Quotes of the Day:

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

- Aristophanes

“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.”

- Francis Bacon, The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon

“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all – except the censor. We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.”

- John F Kennedy, Saturday Review, October 29th, 1960

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 25 (Putin's War)

2. A center of excellence for preventing civilian harm is coming

3. Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan Fact Sheet

4. Cold War offers clues about China’s plans for the Indian Ocean

5. Ukraine Wants to Go on the Offensive Against Russia. It Could Be Risky

6. America is Gifting Ukraine a New Air Defense Network to Stop Russia's Strikes

7. China can’t be the CIA’s only focus in a world of threats

8. FDD | Letter on Russia’s illegal seizure and mistreatment of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant

9. How the Salman Rushdie Fatwa Changed the World

10. Israel may need a paradigm shift on Iran

11. Biden, Zelensky discuss concerns over Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant

12. Congress Must Rescue Biden from His Defeatist Policies

13. Ukraine narrowly escapes nuclear catastrophe as plant loses power, Zelenskiy says

14. The Disturbing Return of the Fifth Column

15. Last Chance For America and Iran

16. Mossad chief says US ‘rushing into a deal that is a lie’ with Iran

17.  Avoiding empty cockpits: Addressing the Air Force’s pilot shortage problem

18. Putin orders Russian military to increase troops amid Ukraine losses

19. After Duterte dissonance, Marcos set to pivot back to Washington

20. War crimes in Ukraine may be unprecedented. So is the country's push for swift justice.

21. Is the US mission to support Ukraine getting a named operation?

22. The Use of Human Shields Is a War Crime. America Must Hold Terrorists Accountable

1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 25 (Putin's War)

Maps/graphics: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-25

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, AUGUST 25

Aug 25, 2022 - Press ISW

understandingwar.org

Karolina Hird, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan

August 25, 6:30 pm 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.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s August 25 decree to increase the size of the Russian military starting in January 2023 is unlikely to generate significant combat power in the near future and indicates that Putin is unlikely to order a mass mobilization soon. The decree increases the nominal end strength of the Russian Armed Forces by 137,000 military personnel, from 1,013,628 to 1,150,628, starting on January 1, 2023.[1] The Russian military likely seeks to recover losses from its invasion of Ukraine and generate forces to sustain its operation in Ukraine. The announcement of a relatively modest (yet likely still unattainable) increased end strength target strongly suggests that Putin remains determined to avoid full mobilization. The Kremlin is unlikely to generate sufficient forces to reach an end strength of over 1,150,000 soldiers as the decree stipulates. The Russian military has not historically met its end-strength targets. It had only about 850,000 active-duty military personnel in 2022 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for example, well shy of its nominal end strength target of over one million.[2]

Russia would likely face serious obstacles to adding large numbers of new soldiers quickly. Apart from the challenges Russian recruiters face, Russia’s net training capacity has likely decreased since February 24, since the Kremlin deployed training elements to participate in combat in Ukraine and these training elements reportedly took causalities.[3] Russia may use the fall conscription cycle in October 2022, which should bring in about 130,000 men, to replenish Russian losses, which reportedly number in the tens of thousands killed and seriously wounded. The Kremlin may alternatively use the additional end strength to formally subsume into the Russian military the forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and/or the new Russian volunteer units that are not formally part of the Russian military. The net addition to Russia’s combat power in any such case would be very small.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) disconnected from the power grid for the first time in its operational history on August 25. Ukrainian nuclear operating enterprise Energoatom reported that Russian shelling caused the disconnection by starting fires at ash pits near the Zaporizhia Thermal Power Plant (ZTPP), approximately 5km from the ZNPP.[4] Energoatom stated that the ZTPP is currently supplying the ZNPP with power and that work is ongoing to reconnect one of the ZNPP power units back to the Ukrainian power grid.[5]

Russian sources accused Ukrainian forces of firing at the ZNPP, but Russia has not provided clear evidence of Ukrainian troops striking the plant.[6] As ISW has previously reported, Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) stated that Russian troops deliberately conducted mortar strikes against the ash pits at the ZTPP.[7] The GUR also has not provided clear evidence to support its claims. The Russians’ failure to provide unequivocal evidence of the extensive shelling they accuse Ukraine of conducting is more noteworthy, however, because Russia controls the ground and could provide more conclusive evidence far more easily than Ukraine could. The GUR also reported on August 20 that Russian officials had indefinitely extended the order for Ukrainian employees of the ZNPP to stay home, and there have been no reports of any rescission of that order, which means that a portion of the ZNPP’s workforce is apparently still absent on Russian orders despite the ongoing emergency.[8] Russian forces have also heavily militarized the ZNPP since its capture, despite the fact that the facility is far from the front line and at no risk of imminent Ukrainian ground attack. This pattern of activity continues to make it far more likely that Russian forces have been responsible for kinetic attacks on and around the ZNPP than that Ukrainian forces have been.

Key Takeaways

• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northwest and northeast of Slovyansk, northeast and south of Bakhmut, and northwest of Donetsk City.
• Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack in northwestern Kharkiv Oblast.
• Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks in northwestern Kherson Oblast.
• Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian military assets and ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in Kherson Oblast.
• Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing recruitment efforts for volunteer battalions, which are continuing to deploy to training grounds in Russia and to Ukraine.
• Russian occupation administrators are continuing to take measures to mitigate challenges to their authority and facilitate the economic and educational integration of occupied territories into the Russian system.

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and two supporting efforts);
• Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts
• Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
• Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
• Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied Areas

Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine

Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Russian forces conducted limited ground attacks northwest and northeast of Slovyansk on August 25. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian troops attempted to advance from occupied positions in Pasika (25km northwest of Slovyansk) to Dolyna, 18km northwest of Slovyansk along the E40 Izyum-Slovyansk highway.[9] The Ukrainian General Staff also stated that Russian troops attempted to improve their tactical positions around Staryi Karavan, which is in Russian-occupied territory about 13km northeast of Slovyansk along the T0514 highway that runs through Raihorodok into Slovyansk.[10] Russian forces shelled civilian infrastructure in Slovyansk.[11]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks towards Siversk on August 25 and shelled Siversk and surrounding settlements.[12]

Russian forces continued ground attacks northeast and south of Bakhmut on August 25. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian troops attempted to advance on Bakhmut from Bakhmutske, 8km northeast of Bakhmut.[13] Russian troops, likely including Wagner Group mercenaries and elements of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) 6th Cossack Regiment are continuing to conduct ground attacks with artillery support around Bakhmut and in Soledar.[14] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian troops attempted to advance northward from the Horlivka area and conducted a ground attack from Travneve (19km southeast of Bakhmut) to Kodema (14km southeast of Bakhmut) and are fighting around Kodema.[15]

Russian forces conducted a limited ground attack on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City on August 25. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian troops attempted to push from Pisky to Pervomaiske and break Ukrainian defensive lines in the Pervomaiske area.[16] Geolocated footage posted on August 24 shows Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) troops hanging a Soviet flag near the center of Pisky and seemingly unconcerned with Ukrainian artillery fire, which confirms that DNR troops gained full control of Pisky and are likely launching westward attacks from positions in Pisky.[17] Russian forces continued to strike Ukrainian positions along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City frontline.[18]

Russian forces did not conduct any confirmed ground attacks southwest of Donetsk City towards the Zaporizhia Oblast border on August 25. Russian sources claimed that Russian and DNR troops are continuing offensive operations in the Vuhledar area, 35km southwest of Donetsk City. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces continued air and artillery strikes near Vuhledar and toward the Zaporizhia Oblast border.[19]

Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)

Russian forces conducted a limited ground assault northwest of Kharkiv City on August 25. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces retreated after attempting an unsuccessful offensive near Petrivka, approximately 15km northeast of Kharkiv City.[20] Russian forces conducted an airstrike near Pytomnyk, approximately 15km north of Kharkiv City, and continued using tube, tank, and rocket artillery to shell settlements along the Kharkiv City Axis.[21]

Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)

Russian forces conducted limited ground assaults in northwest Kherson Oblast but did not make any territorial gains on August 25. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled an attempted Russian offensive near Tavriiske, approximately 38km northwest of Kherson City.[22] The Ukrainian General Staff also reported that Russian forces retreated after attempting a reconnaissance-in-force operation near an unspecified village called Blahodatne.[23] It is unclear whether the report referred to the Ukrainian-held Blahodatne northwest of Russian-occupied Kyselivka or the Blahodatne in southern Mykolaiv Oblast that Russian forces captured around August 21.[24]

Russian forces continued focusing on maintaining occupied lines and striking Ukrainian positions along the Southern Axis. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces launched airstrikes on four settlements southeast of Zaporizhia, as well as near Bila Krynytsia, likely targeting Ukrainian positions near the Ukrainian bridgehead over the Inhulets River.[25] Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces used Smerch rockets and S-300 missiles to strike port and residential infrastructure in Mykolaiv City.[26] Ukrainian and Russian sources stated that Russian forces shelled the Chaplin railway station in central Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on August 24.[27] Russian forces continued using tank, tube, and rocket artillery to shell civilian and military infrastructure along the entire frontline of the Southern Axis.[28]

Ukrainian forces continued to target Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) and positions in Kherson Oblast on August 24-25. Ukrainian Southern Operational Command Spokesperson Vladislav Nazarov reported that Ukrainian forces again struck the Antonivsky bridge in a continued effort to prevent Russian construction units from restoring the bridge.[29] Geolocated video footage posted on August 24 showed damage near the Kakhovka bridge after Ukrainian forces reportedly struck the area with unspecified weapons on August 24.[30] Ukrainian officials also reported that Ukrainian forces destroyed four Russian warehouses, a concentration of manpower, and two command posts, including a command post of a battalion tactical group of the 33rd Motorized Rifle Regiment in unspecified areas in the Southern Axis.[31]

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

Russian federal subjects (regions) are continuing additional recruitment drives for volunteer battalions, which continue to deploy to training grounds ahead of deployment to Ukraine. Russian outlet VladNews reported that Primorsky Krai’s military commissioner announced that 140 people (half of the 280 target) have signed up for Primorsky Krai’s “Arsenyevskyi” volunteer repair battalion.[32] Local Chelyabinsk outlet BezFormata reported that Chelyabinsk’s military commissar is conducting additional recruitment drives for the “Yuzhnouralets” and “Yuzhnyi Ural” volunteer battalions—one of which ISW previously reported has already deployed to a training ground and the other of which is still forming.[33] Local Oryol outlet NewsOrel stated that the “Orlovskyi” volunteer battalion has deployed to a base in Russia prior to deploying to Ukraine on August 25.[34] Russian media also reported that Bashkortostan’s “Shaimuratov” and “Dostavalov” volunteer battalions are completing their training and will deploy to Ukraine at an unspecified date in the near future.[35]

Internal friction between elements of different Russian conventional forces, special forces, private military company (PMC) workers, and national guard elements may be increasing. An unconfirmed Twitter post, which cited sources within the 22nd Spetznaz Brigade, claimed that relations between Russian Spetznaz units are breaking down, as are relationships between Spetznaz units and PMC elements.[36] The post claims that a conflict between groups from two Spetznaz brigades and a PMC unit turned into an armed fight when one Spetznaz unit sided with the PMC unit instead of the other Spetznaz unit.[37] The Russian military leadership is leveraging PMC elements such as the Wagner Group and Spetznaz as key maneuver elements, and internal firefights between these factions could erode the mutual confidence necessary for troops to cooperate effectively in combat.

Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)

Russian occupation authorities are continuing to face challenges to their administrative abilities in occupied areas and are taking measures to crack down on perceived threats to their control. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on August 25 that unknown actors, likely Ukrainian partisans, conducted an explosive attack against the Russian headquarters for referendum preparations in Pryazovske, Zaporizhia Oblast.[38] Russian authorities are likely increasingly concerned with the security of their administrative and military assets due to partisan strikes, as noted by Advisor to Kherson Oblast Head Sergey Khlan who stated that Russian forces are seizing and photographing passports from anyone they find near military facilities.[39] Khlan noted that this will allow Russian forces to use personal data to blame and threaten individuals in the case of strikes on such facilities.[40]

Russian authorities are taking measures to increase the economic integration of occupied territories into the Russian system. Luhansk Oblast Head Serhiy Haidai stated that Russian occupiers exported all 200,000 tons of grain collected by the Ukrainian producer “Agroton” to Russia and that the two major agricultural producers/exporters in Luhansk Oblast have been purchased and taken over by an unnamed Russian “entrepreneur” from Krasnodar Krai.[41] Russian authorities are likely continuing efforts to exploit Ukrainian economic assets in order to foster Ukrainian economic dependency on Russia and facilitate integration measures.

Russian and proxy authorities are also continuing efforts to facilitate the integration of educational systems in occupied Ukraine into the Russian system. The Ukrainian Resistance Center additionally reported that Russian authorities are offering Ukrainian parents a one-time 10,000-ruble ($165) payment if they apply to send their children to Russian-run schools in occupied Ukraine.[42] LNR Head Leonid Pasechnik attended the August Pedagogical Conference in Luhansk Oblast and affirmed that his main goal is securing the integration of schools in Luhansk into the Russian educational space.[43] Russian and proxy authorities are likely escalating educational integration efforts ahead of the school year in an attempt to instill Russian educational values into Ukrainian children as part of a wider brainwashing and psychological manipulation campaign that would allow the strengthening of occupational control.

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.

[1] http://publication.pravo.gov dot ru/Document/View/0001202208250004

[3] https://www.facebook.com/GeneralStaff.ua/posts/274980681481684; https://www.objectiv dot tv/objectively/2022/03/17/voennye-pokazali-video-likvidirovannoj-pod-harkovom-batalonno-takticheskoj-gruppy/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlJDitMo83Q; https://gur dot gov.ua/content/voennosluzhashchye-54-tsentra-podhotovky-razvedyvatelnykh-podrazdelenyi.html

[7] https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign... gov.ua/content/okupanty-obstriliuiut-zolovidvaly-zaporizkoi-tes-shchob-pidniaty-khmary-radioaktyvnoho-pylu.html; https://t.me/energoatom_ua/9127

[8] https://gur dot gov.ua/content/na-zaes-prodovzhyly-vykhidni-dlia-ukrainskoho-personalu.html

[32] https://vladnews dot ru/2022-08-25/206461/bolee_dobrovolcev

[33] https://chelyabinsk.bezformata dot com/listnews/nabor-na-voennuyu-sluzhbu-po-kontraktu/108723338/

[34] https://newsorel dot ru/fn_1135781.html

[35] https://zvezda-gafuri dot ru/news/novosti/2022-08-24/boytsov-bashkirskih-batalonov-pered-otpravkoy-v-zonu-svo-naveschayut-glavy-administratsiy-munitsipalitetov-2921431

[38] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/08/25/pid-melitopolem-pidirvaly-shtab-pidgotovky-do-psevdoreferendumu/; https://www.pravda.com dot ua/rus/news/2022/08/25/7364740/; https://t.me/riamelitopol/66312; https://t.me/riamelitopol/66303; http...

[42] https://sprotyv.mod.gov dot ua/2022/08/25/okupanty-planuyut-platyty-batkam-aby-ti-viddavaly-ditej-v-rosijski-shkoly/; https://t.me/readovkanews/40742

understandingwar.org

2. A center of excellence for preventing civilian harm is coming

This has been brewing for many years. I recall Sarah Sewell and Maj Gen (RET) Geoff Lambert doing a study on civilian casualties back in 2010-2011.

A center of excellence for preventing civilian harm is coming

militarytimes.com · by Meghann Myers · August 25, 2022

Following revelations of two high-profile U.S. strikes that inadvertently targeted civilians, the Pentagon is creating a far-reaching organization with an oversight committee to address how to not only better plan air strikes, but how to respond when civilians become collateral damage.

Over the next few years, the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence will stand up as part of what the Defense Department has dubbed its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan. It’s the first effort to standardize civilian harm mitigation techniques and collect data for lessons learned across the military services and combatant commands.

“Hard-earned tactical and operational successes may ultimately end in strategic failure if care is not taken to protect the civilian environment as much as the situation allows—including the civilian population and the personnel, organizations, resources, infrastructure, essential services, and systems on which civilian life depends,” the report reads.

The new center of excellence comes after two reviews conducted in late 2021 found that U.S. Central Command, specifically, carried out strikes lacking good ground intelligence that might have prevented civilians from being killed, but that the entire department was lacking solid policies on civilian harm mitigation.

“And the action plan, we think, improves our ability to understand the causes of civilian harm, and continually improve our approach to civilian harm mitigation and response ― again, in a systemic fashion, and you will see in the plan considerable effort to build in not only new institutions, but also resource those institutions,” a senior defense official told reporters Thursday.

RELATED

Pentagon’s civilian casualty tracking ‘a hot mess’

A new center of excellence will deal specifically with preventing and responding to civilian harm.

An estimated 150 or so personnel will be needed to man the organization to start, the official said, though DoD is still working through whether they should be uniformed or civilian and what their ranks should be.

The committee overseeing the center of excellence will be chaired by the Pentagon’s policy and financial chiefs, along with the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Some of the funding can come from existing DoD accounts, the official said, though they are working with lawmakers to secure what they imagine will be in the tens of millions of dollars to operate annually.

Once things are off the ground, the goal is to standardize practices across the department, starting with the mistaken targeting that has plagued so many strikes.

“A robust understanding of the civilian environment — including the civilian population and the personnel, organizations, resources, infrastructure, essential services, and systems on which civilian life depends — can improve the commander’s ability to distinguish nonadversarial aspects of the operational environment and to provide guidance to the forces under his or her command,” the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan reads.

And on the back end, the center of excellence will maintain a central hub of strike data that can be called upon for lessons learned, as well as policies for compensating victims, whether that’s through payments or, in some cases, relocation.

“DoD responses to civilian harm can vary across conflicts and theaters, and often more can be done to acknowledge and respond to harm to civilians affected by U.S. military operations,” the action plan reads. “As the Department takes steps to improve its ability to mitigate civilian harm, DoD will also improve its ability to consistently and appropriately acknowledge and respond to civilian harm when it occurs and to treat those who are harmed with dignity and respect.”

The center of excellence expects to be staffed and have policies in place over the next year, building out training and execution of strategies toward full operation in fiscal year 2025.

About Meghann Myers

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

3. Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan Fact Sheet

The 46 page plan can be downloaded here: https://media.defense.gov/2022/Aug/25/2003064740/-1/-1/1/CIVILIAN-HARM-MITIGATION-AND-RESPONSE-ACTION-PLAN.PDF?utm_source=pocket_mylist

Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan Fact Sheet

defense.gov

Release

Immediate Release

Aug. 25, 2022

On August 25, 2022, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which lays out a series of major actions DoD will implement to mitigate and respond to civilian harm.

The plan, directed by the Secretary of Defense, creates new institutions and processes that will improve strategic outcomes, optimize military operations, and strengthen DoD's ability to mitigate civilian harm during operations through a reinforcing framework. It will facilitate continued learning throughout DoD, enhance DoD's approach to assessments and investigations, and improve DoD's ability to effectively respond when civilian harm occurs. The actions set forth in the CHMR-AP build upon each other to improve accountability and transparency regarding civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations. DoD will begin implementing the CHMR-AP immediately. Certain actions set forth in the plan can be taken now, while others will require additional time to properly implement.

Under the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response-Action Plan, DoD will:

• Establish a civilian protection center of excellence to serve as the hub and facilitator for DoD-wide analysis, learning, and training related to civilian harm mitigation and response (CHMR);
• Provide commanders and operators with more information to better understand the civilian environment; Incorporate guidance for addressing civilian harm across the full spectrum of armed conflict into doctrine and operation plans so that we are prepared to mitigate and respond to civilian harm in any future fight;
• Develop standardized civilian harm operational reporting and data management processes, including the development of a centralized, enterprise-wide data management platform, which will improve how DoD collects, shares, and learns from data related to civilian harm;
• Improve our ability to assess and respond to civilian harm resulting from our operations;
• Incorporate CHMR into exercises, training, and professional military education across the Joint force;
• Incorporate CHMR into security cooperation and operations with allies and partners;
• Establish a CHMR Steering Committee, which will be co-chaired by senior DoD leadership and which will convene regularly to provide executive leadership, oversight, and guidance during all phases of the action plan to facilitate its timely and effective implementation; and
• Designate the Secretary of the Army as DoD’s joint proponent for CHMR.

As directed by the CHMR-AP, and under the leadership and oversight of the Secretary of Defense, DoD leadership, and the CHMR Steering Committee, the Department will continue to improve its approach to mitigating and responding to civilian harm.

Protecting civilians from harm in connection with military operations is not only a moral imperative, it is also critical to achieving long-term success on the battlefield. Hard-earned tactical and operational successes may ultimately end in strategic failure if care is not taken to protect the civilian environment as much as the situation allows — including the civilian population and the personnel, organizations, resources, infrastructure, essential services, and systems on which civilian life depends.

The entire Action Plan can be found here.

4. Cold War offers clues about China’s plans for the Indian Ocean

The Cold War remains relevant.

Excerpts:

One clear lesson from the Cold War is that securing local bases can be costly and uncertain. China’s relationships with Pakistan and Sri Lanka demonstrate how much Beijing has to spend, even without securing assured access. Like the Soviet Union, China may find that relationships with some countries—particularly, corrupt and autocratic regimes—are less than reliable.

The Soviet experience also suggests that the size and composition of the PLA in the Indian Ocean will principally be a function of China’s unique interests in the region. It should not be assumed that China’s future military presence and security relationships will necessarily resemble those of the US.

Cold War offers clues about China’s plans for the Indian Ocean | The Strategist

aspistrategist.org.au · by David Brewster · August 25, 2022

A recent study published by the US Army War College looks at how geography constrained the Soviet military presence in the Indian Ocean and the lessons that can be drawn for China’s efforts to become an Indian Ocean power.

Geography has a big impact on the strategic dynamics of the Indian Ocean. It is largely enclosed on three sides with few maritime entry points. The Himalayas also cut off much of the Eurasian hinterland from access to the sea.

This makes it hard for militaries to get access. The semi-enclosed geography of the Indian Ocean creates a premium for naval powers that control the maritime chokepoints and the limited number of deep-water ports for essential logistical support.

There are similar constraints in projecting airpower. Aircraft can access Indian Ocean airspace from, say, Chinese territory only by flying over other countries. Within the region, the sheer size of the Indian Ocean makes it essential to have a network of local airfields for staging and support.

In the Cold War, the Soviets struggled to overcome these constraints. The Soviet Union had no direct access to the Indian Ocean by sea or air and few reliable regional partners. Its navy had to deploy to the Indian Ocean mostly from the Pacific, transiting the straits through Southeast Asia where vessels were subject to interdiction and tracking.

This had a significant impact on the Soviet naval presence. The long transit from Vladivostok to the Arabian Gulf meant that keeping one vessel on station required ships to spend around a third of their time in transit. Long transits also limited the deployment of smaller vessels. Logistical requirements meant that a majority of deployed Soviet vessels were support and other auxiliary vessels.

There were strong imperatives to obtain local bases. The Soviet Navy developed several facilities around the Horn of Africa, and where onshore support wasn’t available, they relied on floating bases in international waters. The quest for bases was pursued opportunistically and often meant relying on politically unstable partners. Access was far from guaranteed and they were evicted from several bases.

Although Soviet ships often outnumbered the US Navy’s in the Indian Ocean, the Soviet Navy didn’t achieve meaningful or lasting naval superiority across the region. The naval balance in favour of the Soviets was quickly reversed in times of crisis.

The composition of the Soviet fleet also differed considerably from the US’s with a large number of auxiliary vessels, including intelligence and research ships.

The Soviet air presence developed with several years’ lag. Operational access was also geographically constrained. Flight distances into the region were long, and aircraft operating from Soviet territory had to fly over other countries. This created a premium for access to local air bases.

The geographic constraints faced by China in the Indian Ocean mirror those faced by the Soviet Union.

For China, the Indian Ocean has secondary importance compared with the Pacific. But Beijing still has several strategic imperatives or missions in the Indian Ocean, starting with the protection of its crucial ocean supply lines for energy. But other missions are just as important in influencing the composition, size and locations of the Chinese military presence. These include protecting Chinese citizens and investments, bolstering soft-power influence, countering terrorism, collecting intelligence, supporting coercive diplomacy towards small countries, and enabling operations in a conflict environment. The People’s Liberation Army must be capable of responding to a range of contingencies.

The PLA Navy has a leading role in the PLA’s Indian Ocean presence, reflecting the imperatives of protecting supply lines and the political advantages of a relatively transient naval footprint.

The size and composition of Chinese naval deployments to the Indian Ocean have evolved. They now include an antipiracy taskforce, hydrographic-survey and intelligence-collection vessels, and submarines. But, although the presence has grown, China has so far been relatively incremental in its approach.

It’s possible that the PLA Navy’s presence could come to resemble the US Navy’s, if Beijing wants to protect the entirety of its Indian Ocean supply lines. That would be a major undertaking, requiring the sustained deployment of large numbers of vessels, including aircraft carriers and submarines, as well as land-based aircraft. It would require multiple naval and air bases in the region.

But Beijing may judge that protecting its supply lines against the US and India is impracticable. It may choose to focus on the Pacific while pursuing limited objectives in the Indian Ocean.

The PLA Navy’s presence in the Indian Ocean over the past decade has focused overwhelmingly on antipiracy, intelligence and naval diplomacy. These will likely continue to be a major focus and might evolve to include limited, coercive diplomacy (for example, disputes over fishing rights), as has been the case elsewhere. PLA Navy assets might be supplemented by vessels from other maritime agencies.

China may also develop additional capabilities to create local superiority; respond to a limited distant blockade; provide support for local interventions; or undertake limited sea-denial operations. All of these missions would be broadly analogous to the Soviet Union’s Indian Ocean strategy. These could provide options to respond to certain contingencies at a fraction of the cost of a full sea-control strategy.

As with the Soviets, constraints on China’s access create imperatives for local support facilities. But the nature and extent of China’s basing requirements would also depend on its overall strategy. Many needs could be satisfied by relying on a ‘places not bases’ approach of using commercial facilities while minimising the need for dedicated bases. But any significant and sustained Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean would likely require dedicated support facilities comparable to traditional bases.

China’s approach to securing local facilities is much more deliberate and comprehensive compared with the Soviet approach. China may be seeking to build what some analysts call strategic strong points as part of a network of supply, logistics and intelligence hubs across the Indian Ocean.

But whether that would yield assured access to support facilities under wartime conditions is uncertain. Despite many ‘feelers’ for facilities in the Indian Ocean region, no potential host country has offered permanent facilities to the PLA Navy (with the exception of Djibouti). Indeed, several potential hosts have pushed back on proposed port developments.

The port at Gwadar, Pakistan, is often identified as the most likely location of another Chinese naval base in the northwestern Indian Ocean (although it has not been used by the PLA). But any comprehensive Chinese naval presence would likely also require assured access to facilities in the southwestern, central and eastern Indian Ocean.

China also needs to develop its regional airpower capabilities. Support for sustained naval operations would require substantial airpower, including maritime surveillance and strike aircraft. But the PLA Air Force doesn’t have assured airfield access in the Indian Ocean, although it could potentially use the new 3,400-metre airfield at Dara Sakor, Cambodia. China’s lack of air capabilities in the Indian Ocean places it at a major tactical disadvantage. That could become a bottleneck limiting the PLA’s strategic power projection.

One clear lesson from the Cold War is that securing local bases can be costly and uncertain. China’s relationships with Pakistan and Sri Lanka demonstrate how much Beijing has to spend, even without securing assured access. Like the Soviet Union, China may find that relationships with some countries—particularly, corrupt and autocratic regimes—are less than reliable.

The Soviet experience also suggests that the size and composition of the PLA in the Indian Ocean will principally be a function of China’s unique interests in the region. It should not be assumed that China’s future military presence and security relationships will necessarily resemble those of the US.

aspistrategist.org.au · by David Brewster · August 25, 2022

5. Ukraine Wants to Go on the Offensive Against Russia. It Could Be Risky

Excerpts:

Thus far, heralds of Western disunity over Ukraine have largely proven wrong, as many Western countries have continued to provide material and rhetorical support to the Kyiv government. Indeed, there’s little hard evidence that enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine has waned significantly, despite a few hazy indicators from polling. However, demonstrating some degree of offensive success may also become important domestically for the Zelensky regime, which has maintained high levels of approval in the face of the Russian invasion. The same polls that indicate high support also indicate great confidence regarding the future of the conflict, confidence that may eventually require some demonstration of effectiveness.

Granted, offensive operations are a tough sell for an army that has been badly mauled over the past six months. Simply integrating all of the equipment that Ukrainian forces have received is a titanic organizational task; forging a sufficient number of Ukrainian units into a maneuver-capable combined arms force is an exceedingly tall order. Ukrainians can surely be forgiven for resenting Western advice on when and where they should launch risky, costly military operations. Nevertheless, if the war is to end in anything other than a stalemate that leaves Russia in control of a huge portion of the country, the Ukrainian military needs to demonstrate its ability to defeat the Russians in the field and retake captured territory.

Ukraine Wants to Go on the Offensive Against Russia. It Could Be Risky

What if Ukraine launches its own offensive against Putin and it fails?

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Farley · August 25, 2022

Will Ukraine Go on the Offensive Or Not? Expert Analysis by Dr. Robert Farley: 

Observers of the Russia-Ukraine War have been aflutter for weeks about the prospect of a Ukrainian offensive to retake some of the territory seized by Russia in the first months of the war. To some extent, this reflects frustration with what has become a static struggle of attrition, with front lines moving only a few kilometers and (in recent weeks) slowing to a crawl. For a variety of reasons, however, onlookers have been disappointed.

Despite some feints and some apparent early moves, Ukraine has not engaged in a serious effort to dislodge Russia from any of its conquests.

There are good reasons why Ukraine would resist the call for an early offensive from foreigners who’ve grown bored with the war. A failed counter-offensive would be a dramatic defeat for Ukrainian prospects. In addition to the political effects (which would include an increase in Russian morale and the potential loss of support in the West), a failed offensive could open gaps and vulnerabilities in Ukraine’s defensive position, enabling Russian counter-attacks that could seize additional territory. A failed counter-offensive could also result in a Russian cease-fire offer on extremely advantageous terms to Moscow, a prospect that Kyiv would prefer to avoid.

There is little question that the Ukrainians are inflicting serious damage on the Russians, including both fielded forces and logistical systems. Simply attriting Russians forces will not obligate them to evacuate Ukraine. Armies do not generally collapse from attrition alone; the threat and practice of maneuver warfare must force them to engage, at which point the extent of the damage inflicted becomes clear. An army defending from static positions can endure logistical shortcomings and the slow grind of combat, but may fall apart when attacked with intent to overrun or encircle. To enjoy strategic success, damage to Russian forces must be accompanied by liberation of real territory of strategic importance.

Eyes have focused especially on Kherson, which is both geographically vulnerable and strategically critical, but despite a range of preparatory action and a lot of discussion, an offensive has not ensued. Russian reinforcements, deployed either defensively or in preparation for another drive towards Odesa, have complicated the situation. The terrain does not favor offensive action, especially for a military that continues to struggle to integrate new equipment. Combined arms offensive operations against a determined opponent in open country require extraordinary skill and coordination, and neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians have demonstrated this capability thus far.

However, the ability to demonstrate an offensive capability may be politically important to the Ukrainians. During World War II, the Roosevelt administration authorized early, under-prepared offensives in North Africa and the Solomon Islands out of a political need to demonstrate to international and domestic audiences that the United States was willing and able to carry the war to the enemy.

Bayraktar TB2 Drone of the Ukrainian Air Force.

Thus far, heralds of Western disunity over Ukraine have largely proven wrong, as many Western countries have continued to provide material and rhetorical support to the Kyiv government. Indeed, there’s little hard evidence that enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine has waned significantly, despite a few hazy indicators from polling. However, demonstrating some degree of offensive success may also become important domestically for the Zelensky regime, which has maintained high levels of approval in the face of the Russian invasion. The same polls that indicate high support also indicate great confidence regarding the future of the conflict, confidence that may eventually require some demonstration of effectiveness.

Granted, offensive operations are a tough sell for an army that has been badly mauled over the past six months. Simply integrating all of the equipment that Ukrainian forces have received is a titanic organizational task; forging a sufficient number of Ukrainian units into a maneuver-capable combined arms force is an exceedingly tall order. Ukrainians can surely be forgiven for resenting Western advice on when and where they should launch risky, costly military operations. Nevertheless, if the war is to end in anything other than a stalemate that leaves Russia in control of a huge portion of the country, the Ukrainian military needs to demonstrate its ability to defeat the Russians in the field and retake captured territory.

TB2 drone similar to the one fighting in Ukraine.

A 19FortyFive Contributor, Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph. D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), and Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.

In this article:

Written By Robert Farley

Dr. Robert Farley has taught security and diplomacy courses at the Patterson School since 2005. He received his BS from the University of Oregon in 1997, and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2004. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), and Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020). He has contributed extensively to a number of journals and magazines, including the National Interest, the Diplomat: APAC, World Politics Review, and the American Prospect. Dr. Farley is also a founder and senior editor of Lawyers, Guns and Money.

19fortyfive.com · by Robert Farley · August 25, 2022

6. America is Gifting Ukraine a New Air Defense Network to Stop Russia's Strikes

Long term support.

Excerpt:

The Pentagon hasn’t listed everything it’s sending in the new package, which likely includes more logistics vehicles retired from U.S. Army stocks—and possibly other pre-used equipment it prefers to keep under wraps for now. The focus on long-term support is wise, though: Russia’s unprovoked war seems liable to drag on; and even in the happy event it doesn’t, the risk of follow-on conflict will remain so high that continued assistance is essential.

America is Gifting Ukraine a New Air Defense Network to Stop Russia's Strikes​

Expert: “Factoring in that Ukraine is also set to receive four compatible IRIS-T air defense batteries from Germany, that means Kyiv will eventually have a dozen networkable modern air defense batteries.”​

19fortyfive.com · by Sebastien Roblin · August 26, 2022

Ukraine is getting new air defense systems that won’t make things easier for Russia: August 24 was the 31st anniversary of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union—and Moscow did not let the day pass without yet another vicious attack, peppering the town of Chaplyne with a lethal hail of Smerch rockets, and Iskander and S-300 missiles. Hits to residential areas, the train station and a passenger train killed 25 civilians and wounded 50.

Fortunately, Russia’s ability to inflict such terror attack appears likely to decline over time. One reason is depletion of missile stocks and inability to rapidly build them back up. Another factor is that Ukraine’s ground-based air defenses are strengthening, not weakening,

This trend was discernible in the $2.98 billion military aid package the U.S. announced the same day, the largest given by Washington to Ukraine yet. (Technically, the money is coming out of a total of $13.7 billion already authorized by Congress in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.)

This package, which focused on “long-term…multi-years investments” included no less than six NASAMS air defense batteries to supplement two already donated to Ukraine, with delivery unrolling over the next year or two.

Factoring in that Ukraine is also set to receive four compatible IRIS-T air defense batteries from Germany, that means Kyiv will eventually have a dozen, networkable modern air defense batteries.

Ukraine’s older ground-based Soviet-era air defenses systems, supplemented by Western short-range missiles, have performed beyond expectations, shooting down a large share of cruise missiles and accounting for most of the 100 confirmed Russian jet and helicopters losses in the war as of late August, confining Russian tactical jets to attacking frontline targets rather than Ukrainian supply lines.

But benefiting from sensors and missiles decades more modern than those used by Ukraine, medium-range NASAMS batteries could reduce cruise missile threats to Ukrainian cities, or closer to the frontline, make even hit-and-run airstrikes far more risky. The systems are apparently new production, meaning they’re likely the latest NASAMS-3 model which can fire both medium-range AIM-120 radar-guided missiles and short-range AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles.

Ukraine’s dated but powerful S-300P batteries will continue to handle wider-area defense. But, depending on the AIM-120 variant, NASAMS batteries can defend a 15.5, 18.5 or even 28.5-miles radius—enough to protect a city-sized ‘bubble’. And they can engage aircraft flying up to 65,000 feet, the maximum practical ceiling of manned combat aircraft.

Each battery includes multiple launchers and MPQ-64F1 Sentinel radars effective at detecting even low-flying aircraft/missiles; and a stealthier MSP-500 optical sensor for relatively close threats. The battery’s fire control system is designed to network with other batteries, including the IRIS-Ts Germany will eventually supply. However, Ukraine will likely need to devise workarounds to coordinate with its Soviet-technology defenses.

Kyiv will need to choose between enhancing defense of cities like Dnipro, Lviv and Kyiv from cruise missiles, or deploying near the frontline at Kharkiv, Kramatorsk or Mykolaiv where threats are denser, and there’s greater risk of losses to Russian artillery and air defense suppression strikes. Fortunately, with twelve NASAMS and IRIS-T batteries, Kyiv may be able to do both to a degree.

Ukraine is getting VAMPIREs—but were they lurking there all along?

The U.S. will also purchase a counter-drone system called VAMPIRE for Ukraine, which stands for Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment. This is actually a boxy four-round rocket-launcher pod mated to an independent 24-volt generator and a WESCAM MX-10 stabilized electro optical/infrared sensor turret with target-tracking capabilities.

This package can be easily fitted both onto military vehicles and civilian pickup trucks and launch 70-millimeter laser guided AGR-20 Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System (APKWS) rockets, an especially affordable form of guided weapon.

APKWS rockets can actually be used against ground targets and manned aircraft or missiles too. Nonetheless, the counter-drone application is evident: Ukrainian troops are compelled to expend costly anti-aircraft missiles designed to intercept supersonic fighters on cheap Russian surveillance drones because of the risk these may call down very lethal artillery bombardments. APKWS thus offers a lower-cost guided weapon for disabling smaller, lower-flying drones.

The Pentagon prior announced transfer of APKWS rockets to Ukraine in May without explaining their launch platform. It’s not clear if they have been employed as part of a different system than VAMPIRE, or if VAMPIREs have in fact been in use all along.

It’s worth noting that Germany is also including 20 pickup trucks and 2,000 70-millimeter laser-guided rockets in its arms package for Ukraine. It seems likely these systems may be able to share the same ammunition supply.

Winning the Artillery War: Ammo, Counterbattery Radars and Surveillance Drones

After Moscow’s failed early advances, Russian forces have leaned on overwhelming artillery bombardments to slowly bash away Ukrainian defenses in Eastern Ukraine. By the end of June that strategy seemed to be working, but the following month the tables began to turn as Ukrainian forces used U.S.-delivered HIMARS rocket systems to vaporize Russian ammunition dumps and supply links behind the frontline. By August, that’s estimated to have reduced munitions expended by Russia to 5,000-6,000 shells daily, one-third the previous rate.

Ukraine’s big guns still face daunting odds, so much of the U.S. assistance is aimed at helping them, notably by sending 245,000 more 155-millimeter shells, on top of 75,000 given earlier in August. This NATO-standard caliber is compatible with most of the howitzers given/sold to Ukraine including the German PzH 2000, Czech Zuzana 2, French CAESAR, Polish Krab, and U.S.-built M109 and M777 howitzers. In July Ukraine reportedly expended 3,000 155-millimeter shells daily, at which rate the combined 320,000 shells given by the U.S. might last 3-4 months.

Washington is also sending 65,000 120-millimeter heavy mortar rounds. Heavy mortars are easier to tow than howitzers and have a comparably devastating blast effect but much shorter range (usually 4-5 miles). Ukraine already uses PM38 and 2B11 120-millimeter mortars, and an indigenous M120 Molot system. Kyiv has also received Finnish KRH-92s mortars of this caliber, and in August, Washington donated 20 of its own 120-millimeter systems as well as 20,000 shells.

Even with Western aid, though, Ukraine can’t match Russian numerical superiority in shells and guns. That means it has no choice but to fight smarter with its smaller arsenal.

One tactic is to consistently knock-out Russian batteries with counter-battery fires. Towards that end, Ukraine is receiving an additional 24 counter-battery radars. Radars previously received from the U.S. have allowed Ukrainian batteries to rapidly trace back the origin point of Russian shelling and precisely attack the guns—a procedure Ukrainian gunners are executing many times faster than Russia does.

But a Ukrainian defeat at Pisky linked to absent counterbattery capability highlight that Kyiv’s forces still need additional counterbattery coverage and better communications and organization. Extra radars should at least help the former problem.

Another tactic to overcome Russia’s ammunition advantage is to make a smaller number of shells achieve the same or greater effect. One method is to use expensive GPS-, laser- and even radar-guided shells to guarantee a shot lands on target.

But with assistance from a drone spotter, even cheap unguided artillery shells can be quickly adjusted to land on a point target without need for a massive, ammunition-burning barrage.

Thus Washington is transferring additional hand-launched RQ-20 Puma AE surveillance drones to help Ukraine acquire targets; the short-range Puma will complement 15 longer-range/endurance Boeing-Insitu ScanEagle drones donated to Ukraine earlier in August. The 13-pound RQ-20 has a range of 9 miles, can stay aloft for two hours, and carries a high-quality electro-optical/infrared camera turret.

RQ-20s earlier received by Ukraine reportedly have proven useful spying on Russian artillery around Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia.

#Ukraine: US-supplied RQ-20 Puma reconnaissance drones are already being deployed by Ukrainian forces in #Zaporizhzhia – though Ukraine already has similar recon systems, this one has much better high-quality thermal imaging payload and laser illuminator. pic.twitter.com/n3L1LXf5Yd

—  Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 30, 2022

The Pentagon hasn’t listed everything it’s sending in the new package, which likely includes more logistics vehicles retired from U.S. Army stocks—and possibly other pre-used equipment it prefers to keep under wraps for now. The focus on long-term support is wise, though: Russia’s unprovoked war seems liable to drag on; and even in the happy event it doesn’t, the risk of follow-on conflict will remain so high that continued assistance is essential.

Expert Biography: Sébastien Roblin writes on the technical, historical and political aspects of international security and conflict for publications including The National Interest, NBC News, Forbes.com, War is Boring and 19FortyFive, where he is Defense-in-Depth editor. He holds a Master’s degree from Georgetown University and served with the Peace Corps in China. You can follow his articles on Twitter.

19fortyfive.com · by Sebastien Roblin · August 26, 2022

7. China can’t be the CIA’s only focus in a world of threats

I concur.

However, whenever something becomes the highest priority everyone gravitates toward that mission because being part of that mission improves the chances of promotion.  

But in some ways people working on other threats, anticipating what might happen in the future may have equal or greater value than those working on the CURRENT priority mission.

I am reminded of this story in one of the translations of Sun Tzu's Art of War. Some of the best intelligence analysts are like the eldest brother physician so their names are never known.

"According to an old story, a lord of ancient China once asked his physician, a member of a family of healers, which of them was the most skilled in the art.

The physician, whose reputation was such that his name became synonymous with medical science in China, replied, "My eldest brother sees the the spirit of sickness and removes it before it takes shape, so his name does not get out of the house.

My elder brother cures illness when it is still extremely minute, so his name does not get out of the neighborhood.

As for me, I puncture veins, prescribe potions, and massage skin, so from time to time my name gets out and is heard among the lords."

I also recall a story about Cold War versus GWOT intelligence analysis. During the COld War allegedly 75% of intelligence analysis was focused on future threat and operations while 25% were focused on current operations. During the GWOT those percentages were reversed - 75% on current operations and 25% on the future.

China can’t be the CIA’s only focus in a world of threats

Congress must provide the oversight and funding needed to ensure our nation's safety

washingtontimes.com · by Daniel N. Hoffman

OPINION:

When he created the China Mission Center a few months back, CIA Director William Burns said the goal was to “strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century — an increasingly adversarial Chinese government.”

The Biden administration is absolutely right to be focused on China, which is militarizing the South China Sea, conducting provocative military drills threatening Taiwan’s territorial integrity, counterfeiting U.S. products, stealing U.S. intellectual property, using its “Belt and Road” initiative as cover for drowning developing countries in debt, and ruthlessly expanding its economic throw weight, military power and political influence from Asia to Africa with its full-throttled police state espionage.

But the CIA is a global intelligence service, which is charged with recruiting spies, stealing secrets and producing analysis on a dizzying array of other wickedly complex threats to our national security, including weapons proliferation, Iran, Russia, North Korea and transnational terrorism.

On any given day, any one of those threats, not China, can be the one that has our homeland in its crosshairs.

While elected officials often train their sights capriciously from one area of focus to another, the CIA must simultaneously and continuously track all threats across the globe. Consider, for example, the Bush administration’s shift to Iraq in 2003 before the mission in Afghanistan was complete or how former President Barack Obama criticized Republican challenger Mitt Romney in 2012 for holding a “Cold War” mindset when Mr. Romney rightly emphasized Russia was more often a contributor — and not a solution — to many of the major global problems we face.

The Biden administration wanted a “stable and predictable” relationship with Russia, but President Vladimir Putin instead started the most devastating war in Europe since WWII. Russia remains a global intelligence threat, with a long history of cloak-and-dagger espionage aimed at the U.S. and support for anti-U.S. allies such as Iran and Syria.

And terrorism, not China, is still the national security threat with the shortest fuse. It’s a threat we ignore at our peril.

CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp rightly emphasized that “even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and strategic challenges such as that posed by the People’s Republic of China demand our attention, the CIA will continue to track terrorist threats globally and work with partners to counter them.”

The Taliban’s celebration of its first year in power, coming on the heels of the U.S. successful targeting of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, is a reminder that Afghanistan is a failed terrorist state with wide swaths of ungoverned space that offer sanctuary for the Islamic State and al Qaeda terrorists. Without an official presence in the country, the CIA mission to detect and preempt threats from Afghanistan has grown exponentially more challenging.

The strike on al-Zawahiri, as great a counterterrorism success as it was, should not lull us into a false sense of security about our capability to collect intelligence on radical Islamist terror networks and foil their plots. Without our most effective ally in the region, the former government of Afghanistan, the CIA will be forced to devote more resources than ever to collecting intelligence in the Taliban’s Afghanistan.

But there are some silver linings here, as well as critical policy measures our elected leaders should implement.

First, recruiting human intelligence sources is relatively inexpensive, especially in comparison to the cost of the munitions and military equipment required for the Afghanistan mission.

Second, the CIA officers are not single-threaded. They are focused worldwide on multiple hard targets, including Iranians, Russians and Chinese, who themselves are present in the Middle East and South Asian conflict zones where terrorists operate. CIA officers with the best training in operational tradecraft, language skills and cross-cultural awareness are uniquely qualified to conduct these hard-target operations both unilaterally and with our international partners.

Third, counterterrorism operations since the Sept. 11 attacks tested some of the most promising CIA officers in a crucible, helping to fashion them into some of the agency’s best leaders today.

The CIA can — and should be expected to — do it all. Where resources are stretched, the answer is not to treat the agency’s mission as a zero-sum game, sacrificing coverage on one priority in favor of another. Instead, Congress must provide the oversight and funding needed to ensure the CIA can keep our nation safe, especially from those who do not always draw the immediate attention of our elected officials.

• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018.

Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

Click to Read More and View Comments

Click to Hide

washingtontimes.com · by Daniel N. Hoffman

8. FDD | Letter on Russia’s illegal seizure and mistreatment of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant

The letter can be downloaded here: https://www.fdd.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Letter-to-President-Biden.pdf.pdf

FDD | Letter on Russia’s illegal seizure and mistreatment of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant

fdd.org · August 25, 2022

President Joseph R. Biden

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President,

As a bipartisan group of experts on nuclear nonproliferation, many of whom have served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, we urge you to prioritize responding to Russia’s illegal seizure and mistreatment of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and its staff. The most immediate priority should be ensuring the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can visit the plant to ensure its operations are safe and secure.

As you know, the Russian military seized ZNPP, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in early March. Russia reportedly has since deployed additional forces there, using the facility as a base from which to shell nearby Ukrainian positions and population centers, knowing the Ukrainian military cannot risk responding in kind.

Moscow’s actions risk causing a transnational radiological disaster. Russian forces occupying ZNPP have reportedly subjected the plant’s workers to torture, interrogation, and other undue stress that could jeopardize vital safety functions. The Russia military’s reported shelling of the facility and damage caused to the complex have further threatened the safety and security of the plant and its surroundings.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has aptly described Russia’s actions as “suicidal” and on August 11 underscored the urgent need for an “agreement … at a technical level on a safe perimeter of demilitarization to ensure the safety of the area.” Nevertheless, Russia reportedly is planning a long-term occupation of ZNPP and intends to connect the facility to the electric grid in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.

We, the undersigned, commend the August 10 statement by the G7 foreign ministers, which demanded that Russia “immediately hand back full control” of ZNPP “to its rightful sovereign owner … to ensure [the plant’s] safe and secure operations.” We support the IAEA request to access the plant, and demand that Russia vacate the facility.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi recently emphasized “the urgent need for the IAEA to be able to send an expert mission to carry out essential nuclear safety, security and safeguards work there.” Despite recently pledging to facilitate the visit, Moscow continues to drag its feet, citing alleged security concerns with the IAEA delegation’s traveling through Kyiv, as the Ukrainian government wants.

We urge you to work closely with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, UN Secretary-General Guterres, and IAEA Director General Grossi to secure an IAEA visit based on the agency’s long record of impartiality and neutrality. We agree with your ambassador to the IAEA, Laura S.H. Holgate, that such a visit should “occur in a manner that fully respects Ukrainian sovereignty and legitimate Ukrainian authorities, and the IAEA must not lend any legitimacy to Russia’s actions or control of the site.”

There is no place in the 21st century for the illegal seizure and use of a nuclear facility to terrorize a population. At this nuclear facility devoted to peaceful purposes, atomic scientists, technicians, and other staff must remain free to focus on their critical work. In addition, the IAEA must be granted immediate access to ensure the plant’s safety and security.

We know you share our serious concern about Russia’s reckless behavior and infringement of its nuclear safety and security obligations and the human rights of ZNPP’s staff. We hope you will take urgent action to help secure the IAEA visit to prevent a potential humanitarian and ecological disaster.

Sincerely,

David Albright, Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security

Michael Allen, former National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Counterproliferation Strategy

Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Research Associate, Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center

Susan Burk, Independent Consultant, and former Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation

Mark Dubowitz, Chief Executive, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)

Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor, FDD

Lisa E. Gordon-Hagerty, former Administrator, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security

Robert Einhorn, Brookings, former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation

Christopher Ford, MITRE Fellow and Director of the Center for Strategic Competition, Visiting Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation

Olli Heinonen, Distinguished Fellow, Stimson Center, and former Deputy Director General, IAEA

Larry D. Johnson, former Legal Adviser, IAEA

Robert Joseph, former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ambassador (ret.)

Laura Kennedy, former acting U.S. representative to the Vienna Office of the United Nations and acting U.S. representative to the IAEA

Orde Kittrie, Senior Fellow, FDD, Law Professor at Arizona State University, and former State Department lead attorney for nuclear affairs (Co-organizer)

Gregory D. Koblentz, Associate Professor and Director, Biodefense Graduate Program, Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, and former Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

Valerie Lincy, Executive Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

Brent Park, former Deputy Administrator, NNSA and former Associate Laboratory Director at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Stephen Rademaker, former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and Nonproliferation

Bennett Ramberg, author of Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril, University of California Press, and former State Department foreign affairs officer

Laura Rockwood, former Senior Legal Advisor, IAEA

Anthony Ruggiero, Senior Director and Senior Fellow, FDD’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program, and former NSC Senior Director for Counterproliferation and Biodefense (Co-organizer)

Gary Samore, Professor of the Practice of Politics and Director of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, and former NSC Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Henry Sokolski, Executive Director, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and former Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy, Department of Defense

Sharon Squassoni, Research professor, George Washington University, and former State Department and Arms Control and Disarmament Agency official

Andrea Stricker, Deputy Director and Research Fellow, FDD’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program (Co-organizer)

Jackie Wolcott, Chair, FDD’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program, and former U.S. representative to the Vienna Office of the United Nations and the U.S. representative to the IAEA

fdd.org · August 25, 2022

9. How the Salman Rushdie Fatwa Changed the World

Excerpts:

Mr. Rushdie had been living with little to no security for nearly 20 years, even though radical Islam, at least on the Sunni side, wasn’t yet a spent force in the West’s large immigrant communities. Hadi Matar, the Lebanese-American Shiite who stabbed Mr. Rushdie, might have had contact with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the muscle behind Iran’s theocracy. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the guards abet such a hit. They have plotted in recent weeks against former U.S. officials and dissident Iranians abroad, including John Bolton and Masih Alinejad.

Mr. Rushdie, now an American and easily the West’s pre-eminent tribune for free speech, deserves a vigorous defense. How we extol and protect him, and punish those who have harmed him, reverberates far beyond our shores.

How the Salman Rushdie Fatwa Changed the World

Khomeini’s decree stoked Muslim anger and paralyzed the West’s response to Islamic fundamentalism.

By Reuel Marc Gerecht

Aug. 25, 2022 6:19 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-salman-rushdie-fatwa-changed-the-world-khomeini-islam-1989-satanic-verses-irgc-bolton-west-muslim-anger-elite-11661450264

Apart from Iran’s Islamic revolution, for which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini could claim only partial credit, his most momentous achievement was the February 1989 fatwa against author Salman Rushdie. Pronounced in response to Mr. Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses,” Khomeini’s edict was the first time a Muslim militant had the audacity to apply an Islamic punishment deep inside the West. Khomeini applied jujitsu to the West’s claim that it stood for “universal values,” obliging it to take note of Muslim sensibilities about the sacred and the profane. Muslim reaction to Khomeini’s decree varied, but it elicited considerable sympathy among Sunni as well as Shiite believers.

Mr. Rushdie’s recondite book was an odd choice for such ire. Islamic scholars and jurists had long debated Surah 53, the segment of the Quran on which “The Satanic Verses” is based. It concerns Muhammad’s efforts to convert the powerful pagans of Mecca to Islam. The canonical interpretation held that the devil intruded into the prophet’s inspirations, producing what appeared to be a temporary and tactically astute toleration of paganism. Possibly excepting the slaughter of the male members of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe, no action has caused more heartburn among Islamic commentators.

Mr. Rushdie built his provocative fantasy on well-trodden ground. Unfortunately for him, his Muslim background, coupled with Khomeini’s need for a new cause after Iran’s defeat a year earlier in its war with Iraq, catapulted the author into a tumultuous intra-Muslim struggle. If John Wansbrough—author of a 1977 book arguing that the Quran couldn’t have been the work of one man in the early seventh century—had written Mr. Rushdie’s book, neither Khomeini nor the clerics in Britain and India who first expressed their dismay about his writing would have cared. The same is true of Wansbrough’s students Michael Cook and Patricia Crone, who suggested that early Islam might have been a Jewish messianic movement.

In 1989 Iran’s supreme leader divided the world into three parts—the West and East, both led by infidels, and the Muslim-led but Western-harassed Third World. Infidels are by definition misguided and prone to ignorant, invidious ideas. Muslims historically didn’t concern themselves with European aspersions on the faith or its prophet. Even after the Europeans started to defeat Ottoman and Mughal armies, Muslims remained mostly self-assured and oblivious to Christian criticism. But that changed as Muslim elites began to Westernize. For many faithful Muslims, Mr. Rushdie, an Indian Muslim by birth, was the quintessential example of this new, thoroughly secularized global elite. He was hopelessly fallen and had committed a capital offense.

NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

Morning Editorial Report

All the day's Opinion headlines.

Preview

Subscribe

The ayatollah, who had an acute sensitivity to the zealous importation of Western ways into his homeland, tapped into a deep vein of Muslim pride and anger with his fatwa. It became a significant eruption of what the historian Bernard Lewis described as “the revolt of Islam.” And it revealed a crippling weakness of secularized Muslims in most Muslim societies—namely, that they had a devilish and dangerous time gainsaying traditional beliefs even when they believed them to be absurd, harsh or antiquated.

The Westernizing, sometimes liberal evolution of Muslim societies has always been an ebb-and-flow affair. Khomeini’s edict against Mr. Rushdie reduced the running room for Westernized elites, including Muslim rulers and dissidents. Profane intellectual exploration and civilizational self-criticism—elemental parts of the West’s not-so-secret sauce—became much more dangerous in the post-1989 Muslim world. Completely Westernized artists who bathe in provocation, such as Mr. Rushdie, were made more vulnerable.

Khomeini’s success against Mr. Rushdie, which nearly cost the author his life on Aug. 12 in Chautauqua, N.Y., induced an increasingly paralyzing concern among Westerners about invidious inquiry. Fear and guilt about Europe’s imperial sins and America’s Cold War heavy-handedness—which contributed to tier-mondisme (Third Worldism) in France and multiculturalism in the U.S.—made it difficult to have honest conversations about the West and Islam. Today, it’s hard to imagine a young Wansbrough, Cook or Crone getting tenure at a prestigious university.

Mr. Rushdie had been living with little to no security for nearly 20 years, even though radical Islam, at least on the Sunni side, wasn’t yet a spent force in the West’s large immigrant communities. Hadi Matar, the Lebanese-American Shiite who stabbed Mr. Rushdie, might have had contact with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the muscle behind Iran’s theocracy. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the guards abet such a hit. They have plotted in recent weeks against former U.S. officials and dissident Iranians abroad, including John Bolton and Masih Alinejad.

Mr. Rushdie, now an American and easily the West’s pre-eminent tribune for free speech, deserves a vigorous defense. How we extol and protect him, and punish those who have harmed him, reverberates far beyond our shores.

Mr. Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

10. Israel may need a paradigm shift on Iran

Conclusion:

Israel must engage public opinion and make it clear to decision-makers, particularly in the US what the dangers of a nuclear deal with Iran are, while simultaneously building legitimacy for increasing its activity in the "war between wars." It must start thinking of a paradigm shift toward a comprehensive plan to weaken Iran, along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine, including by setting measures of success to gauge its effectiveness. 

Israel may need a paradigm shift on Iran

Israel could benefit from a new Iran strategy if a nuclear deal is restored, along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine in the 1980s.

 By  Jacob Nagel  Published on  08-26-2022 11:22 Last modified: 08-26-2022 11:23

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/israel-may-need-a-paradigm-shift-on-iran/

During President Joe Biden's visit, the most difficult task was explaining to him the dangers posed by returning to the 2015 nuclear deal. Not surprisingly, Israel failed miserably in this effort – not in the actual explanations to Biden but in the ultimate results. The administration has remained bent on doing every possible mistake on its path to restoring the JCPOA. Biden is being helped in this mission by having a chorus of supporters of irresponsible prominent Israelis – including some who are still in public office – who have been engaged in "background briefings" and various overseas meetings to convey a view that runs contrary to Israel's official position.

Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The IDF chief of staff, the Mossad director, and the political echelon (including, of course, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) are convinced that re-entering the deal would be a big mistake. Israel's political echelons are mostly working hard to get this message across to the US, using all available platforms, despite some claiming that they are not making themselves heard loud enough. As is customary in a democracy, it is time that their subordinates fall in line. 

Both Iran and the US have escalated their rhetoric (in the ayatollahs' case it is also about preparing the public opinion for a return to the deal), with both sides highlighting the benefits they would secure through the deal. Likewise, both sides have been stating that the deal entails almost no concessions on their part, although unfortunately, this is true only on the Iranian side.

 Although the recent talks in Vienna were reportedly a big failure because Iran has refused to accept the deal, which was presented as "take it or leave it", the fact of the matter is that intense negotiations have continued since in Brussels, Washington, and Tehran. The Europeans have even tweaked their latest offer by adding major concessions. Iran responded by saying that they may accept the deal only to return it o the US so that they could "make more concessions." 

 The agreement has yet to be finalized, probably because Iran, true to form, want to extract last-minute concessions. The US media was gearing up for an announcement last weekend, but no deal was announced – because of Iran's demands. 

 This is a very bad deal. The talks were primarily led by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his envoy to the talks, Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov. Russia has all the while continued its onslaught in Ukraine with the help of Iran, which has been providing arms and sanction-busting advice to the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Iran has continued to plot the assassination of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and other former Trump administration officials. But despite all this, the US and Europe have played along, pursuing the goal of reaching a deal at all costs. Russia and China could just sit back and enjoy the view as Iran humiliates them. How long will the US and Europe call this spit rain? 

The emerging deal is much worse than the original one. It may have been cast as just a tweaked version but it includes many more concessions. What's worse is that it does not take into account the time that has gone by since 2015 and the limited time left before the sunset clauses take effect. The deal does not address the Iranian nuclear archive and the various violations that the International Atomic Energy Agency has been investigating over the possible military dimension to the nuclear program. 

The concessions that have already been agreed upon in the new deal include allowing Iran to keep the assets it has gained by breaching the deal, including the use of advanced centrifuges and sophisticated manufacturing capabilities. Iran will also get to keep the uranium it has enriched over the years since its effectively left the deal, although it will be converted to a lower purity level. Starting in 2026, Iran will also be allowed to install advanced IR6 centrifuges instead of the current ones, and in 2029 it will be allowed to manufacture as many sophisticated centrifuges as it sees fit. From 2031 onwards, it will no longer be limited by the amount of enriched uranium, but under the limits set by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its inspection regime, but we all know how toothless this document is. 

Iran will also get massive sanction relief, including lifting restrictions on companies that do business with the Revolutionary Guards. This is almost as good as de-listing the IRGC from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. Lifting sanctions will allow Iran to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars almost immediately and about $1 trillion by the time the deal expires. The money will let Iran rebuild its economy, as well as upgrade its nuclear and conventional capabilities and bolster support for terrorism through Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and others.  

Iran has insisted that under a new deal it would get guarantees that would protect it should a future US president pulls out of the deal. The parties are trying to find a formula that would be in compliance with US law and ensure that companies that continue to do business with Iran will not be adversely affected in such a scenario for the first few years. 

On top of all this, Iran has insisted that the deal include a pre-determined mechanism that would ensure the IAEA investigations into its suspicious activity are closed. They have made this a precondition for making the deal come into effect. This devoids the claim of having "unprecedented inspections" under the former deal of any real meaning and severely undermines the IAEA's standing. On the other hand, even if the investigations don't closer, this would let Iran hold off on implementing the deal despite having already been granted most of the sanction relief. 

Israel must prepare for the real possibility that a deal is about to be finalized, although the Iranian foot-dragging could ultimately result in the US waiting until after the November midterm elections. 

President Ronald Reagan introduced in the 1980s a new doctrine to make the Soviet Union collapse by using a multidisciplinary approach, mainly economic, as described in the book "Victory" and in various articles authored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in 2017. Although israel is not the US, neither is Iran the USSR. And despite the massive cash flow that would make its way to Iran thanks to a revived deal, its economy will remain fragile. 

 If a deal is signed, preventing Iran's ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade level would no longer be an option, regardless of any new capabilities we develop. One of the most plausible paths that could remain at our disposal is through comprehensive plans to weaken the regime. We don't have to immediately make plans for regime change; it would suffice if we weaken it so that it prevents it from taking provocative action under the auspices of the deal. For example, the recent attacks inside Iran, some of which have been attributed to Israel by foreign media, have led to paranoia, hysteria, and a reassessment of Iran's aggressive conduct. This is just one example of a paradigm shift that could quickly lead to unexpected results.

Those who say that returning to the deal is a very bad option but it is the lesser evil because it would allow Israel to better prepare for action are wrong and misleading. The time Israel "buys" through this deal will cost it dearly because under a deal Iran will greatly enhance its capabilities and nuclear infrastructure, and will become ever closer to a situation where Israel's newly developed capabilities will no longer be affected. Under a deal, even if Iran rapidly advances in its nuclear program, Israel will find it very hard to put the capabilities it had developed in the time it had so-called bought thanks to the deal. Without a deal, Iran will be in an inferior position and without legitimacy, even if decides to break toward a bomb at a rapid pace. Returning to the deal will guarantee it becomes a nuclear threshold state, albeit more slowly, which would trigger a nuclear arms race in the region. 

Former IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said this week that "bad deals are better than good wars." This is a strategic error because bad deals usually lead to wars that are much worse than the "good wars" that we sometimes have to wage rather than contain bad deals. The IDF, the Mossad, and the entire national security apparatus have received hefty budgets and get their demands prioritized for this exact purpose: so that they could prepare and fight if needed, while obviously seeking to avoid war as much as possible.

Israel must engage public opinion and make it clear to decision-makers, particularly in the US what the dangers of a nuclear deal with Iran are, while simultaneously building legitimacy for increasing its activity in the "war between wars." It must start thinking of a paradigm shift toward a comprehensive plan to weaken Iran, along the lines of the Reagan Doctrine, including by setting measures of success to gauge its effectiveness. 

11. Biden, Zelensky discuss concerns over Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant

Biden, Zelensky discuss concerns over Zaporizhzhya nuclear plant

BY MORGAN CHALFANT - 08/25/22 3:08 PM ET

The Hill ·· August 25, 2022

President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke Thursday about a new $3 billion security assistance package for Ukraine, and the two leaders also demanded Russia relinquish control of the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, according to the White House.

The phone call took place a day after the White House announced the $2.98 billion assistance package for Ukraine, dovetailing with the country’s Independence Day. The package is the latest tranche of support to help Kyiv fight off the continuing Russian attack.

Biden “congratulated Ukraine on its Independence Day and expressed his admiration for the people of Ukraine, who have inspired the world as they defended their country’s sovereignty over the past six months,” according to a White House readout of the phone call.

“The two leaders also called for Russia to return full control of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant to Ukraine and for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to the plant,” the readout said.

Russia has controlled the Zaporizhzhya plant since early on in the war. But fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces has intensified around the nuclear plant, raising concerns about the potential for a disastrous mishap.

The plant, which is the largest in Europe, was temporarily disconnected from the power grid on Thursday as a result of fires that broke out around lines connecting it to the grid.

International inspectors from the IAEA are seeking access to the plant.

Unvaccinated tennis star Novak Djokovic to miss US Open NLRB: Starbucks illegally withheld wages, benefits from union workers

Earlier Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron met with IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and reiterated support for sending agency experts to the plant “as quickly as possible,” according to a readout from the Elysée.

In a tweet, Zelensky said that he thanked Biden on Thursday for the “unwavering” U.S. security and financial support for Ukraine amid the Russian war, which passed the six-month mark on Wednesday. He did not specifically mention the Zaporizhzhya plant.

“We discussed Ukraine’s further steps on our path to the victory over the aggressor and importance of holding Russia accountable for war crimes,” Zelensky said.

The Hill · by Tobias Burns · August 25, 2022

12. Congress Must Rescue Biden from His Defeatist Policies

Congress Must Rescue Biden from His Defeatist Policies

By Michael Rubin

Washington Examiner

August 25, 2022

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/congress-must-rescue-biden-from-his-defeatist-policies/

Iranian hard-liners have been circulating a list of “concessions” worth tens of billions of dollars to which the Biden administration has allegedly agreed, all to get Tehran to come into compliance with a nuclear agreement that is near expiring.

For the Biden administration, a collapse of fortitude in the face of rogue regimes has become the rule rather than the exception. After fanning conspiracies that former President Donald Trump was a Russian agent, President Joe Biden’s team gave Russian dictator Vladimir Putin the gift of a generation when it waived sanctions on the Russo-German Nord Stream-2 project, an action that the Kremlin interpreted, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had warned, as a green light to invade Ukraine.

As Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border, Biden again counseled defeat. National security adviser Jake Sullivan encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to flee his country and surrender it to Russian aggression. That Zelensky refused did more to defend the post-World War II liberal order than any U.S. politician has since former President Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps Biden’s biggest surrender was Afghanistan. It is one thing for Biden to want to end a war, but how wars end matters. Biden gratuitously kneecapped America’s Afghan allies and all but handed the Taliban a regime. (Biden’s initial inclination to set the final withdrawal date for Sept. 11 would have been a gift to al Qaeda had advisers not quietly walked the president’s worst inclinations back). Even now, the State Department has chosen to condemn Afghans’ successful resistance against the Taliban, which suggests a bizarre desire to preserve the Taliban rule.

Now, Biden is at it again. When the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, it remained in physical possession of more than $9 billion in Afghan government reserves that the elected Afghan government had deposited in U.S. banks. That is Afghans’ money, but not the Taliban’s. Yet, just weeks after the Taliban was caught red-handed sheltering al Qaeda’s leader in the house of its interior minister, the Biden administration appears ready to transfer those billions of dollars surreptitiously to the Taliban. The scheme to which Biden’s team has agreed is to transfer that money into a Swiss-based trust fund from which an international board would disburse money to alleviate suffering under the Taliban regime.

This setup will not work. The Taliban would no more allow independent distribution of aid than North Korea would. The White House should know that since the Clinton administration tried this once and failed. At the very least, Biden’s setup would reward the Taliban and their Pakistani masters after both conspired to kill hundreds of Americans. The scheme also creates a dynamic in which the Taliban could point a figurative gun at Afghans’ heads to demand money.

The president’s knee-jerk reaction is to appease and incentivize the world’s most reactionary forces rather than defend the liberal order. The issue is not partisan: Mainstream Democrats may be quieter but are just as uneasy as Republicans at Biden’s judgment.

It is time for Congress to act in a truly bipartisan manner to put the brakes on Biden’s worst excesses. Congress already demands a say in any agreement Biden strikes with Iran. Perhaps it can also demand that Afghanistan’s money be used to resettle and aid Afghans who put their lives on the line for the U.S. or Americans. A portion of the money can likewise be earmarked to support Afghan girls and women who seek to continue their schooling outside of Afghanistan. More still can support the armed Afghan resistance. None, however, should ease Taliban governance.

If Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken ignore such prerogatives, it is time for Congress to respond with its power of the purse to reduce and curtail support for other programs in order to concentrate on what Biden appears so reluctant to do — defend the liberal order.

13. Ukraine narrowly escapes nuclear catastrophe as plant loses power, Zelenskiy says

A catastrophe is just waiting to happen. How many times can you dodge a bullet?

Ukraine narrowly escapes nuclear catastrophe as plant loses power, Zelenskiy says

Reuters · by Tom Balmforth

• Summary
• Work ongoing to reconnect two working reactors to grid
• Zelenskiy urges world pressure to force Russians from site
• Residents in Kyiv worried about situation at plant
• https://tmsnrt.rs/3wuZdx9

KYIV, Aug 26 (Reuters) - The world narrowly escaped a radiation disaster when electricity to Europe's largest nuclear power plant was cut for hours, Ukraine's president said, urging international bodies to act faster to force Russian troops to vacate the site.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russian shelling on Thursday had sparked fires in the ash pits of a nearby coal power station that disconnected the Zaporozhzhia plant from the power grid. A Russian official said Ukraine was to blame.

Back-up diesel generators ensured power supply that is vital for cooling and safety systems at the plant, Zelenskiy said, praising the Ukrainian technicians who operate the plant under the gaze of the Russian military.

"If our station staff had not reacted after the blackout, then we would have already been forced to overcome the consequences of a radiation accident," he said in a video address on Thursday evening.

"Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster... Every minute that Russian troops remain at the nuclear power station there is a risk of global radiation catastrophe," he said.

Residents in the capital Kyiv, some 556 km (345 miles) to the northwest of the plant, expressed alarm at the situation.

"Of course everyone is afraid, the entire world is afraid. I really want the situation to become peaceful again... I want the power shortages to be overcome and additional facilities to be operational," said businessman Volodymyr, 35, who declined to give his surname.

Energoatom said electricity for the plant's own needs was now being supplied through a power line from Ukraine's electricity system, and work was ongoing to restore grid connection to the plant's two functioning reactors.

Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official in the occupied town of Enerhodar near the plant, blamed Ukraine's armed forces for the incident, saying they caused a fire in a forest near the plant. He said local towns had lost power for several hours.

"This was caused by the disconnection of power lines from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station as a result of provocations by Zelenskiy's fighters," Rogov wrote on Telegram. "The disconnection itself was triggered by a fire and short circuit on the power lines."

Russia's Defence Ministry said on Friday its forces had destroyed a U.S.-made M777 howitzer which it said Ukraine had used to shell the Zaporizhzhia plant. Satellite images showed a fire near the plant but Reuters could not verify its cause.

Map locating Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with Russian occupied Ukrainian territory

HOTSPOT

Energoatom said Thursday's incident had been the first complete disconnection of the plant, which has become a hotspot in the six-month-old war.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February, captured the plant in March and has controlled it since, though Ukrainian technicians still operate it. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling the site, fuelling fears of a nuclear disaster.

1/5

Overview of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and fires, in Enerhodar in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, August 24, 2022. European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery/Handout via REUTERS

The United Nations is seeking access to the plant and has called for the area to be demilitarised. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials are "very, very close" to being able to visit Zaporizhzhia, agency Director-General Rafael Grossi said on Thursday.

Germany on Friday condemned Russia's continued occupation of the plant. "The situation (there) is still very, very dangerous," a foreign ministry spokesperson said.

Nuclear experts have warned of the risk of damage to the plant's spent nuclear fuel pools or its reactors. Cuts in power needed to cool the pools could cause a disastrous meltdown.

Paul Bracken, a national security expert and professor at the Yale School of Management, said the concern was that artillery shells or missiles could puncture the reactor walls and spread radiation around potentially a large area, much like the 1986 accident involving the Chornobyl reactor.

A failure at the Zaporizhzhia plant could "kill hundreds or thousands of people, and damage environmentally a far larger area reaching into Europe," Bracken said.

"Russian Roulette is a good metaphor because the Russians are spinning the chamber of the revolver, threatening to blow out the brains of the reactor all over Europe," Bracken said.

FIGHTING

Russia's ground campaign has stalled in recent months after its troops were repelled from the capital Kyiv in the early weeks of the invasion, but fighting continues along the front lines to the south and east.

Russian forces control territory along Ukraine's Black Sea and Sea of Azov coasts, while the conflict has settled into a war of attrition in the eastern Donbas region, which comprises the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Explosions were heard in the early hours of Friday in the southern city of Mykolaiv, a key battleground as Russian forces try to push further westwards along the coast to cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea.

The immediate cause of the blasts was unclear, regional governor Vitaliy Kim said, adding that two villages nearby had been shelled. There were no reports of casualties.

The Ukraine military said its forces had repulsed Russian assaults on the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar in the eastern Donetsk region and struck ammunition depots and enemy personnel in the southern Kherson region.

Ukrainian forces fired some 10 rockets from a U.S.-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launcher at the town of Stakhanov in the eastern Donbas region, pro-Moscow breakaway officials in Luhansk were quoted by Russia's TASS news agency as saying.

Reuters was unable to verify the battlefield reports of either side.

The Kremlin says its aim is to "denazify" and demilitarise Ukraine and remove perceived security threats to Russia. Ukraine and the West say this is a baseless pretext for a war of conquest.

Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Daniel Wallis, Stephen Coates and Gareth Jones; Editing by Cynthia Osterman, Simon Cameron-Moore and Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters · by Tom Balmforth

1​4. The Disturbing Return of the Fifth Column

Return? It has always been there. We ignore it at our peril.

Excerpts;

If current trends continue, fifth-column politics will become a defining feature of geopolitics and diplomacy as well as domestic politics. Scholars and conflict resolution practitioners must learn to recognize the signs of campaigns against purported fifth columns when they appear and understand how internal polarization and international security crises can converge with dire consequences. And just as cynical politicians understand that accusing marginalized groups of disloyalty can initiate a cycle of alienation and aggression, well-intentioned policymakers must be cognizant of how their own rhetoric about security may inadvertently exacerbate suspicions toward unassimilated or ostracized populations.

International organizations should put in place early warning systems tracking fifth-column accusations and cultivate relationships with local civil society groups. Discourse or policies that seek to stoke fifth-column tensions should spur international collective action in the form of shaming or sanctions. Insofar as inflammatory political rhetoric is intended to provoke a reaction from an accused fifth column, exposing this strategy and pushing back against these narratives through local media campaigns may make such provocations easier to resist.

The forces driving fifth-column politics, however, are powerful and will not subside until political polarization, income inequality, and disinformation enabled by social media abate—none of which is likely to happen any time soon. In an age of uncertainty and fragmentation, fifth columns will no longer be confined to the dark corners of the nationalist imagination. They will be front and center in domestic and global politics.

The Disturbing Return of the Fifth Column

How Enemies Within—Real and Imagined—Are Influencing Geopolitics

By Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz

August 26, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz · August 26, 2022

In the wake of its invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government has carried out a large-scale crackdown against citizens perceived as opposing the war. Russian President Vladimir Putin made his intentions clear in a speech in March, warning that the West “will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors—on those who earn their money here, but live over there. Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking.”

Putin’s rhetoric has been translated into official policy: dissidents and independent-minded Russians have been accused of advancing Western interests and working to undermine Russia from within. Some have been fined, imprisoned, or tortured. This campaign against supposed traitors has been mounted not only by the Kremlin’s agents directly but also by ordinary citizens who believe they are acting patriotically by turning on their neighbors and colleagues. The playbook is one that leaders are using in a growing number of countries, identifying and vilifying domestic groups purportedly working with external enemies to undermine the national interest—and then inciting the public to target them. In so doing, these leaders exploit preexisting prejudices, national security fears, and geopolitical rivalries to weaken domestic political opponents and boost the cohesion of “insiders” who support them.

Although the term “fifth column” wasn’t coined until the 1930s, the practice of identifying and targeting such threats is a far older phenomenon and arguably predates the nation-state. For much of history, governments have mostly dealt clandestinely with fifth columns rather than trumpet their presence for political gain. In recent years, however, there has been a notable rise in political rhetoric about fifth columns around the world. This increase is attributable to several converging factors: rising geopolitical instability, which increases the likelihood that countries will meddle in the internal affairs of their rivals; the spread of nationalism as a common-sense belief, which reinforces the resonance of fifth-column claims; the electoral success of populist and ethnonationalist movements that often trumpet such concerns; and the widespread adoption of social media, which facilitates the rapid diffusion of fifth-column rhetoric. As long as these trends persist, the focus on externally backed “enemies within” will intensify. Fifth columns, real or imagined, will shape not just the internal politics of many countries but relations among them as they struggle for dominance on the international stage.

ROOTED IN HISTORY

Suspicion that insiders are undermining the national interest can stem from an ideology such as Putin’s or from an ethnic, cultural, or religious identity that marks a group as distinct from the national majority and therefore suspect. Which of these criteria matters most has depended on the larger anxieties and geopolitical dynamics of the era.

The first half of the twentieth century saw a focus on ethnically defined fifth columns as Europe’s empires began to collapse. Leaders who engaged in nation building in emerging states vilified certain groups, often referring to them as “national minorities,” and promulgated exclusionary policies toward actual or potential fifth columns. Campaigns of ethnic cleansing and forced population exchange resulted, including the Armenian genocide of the 1910s.

War and threats to territorial integrity heightened concerns over ethnic fifth columns during this period. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated the deportation of entire ethnic populations—including the Chechens, the Crimean Tatars, the Ingush, and the Meskhetian Turks—ostensibly to punish those who, in the words of Stalin’s chief of secret police, “betrayed the Motherland, crossed over to the side of the fascist occupiers, [and] joined the ranks of saboteurs and spies.” Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government undertook the internment of over a hundred thousand Japanese Americans, despite the fact that intelligence reports at the time found no credible evidence of large-scale espionage or sabotage.

Ideology or ethnic, cultural, or religious identity can mark a group as distinct and suspect.

With the spread of communism and the intensification of Cold War competition, ethnically defined fifth columns gave way to ideologically defined ones. In the Soviet Union, which was racked by fears of “capitalist encirclement,” Stalin warned that his Western adversaries were acting through “wreckers, spies, saboteurs, and murderers.” In the United States, right-wing politicians accused government employees of secretly sympathizing with communism and the Soviet Union. The House Un-American Activities Committee, although initially created to defend against Nazi infiltration, was invigorated by investigations into the supposed communist sympathies of civil servants, leftist activists, and cultural figures. Loyalty oaths for public employees cemented the threat that fifth columns posed to national unity in the public’s mind.

With the end of the Cold War, the focus on ideology as a basis for fifth-column accusations waned and was superseded by renewed concern over ethnic and national loyalties. The breakup of the Soviet Union and of Yugoslavia left national minorities stranded in the midst of renewed efforts by national majorities to consolidate their “own” nation-states. Among them were the Russian-speaking populations in new post-Soviet states, who were feared as a potential cat’s paw for Russian irredentist claims. Krajina Serbs in Croatia were similarly depicted as fifth-column sympathizers of the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic based on their ethnicity, even though most of them did not share his views at the time.

This phase of ethnically driven fifth-column politics was also evident in Asia. After Uyghur protesters demanded the cessation of the mass immigration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang Province in 1990, China cracked down on protesters and began painting the Uyghurs as an ethnic and religious nationalist threat. That framing has survived to the present, as China has portrayed political violence in Xinjiang as a product of subversive infiltration by transnational jihadi networks.

INSTABILITY AND INFILTRATION

Today, fifth-column politics is omnipresent. The end of the United States’ “unipolar moment,” coupled with the rising aspirations of revisionist states, has increased geopolitical instability. Russia has been a major source of this instability, invading Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine twice, ostensibly on behalf of Russian-speaking separatists or supposedly oppressed populations. Other regional powers, such as Brazil, China, India, Iran, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey, have also sought to exert influence within unstable regional orders.

Often, a sponsor country will support a friendly nationalist or ethnic group in an adjacent country that aspires for self-determination or autonomy. In response, politicians in the targeted country may play up the linkages between these alleged fifth columns and their foreign backers, seeking to generate support from the national majority. Such dynamics have been evident in the fraught politics surrounding actual or suspected Iranian support for the Houthis in Yemen, Saudi support for Sunni militants in Syria, and Chinese support for “fifth-column units” in Taiwan.

Regional powers also use fifth-column politics to cultivate local support in strategically important countries. Western politicians have accused Russia of supporting ideological allies in several democratic states and China of similarly buying the loyalty of politicians in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Earlier this year, U.S. FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that elected officials in the United States who are pro-China will “be called on to do Beijing’s bidding when their power and influence grow.” Status-quo powers, including the United States, engage in similar activities by supporting pro-Western movements around the globe.

A POPULIST OPPORTUNITY

Leaders have also used fifth-column appeals to capitalize on rising domestic ethnonationalism. Right-wing politicians often play on ethnic and cultural resentments, using the specter of disloyalty of particular domestic groups as the basis for populist political movements. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban exemplified this approach when he portrayed the financier and philanthropist George Soros as the leader of a fifth column in campaigns that played on anti-Semitic stereotypes. Other far-right politicians and parties in Europe have depicted Muslim citizens as threats to Christian civilization, and conservative politicians in the United States have used similar rhetoric in relation to Muslim Americans. Populist appeals that have succeeded in one country have been readily adopted by politicians in others, responding to similar anti-elite sentiments and cultural grievances.

Beyond ideological and ethnic criteria, fifth-column rhetoric also targets groups based on new forms of difference. Homosexuality has increasingly been linked to the infiltration of Western values, and LGBTQ identity has been seen as a form of fifth-column activity. In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party’s presidential candidate compared what he called “LGBT ideology” to communism, and in China, gay people have been labeled “agents of foreign influence.”

Right-wing politicians play on ethnic and cultural resentments as the basis for populist movements.

Yet another framing for fifth-column accusations is the supposed fealty of politicians to supranational institutions at the expense of national interests. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, opposition parties and movements in Europe saw an opportunity to delegitimize the ruling parties that were willing to negotiate loan agreements with external actors such as the International Monetary Fund. Accusations of disloyalty were articulated by both left- and right-leaning populist movements. And they went beyond dividing society into “pure” patriotic citizens and a “corrupt” elite, as populist movements often do, successfully linking that elite to specific, presumably malevolent, external actors such as the IMF, Germany, and the European Union.

It was on these grounds that former Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras attacked parties that had voted for two bailout agreements and other austerity policies before his Coalition of the Radical Left came to power: “We should never forget that the enemy is not just in Berlin, Brussels or Washington. The enemy, maybe the harshest one, is also within our borders,” he said in a speech in 2015. Such fiery allegations had lost their force by the end of his term as prime minister in 2019, especially after his coalition voted for a third bailout agreement. But the notion that political elites had colluded with the European Commission in Brussels or the IMF in Washington, turning Greece into a “debt colony,” as prominent members of Tsipras’s party put it, continued to be articulated by parties on both the left and the right. Fifth-column accusations linking domestic elites to “globalists” and international finance, often with anti-Semitic overtones, outlasted the financial crisis and have buoyed populist politicians around the world.

HOW DANGEROUS IDEAS SPREAD

The diffusion of ideas around the world was once thought to benefit democracy, as movements and leaders emulated pro-democratic successes occurring elsewhere. But the primary beneficiaries of this learning process in recent years appear to be populist, ethnonationalist, and authoritarian forces. Strongmen such as Putin, Erdogan, and Orban have shown how employing fifth-column rhetoric can produce electoral success and unify majoritarian coalitions around perceived cultural and security threats. Such appeals have spread far and wide, in part thanks to social media. It is little wonder that parties in long-standing democracies have adopted similar tactics. Far-right parties in France depict Islam and Muslims as an existential threat to the French way of life. In the United States, the so-called replacement theory, which posits that elites (often specifically, Jews) deliberately promote immigration from the “Global South” to dilute the political power of white Americans, has proliferated on the right and appears to be increasingly mainstream. More recently, bipartisan China bashing in the United States threatens to unfairly target students, scholars, and scientists of Chinese ancestry.

Such rhetoric is likely to flourish in the coming election cycles. Needless to say, it will have important policy implications. Domestically, the feared presence of fifth columns could further erode trust between various ethnic, social, and partisan groups, amplifying polarization and undermining national cohesion. Where such claims become widespread, societies are likely to become more fragile, vulnerable to external meddling, and prone to violence.

Internationally, the belief that some countries seek to aid or “activate” friendly foreign groups to undermine their adversaries can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, pushing persecuted groups to seek external protection from their own governments. Overly solicitous rhetoric or actual support by external actors for supposed fifth columns can heighten the perceived threat in targeted countries, increasing the likelihood of interstate conflict. In the extreme, the reciprocal abuse of vulnerable groups by warring countries can lead to ethnic cleansing, as it did in Greece and Turkey at the beginning of last century and in Bosnia and Serbia at the end of it.

HERE TO STAY

If current trends continue, fifth-column politics will become a defining feature of geopolitics and diplomacy as well as domestic politics. Scholars and conflict resolution practitioners must learn to recognize the signs of campaigns against purported fifth columns when they appear and understand how internal polarization and international security crises can converge with dire consequences. And just as cynical politicians understand that accusing marginalized groups of disloyalty can initiate a cycle of alienation and aggression, well-intentioned policymakers must be cognizant of how their own rhetoric about security may inadvertently exacerbate suspicions toward unassimilated or ostracized populations.

International organizations should put in place early warning systems tracking fifth-column accusations and cultivate relationships with local civil society groups. Discourse or policies that seek to stoke fifth-column tensions should spur international collective action in the form of shaming or sanctions. Insofar as inflammatory political rhetoric is intended to provoke a reaction from an accused fifth column, exposing this strategy and pushing back against these narratives through local media campaigns may make such provocations easier to resist.

The forces driving fifth-column politics, however, are powerful and will not subside until political polarization, income inequality, and disinformation enabled by social media abate—none of which is likely to happen any time soon. In an age of uncertainty and fragmentation, fifth columns will no longer be confined to the dark corners of the nationalist imagination. They will be front and center in domestic and global politics.

• HARRIS MYLONAS is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs and Editor in Chief of Nationalities Papers.
• SCOTT RADNITZ is Herbert J. Ellison Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. From 2022 to 2023, he is Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.
• They are the co-editors of Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns.

Foreign Affairs · by Harris Mylonas and Scott Radnitz · August 26, 2022

15. Last Chance For America and Iran

Excerpts:

A larger barrier to a durable deal, however, is Washington’s use of arms sales to Middle Eastern allies to retain influence in the region. The United States cannot expect an arms control agreement with Iran to endure if it simultaneously seeks to expand the Abraham Accords into an anti-Iran military alliance and to provide ever more sophisticated weapons systems to Iran’s regional rivals. Cementing regional divisions and intensifying Iranian suspicions about its neighbors will only give Iran new incentives to cheat on the agreement and pursue a nuclear deterrent.

There is another way. Regional powers have in the past few years initiated their own de-escalatory diplomacy, in large part facilitated by the Iraqi government in the so-called Baghdad Dialogue. Tehran and Riyadh have held several rounds of talks that helped bring the war in Yemen to a truce. By getting behind this process and by encouraging regional efforts to resolve regional disputes—as well as efforts to strengthen economic ties between Gulf states and Iran—the United States can help further bind Tehran to the renewed nuclear deal. If such moves are successful, it would also create regional resistance—from key US security partners in the Persian Gulf—to a second American exit. Such a dynamic would mark a stark shift from the situation in 2017-2018 when the UAE and Saudi Arabia pushed Trump to abandon the JCPOA.

Many of these steps will be resisted by Washington, Tehran, or both. But if they are not taken, the new JCPOA is unlikely to endure. Surviving one American exit was nothing short of a miracle. Overcoming a second would likely prove impossible.

Last Chance For America and Iran

A New Nuclear Deal Won’t Survive Without a Broader Rapprochement

By Trita Parsi

August 26, 2022

Foreign Affairs · by Trita Parsi · August 26, 2022

As war rages on in Ukraine, diplomacy is on the cusp of prevailing in Vienna. Against the odds, negotiators are poised to revive the Iran nuclear agreement and block Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon—a crucial U.S. interest. According to officials who are familiar with the draft of the agreement circulated in Europe and Tehran in the latter half of August, Iran will once more give up its stockpile of enriched uranium, apart from 300 kilograms enriched at lower levels. It will also cease all enrichment above 3.67 percent and remove thousands of advanced centrifuges from operation. Iran will also have no pathway to a plutonium-based nuclear weapon. Perhaps most importantly, its nuclear program will once more be fully open to intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency inspections.

If the agreement is formally adopted, it will mark a significant breakthrough for US national security and stability in the Middle East. Instead of contending with Iran inching closer to a bomb, the United States can now look forward to having the Iranian nuclear program in a box at least for the next two years. The aftermath of Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the original 2015 agreement, when Iran returned to a rapid expansion of its nuclear program and came closer than ever to having the material for a nuclear weapon, clearly shows that the United States is better off with the deal than without it. But as it currently stands, the new iteration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), will be precarious at best.

Critics will contend that the new deal is shorter and weaker rather than longer and stronger. Some of these arguments have merit. Iran’s breakout capability—the amount of time it will take for Tehran to amass the material for a nuclear bomb—will be six to nine months rather than the original 12 months. Still, from a nonproliferation standpoint, even a half year is vastly superior to Tehran’s current breakout capability of roughly a few days. And whereas the original JCPOA contained restrictions of up to 20 years on Iran’s nuclear program, the revived deal may last only as long as a Democrat is in the White House, since key Republican leaders have already publicly committed to killing the deal if a Republican is elected in 2024.

Yet the main reasons why the new JCPOA is more fragile are not internal to the deal but external. There is now deepened mistrust, both in Tehran and in other capitals around the world, about Washington’s ability to uphold international agreements. The current U.S. and Iranian political leaderships also have few domestic incentives to move beyond their shared enmity. As a result, the new Iran deal may come into existence in a strategic context that reduces rather than bolsters its longevity. Still, both sides can take steps to address these concerns and make the deal more durable. If they do not, even this historic breakthrough could be merely a precursor to an even more dangerous crisis.

A TRUST-DEPLETING EXERCISE

One of the crucial differences between the initial nuclear deal and its current revived version is the diplomatic environment in which it is taking place. By the time the JCPOA was concluded in 2015, more than two years of direct, face-to-face negotiations between the United States and Iran had built a modicum of trust between the two adversaries. During the second term of U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry spent more time with his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, than he did with any other foreign leader. The two exchanged phone numbers after their first meeting in September 2013 and texted regularly after that. This connection proved helpful well beyond the nuclear negotiations, as for example when several U.S. sailors accidentally drifted into Iranian waters in January 2016. It took Zarif and Kerry just five phone calls and less than 16 hours to secure the release of the sailors in what would have been a significant crisis, had it occurred before the JCPOA was in place.

The renewed JCPOA, on the other hand, has been negotiated not by the top U.S. and Iranian diplomats but by designated envoys on both sides who have yet to speak to each other; Iran has refused direct negotiations. Instead of building trust, the past 16 months of indirect talks have often depleted it.

Mismatched expectations are a key reason for this dynamic. Although Iran expanded parts of its nuclear program in retaliation for Trump’s betrayal of the deal, it never exited the agreement, out of hope that the United States would return to it once Trump had left the White House. Tehran’s gamble was not based on wishful thinking. As a presidential candidate, Biden called Trump’s exit from the deal “a self-inflicted disaster.” He joined all but one of the 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls in pledging to swiftly and unconditionally return to the agreement. Rejoining the deal was even written into the Democratic Party platform in 2020.

Biden’s decision not to return swiftly to the deal stunned Iranian officials.

But once in office, Biden was in no rush. Instead of issuing an executive order to return to the agreement on his first day—as he did with the Paris climate agreement and U.S. engagement with the World Health Organization—he chose to keep Trump’s Iran sanctions in place. Then, Biden spent valuable months consulting with Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Saudi Arabia, which are fierce opponents of the agreement. In April 2021, Major General Tal Kalman, the head of the Israeli military’s Iran directorate, praised the Biden administration for “keeping its promises [to Israel].” Biden had set out “to listen, not rush to a new deal,” he told the Jewish News Syndicate. Biden’s delay was partly designed to dispel fears among these allies that a renewed JCPOA would lead to a broader thaw between the United States and Iran. In contrast to Obama, who spent months seeking to improve the tenor of U.S.-Iranian relations, Biden did not bother with any confidence-building measures. Instead, to avoid fueling the anxieties of Washington’s partners, he insisted that Iran take the first step—even though it was the United States that had left the agreement.

Biden’s decision not to return swiftly to the deal stunned Iranian officials, who concluded that he aimed to prolong Trump’s sanctions to force Iran to accept stricter terms. In January 2021, Nasser Hadian, an adviser to the Iranian government then led by President Hassan Rouhani, told The New Yorker that if Biden did not act, “all of Iran’s major factions will push for Iran to increase all aspects of its nuclear program.” That is exactly what happened. After it became clear that Biden was not returning to the deal, Tehran began rapidly expanding its uranium enrichment program. By May 2021, Iran had installed almost 2,000 advanced centrifuges, surpassing both the number it had at any time before the JCPOA and during the Trump presidency. A month later, after a suspected Israeli attack on the Natanz nuclear site, Iran ramped up enrichment levels to 60 percent for the first time, bringing it dangerously close to producing weapons-grade uranium.

These moves meant that the atmosphere was already poisoned when negotiations began on April 6, 2021. Moreover, Iran had entered its political season, with less than three months to go until a presidential election. The Iranian refusal of direct talks with the United States also made diplomacy less effective and next to useless for trust building. After taking office in August, Iran’s new president, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi, said he neither viewed a nuclear deal as a priority nor saw much promise in rapprochement with the West. He chose Ali Bagheri Kani, a leading opponent of the JCPOA, as his nuclear negotiator. Raisi’s team took months to review the previous negotiations while continuing to add centrifuges and amass enriched uranium, fueling suspicions in Washington that Iran was simply running out the clock until it became a de facto nuclear power. In October 2021, an increasingly frustrated U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Iran that the United States was “prepared to turn to other options” if Tehran didn’t change course, implicitly threatening military action.

In less than a year, hopes for a new Iran deal seemed to have been dashed. In the early months of 2021, Biden had slowed down the process, frustrating the Iranians and fueling their suspicions. By the third quarter of that year, it was Iran that was slow-walking diplomacy. Predictably, Tehran’s procrastination only further depleted trust and goodwill. It is even more noteworthy, then, that the two sides have managed to revive the talks and bring them to a final stage in August 2022—a direct result of the most basic truth of successful diplomacy: showing flexibility. Rather than solely relying on pressure and coercion, both the United States and Iran have made concessions to get concessions. But can this achievement prove durable?

THE CEILING, NOT THE FLOOR

Given the current state of U.S.-Iranian relations, it is remarkable that progress has been made at all. In 2015, Zarif famously said that the JCPOA is the floor, not the ceiling, indicating that the JCPOA could set off a larger warm-up between the two countries. “We must now begin to build on it,” he tweeted. The revived JCPOA, however, appears to be the ceiling, not the floor of U.S.-Iran relations. As it now stands, prospects for expanding on it are slim, for several reasons.

For one thing, political instability and polarization in the United States have rendered any U.S. promise unreliable at best. This new normal, where U.S. presidents can no longer can be expected to honor the agreements signed by their predecessors, further deepened Tehran’s apprehensions about renewing the JCPOA. Notably, the Biden administration rebuffed Iranian requests to include binding mechanisms that could prevent a second unwarranted U.S. exit from the JCPOA, asserting that in a democracy, a president cannot tie the hands of his successors. In the end, the changes made to the JCPOA to meet Iran’s demand—such as extending the grace period for foreign companies to wrap up their trade with Iran in case sanctions are reimposed—fall well short of Tehran’s expectations. Instead of signing up for a nuclear agreement that normalized Iran’s trade and investments with the world, Iranian officials had to determine whether only two years of oil sales would be worth giving up vital elements of their nuclear program—and how such a deal would not leave them bereft of leverage in case the United States abandoned the agreement in 2025.

Iran sees little need to seek rapprochement with an untrustworthy United States.

Adding to the challenge are the current geopolitical circumstances. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has strengthened the Raisi government’s preference to look to the East, not the West. From Tehran’s vantage point, the world has become irreversibly multipolar now, creating an environment in which Iran’s geopolitical prospects as a major regional power are set to improve. According to this thinking, Europe is in dire need of Iranian gas and is consumed by the perceived threat from Moscow; China’s and Russia’s growing conflicts with the United States have increased the need of both for strengthened ties with Tehran; and the bifurcation of the global economy between the West and the East will provide Iran with new ways to escape US sanctions. When even some of Washington’s closest partners—including Saudi Arabia and UAE— are hedging their bets and looking for other ways to ensure their security, Iran sees little need to seek rapprochement with a declining and untrustworthy United States.

Similar hesitations abound in Washington. The Biden administration, which didn’t have much appetite for broader engagement with Iran when Rouhani was president, has even less with Raisi in power. The alleged Iranian plot to assassinate John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Trump, and the attempted assassination of Salman Rushdie by a New Jersey-born Lebanese American who had expressed sympathy for Iran’s theocracy have certainly not increased the White House’s desire to make amends with religious autocrats in Tehran.

But perhaps more important, Washington’s focus is now on China. In the geopolitical contest that Biden envisions, the United States’ vast alliance system constitutes a critical advantage over Beijing. Keeping friends at Washington’s side is essential, even if it entails engaging with leaders who might otherwise be shunned, as Biden did in his July 2022 visit to Saudi Arabia. Given Riyadh’s anxiety over a broader U.S.-Iran rapprochement, Washington is unlikely to risk pushing Saudi Arabia closer to Beijing for the sake of a larger opening with Tehran. To many observers in Washington, Iran simply isn’t a sufficiently attractive geopolitical prize to justify such a risk.

Precisely for these reasons, strategists on both sides have assumed that a new iteration of the JCPOA is not likely to last beyond the Biden presidency. The mutual mistrust and question marks about the deal’s durability make it too fragile to withstand the weight of growing U.S.-Iranian tensions on other fronts and the threat of a future Republican-led U.S. re-exit from the agreement. Consequently, Washington and Tehran will likely spend the next two years preparing for a new crisis in 2025. Tehran will seek to make its economy sanctions-proof. Washington will seek to make its military option credible. Acting on the expectation that the new JCPOA won’t survive, however, may make its collapse a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Iran, the United States, and the EU want the renewed JCPOA to stick, they should act accordingly. There are several measures they can take to maximize the prospects of the deal’s survival.

TALK AND DO BUSINESS

For Iran, one of the easiest strengthening steps concerns direct diplomacy. With the JCPOA renewed and sanctions lifted, Tehran’s refusal to engage in direct dialogue with Washington will increasingly appear ungrounded. Moreover, U.S.-Iranian talks should not be limited to U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Bagheri-Kani, discussing the nuclear deal. Dialogue between the two countries should instead be normalized to the extent possible by establishing direct contact between Blinken and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, as well as between U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. Neither country’s interest has been served by decades without dialogue, and addressing the nuclear file in a narrow and minimal way will do little to build broader trust between the two sides.

By reestablishing diplomatic channels, both sides can dramatically lower the cost for future governments and administrations to begin talks. Although this doesn’t guarantee that a future Republican administration won’t withdraw from the JCPOA, direct engagement between the two sides may help persuade a future GOP president to stick with the deal. The problem here lies on the Iranian side, but Tehran may have realized the folly of refusing dialogue with Washington. Indeed, Iranian officials told me in 2019 that they believed that had they engaged with Trump in early 2017, he might not have quit the nuclear agreement in the first place.

A second way to strengthen the deal would be to make it more ambitious. The past few months of negotiations were complicated because the JCPOA was not broad enough to warrant significant political sacrifices, nor was it narrow enough to render its risks negligible. Accordingly, the Biden administration’s effort to seek a larger deal is, in principle, well founded: the necessary amendments to make the deal durable are hard to justify unless the agreement is enlarged.

The strongest way to ensure U.S. compliance would be to open direct U.S.-Iranian trade.

For instance, the assurance Iran seeks against a second U.S. exit was not fully addressed in the renewed JCPOA but can and should be dealt with in subsequent talks. The original JCPOA did provide such an assurance—snap-back sanctions—but it applied only to Iran. An enlarged agreement should make the cost of violating the deal more symmetric for all parties. After all, Washington cannot claim to be the guarantor of a rules-based international order and also insist it cannot be expected to uphold agreements beyond one political cycle.

The strongest way to ensure sustained American compliance, however, would be to open direct U.S.-Iranian trade. The JCPOA waived U.S. sanctions only on third countries. It did not permit trade between the United States and Iran. Longer restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program could be negotiated in return for lifting primary U.S. sanctions. This would open the Iranian economy to American businesses and create something the original JCPOA lacked—a powerful constituency in the United States that would resist any repeat of Trump’s folly in the future. Hardliners in Tehran will likely resist such a move, but Iran’s experience with the JCPOA proved the futility of relying solely on secondary sanctions relief. As long as U.S. companies were absent from the Iranian market, pulling out of the JCPOA had little to no economic impact on the U.S. economy.

A third step concerns Washington’s European allies. European diplomats played a critical role in reforging the nuclear agreement, by serving as mediators between the United States and Iran. European governments can play an equally important role in sustaining the agreement by including Iran in their long-term energy security policy. Tehran now puts little value on EU promises since Europe quickly abandoned its trade with Iran after Trump reimposed sanctions. But European negotiators insist that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has permanently changed their geopolitical calculus: Iran can help shift Europe permanently away from Russian gas, and no Republican president can force Europe to go back to Russian energy. Whether or not this assessment proves true, forging strategic EU-Iranian energy ties will nevertheless help increase the chances that the renewed JCPOA will last while deepening Europe’s influence with Tehran and its role within the nuclear agreement.

ARMS CONTROL OR ARMS RACE?

A larger barrier to a durable deal, however, is Washington’s use of arms sales to Middle Eastern allies to retain influence in the region. The United States cannot expect an arms control agreement with Iran to endure if it simultaneously seeks to expand the Abraham Accords into an anti-Iran military alliance and to provide ever more sophisticated weapons systems to Iran’s regional rivals. Cementing regional divisions and intensifying Iranian suspicions about its neighbors will only give Iran new incentives to cheat on the agreement and pursue a nuclear deterrent.

There is another way. Regional powers have in the past few years initiated their own de-escalatory diplomacy, in large part facilitated by the Iraqi government in the so-called Baghdad Dialogue. Tehran and Riyadh have held several rounds of talks that helped bring the war in Yemen to a truce. By getting behind this process and by encouraging regional efforts to resolve regional disputes—as well as efforts to strengthen economic ties between Gulf states and Iran—the United States can help further bind Tehran to the renewed nuclear deal. If such moves are successful, it would also create regional resistance—from key US security partners in the Persian Gulf—to a second American exit. Such a dynamic would mark a stark shift from the situation in 2017-2018 when the UAE and Saudi Arabia pushed Trump to abandon the JCPOA.

Many of these steps will be resisted by Washington, Tehran, or both. But if they are not taken, the new JCPOA is unlikely to endure. Surviving one American exit was nothing short of a miracle. Overcoming a second would likely prove impossible.

• TRITA PARSI is Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Foreign Affairs · by Trita Parsi · August 26, 2022

16. Mossad chief says US ‘rushing into a deal that is a lie’ with Iran

Mossad chief says US ‘rushing into a deal that is a lie’ with Iran

timesofisrael.com · by 25 August 2022, 8:14 pm Edit

Mossad chief David Barnea has said in recent meetings about the Iranian nuclear deal that the US “is rushing into an accord that is a lie,” according to multiple reports in Hebrew media outlets this evening.

Barnea is quoted as saying the emerging accord is “very bad for Israel” and “a strategic disaster.”

The reports in Channel 12, Ynet, Haaretz and others do not cite a source, but all seem to have received the same information on the Mossad chief’s internal comments.

Barnea adds that an accord appears inevitable “in light of the needs of the US and Iran.”

He said the deal “gives Iran license to amass the required nuclear material for a bomb.” It will also provide Tehran billions of dollars in currently frozen money, increasing the danger Iran poses through the region via its proxies.

He stresses that a deal will not obligate Israel, and the country will act however it sees fit. If it does not do so, it will be in danger, he says.

It's not (only) about you.

Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.

Sure, we'll remove all ads from your page and you'll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.

Join the Times of Israel Community Join our Community Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this

You're a dedicated reader

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

That’s why we started the Times of Israel ten years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.

So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.

For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you,

David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel

Join Our Community Join Our Community Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this

timesofisrael.com · by 25 August 2022, 8:14 pm Edit

17. Avoiding empty cockpits: Addressing the Air Force’s pilot shortage problem

Excerpts:

The bottom line is that Congress seems to recognize that these innovations, along with the flexibility to tailor them to a pilot’s circumstances, can potentially increase retention.

The United States is in a race with the People’s Republic of China to ensure our airmen have the best aircraft in the world. And China is not the only looming threat. But fielding the best aircraft in the world won’t matter if there aren’t enough well-trained pilots to fly them.

Offering increased retention incentives to US Air Force pilots earlier and providing the service with the flexibility to adjust those incentives over time, will help address a problem that threatens our national security and is likely to only get worse without urgent action.

Avoiding empty cockpits: Addressing the Air Force’s pilot shortage problem - Breaking Defense

Fielding the best aircraft in the world won’t matter if the Air Force can’t retain enough well-trained pilots to fly them, argue FDD’s Bradley Bowman and Maj. Brian Leitzke.

By  BRADLEY BOWMAN and MAJ. BRIAN LEITZKE

on August 25, 2022 at 10:42 AM

breakingdefense.com · by Bradley Bowman · August 25, 2022

U.S. Air Force Col. Jesse J. Friedel, 35th Fighter Wing commander, steps out of an F-16 Fighting Falcon cockpit after his fini-flight at Misawa Air Base, Japan, June 22, 2022. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Leon Redfern)

Each year the Pentagon spends billions of dollars upgrading older aircraft, buying new ones and developing super-secret next-generation capabilities. But in the op-ed below, FDD’s Bradley Bowman and Maj. Brian Leitzke argue that more needs to be done to ensure the Air Force has a steady supply of the most critical piece of the puzzle: pilots.

Beijing demonstrated its growing military strength this month as the People’s Liberation Army conducted large-scale air and naval exercises around Taiwan and even fired missiles over the island. Eyeing a possible conflict with China in the coming years, the US Air Force is trying to field next-generation aircraft in sufficient quantities to help deter aggression and achieve victory if deterrence fails.

The problem is that the service consistently struggles to retain enough aviators to fly those aircraft. In fact, the Total Air Force (Active, Guard, and Reserve) was short 1,650 pilots in 2021, and the shortfall will likely only get worse.

It’s a crisis that must be addressed head-on, both by training more pilots but more importantly by retaining a higher percentage of experienced pilots through flexible incentives offered to officers earlier in their careers.

Some might be tempted to dismiss recent warnings, pointing out that pilot shortages are not a new problem and that the Air Force actually shrank the pilot shortage by more than 14 percent from 2020 to 2021.

While that’s certainly true, and the Air Force deserves credit for years of work to address this challenge, we shouldn’t draw too much comfort from what was likely somewhat of an anomaly.

The reality is that last year’s reduction in the pilot shortfall was at least partially attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in commercial airline furloughs, reduced hiring and a weakened overall job market, including for Air Force pilots looking to transition to a variety of civilian jobs. That undoubtedly incentivized some pilots to remain in the service. But those dynamics are already changing.

Indeed, according to federal labor statistics, the US airline industry needs to hire 14,500 new pilots each year until 2030, yet the United States reportedly produces just 5,000 to 7,000 pilots annually.

That shortage will lead commercial airlines to offer more attractive offers to woo Air Force pilots into civilian cockpits. Those offers will undoubtedly seem tempting to some pilots whose active-duty service commitments are ending – mid-career officers who may be flying less or who are concerned about the impact of the military lifestyle on children who are getting older.

So, what’s to be done?

Well, there are basically two ways to effectively address the pilot shortage problem: produce more pilots and persuade more to stay in the service. An ideal solution, of course, should seek to do both.

But there are reasons to believe that the best opportunities to address the pilot shortage problem can be found in retention over production. Training new pilots and providing them with the experience that makes them more effective in combat are time- and resource-intensive.

Air Force undergraduate pilot training production was 1,381 in fiscal year 2021, up from 1,263 the previous year. But at that rate, assuming other variables remain constant, it would take more than a decade to address the current shortfall.

Plus, even if the service sends more pilots through training, it takes years for new aviators to gain the experience of the mid-career pilots who are leaving the service. In other words, increased production of pilots is part of a longer-term solution, but only part. Indeed, in a 2019 report to Congress [PDF], the Air Force admitted that training more new pilots cannot solve its pilot shortage.

Increasing the production of pilots is also more expensive than retaining aviators. “The cost of training a basic qualified fighter pilot ranges from $5.6 million for an F-16 pilot to $10.9 million for an F-22 pilot,” a team of researchers found in a 2019 RAND study. For that reason, as the study demonstrated, it is far more cost-efficient to offer seasoned aviators large retention bonuses than to train new pilots.

Recognizing the problem, the House and Senate armed services committees are advancing legislation designed to retain experienced Air Force pilots. In their respective versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, both committees included language that would establish an “Air Force Rated Officer Retention Demonstration Program” for aviators willing to remain on active duty.

The program would give the Air Force the authority to offer more flexible retention incentives. That flexibility is critical since each aviator’s circumstances are different. As currently written, the program would enable the Air Force to guarantee future assignment locations for aviators willing to extend their service commitment.

That innovation might face resistance in some quarters of the Air Force. Yet it could yield significant retention benefits for pilots who want to fly and execute their meaningful missions but also have location-specific concerns related to spouse employment, resources for their children, or other considerations. Exit interviews suggest that lack of control over future assignments is often a top reason pilots leave the Air Force.

The program would also increase the maximum bonus the Air Force can offer to aviators. It may be especially effective to offer bonuses even earlier in a pilot’s career, as recommended in an October 2020 Center for Strategic and International Studies report. Even if a pilot’s initial active-duty commitment has not expired, the purpose of offering the bonus is to extend that commitment to help solve the shortage by maximizing retention.

Last year, just 36 percent of eligible pilots elected to accept bonuses and extend their service. That’s hundreds of pilots below what’s required to address the shortage. The Air Force could likely achieve a higher “take rate” by offering the benefits earlier to officers.

Early in their careers, pilots’ primary focus is flying, executing the exhilarating and meaningful no-fail mission they joined the Air Force to support. But they’re also just beginning to build a financial foundation, perhaps for a growing family. Bonuses would represent a more significant relative financial benefit for younger officers who are earning less and would enable them to take advantage of the investment benefits associated with receiving money sooner. They’d also appreciate the long-term predictability assignment guarantees would offer them and their families.

The bottom line is that Congress seems to recognize that these innovations, along with the flexibility to tailor them to a pilot’s circumstances, can potentially increase retention.

The United States is in a race with the People’s Republic of China to ensure our airmen have the best aircraft in the world. And China is not the only looming threat. But fielding the best aircraft in the world won’t matter if there aren’t enough well-trained pilots to fly them.

Offering increased retention incentives to US Air Force pilots earlier and providing the service with the flexibility to adjust those incentives over time, will help address a problem that threatens our national security and is likely to only get worse without urgent action.

Bradley Bowman is senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former US Army UH/VH/EH-60 pilot-in-command. Maj. Brian Leitzke is a US Air Force F-15E instructor pilot and visiting military analyst at FDD. The views expressed in this commentary are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Defense Department or the Air Force.

Recommended

Army’s ultra-endurance Zephyr drone comes down after ‘unexpected termination’ over Arizona desert

After setting endurance flight records, the slender UAV will now be grounded until 2023.

breakingdefense.com · by Bradley Bowman · August 25, 2022

18. Putin orders Russian military to increase troops amid Ukraine losses

Putin orders Russian military to increase troops amid Ukraine losses

militarytimes.com · by Derek Gatopoulos · August 25, 2022

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a major buildup of his country’s military forces Thursday in an apparent effort to replenish troops that have suffered heavy losses in six months of bloody warfare and prepare for a long, grinding fight ahead in Ukraine.

The move to increase the number of troops by 137,000, or 13%, to 1.15 million by the end of the year came amid chilling developments on the ground in Ukraine:

— Fueling fears of a nuclear catastrophe, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the middle of the fighting in southern Ukraine was cut off from the electrical grid after fires damaged the last working transmission line, causing a blackout across the region, according to Ukrainian authorities. The plant was later reconnected to the grid, a local Russian-installed official said.

— The death toll from a Russian rocket attack on a train station and the surrounding area on Ukraine’s Independence Day climbed to 25, Ukrainian authorities said. Russia said it targeted a military train and claimed to have killed more than 200 Ukrainian reservists in the attack Wednesday.

Putin’s decree did not specify whether the expansion would be accomplished by widening the draft, recruiting more volunteers, or both. But some Russian military analysts predicted heavier reliance on volunteers because of the Kremlin’s concerns about a potential domestic backlash from an expanded draft.

The move will boost Russia’s armed forces overall to 2.04 million, including the 1.15 million troops.

RELATED

‘Vampire’ to transform Ukraine pickups into deadly missile launchers

The L3Harris-made Vampire will be included in the nearly $3 billion in aid announced Wednesday.

Western estimates of Russian dead in the Ukraine war have ranged from more than 15,000 to over 20,000 — more than the Soviet Union lost during its 10-year war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said last week that as many as 80,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded, eroding Moscow’s ability to conduct big offensives.

The Kremlin has said that only volunteer contract soldiers take part in the Ukraine war. But it may be difficult to find more willing soldiers, and military analysts said the planned troop levels may still be insufficient to sustain operations.

Retired Russian Col. Retired Viktor Murakhovsky said in comments carried by the Moscow-based RBC online news outlet that the Kremlin will probably try to keep relying on volunteers, and he predicted that will account for the bulk of the increase.

Another Russian military expert, Alexei Leonkov, noted that training on complex modern weapons normally takes three years. And draftees serve only one year.

“A draft won’t help that, so there will be no increase in the number of draftees,” the state RIA Novosti news agency quoted Leonkov as saying.

A drone carries a big national flag in front of Ukraine's the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

Fears of a Chernobyl-like disaster have been mounting in Ukraine because of fighting around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia plant. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the site.

The damaged line in Thursday’s incident apparently carried outgoing electricity, not affecting a separate line used to power vital cooling systems for the plant’s reactors.

Zaporizhzhia’s Russian-installed regional governor, Yevgeny Balitsky, claimed on the Telegram messaging app that Ukrainian forces had attacked, causing the fire that damaged the transmission lines. Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency, Energoatom, blamed “actions of the invaders.”

While the incident apparently didn’t affect the reactors’ cooling systems — whose loss could lead to a meltdown — it stoked fears of disaster.

RELATED

US weapons package for Ukraine stresses long-haul commitment

The Pentagon is expected to contract for the defense materiel, apart from billions in equipment it has sent Ukraine from its stockpiles.

Elsewhere on the battle front, the deadly strike on the train station in Chaplyne, a town of about 3,500 in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, came as Ukraine was bracing for attacks tied to the national holiday and the war’s six-month mark, both of which fell on Wednesday.

The deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, did not say whether all of the 25 people killed were civilians. If they were, it would amount to one of the deadliest attacks on civilians in weeks. Thirty-one people were reported wounded.

Witnesses said some of the victims, including at least one child, burned to death in train cars or passing automobiles.

“Everything sank into dust,” said Olena Budnyk, a 65-year-old Chaplyne resident. “There was a dust storm. We couldn’t see anything. We didn’t know where to run.”

The dead included an 11-year-old boy found under the rubble of a house and a 6-year-old killed in a car fire near the train station, authorities said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces used an Iskander missile to strike a military train carrying Ukrainian troops and equipment to the front line in eastern Ukraine. The ministry claimed more than 200 reservists “were destroyed on their way to the combat zone.”

The attack served as a painful reminder of Russia’s continued ability to inflict large-scale suffering. Wednesday’s national holiday celebrated Ukraine’s 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.

Tetyana Kvitnytska, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional health department, said those hurt in the train station attack suffered head injuries, broken limbs, burns and shrapnel wounds.

Following attacks in which civilians have died, the Russian government has repeatedly claimed that its forces aim only at legitimate military targets. Hours before the bloodshed at the train station, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu insisted the military was doing its best to spare civilians, even at the cost of slowing down its offensive in Ukraine.

In April, a Russian missile attack on a train station in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed more than 50 people as crowds of mostly women and children sought to flee the fighting. The attack was denounced as a war crime.

In Moscow on Thursday, Dmitry Medvedev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said Western hopes for a Ukrainian victory are futile and emphasized that the Kremlin will press home what it calls the “special military operation,” leaving just two possible outcomes.

“One is reaching all goals of the special military operation and Kyiv’s recognition of this outcome,” Medvedev said on his messaging app channel. “The second is a military coup in Ukraine followed by the recognition of results of the special operation.”

19. After Duterte dissonance, Marcos set to pivot back to Washington

Excerpts:

The US also cannot take the Philippines for granted, a fact not lost on Washington. Even as China bracketed Taiwan with live firing military exercises and missile tests, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Manila reaffirming the US-Philippines alliance.

It was an important visit. A 2017 survey showed that while a plurality of Filipinos would rather expand defence relations with the US over China and Russia, a large number also questioned the reliability of the superpower.

But policy is one thing, and dealing with realities in the contested South China Sea is another, cautioned Ms Marites Vitug, long-time investigative journalist, editor-at-large of the media organisation Rappler, and author of among other things, Rock Solid, a book recounting the arbitration case about the South China Sea the Philippines brought and won against China in 2016.

After Duterte dissonance, Marcos set to pivot back to Washington

By Nirmal Ghosh The Straits Times3 min

View Original

WASHINGTON - Newly elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr will soon visit Singapore and Indonesia - and probably the United States before the end of the year - providing clues as to how he will navigate the increasingly dangerous space of the US-China rivalry in which his country, a US ally, is a potential front-line state.

The signs are a departure from the truculent style of former president Rodrigo Duterte, who was notorious for sniping at the US and seemingly veering closer to China.

But President Marcos is more like his own father - the US-backed Ferdinand Marcos who was thrown out in the Philippines' storied 1986 People Power revolution - than Mr Duterte, Mr Richard Heydarian, political commentator, columnist and incoming senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines told Asian Insider.

"I think he's pursuing what we call multi-vector foreign policy, whereby he wants to keep relations with major powers… on an even keel, extracting the maximum concessions and benefits from each of these relationships, without depending on each of them or alienating each of them unnecessarily," said Mr Heydarian.

"We have had presidents who would side with one superpower, but alienate the other," he said, noting that Mr Duterte's "independent foreign policy" was more like a "pivot to China foreign policy".

"Marcos Jr, unlike Duterte, doesn't have a long history of resentment against the Americans. And the American government has made it clear that their court cases in the US will not really affect him if he's going to visit," he said, referring to a longstanding contempt case against Mr Marcos for failing to comply with a court order in a case against his father. US officials have indicated that as a sitting head of state, he would have immunity.

"Most of his family have been educated in the West. So there are many personal (and) psychological factors that make Marcos Jr different from Duterte," he noted.

"But the structural factors are also very important," Mr Heydarian noted. Approval ratings in the Philippines are far higher for the US than for China.

"And the Philippine defence establishment is very much for maintaining robust relations with the US, and a relatively sceptical disposition towards China," he added.

But while public opinion in the Philippines has been consistently pro-America, despite their complex history, rather than China, this is not necessarily universal.

The US also cannot take the Philippines for granted, a fact not lost on Washington. Even as China bracketed Taiwan with live firing military exercises and missile tests, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Manila reaffirming the US-Philippines alliance.

It was an important visit. A 2017 survey showed that while a plurality of Filipinos would rather expand defence relations with the US over China and Russia, a large number also questioned the reliability of the superpower.

But policy is one thing, and dealing with realities in the contested South China Sea is another, cautioned Ms Marites Vitug, long-time investigative journalist, editor-at-large of the media organisation Rappler, and author of among other things, Rock Solid, a book recounting the arbitration case about the South China Sea the Philippines brought and won against China in 2016.

20. War crimes in Ukraine may be unprecedented. So is the country's push for swift justice.

August 25, 2022

It is long past time that war crimes in Ukraine be made a international priority. The entire world should know and understand Putin’s thugs are committing war crimes and genocide in Ukraine.

I have written before that much if not all of what we see in the media is atrocities-lite, nothing like what the reality is in Ukraine and very little about the extraordinary deportations of over 400,000 people into Russia for indoctrination and worse – this includes at least 260,000 children! 

If the American public saw the reality of what the Russians are doing in the context of our assurances of Ukrainian sovereignty and borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and American values, and our critical national security interests in Ukraine there would a clear demand that the United States immediately provide Ukraine with everything it needs to win this war and expel Russia from its territory – right weapons, in the right place, at the right time – which is now.

In his Independence Day address President Zelenskyy said,

“What is the end of the war for us? We used to say: peace. Now we say: victory.”

Victory is the appropriate objective for the people of Ukraine and it is in our strategic best national interests. And, as part of our support for Ukraine, it is time to prioritize the publication of the reality of Russian war crimes.

USToday yesterday ran a significant story on those war crimes and the challenges of bringing war crime cases. It is long and well worth the time to read. The detailed requirements of bringing legal cases must not be an excuse not to broadcast the reality of what is happening. The public can come to a conclusion as to the reality of what Russia is in fact doing to Ukraine and the people of Ukraine.

Putin and Russia are and must be shown as pariahs.

USToday

August 24, 2022

FOR SUBSCRIBERS

War crimes in Ukraine may be unprecedented. So is the country's push for swift justice.

Story by Kim Hjelmgaard, photos and videos by Jessica Koscielniak, USA TODAY

Published 10:09 PM EDT Aug. 23, 2022 Updated 10:09 PM EDT Aug. 23, 2022

Editor's note: This story contains graphic images and descriptions.  

KHARKIV, Ukraine – Alexander Satanovskiy died during a game of dominoes.

He and his friends gathered most evenings at a table in the playground at the foot of the apartment buildings where they all lived. A wooden structure sheltered their seats. On busy days, some players had to stand. 

After the war with Russia [Putin’s war against Ukraine - RAM] began six months ago, they often heard air raid sirens and artillery fire echoing in the distance. People had been killed and injured nearby. But Satanovskiy and his friends still gathered to play. He had taken a break from the game for about a week. But for one reason or another – to snap boredom or on a whim, his wife wasn't sure – one day in late June he felt the pull of camaraderie. He sat again at the domino table with about half a dozen others. 

It was 5:45 on a summer evening in eastern Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. Before the war, it would have been a time to walk in the forest, to snack on sweet cherries in the golden-hour light. To play a game in the park with friends. 

Out of nowhere, a whistling sound arrived. A bang, pop and a whoosh. 

Buildings rattled and glass shattered. 

Alexander Satanovskiy died after a burst of explosions at his apartment complex in Kharkiv on June 27, 2022. Before dark, rescue workers collected his body as investigators searched for signs of a war crime. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Before dark that evening, investigators were on the scene to try to piece together a picture of what happened.

A 1980s-era Soviet-designed Smerch rocket, most likely launched from Russian soil just 10 miles away, exploded overhead. Its payload of miniature explosives scattered across the overgrown playground.

They thudded into the tufts of grass and scuttled along footpaths adjoining several of the residential apartment buildings, spreading like drunkenly tossed dice. 

Then, like so many firecrackers, they exploded, and with them, shrapnel.

Two dozen people fell to the ground, a jumble of torn ears and shredded limbs. 

The domino table was soaked in blood. 

 As investigators used rulers to measure holes in the ground from a cluster bomb, Anna Satanovskaya mourned her husband, one of five to die in the blast. "This is how we live now," she said. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Someone helped Satanovskiy bandage his leg as blood gushed from it. But after about 10 minutes, he began to wheeze. He didn't realize it at first, but he'd also sustained a deep wound on his right side, close to his stomach.

As the long evening shadows stretched across the grass, a crew zipped him into a body bag. He was one of five to die.

"This is how we live now," said Anna Satanovskaya, his 84-year-old widow, the next day. 

She sat on a sofa bed in the three-room apartment they had shared, with its balcony that overlooks the place where he died. Through tears, she talked about 82-year-old Alexander. How he was always singing a song to himself. How he worked as a mechanical engineer in a sewing machine factory. How he was a tender and attentive husband and father. How he dreamed of someday visiting Cuba.

How he had beautiful handwriting.

Anna Satanovskaya

Who can punish the Russians, please tell me?

"Who will punish them?” she asked between sobs, as the low-decibel thud and rumble of artillery from the nearby front line could be heard in the distance.

“Who can punish the Russians, please tell me?" 

A team of war crimes investigators had already begun the work they believed would do just that. Within an hour of the explosion, they were on the ground with cameras, measuring tapes and clipboards for notes. 

They would gather bits of shrapnel, log measurements, interview witnesses.

The cluster bomb, though not banned by Russia, Ukraine or even the United States, is barred under a treaty signed by 123 countries, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition, an international civil society campaign working to end their use. The bomb's popcorn patchwork of exploding fragments is meant to mow down rows of soldiers.

Amid airstrikes and shellings, Ukraine investigates unprecedented number of war crimes

Under constant threat of Russian airstrikes and shelling, Ukrainian prosecutors work to investigate the growing number of suspected war crimes cases.

But the explosion, investigators had already concluded, struck a residential neighborhood that had no obvious nearby military targets.

Alexander Satanovskiy’s life had come to a sudden and unexpected end during Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. 

To the investigators, it looked like a war crime. It looked like murder. [The world must know, Washington – or government -- must make Putin’s war crimes and genocide and international cause. The Members of Congress who vote against support for our national security interests in Ukraine must be reminded for as long as it takes (a) that we “assured” Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum; and (b) there is no moral high ground to turning our backs on “assurances” and genocide. RAM]

An unprecedented investigation begins

Across Ukraine, even as Russian tanks roll and rockets fly, teams are investigating deaths like Satanovskiy’s and thousands of other suspected war crimes. 

Ukrainian and international investigators, prosecutors, police, security services, and forensic and ballistics experts take part, often researching dozens of deaths each day. 

More than 1,000 Ukrainian prosecutors have fanned out across the country to collect war crimes evidence. This includes fragments of missiles, rockets and artillery shells; DNA samples from human remains; victim and witness testimony.

It includes photos, video and detailed notes from investigators as they inspect damage. Sometimes bodies are exhumed. Soil samples taken. Small pieces of debris are analyzed. In some cases, sophisticated laser scanners are deployed to build up a digital picture of crimes scenes. Eventually, cellphone data or radio intercepts may be located. [Again I mention the fearless women of Dattalion who have been for months been documenting war crimes and providing the evidence to some in Congress and attorneys building the cases against the Russians. RAM]

A war crimes prosecutor walks through the site of an industrial missile strike in Kharkiv, Ukraine, June 29, 2022. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Their goal is to investigate and document alleged crimes committed by Russia's military. For now, the work is focused on the Russian military's everyday violence against civilians as opposed to the higher-stakes effort to build a case against Russia's president, Vladimir Putin. [There are efforts in that regard as well and Washington should be broadcasting Putin’s culpability in every one of these atrocities. He started all this wonton bloodshed unilaterally based upon transparent lies. Putin is a war criminal, and it is time to get over the decades-long fantasy of finding and maintaining stable relations with he and the Kremlin – time to recognize what and who we are dealing with - - - a murderer and war criminal. RAM]

USA TODAY spent weeks following investigators to the scenes of suspected war crimes, sometimes arriving – as in the case of the cluster bomb at the playground – just after attacks had ended, even before the victims' bodies had been removed. [Compliments to the authors and Jessica Koscielniak for her photography - she has provided some of the better evidence of what is happening although I wish the pictures, I am sure were withheld could be shown to the American public. RAM]

Experts say the sequence of judicial steps needed to prove a war crime is similar to an ordinary criminal prosecution: Evidence shows the nature of the crime. Witness interviews establish the events. Suspects are identified – not simply “Russia” as an aggressor, but individual soldiers and commanders. This is less impossible than it sounds; indeed, many Russian soldiers have already been taken as prisoners of war. 

Ultimately, if investigators succeed, the suspects are charged, convicted and sentenced.

Yet until recently, many of Ukraine's prosecutors had little direct experience in war crimes work, despite their dark blue vests emblazoned with the words "War Crimes Prosecutor." That job simply did not exist before the war, and the sum total of their training is often just a few days of online tutorials and videos, according to a dozen such prosecutors interviewed by USA TODAY over more than two weeks in June and July. 

For this reason, Ukraine has drafted a dizzying array of overseas experts and specialists to assist its investigations.

The political decision to wage war – however indefensible the reason – is not necessarily the same thing as committing a war crime.  

Bucha medical examiner Serghii Lyakhovych must inspect the bodies of the dead for evidence of war crimes. Here, he examines remains of soldiers who died during fighting at a steel plant in Mariupol. Authorities could not confirm whether those bodies were part of a war crimes investigation. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

War crimes under international law include atrocities against people or property, murder, ill-treatment, sexual violence, forced deportations, hostage killing, torture, plunder or destruction of public property and devastation not justified by military necessity. War crimes can be committed against diverse victims, both civilians and soldiers. [Putin’s thugs have checked all the boxes – at his direction. RAM]

News reports and time spent with investigators show all of these things have and are taking place in Ukraine, though Putin, his senior advisers, cabinet ministers and Russian state media have repeatedly rejected without evidence the war-crimes allegations as hoaxes staged by Ukraine and its allies. They have inundated the Russian public with false and misleading counterclaims against Ukraine. Moscow has charged almost 100 Ukrainian armed forces personnel with crimes against humanity and proposed its own international war crimes tribunal backed by Bolivia, Iran and Syria. [Putin’s lips move regarding Ukraine – lies come out - - - - fact. RAM]

"Our investigations are about accountability and justice," said Iryna Venediktova, until recently Ukraine's prosecutor general, its most senior legal official. She was the first woman to hold the role, which had seen a number of her predecessors resign or be forced out amid claims of ineffectiveness or graft. Security at her office in central Kyiv was tight. Sandbags lined the doorways. In public, she often wore a bulletproof vest. 

Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine's former prosecutor general

Our investigations are about accountability and justice. They are about preventing further atrocities in Russian-occupied territories. Holding trials may save the lives of Ukrainian citizens living under occupation.

"They are about preventing further atrocities in Russian-occupied territories. Holding trials may save the lives of Ukrainian citizens living under occupation," she said. 

Time spent observing these investigations reveals that pursuit of justice in wartime is far from clear.

Ukraine's investigators balance their limited training against a seemingly unlimited wave of cases. Public pressure for convictions bumps up against international scrutiny of their justice system. 

Many attacks on civilian infrastructure, or ones that result in the death or injuries of civilians, are being investigated as suspected war crimes under the Ukrainian criminal code. Some of these may ultimately not be prosecuted after the investigation is complete if they fail to meet the legal threshold for war crimes under international humanitarian law, or if the perpetrators cannot be identified. 

A civilian death or destroyed school or home isn't necessarily enough under international law to prove that a war crime took place. Prosecutors typically look for evidence of intent – that it wasn't an honest mistake. They consider whether there is any significant military target nearby. Soldiers in war must also show regard for protecting civilian lives, and prosecutors look for evidence that soldiers have neglected this duty, based on the precision of the weaponry and where it was used. 

Bucha medical examiner Serghii Lyakhovych examines the body of a soldier who died during the fighting in Mariupol, Ukraine, June 23, 2022. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

"Depending on the situation, some of these incidents and issues can be fiendishly complex, requiring significant tenacity and skill to prove in a courtroom," said Nigel Povoas, a British Queen's Counsel, one of the country's most senior lawyers appointed by the Crown. Povoas has led the prosecution and investigations of some of the world’s most notorious international criminals and is now working in Ukraine for the Internationally led Atrocity Crimes Advisory group, which advises the government on its war crimes cases. 

The investigators themselves must improvise; there is no blueprint for this kind of work in an active war zone, where more artillery may descend even as crews are photographing victims and diagramming crime scenes. 

Suspects can feel abstract or completely unreachable if they are in Russian territory, from which most rockets are launched. [Without quibbling about what does or can make a war crimes case, the reality is that anyone looking at what the Russians are doing in Ukraine sees both war crimes and genocide. The United States should be charging Putin and Russia with war crimes loudly and daily. The moral outrage of a world exposed to these pictures and available videos will isolate Putin even more that our sanction regime – and define clearly who and what Russia is – an international thug. Anyone not condemning him after the realities are publicized will also become isolated as they should be. We should be making certain Ukraine can win this war and expel Russia from its territory – AND – we should turn Putin into an international pariah. RAM]

With war ongoing and no signs of either side letting up, the sheer volume of allegations is also staggering. [May I restate the previous sentence – With Russia’s war against Ukraine ongoing and no signs that Russia will stop, and no sign the people of Ukraine will stop defending themselves and their country, the sheer volume …. RAM]

There are now more than 26,000 such probes in Ukrainian settings as diverse as kindergartens, private homes, alleyways, parks, warehouses, malls, train stations, city streets, maternity wards – even a nuclear power plant.

Investigators examine the destruction from the Russian invasion in Borodyanka, Ukraine on June 23, 2022. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Then there is the institutional reality of Ukraine itself, a country that has long been plagued by a lack of judicial rigor and corruption. Ukraine ranked 122nd out of 180 countries on the 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index by Berlin-based Transparency International. This ranked it the second most corrupt nation in Europe, behind Russia. [No one involved with Ukraine – and the US-Ukraine Foundation has been there since before independence 31 years ago – is unaware of the systemic corruption left as a legacy of the 70-years of Soviet Communism. No country can reform such a legacy over night and Ukraine has been slow in reforms, but progress has been made and much more must be done and insisted on. At the same time, the people of Ukraine are fighting a war and their priority must be winning. Likewise, our national security interests make Ukraine winning our priority as well. RAM]

Some of the more high-profile cases may one day wend their way to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, which claims universal jurisdiction for war crimes events. Or to a specially convened international tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials that dealt with Nazi Germany’s war crimes. Russia's veto power on the U.N. Security Council means that the council likely won't be able to establish a formal U.N. tribunal for Ukraine similar to the one that dealt with massacres, ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, crimes against humanity and genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

In some cases, Ukrainian families and the public have pushed for quick results – jail time, executions, vengeance – while legal experts have urged a slower, more deliberative process.

Bags of remains sit on gurneys outside the Bucha morgue, June 23, 2022. The bodies of 50 soldiers were swapped in an even exchange with Russian forces in early June, then 47 of the bodies were brought to Bucha for autopsies and identification. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

"We are trying our best to manage everyone's expectations," said Oleksii Boniuk, who chairs Ukraine's so-called Mobile Justice Teams, rapid-reaction war crimes investigation units that are housed inside the country’s prosecutor general's office – similar to the U.S. attorney general's office. 

That balancing act has led the investigative process into uncharted territory in modern warfare. Ukraine's war crimes investigations began within days of the war's outbreak, a scenario for which there is no precedent.

Rather than wait for an international tribunal that might convene someday, months or years from now, Ukraine will prosecute most of its war crimes cases itself, with its own judges, in its own courts. [And there is no reason Washington needs to wait in broadcasting loudly and repeatedly Russia’s atrocities and calling them war crimes. RAM]

A defendant sits in a glass cage

Mikhail Kulikov sat in a glass box. 

His head was shaved. He wore gray cargo pants, a sweatshirt and rubber slippers.

He pressed the fingers of one hand lightly against the other, forming a steeple with his hands. He tapped his fingers together slowly.

Kulikov, 32, a Russian soldier, a father of two, was on trial.

Mikhail Kulikov sits inside a glass cage on June 30, 2022, during a trial accusing him of a war crime. Kulikov, a Russian soldier, was accused of operating a tank that fired into an apartment. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

The courtroom in Desnyansky District Court in Chernihiv, 50 miles from Ukraine's border with Belarus, was hearing the case that accused him of a war crime. 

Kulikov pleaded guilty to firing a shell from a Russian tank on a residential apartment building in Chernihiv, a city known for its grand churches and cathedrals and parks with abundant summertime vegetation.

The court building itself was standard municipal fare. 

But inside, the courtroom featured one element not used in the U.S. justice system: a reinforced class enclosure – a box – for defendants.

Human rights groups have denounced the use of such cages as a visual threat to presumptions of innocence. To those not familiar, the cages can make the defendant seem like an exhibit, something bordering on voyeurism. [I don’t like the cages either – those used by Ukraine here, or the ones being readied by Russia to “try” Ukrainians for defending their country in Donbas. But are these “Human rights groups” expressing their outrage over Russian war crimes. Where is their campaign against the war. What is the greater issue – cages or indiscriminate murder of innocents? RAM]

A judge presides over the trial of Russian soldier Mikhail Kulikov on June 30, 2022. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

There was an initial crush of people lined up in a narrow hallway outside the court before the hearing got underway. Once inside, people crowded around the glass box to get a close-up look at Kulikov.

Stony-faced guards made sure that observers and members of the media who had come to watch the proceedings did not get too close. 

Kulikov came across as confident.

Though he had entered a guilty plea, he said he'd only been following his commander’s orders. He expressed remorse for what happened but otherwise said little. Every few minutes, he would lean over as his translator whispered in his ear. 

How the war crimes in Ukraine may be prosecuted

Prosecutors asserted Kulikov was guilty of a war crime, based on firing on a civilian apartment building. The verdict would be decided by a judge. Kulikov's guilty plea could lead to a more lenient punishment. 

But there were challenges to the government's case. 

No one had died in the shelling.

One of the witnesses, an elderly woman, said she had later found a soldier from the tank hiding in a barn where she keeps her chickens. But she said she couldn’t be completely sure the man was Kulikov. A second witness admitted he was down in the apartment building's bomb shelter when the incident took place. 

Kulikov's trial focused on fire that was directed that this apartment building. Prosecutors called it a war crime, but their case had challenges, including the fact that no one had been killed. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

The Russian soldier also said his superiors told him to fire on the building because someone holding an anti-tank missile had been spotted in or near the apartments. That could be a plausible defense. His commander was already back in Russia as part of a prisoner swap and couldn’t be questioned. 

The hearing’s lead prosecutor stressed several times that Kulikov was aware he was shooting at a residential area and there were no military facilities nearby. Yet it was not entirely clear how this prosecutor had been able to establish this. 

There were other red flags around how the Ukrainians had treated Kulikov.

In March, Kulikov spoke at a press conference organized by Interfax-Ukraine, a news agency. He appeared with two other Russian servicemen, all prisoners of war.

“The Ukrainian people are not afraid of anyone. They will stand up for their land to the last,” Kulikov said at the press conference. “(Russian) parents, block the roads, do not let your children go, do everything to make the Russian troops turn back.”

The statement may have been a reflection of Kulikov’s remorse. 

Court police wardens bring Russian soldier Mikhail Kulikov back to a cell, following a hearing during a trial accusing Kulikov of a war crime. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

But according to the Geneva Convention – several combined treaties and protocols agreed by every country that define how soldiers and civilians should be treated in war – a detaining authority has an obligation not to parade POWs or allow them to be exposed to the public. That, in itself, can be a form of war crime, even if it seems a slight one compared to the volume of atrocities alleged against Russia's military since the war started. 

As the Chernihiv hearing came to a close, the court's police wardens dragged Kulikov back to his cell. 

In early August, Kulikov was given a 10-year prison sentence.

A shopping mall lies in ruins

Ljudmyla Brygadyrenko sat on a bench in a small park directly adjacent to what had once been a shopping mall, waiting to learn whether her daughter was dead. 

Tatiana, 22, had worked in a kiosk in the center of the mall selling cellphone accessories. She and her boyfriend were planning to get married. That was before the missile strike, before the mall here in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, became internationally recognized, one of the conflict's most visible alleged war crimes. 

Brygadyrenko, 55, had been waiting for two days with no word from her daughter. 

"She put on a new dress when she left for work," said Brygadyrenko, recalling their final interaction. "I looked at her but didn't kiss her."

Ljudmyla and Volodymyr Brygadyrenko wait for word about daughter Tatiana as they sit near the remains of the Amstor shopping mall in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, on June 29, 2022. The 22-year-old was working in the mall at the time of the attack two days earlier and hadn't answered her phone or returned home since. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

About 100 yards behind the bench, over a hedge, the ground was charred.

Debris was everywhere. 

A crane groaned in the background, as it unearthed chunks of concrete from the tangled wreckage of what once had been a supermarket. 

Parts of the supermarket's fish counter were splattered nearby. Charred meat was visible, poking out from underneath piles of concrete. Every so often an aroma of rotting seafood wafted in on a cloud of dust kicked up from the crane's labored digging. 

"Right now we're only finding small fragments of bones," said Anton Stolitniy, a prosecutor from the neighboring Poltava region.

Stolitniy had been deployed to the Kremenchuk mall site for a few days.

As cranes and firefighters struggled with the remains of the collapsed shopping mall, bystanders waited for word on survivors. Evgenia Zharko, 34, had two friends who were killed in the strike. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Two days after the attack, the death toll had reached 20. 

Ukraine's security services released images and video showing a Russian missile approaching the mall and exploding on impact. 

It was a direct hit on a civilian building far from the front lines. 

The missile unleashed a massive fireball.

"The number of victims is impossible to imagine," Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram, a social media app popular in Ukraine and Russia, as he spoke of up to 1,000 people being inside the mall.

CCTV captured from a nearby park showed people running for cover as a second Russian missile hit a factory, sending shrapnel and debris flying into a lake.

Emergency workers attempting to reach trapped civilians were met by plumes of thick black smoke. The mall’s roof and walls started to collapse. 

As survivors and bystanders tried to clear the rubble and search for the missing, many noticed the ground was exceptionally warm. 

Smoke billows from a crowded shopping mall in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, June 27, 2022. Two days after the airstrike, Two days after the attack, the death toll had reached 20. "The number of victims is impossible to imagine," Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram. VIACHESLAV PRIADKO, AP

The fire inside was so hot it had melted metal and glass. 

Venediktova and a team of investigators arrived at the scene the next day. 

She said the attack constituted a "war crime" under Ukrainian law. In a joint statement, leaders of the Group of Seven countries, including U.S. President Joe Biden, came to a similar conclusion. [I am sorry but coming to the same conclusion isn’t enough. Whether it is our President or the heads of the other Group of Seven countries they should be condemning these war crimes via all available channels – television, radio, social media, speeches – there should be no one left across the globe that doesn’t know of the war crimes and genocide being committed by Russia. I remember the unremitting media campaign of “America Held Hostage” during the Iranian hostage situation in 1980. Every newspaper, every news media broadcast started “American Held Hostage” and the on-going story of Americans being held hostage in Iran. That is what should be happening now! Something like “Russian War Crimes – Day ____” Putin and Russia are, and should be treated, as international thugs just as the Iranians were. RAM]

A day after Venediktova's visit to the scene, scores of firefighters, emergency personnel and investigators were still excavating the site. They were hoping to unearth more evidence, including human remains. Some people were still missing, though the focus was on search-and-recovery, not rescue. 

As the temperature approached 95 degrees angle grinders could be heard cutting through buckled steel beams at the hulking, blackened scene. Firefighters rested in small pools of shade. 

Workers remove debris from Amstor mall in Kremenchuk on June 29, 2022, two days after it was hit by what Ukrainian authorities called a Russian missile strike. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Stolitniy said that while each loss of life in the mall was an absolute tragedy, some of the most important evidence that could be collected in the investigation was identifiable pieces of the missile – hard facts that could tie a crime scene to a particular Russian military unit and, potentially, to the specific commander who gave the order to fire it. 

He would not say what, if anything, of that nature had been found in the Kremenchuk mall. Nor would an officer from Ukraine’s domestic security service, known as the SBU, who was observing the scene. 

"It's possible we're not going to find anything else that looks like a person," Stolitniy said.

Still, Brygadyrenko sat on her bench waiting for news.

Tatiana’s father had submitted a DNA sample to investigators.

The family had been to all the area hospitals and police stations. Her boyfriend was down at the morgue. There was no sign of her.

In recent weeks, amid an uptick of Russian missile and shelling attacks on civilians across Ukraine, Brygadyrenko had implored her daughter to go to a bomb shelter across the street from the mall when the air raid sirens sounded. It's something many Ukrainians have become blase about because of the frequency of alarms, the vast majority of which end without incident.

Ljudmyla Brygadyrenko, 55, shows a picture of her missing daughter, Tatiana. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Evidently her daughter had ignored this advice. 

"She loved life, and Russia took that life," the mother said. 

"She graduated from a culinary school,” she said, before grief abruptly halted her speech. “I told her, 'Go, at least you will be able to cook for yourself.’”

The following week, investigators located Tatiana Brygadyrenko’s teeth in the mall's rubble, matched to her dental records. Her mother was also able to identify a necklace.

It had a tiny cross on it. [I applaud USToday – throughout this article we are introduced to real people and must grasp these deaths are not statistics, they are human lives being taken for no justifiable reason regardless of Putin’s lies. People are dying, families are being destroyed in Putin’s scorched earth war. RAM]

A missile falls next to a school

The elementary school in Kharkiv sat next to an enormous crater in its side yard, where apple trees had grown. 

A Russian missile hit the schoolyard, blowing out hundreds of windows and destroying many classrooms.

Elena Fomichova, the school's director, was organizing parents and former students to help clean up the mess. 

Ljudmyla Brygadyrenko, 55, shows a picture of her missing daughter, Tatiana.JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Evidently her daughter had ignored this advice. 

"She loved life, and Russia took that life," the mother said. 

"She graduated from a culinary school,” she said, before grief abruptly halted her speech. “I told her, 'Go, at least you will be able to cook for yourself.’”

The following week, investigators located Tatiana Brygadyrenko’s teeth in the mall's rubble, matched to her dental records. Her mother was also able to identify a necklace.

It had a tiny cross on it. [I applaud USToday – throughout this article we are introduced to real people and must grasp these deaths are not statistics, they are human lives being taken for no justifiable reason regardless of Putin’s lies. People are dying, families are being destroyed in Putin’s scorched earth war. RAM]

A missile falls next to a school

The elementary school in Kharkiv sat next to an enormous crater in its side yard, where apple trees had grown. 

A Russian missile hit the schoolyard, blowing out hundreds of windows and destroying many classrooms.

Elena Fomichova, the school's director, was organizing parents and former students to help clean up the mess. 

Ekaterina Bogdanova, 79 cleans Kharkiv's school No. 29 after the school yard was hit by a Russian missile on during the night of June 27, 2022.JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

"Just the other day there were kids playing soccer right over there," said Fomichova, pointing to a field about 50 yards away.

Before the war, before hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children fled for safety overseas, before the coronavirus pandemic, Kharkiv's school No. 29 had about 300 pupils. 

Few children remained after the war began, and in June, class was out for the summer. No one was inside when the blast hit. 

"Look, this is a school, it's not a military target. There are no military targets around here. Only a hospital a few streets away," said Roman Petrenko, the prosecutor responsible for the district in north-west Kharkiv that administers school No. 29. 

Roman Petrenko, prosecutor

Look, this is a school, it's not a military target. There are no military targets around here. Only a hospital a few streets away.

But even here, truth can be hazy, with moving parts and multiple explanations. 

Not far from the soccer field were a series of brick buildings surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire. Every few minutes a few soldiers would quietly come or go from a small gate connected to the wall.

At first, Petrenko was adamant that the buildings next to the school had no military function. Eventually he conceded the site housed some buildings Ukraine's military was using to do work related to radio communications. He said he did not know more. 

Could the Russian missile that struck school No. 29 have been intended for the buildings next door instead of the school? It's conceivable. It doesn't excuse the strike on the school, but it could make it a mistake rather than a crime.

 A man looks out a broken window at Kharkiv's school No. 29, June 27, 2022, following a Russian missile strike. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

It may also suggest that in some cases, Ukrainian military infrastructure is close to civilian buildings.

At another school in Kharkiv that was hit by a missile strike, it seemed apparent that Ukrainian soldiers had been sleeping there. And the school settings again expose the difficult questions of wartime justice.

If soldiers are using an empty school as barracks, does that mean the school no longer constitutes civilian infrastructure?

This may sound like legal hair-splitting when Ukraine as a whole has been invaded by Russia and may, in fact, have no option but to fight back from urban settings in close proximity to where civilians live and work.

Yet some war crimes legal experts say, as far as international convictions go, it isn’t. 

Investigators examine the hole left by a Russian missile strike outside of Kharkiv's No. 29 school, June 27, 2022. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

“When NATO forces bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo, the Chinese government considered bringing war crimes charges. One of the reasons it didn’t was because NATO said it was using old maps and it had been a clear mistake. Even if there had been a conflict situation, it would have been impossible to prove,” said Toby Cadman, a London-based judge and expert in international criminal law who has worked on war crimes cases connected to Kosovo, Syria and elsewhere.

Still, after humanitarian group Amnesty International's Ukraine operations published a report accusing Ukraine of endangering civilians by basing some soldiers in empty schools and near hospitals, Hanna Maliar, the country's deputy minister of defense, noted that Ukrainian troops and artillery needed to be in towns and cities to protect civilian infrastructure or "Russian forces would simply sweep in unopposed." [Amnesty International has a name that continues to suggest credibility and it gets cited often. Its record however should make anything it says or does, at best, suspect. RAM]

Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's foreign minister, accused Amnesty of fostering disinformation and aiding Russian propaganda. Other Ukrainian officials and some international ones argued that because Russia is the aggressor, any tactics used by Ukraine to defend itself were justified. [In defending their country, the people of Ukraine are supposed to fight with their hands tied? How about the international focus being on the unprovoked war and the war crimes? RAM]

A larger truth remains elusive

One hundred and eighty days into the war, Ukraine maintains control of most of the sovereign territory it held before the invasion. It has started ramping up strikes on Russian-held bridges and weapons depots.

The litany of war crimes allegations against Russia also continues to grow.

Ukrainian officials believe that Russia killed at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners of war at a detention camp in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, possibly by mining the barrack with a "flammable substance" that led to a massive fire.

But it may be too soon to conclude whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute Russian actors in an international legal setting for genocide, a category of war crime that can be committed during war or peace and is typically defined as an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. [There are courts and there is public opinion – it was a war crime in the common sense of the word and its being such should be shouted over-and-over again. RAM]

Family and friends watch as a cross is placed to mark the grave of fallen Ukrainian solider Yuriy Mukhin at Kharkiv Cemetery number 18, June 28, 2022. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Zelenskyy and other top Ukrainian officials have repeatedly described Russia’s atrocities in these terms, as have some U.S. lawmakers. [Not enough lawmakers. Recall the 57 House Members who voted against support for Ukraine and think of the candidates around the country running who are against support for Ukraine. At every townhall, press conference, etc. there should be calls for supporting Ukraine - and our national security interests in Ukraine. RAM]

Yet there are potential hurdles. 

“It is much harder to prove from a judicial perspective that genocide is taking place in Ukraine than it is from an analytical or moral or historical perspective,” said Eugene Finkel, a Ukrainian-born political scientist and noted genocide scholar who teaches at Johns Hopkins University and has concluded that genocide is happening in Ukraine. 

“You need to prove intent, motivation; you need to explain the logic, make an argument. As a historian I can look at the bigger picture and look at who gets killed and why. That’s more difficult for prosecutors who mostly look at what happened in each individual case,” he said. 

Ukraine has also identified about 600 top Russian officials – cabinet ministers, senior military commanders, propagandists – who it wants to hold accountable for the "crime of aggression." The crime of aggression targets those most responsible – leaders – for the act of invading, attacking, annexing or bombing another country. 

Emilia Krylas, 4, kisses a photo of her father Oleg Krylas, 44, before saying good bye at the Irpin cemetery on July 5, 2022. Krylas, according to his wife Neonila, was killed by a sniper while fighting on the frontlines in the Donbas region. His family came to visit Krylas on the 40th day since his death bringing him flowers, candy, alcohol and cigerettes. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

It has been argued successfully internationally only at the Nuremberg trials and at the Tokyo tribunal, which also was connected to World War II, according to Jennifer Trahan, a legal expert who teaches at New York University. 

Whether Ukraine will be able to engineer an international tribunal for this kind of prosecution remains to be seen, though it did convict and sentence in its own courts – in absentia – former president Viktor Yanukovych of the crime of aggression over his attempts to quash a 2014 pro-Western uprising.

“We understand that this is a long-term play,” said Yuriy Belousov, Ukraine's chief prosecutor responsible for war crimes cases. 

“We understand there are limitations. We don't have physical access to these people. We also know if they leave Russia, go somewhere, justice will wait for them there.” [It would certainly help if the United States would support such a tribunal as it should. RAM]

An early atrocity remains unresolved 

One person who isn't prepared to be patient is Natalia Verbova.

Her husband was one of eight men killed in Bucha by Russian paratroopers in March. 

The Kyiv suburb saw some of the worst Russian atrocities, according to investigators, witnesses and human rights groups: residents raped and killed in basements; people subjected to mock and summary executions; snipers firing on unsuspecting civilians or those trying to run away; people forced to smell corpses. Hundreds were buried in mass graves. 

Natalia Verbova visits 144 Yablunska St., where her husband, Andriy Verbovyi, was killed with seven other men in Bucha, Ukraine. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

"The torture (the Russians) inflicted. The physical and mental pain. They must experience it themselves," said Verbova as she fiddled with a box of matches while sitting on a bench near where her husband was killed.

Verbova, a 50-year-old nurse, told the story of her husband's death, something she has done many times. It never gets easier.

Eyewitness accounts and video, some of it first published in the New York Times, have established Andriy Verbovyi and the others were marched to their deaths at gunpoint.

They were members of a poorly equipped civilian militia manning a makeshift checkpoint – they had a grenade, a pair of binoculars and a rifle among them – when they went into hiding as Russian airborne troops advanced on Bucha, just north of Kyiv. 

Before the war, the men were civilians. 

The Russians "must experience it themselves," Natalia Verbova said of the loss of her husband, one of eight killed in some of the worst wartime atrocities, according to investigators. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Verbovyi, 55, was a carpenter whose deft skills earned him the nickname “golden hands.”

"He could make anything from scratch," his wife said. "He approached everything in a humane way. He tried to help everyone, give advice, do things for them."

The men hid directly opposite the checkpoint at 31 Yablunska St. 

Valera Kotenko, who owned the home where they hid, used to bring them hot tea and coffee as they stood for hours outside in the cold. Now, as they stayed out of sight and hoped the Russians would pass by, they sent messages by text to wives and girlfriends and parents. 

"His last words were 'I love you but please don't call me again.' He was afraid of making noise. They were surrounded by Russians and spoke only in whispers," said Verbova.

His last words were 'I love you but please don't call me again.' He was afraid of making noise. They were surrounded by Russians and spoke only in whispers.

On the morning of March 4, the Russians found them. 

Images taken from CCTV footage show nine men, each with one hand placed on their heads and the other holding the belt or pants waist of the man in front, being led up the street to a nearby office building at 144 Yablunska St. 

Andriy Turbar, Bucha's deputy prosecutor, said the men were lined up against a wall in a parking lot, beaten and made to pull their sweaters over their heads. Verbovyi and another man, Ivan Skyba, were taken inside the office building for questioning.

It was here that Verbovyi was shot and killed.

Skyba was then taken back to the parking lot, from where he and the remaining captives were led around a corner to a small courtyard. 

Witnesses heard gunshots. The men were not seen alive again. 

"People in Bucha were killed simply because they were Ukrainian,” said Turbar. "We don't have another explanation."

Natalia Verbova shows a picture of her husband Andriy Verbovyi, 55, who was killed with seven other men by Russian soliders in Bucha in early March. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

The bodies laid there until early April, when the area was liberated by Ukrainian forces. Their families had little idea what had happened to them. 

Even now, investigators are finding bodies in Bucha, according to Serghii Lyakhovych, 28, the town's medical examiner. A few days before USA TODAY visited the area this summer, investigators exhumed seven bodies found near a Russian trench on Bucha's outskirts. The victims had been shot in the head and knees. They wore jeans and sneakers and T-shirts. Likely civilians, said Lyakhovych. 

The courtyard at 144 Yablunska St. still exhibits evidence of how Verbovyi and the other men from the checkpoint were executed. 

Gun-shot markings can be seen on a series of steps and across a back wall. They are low to the ground. The men almost certainly died on their knees.

Pockmarks from bullet appear on the steps outside 144 Yablunska Street, where Ukrainan men were shot and killed. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Photos from the scene show some of the men with no shoes on. At least one had his hands bound. Their bodies look rigid and twisted. One man’s foot appears to be caught in a chain-link fence, partly held aloft there by his sock. 

Verbova visits the courtyard often with her grown son. They bring flowers and candles. Verbovyi’s body was dumped there with the others after he was killed inside the building.

"My husband always liked to buy and light candles when we went to visit relatives and friends (at the cemetery). So I do that for him now,” she said. 

Yet Verbova is unsettled by her understanding of the status of the investigation. It's too slow, she can't see any noticeable progress and she's had little contact with prosecutors, she says. She is also upset that authorities keep demanding additional proof her husband was working for Ukraine's military when he died. This has a bearing, she says, on the compensation she is due from the state. 

“I am really disappointed – why haven't those criminals, those Russians, been found? Why isn't an international tribunal dealing with them?” she asked.

Andriy Turbar, Bucha's deputy prosecutor, holds a photo from his folder of evidence of bodies found on the side of this building in Bucha. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

One aspect in particular troubles her: Skyba, the man with whom her husband had gone into the building at 144 Yablunska St., emerged from the building alive. After being taken to the courtyard where the other men were shot and left for dead, he survived that episode, too.

 In a new BBC documentary, Skyba explains how he narrowly avoided death, by playing dead. 

 Verbova feels it made him out to be something of a hero. 

“I have a lot of questions for him,” she said. “How did the Russians know they were hiding at 31 Yablunska Street? They hid there for almost a day. Why didn’t they split up?"

In a phone interview, Skyba said he has been cooperating with a probe handled by the SBU, Ukraine's domestic security agency. Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office declined comment, citing an open legal case. 

In mid-July, Zelenskyy removed Venediktova from her role as prosecutor general when he also relieved the head of Ukraine's domestic security agency from his duties.

Ukraine’s then-prosector general, Iryna Venediktova, at her Kyiv office, July 1, 2022. Later that month, she was removed from office. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Both of the organizations they led, Zelenskyy said in explaining their dismissals, were riddled with Russian collaborators. He said more than 60 former employees of the two powerful organizations were actively working against Ukrainian interests and more than 650 treason cases against Ukrainian law enforcement officials had been opened. A representative for Venediktova did not return a request for comment on her firing, which was later upheld by Ukraine’s Parliament.

War crimes trials could lead to international courts. But could they lead to Putin?

Striking a balance as bombs fall

Russia has fired almost 3,500 missiles at Ukrainian cities, according to Zelenskyy.

Many have been shot down or have failed to hit a target. 

Others simply don’t detonate. Many, when investigators unearth them, resemble little more than gnarled scrap metal.

Russia says it is using high-precision weaponry to target military infrastructure. Yet most of the fragments of missiles, rockets and artillery shells Ukrainian investigators collect are old, unguided, Soviet-era. [Which are just fine for the indiscriminate slaughter intended to eliminate the people of Ukraine and the destruction of their country. RAM]

Metal scraps, like these in Kharkiv, help investigators determine the types of ammunition and missiles that are used by Russian military attacks. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

A lot of this evidence is stored in undisclosed locations, often warehouses, like the one overseen by Volodymyr Homenko, a former SWAT team instructor who runs an explosive ordnance disposal unit at Ukraine’s national police, part of the ministry of internal affairs.

There are about 20 of these warehouses full of ballistics evidence across Ukraine.

Homenko’s was situated on Kyiv’s outskirts.

Inside, the remains of munitions were separated by type and laid out on the floor: Iskander missiles, Smerch cluster rockets, aerial bombs, shells. (Ukraine’s domestic security agency swiftly removes any higher-tech weapons recovered from crime scenes, according to Homenko. It does this so its ballistics experts can study and even copy the technology.)

The building has seen better days. The entrance was secured by a single padlock. 

A warehouse in Kyiv holds row after row of Russian munitions, evidence collected in the ongoing probes of suspected war crimes. Volodymyr Homenko, a former SWAT team instructor who runs the site, says missile parts can be traced back to the specific Russian military units that could face charges. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Close to the front door, a supermarket shopping cart with its wheels cut off was stacked full of land mine tops. Small pools of dingy water and discarded fast-food packaging shared the floor with thousands of neatly sorted exploded and unexploded weaponry. On a rear wall, someone had scrawled in red, in all caps, what appeared to be the word “DEATH.”

Homenko explained how some of the missile parts can be traced back to the specific Russian military units that fired them through their serial numbers, something that could prove useful if certain war crimes cases go to court.

In March, Russian offensive positions were less than three miles from this spot; Homenko and 25 of “his guys” had suited up in military tactical gear, grabbed their weapons and were ready to engage the enemy before Russia’s forces retreated.

Back then, this warehouse was receiving “a truckload a day” of potential munitions evidence, Homenko said. By late summer, the flow had trickled to a few pieces a day.

Damaged Russian munitions are housed in a Kyiv warehouse, July 7, 2022.JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

"Each of these strikes has 100 stories behind it, one worse than the next," said Amed Khan, an American human rights activist and philanthropist who has spent much of the war traveling Ukraine and helping to procure humanitarian supplies.

Still, Ukraine's quest for justice continues to put its investigators in different versions of the same difficult situation. Limited resources and training. Expanding cases. International scrutiny. Public pressure for convictions. 

A amid a threat to their own safety is something Oleksiy Filchakov, Kharkiv’s chief prosecutor, knows all about.

He has a few rules he and his team of investigators stick to when investigating war crimes in the “gray zone,” an unofficial contact line that separates Ukrainian territory from that held by Russia’s military. 

No more than two vehicles. If there are more than 10 people in the group – investigators, explosives technicians, forensic specialists – switch all cellphones off. Don’t stay at any one crime scene for more than two hours; three is usually the absolute maximum.

The Russians snoop on cellphone networks and are prone to target clusters of cars and people in this area – especially those who want to hold them to account, he said.

Kharkiv's chief regional prosecutor, Oleksiy Filchakov.JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

“Armored cars don’t really protect us,” Filchakov said in an interview in his Kharkiv office. It sits on a nexus of streets surrounded by bombed-out and abandoned buildings.

Underneath a khaki shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Filchakov wore a military olive green T-shirt similar to the one that Zelenskyy has favored since the war's start, instead of his former navy suits, white shirts and ties. The T-shirt has come to symbolize strength, patriotism, Ukraine's defiance to Russia's war.

“Maybe against small pieces of shrapnel, but if there is a direct hit from the drones and banned rocket systems Russia uses, nothing will remain of this armored car. We have gotten used to arriving at a scene, then having to take shelter in a basement,” he said.

Filchakov had originally arranged for USA TODAY to accompany his investigators to a crime scene in the gray zone outside central Kharkiv. 

He called it off at the last-minute after receiving an intelligence update.

“Too dangerous,” he said. 

“Even being in this room, we are also in danger, because the positions of the Russian military are only 20 km (12 miles) from this place. This building is a target.” 

Most attacks happen during the night. 

Volodymyr Olkhovik, 79, hospitalized in Kharkiv the day after a cluster bomb exploded in his neighborhood on June 29, 2022. Olkhovik was seated at the bench playing dominoes with 12 others when the cluster ammunition exploded near them. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

“They start at 23:00 hours and you could set your clock to them,” said Nils Thal, 35, a volunteer German firefighter from Nuremberg who spent about eight weeks in Kharkiv this summer embedded with Ukrainian emergency response units.

Thal heard the sounds made by the cluster bomb that killed Satanovskiy. He was standing on the roof of a fire station. He had gone up there to drink a cup of coffee. He later helped Ukrainian investigators as they zipped Satanovskiy up in a body bag. 

But the missiles and shells also strike during the day. It was Filchakov who alerted USA TODAY to the cluster bomb attack that killed Satanovskiy.

"There was no smoke, only pops and flying fragments. The fragments were large. I was struck by one as thick as a finger," said Volodymyr Olkhovik, 79, who was seated at the bench playing dominoes on the side opposite to Satanovskiy. 

Olkhovik escaped with a broken leg and shrapnel in his back. 

Olkhovik, like Satanovskiy, hadn't planned to play that day either. He had only decided last minute to stop by on his way back from the grocery store. 

Anna Satanovskaya, 84 sits on her bed the day after losing her husband Alexander Satanovskiy in a cluster bomb attack. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Since the war erupted on Feb. 24, the U.N. has verified more than 5,000 civilian deaths, though the true figure may be far higher.

The missiles and shells appear to fall down from the sky randomly.

On a school one minute. On a sports hall or popular shopping mall the next. On an unremarkable playground, where men like Satanovskiy like to play dominoes and aren’t expecting to die before dinner on a warm and pleasant summer evening.

And in the hours that follow, investigators will arrive to begin their task again. 

"What we need to do this work is time," said Filchakov. "We need more time."

Contributing: Jessica Koscielniak, Iryna Dobrohorska, Kostya Ilianok.

Published August 23rd

War crimes trials could lead to international courts. But could they lead to Putin?

Kim Hjelmgaard USA TODAY

Published 2:54 am UTC Aug. 24, 2022 Updated 2:54 am UTC Aug. 24, 2022

BORODYANKA, Ukraine – The laser scanner beamed its rays up and down a stretch of troubled road. It had one aim: help lock up Russian war criminals. 

In March, dozens of Ukrainian civilians died near this road in Borodyanka, a town about 50 miles northwest of the capital Kyiv, as tons of concrete and steel collapsed on top of them. They had been sheltering in the basements of apartment buildings struck by suspected Russian airstrikes and missiles. 

Now, a Polish team had been deployed to Borodyanka with a sophisticated laser scanner to document the physical impact as part of war crimes investigations. These probes are ongoing – the number of cases expanding – as Russia's invasion of Ukraine turns 6 months old.

“This a technical but important tool to help us build up a digital picture of the destruction,” said Michal Kurowski, the prosecutor who was leading the team of specialist investigators. They spent a week in Borodyanka in late June scanning almost 5 miles of the town's streets block by block.

Polish investigators photograph the destruction in Borodyanka, Ukraine. Investigator will use the imagery to create a 3D model of the damage. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

The scanner can capture 3D reality at a measuring rate of 7 million points per second – more than triple what is considered exceptionally accurate.

Each day, the scanner took about 3,000 pictures, which were then fed into a software system that created a simulated experience – virtual reality – of Borodyanka’s caved-in and crumbled buildings. The idea is that one day, prosecutors in a courtroom will be able to use these simulations to walk judges and juries around and within the bombed out apartment buildings as they consider war crimes evidence against Russia.

The Polish team's use of the laser scanner reflects the spectrum of approaches investigators are using to gather war evidence, which include scraps of ballistic evidence, witness testimony, open-source photos and radio intercepts.

Just as the investigations are wide-ranging, they could lead to a wide range of outcomes in the push for justice. 

Courts of many possible varieties 

Ukraine has chosen to pursue the majority of its war crime cases in its domestic courts, where it might, some experts believe, have more latitude to pursue convictions with evidence that falls short of international legal standards.

Beyond local courts, options for possible war crimes trials are broad. But each comes with its own complications: 

The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, does not try war crimes cases unless the accused is present in the court. Although Ukraine is already holding trials for some of the Russian soldiers it has captured, the country aspires to prosecute officials from Russia, such as commanders who launch rockets from across the border or who order other atrocities. But it could take years, if at all, before such senior perpetrators are identified or detained. 

The United Nations has sent investigators to probe rights abuses in Ukraine. The U.N. convened such a war crimes tribunal to deal with wartime atrocities in the former Yugoslavia; that effort lasted more than two decades. But Russia's seat on the U.N. Security Council means it would almost certainly veto any similar attempt now.

Military tribunals held in Nuremberg and Tokyo related to war crimes during World War II were convened in military courts by the victors.

Other countries have opened their own investigations. They include many European countries, as well the U.S. Justice Department. But these cases focus on potential unlawful killings of their nationals in Ukraine. If the suspects are ever arrested, trying them in those national courts would hinge on a potentially lengthy extradition process.

At the top, little way to reach Putin

For now, Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior members of his government enjoy relative impunity. 

As long as they stay in power, and remain in Russia or some other Moscow-friendly country, it will be extremely difficult to execute any arrest warrants to bring them before a global court, said Nigel Povoas, a British lawyer who has led the prosecution against some of the world’s most notorious international criminals and is now advising Ukraine's government on its war crimes cases. 

Heads of state are often isolated from international justice, regardless of wartime atrocities. [It certainly doesn’t mean that they cannot be called out as war criminals and international pariah – something that be done loudly and continuously. As writing above, it is time to recognize who and what we are dealing with and get over Washington’s multi-administration fantasy of stable US-Russian relations. Time to do what is right and stop sacrificing what is right at the altar of meaningless stability. RAM] 

Vladimir Putin in February 2022, the month the invasion of Ukraine began. ADAM BERRY / GETTY IMAGES

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, for example, has evaded international justice despite more than a decade’s worth of evidence establishing how he has, with Russia’s assistance, bombed hospitals and schools, plunged large parts of the country into physical ruin and murdered tens of thousands of civilians.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi over alleged war crimes connected to anti-regime protests in 2011. He was deposed and executed by his own people before prosecutors could hold him to account in The Hague.

By the time the U.N.-established court connected to the former Yugoslavia dissolved in 2017, it had spent 24 years – 10,800 trial days – hearing 4,650 witnesses, examining 2.5 million pages of transcripts and delivering indictments against 161 people, including former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. It took a 13-year manhunt involving the CIA and various U.S. special forces groups before Karadzic was brought to trial by a special criminal tribunal, also in The Hague.

There were major disruptions.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic refused to enter a plea at the U.N. war crime tribunal in The Hauge, Netherlands, in, 2001. He calling the tribunal illegal. AP PHOTO/ICTY TV

Slobodan Praljak, a Bosnian Croat general who was convicted of crimes against humanity while commanding his forces, killed himself in the courtroom by drinking potassium cyanide. His last words before drinking the poison were: "Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal. With indignation, I reject your verdict."

The ICC does not hold hearings in August, when Europeans tend to go on vacation, but on any other day this summer, its courtrooms heard testimony related to war crimes allegations including torture, mutilation, hostage taking, genocide and crimes against humanity. Throughout June and July, these hearings were exclusively devoted to alleged war crimes connected to conflicts in the Central African Republic, Mali and Sudan. These cases stem from events that took place 10 to 20 years ago.

Nigel Povoas, British lawyer

The wheels of International justice far too often have moved too slowly to meet the demands of victims and communities to see justice done within a reasonable time after their suffering was inflicted.

The chance of a top Russian official facing trial  "all depends on the course of the war. If (Putin and others) remain in Russia, it may not be realistic. But if the war goes Ukraine’s way, they may eventually be able to be accessed and arrested,” said Povoas, who noted that Ukraine could, in its own courts, still seek to try some of Russia’s senior leaders in absentia.

Povoas added that in many ways, national courts are increasingly seen as the most effective places to try war crimes cases because they tend to be more efficient and more accessible to the needs of victims and witnesses. International legal settings require far more coordination, bureaucracy and funding.

“The wheels of International justice far too often have moved too slowly to meet the demands of victims and communities to see justice done within a reasonable time after their suffering was inflicted,” he said. 

It is also expensive.

David Akerson, a former prosecutor at the U.N. atrocity trials connected to the former Yugoslavia, has estimated that each war crimes trial can cost around $30 million. 

Kurowski said the scanner used in Borodyanka cost several hundred thousand dollars. Such devices had only recently been made available in Poland and he didn't think any of the other investigation teams in Ukraine, foreign or domestic, had one. 

A city scarred by war

When Russia’s invading forces withdrew from Borodyanka in April, they left a shattered town. Some people are still missing.

Yet life has slowly returned. 

A fruit-and-vegetable market has reopened in the town's main square.

As of late June, about half of its population of 16,000 people had come home.

But the once sleepy town still bears obvious scars: rows of high-rise apartment buildings cleaved in two, whole floors gutted by fire or with their entrails – sinks, ovens, air-conditioners – hanging upside down or at strange angles.

In the surrounding fields, mines are still being cleared. 

 C 

Investigators examine the damage in Borodyanka, where life is slowly returning. About half its population has come home, but high-rises still stand gutted, and minefields are still being cleared. JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK, USA TODAY

Investigators like Glyn Morgan, a British criminal intelligence expert who is advising Ukraine’s government on its war crimes probes, regularly turn up in Borodyanka.

“The approach I always take is to try and understand what was the military logic behind what happened. Because if there is a military logic, then that often means that it isn't necessarily a (war crime),” said Morgan, who was observing a series of burned-out civilian buildings in town, half of which had been reduced to rubble. 

“Unless those buildings had some particular military value in them, such as a Ukrainian army commander or an anti-tank or anti-aircraft missiles in there, they have no specific military value. So why would you even waste one of your own bombs bombing a target that isn't essential from a military perspective?” he mused. 

Possible fallout for Putin

Putin’s concern over the war crime claims may be materializing in other ways. 

In mid-June, Dutch authorities said they foiled a plot by a Russian spy to gain access to the International Criminal Court as it investigated allegations of Russian war crimes. According to Dutch intelligence, a Russian military intelligence officer named Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov used an elaborately constructed identity to try to infiltrate the court as an intern.

Cherkasov crafted an alias of a Brazilian man. He then used that fake name to apply for the internship. In his application, he spun a complex cover tale about growing up in poverty and how members of his family suffered from heart problems. 

How the war crimes in Ukraine may be prosecuted

If this person had gotten the chance to really work at the ICC, he could have gathered information, could have spotted sources (or recruited them) and could have gained access to the digital systems,” the Dutch intelligence service said in a statement. 

“He might also have been able to influence criminal proceedings of the ICC.”

Cherkasov was arrested and deported back to Brazil.

Still, in a likely sign of Ukraine's impatience for justice, it might have already moved toward one other possible method of avenging war crimes: extra-judicial killings of Russian suspects.

Gen. Kyrylo O. Budanov, the country’s chief military intelligence officer, told USA TODAY that his operatives are hunting Russian military personnel believed responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.

Gen. Kyrylo O. Budanov, Ukraine’s chief military intelligence officer

Amid the fog of war sometimes the Russians cannot clearly differentiate if a person just died in a battle or if there's been a targeted assassination.

He said these operations have also taken place inside Russia, successfully targeting mid-ranking Russian officers.

When confronted with these claims this summer, Ukraine's then-prosecutor general Iryna Venediktova said she found Budanov’s assertions “shocking.” Andriy Kostin, her successor, could not immediately be reached for comment. 

"Amid the fog of war sometimes the Russians cannot clearly differentiate if a person just died in a battle or if there's been a targeted assassination," Budanov said. 

Contributing: Jessica Koscielniak, Iryna Dobrohorska, Kostya Ilianok

Published 2:54 am UTC Aug. 24, 2022 Updated 2:54 am UTC Aug. 24, 2022

How a war crime in Ukraine can be identified, prosecuted, punished

Javier Zarracina Kim Hjelmgaard USA TODAY

Published 2:27 am UTC Aug. 24, 2022 Updated 2:27 am UTC Aug. 24, 2022

Russia's invasion of Ukraine drew resounding condemnation from the West. But an objectionable war is not the same as a war crime.

To prove a crime, investigators must build a case under local or international law. USA TODAY spent weeks following teams of investigators in Ukraine, whose work shows just how complex and murky that effort can sometimes be. 

Is the invasion of Ukraine a war crime?

Even if widely decried for being unprovoked, unjustified and morally wrong, Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty falls short of what is typically prosecuted as a war crime in an international court. 

Ukraine wants to hold Russia accountable for the crime of aggression – a statute that says it is illegal to invade, bomb or annex another country. It has only been applied internationally twice before, at the Nuremberg trials and Tokyo tribunal in the wake of World War II, according to Jennifer Trahan, a legal expert who teaches at New York University. 

Ukraine previously convicted in its own domestic courts – in absentia – former president Viktor Yanukovych of the crime of aggression over his attempts to quash a 2014 pro-Western uprising.

What qualifies as a war crime?

War crimes are violations of the laws of war as codified by international humanitarian treaties such as the Geneva Convention and Rome Statue.

They include atrocities against people or property, murder, ill-treatment, sexual violence, forced deportations, hostage killing, torture, plunder or destruction of public property, and devastation not justified by military necessity. War crimes can be committed against diverse victims, both civilians and soldiers. 

Genocide, a category of war crime, comprises acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Crimes against humanity are intentional acts against civilian populations, including murder, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment and torture.

How are war crime laws enforced?

Ukraine intends to prosecute the majority of its war crimes cases in its own courts. Eight cases have so far been tried, each involving low-ranking Russian soldiers. It may also try some cases in absentia, meaning the defendants would not be in custody. 

The International Criminal Court, in The Hague, Netherlands, claims universal jurisdiction for war crimes cases. It has opened its own probes in Ukraine. However, the ICC does not hold war crimes hearings unless the accused is present in the court. It could take years, if at all, before many senior suspects are detained. Neither Ukraine, Russia nor the U.S. is a party to the ICC. 

The U.N. has sent investigators to Ukraine to probe human rights abuses.

But Russia's veto power on the U.N. Security Council means the international body likely won't be able to establish a formal tribunal for Ukraine similar to the one that dealt with massacres, ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, crimes against humanity and genocide in the former Yugoslavia. 

The Nuremberg trials were carried out by Allied forces in Germany, beginning in 1945 when the top surviving German leaders and high-ranking officials, as well as six organizations, were tried for Nazi war crimes. The Nuremberg trials were an international military tribunal led by prosecutors from the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The Tokyo trials, also in a military court, prosecuted Japanese leaders for World War II war crimes. 

Other countries, including the U.S. and many in Europe, have opened their own investigations. But these cases focus on potential unlawful killings of their nationals in Ukraine. If the suspects are ever arrested, trying them in those national courts would hinge on a potentially lengthy extradition process. 

How are war crimes prosecuted?

The sequence of judicial steps needed to prove a war crime is similar to an ordinary criminal prosecution: Evidence shows the nature of the crime. Witness interviews establish the events. Suspects are identified. If investigators succeed, the suspects are charged, convicted and sentenced.

Crucially, war crimes prosecutors look for evidence of intent – that it wasn’t an honest mistake. They consider whether there is any significant military target nearby. Soldiers in war must also show regard for protecting civilian lives, and prosecutors look for evidence that soldiers have neglected this duty, based on the precision of the weaponry and where it was used.

So, bringing a war crimes case presents many challenges and hurdles - accepted. But the opinion of people matters and given the facts of Putin's war they will see the outrageous atrocities being committed can make their own decisions and they should be given all the facts and images so that they can make it clear to their representatives in government what our policies and actions should be. RAM

The introductory and parenthetical comments are Mr. McConnell's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation or the Foundation's Friends of Ukraine Network.

Bob McConnell

Coordinator, External Relations

U.S.-Ukraine Foundation’s Friends of Ukraine Network

Robert A. McConnell is a co-founder of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation and Coordinator of External Relations for the Foundation’s Friends of Ukraine Network. He is Principal of R.A. McConnell and Associates. Previously, he has served as head of the Government Advocacy Practice at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Vice President – Washington for CBS, Inc, and Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice during the Reagan Administration. robert@usukraine.org

I do also note a number of people have written to ask what they can do to support the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation and/or other relief efforts focused on Ukraine.

If you are interested, please use the "Donate Now" button below it will take you to the Foundation's website, where you will be provided several options. 

DONATE NOWShare This Email Share This Email Share This EmailYou can also support the U.S. - Ukraine Foundation's mission by sending a contribution by mail to:

U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, 6312 Seven Corners Center - #361, Falls Church, VA 22044

U.S.-Ukraine Foundation | 1050 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 500, Washington, DC 20036Unsubscribe ybh1234@aol.comUpdate Profile | Constant Contact Data NoticeSent by robertamcconnelljr@verizon.net

21. Is the US mission to support Ukraine getting a named operation?

Is the US mission to support Ukraine getting a named operation?

militarytimes.com · by Meghann Myers · August 25, 2022

Six months into the U.S. effort to bolster Ukraine’s military with equipment, while reassuring NATO allies with troops and aircraft throughout Eastern Europe and Germany, the plan is for troops to remain activated for the foreseeable future.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the Biden administration plans to put a name on this support effort, in the vein of the ongoing Operational Inherent Resolve mission to defeat ISIS. But a Pentagon spokesman couldn’t confirm that report on Thursday.

“I’m not aware of any plans to establish a named operation in support of Ukraine security assistance,” Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. “It’s certainly something to take a look at and when we have something to announce, definitely, but I’m not aware of anything.”

RELATED

Thousands of troops are still deployed to Europe for Ukraine response

Some troops have rotated out or gone home for good, but the Europe mission has no end in sight.

Naming an operation “typically entails funding” and coordination across DoD and the Joint Staff, Ryder added, which hasn’t been put in place.

As of Wednesday, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with more than $13.5 billion in weapons and funding, in addition to providing training on weapons system to troops outside of the country.

Some activated units have been extended or rotated home and been replaced since mobilizations began in March, bumping up the total number of American troops in Europe from 80,000 to nearly 100,000

“My sense is that will remain at that level for the time being,” Ryder said. “Because, again, part of this is not only providing that capability and sending an important message to Russia, but also to our allies and our partners in the region about our commitment to supporting Ukraine.”

About Meghann Myers

Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership and other issues affecting service members.

22. The Use of Human Shields Is a War Crime. America Must Hold Terrorists Accountable

The Use of Human Shields Is a War Crime. America Must Hold Terrorists Accountable

19fortyfive.com · by Orde Kittrie and Matt Zweig · August 25, 2022

Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Gaza-based terrorist organization, repeatedly used civilians to shield its fighters and rockets from Israeli airstrikes during clashes earlier this month. The use of human shields is a war crime. It also triggers a law that Congress passed unanimously in 2018, authorizing the president to name — and impose sanctions on – terrorists who use human shields. Yet neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump has taken this important step to hold terrorists accountable.

PIJ is one of several terrorist groups that heavily uses human shields against Western militaries. Hamas and Hezbollah, which like PIJ are funded and armed by Iran, have regularly used human shields against Israel and are expected to again in future conflicts. Meanwhile, the Islamic State and Taliban have in recent years persistently, and effectively, used human shields against U.S. and other NATO forces.

All of these groups engage in the actual war crime of using human shields to lay the groundwork for false accusations that the U.S., Israeli, and other Western militaries deliberately kill civilians.

NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, U.S. Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, said in 2019 that NATO’s adversaries, especially in the Middle East, “have not hesitated to use the prohibited practice of human shields,” as doing so forces NATO troops “to choose between not taking action against legitimate military targets or seeing their actions, and the overall mission, delegitimized.”

PIJ’s use of human shields in Gaza this month killed numerous Palestinian children and other civilians. That is common. What is unusual is the video evidence demonstrating that PIJ caused these Palestinian deaths, undermining accusations that they were Israel’s fault. For example, during a live broadcast on August 7, Lebanon’s Mayadeen TV caught a PIJ rocket misfiring and coming down in a Gaza neighborhood.

The Associated Press noted that “live TV footage” showed PIJ rockets “falling short in densely packed residential neighborhoods,” and sent its reporters to visit the sites and analyze the death toll. On August 8, AP announced that its reporting was “consistent with” an Israeli military assessment that of the 47 Palestinians killed during the August 5-7 fighting, some 12 of the 15 Palestinian children killed, and 16 of the total 27 Palestinian civilians killed, died as a direct result of those PIJ rockets.

Yet PIJ and its sympathizers, including UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, attempted to blame Israel for every one of these deaths. For example, Albanese on August 12 claimed the Israeli military “clearly targets people indiscriminately, as the 46 people who lost their lives, 15 of whom are children, testify.”

Video footage also showed that Israeli forces were extraordinarily careful to avoid striking Palestinian civilians, several times postponing attacks on legitimate PIJ military targets until there were no children in the area.

PIJ’s use of human shields is clearly deliberate. In an August 5 interview, the top PIJ leader, Ziyad Nakhalah, said that PIJ had no “red lines” as it pursued its objective that “the Zionist entity will be annihilated.”

PIJ has a long history of using human shields. Its preeminent practitioner is Khaled al-Batsh, current head of the PIJ’s politburo, whose threats to bomb Israel helped precipitate the August 5-7 conflict. Al-Batsh had previously founded and led the National Authority for Return Marches, which organized a 2018-2019 campaign that saw thousands of Gazans (including women and children) rioting at the border with Israel. Al-Batsh and his Hamas partners designed the marches to overwhelm Israel’s border defenses and thereby enable armed militants to enter the country. In doing so, they explicitly put children at risk.

After al-Batsh and his fellow organizers labeled a particular march as “Our Child Martyrs” day, a UN official warned that would “push boys and girls to put themselves at risk” and urged that children not be “exposed to the risk of violence.” Separately, al-Batsh inaugurated a children’s park which was located along the border for the explicit purpose of using children in the park as human shields. According to Talal Abu Zarifeh, al-Batsh’s subordinate, “the aim behind establishing the park is encouraging a human presence in border areas… [It is unlikely that Israel is] bold enough to shoot at people in the park.”

The administration and Congress should take several steps to more effectively counter the widespread use of human shields by PIJ and other terrorist organizations.

First, the administration should implement its legal authority to designate terrorists who use human shields. Despite strong evidence of human shields use by PIJ and other terrorists, and the requirements of U.S. law, neither Trump nor Biden has thus far imposed any human shields sanctions on anyone. Imposing sanctions on PIJ leaders for their use of human shields would be an important first step.

Meanwhile, Congress should reauthorize and enhance the existing sanctions law,which is set to expire on December 31, 2023.

In addition, the US, Israel, and other allies should work together, including with NATO, to press the UN and other international organizations to investigate, condemn, and encourage penalties for human shields use by terrorist organizations and their material supporters. For example, the UN human rights high commissioner and council should be encouraged to vigorously investigate, condemn, and encourage accountability for the use of human shields.

Finally, the militaries of Israel, the United States and other NATO members, and other allies must coordinate in sharing best practices for more effectively addressing the use of human shields by terrorist organizations.

A robust U.S. government response to the use of human shields by PIJ and other terrorist groups would concretely advance several American national security and foreign policy objectives. These objectives include protecting U.S. and other NATO troops against terrorist use of human shields; setting the record straight in the face of UN and other efforts to falsely accuse Israel of committing war crimes; and undermining PIJ, Hamas, and other terrorist groups while supporting Palestinians who are prepared to make peace with Israel.

Expert Biographies: Orde Kittrie, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and law professor at Arizona State University, is a former U.S. State Department attorney. Follow him on Twitter @OrdeFK. Matthew Zweig is a senior fellow at FDD. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewZweig1. FDD is a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

19fortyfive.com · by Orde Kittrie and Matt Zweig · August 25, 2022

​

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

VIDEO "WHEREBY" Link: https://whereby.com/david-maxwell

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com