to completely do away with the CRF so they are trying hold on to it,” an active-duty Special Forces non-commissioned officer told The High Side. But while the effort to hold on to the force structure “is budget related more than mission related,” he said, “even responsible people are probably looking at how we won’t be able to replace this capability in a crisis so what bureaucratic means can we use to cover this.”

In the meantime, global events continue to provide challenges of the sort that the CIFs have traditionally met. A recent example cited by one retired Special Forces officer was April’s evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Sudan, and the associated difficulties the military had projecting force into the region even with a nearby base in Djibouti.

Without a CIF, “the combatant commander had no choice but to ask for help” from JSOC, he said. “It took over a week to get forces to Djibouti for Sudan.” While moving the “minimum” number of operators into theater was “easy,” he added, “it was tough to get all the helicopters and enablers” there.

Finding airfields to support the evacuation was also difficult, even with Air Force combat controllers on the ground assessing potential airstrips. “The only real option” was the military airfield at Wadi Seidna, about 14 miles north of Khartoum, “but it was very risky,” the retired Special Forces officer said. Indeed, by the time the evacuation was over, British and German experts assessed that the runway was within about a dozen flights of becoming unserviceable, he added.

Ultimately, British special operators helped identify an egress route and SEAL Team 6 operators conducted the evacuation even as “they had to take this crazy circuitous route and negotiate several unaffiliated checkpoints,” he said, adding that a dicey mission like this was a good example of something a CIF could have done better and faster.

Those advocating a return of the CIFs hope that it won’t take a worst-case scenario to underline their value.

“Wait until shit pops off in Kuala Lumpur,” said a retired Special Forces officer. “Who is responding to that?”

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com

If you do not read anything else in the 2017 National Security Strategy read this on page 14:

"A democracy is only as resilient as its people. An informed and engaged citizenry is the fundamental requirement for a free and resilient nation. For generations, our society has protected free press, free speech, and free thought. Today, actors such as Russia are using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. Adversaries target media, political processes, financial networks, and personal data. The American public and private sectors must recognize this and work together to defend our way of life. No external threat can be allowed to shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, or divide our Nation."

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